Sunday, June 20, 2:00 pm
David Hirzel presented
A talk by David Hirzel on the prickly relationship between the socialite and the sea captain on his famous schooner Effie M. Morrissey. When war threatened U.S. neutrality in 1940,
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Monthly Program: The Socialite and the Sea Captain – Louise Arner Boyd and Captain Bob Bartlett on the 1941 Arctic Voyage of the Effie M. Morrissey
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Posted in Institute Activities
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, August 21, 2:00 pm, Public Program via Zoom.
Megan Kate Nelson is a historian and writer, with a BA from Harvard and a PhD in American Studies from the University of Iowa. She is the author of four books: Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America (Scribner 2022); The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West (Scribner 2020; a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in History); Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War (Georgia, 2012); and Trembling Earth: A Cultural History of the Okefenokee Swamp (Georgia, 2005). She writes about the Civil War, the U.S. West, and American culture for The New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, and TIME. Before leaving academia to write full-time in 2014, she taught U.S. history and American Studies at Texas Tech University, Cal State Fullerton, Harvard, and Brown. She grew up in Colorado but now lives in Boston with her husband and two cats.
Writing and Revising Narrative History
A Presentation by Megan Kate Nelson
Join the Mechanics' Institute and the Institute for Historical Study for this exciting talk about writing with historian Megan Kate Nelson who left academia in 2014 to become a full-time writer. During this Zoom event, she will offer advice for writers who want to publish trade history books and other pieces for general readers. Dr. Nelson will talk about how to make the transition from academic to narrative history writing, how to revise manuscripts for trade publication, and how to pitch articles and Op-eds to newspapers and magazines.
Megan Kate Nelson is a historian and writer, with a BA from Harvard and a PhD in American Studies from the University of Iowa. She is the author of four books: Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America (Scribner 2022); The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West (Scribner 2020; a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in History); Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War (Georgia, 2012); and Trembling Earth: A Cultural History of the Okefenokee Swamp (Georgia, 2005). She writes about the Civil War, the U.S. West, and American culture for The New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, and TIME. Before leaving academia to write full-time in 2014, she taught U.S. history and American Studies at Texas Tech University, Cal State Fullerton, Harvard, and Brown. She grew up in Colorado but now lives in Boston with her husband and two cats.
Saturday, June 20, 10:00 am, Monthly Program via Zoom.
For millennia natural philosophers, alchemists, and finally scientists closely studied nature and struggled to answer the simple question: “What is fire?” Some took a purely secular approach, examining fire and matter from a mechanical or chemical point of view. Others hoped that by studying how parts of the world fit together they could better understand the mind of the divine being who created it and may guide its workings still. A classic idea, independently devised in many cultures around the world, imagined that matter is made up of a small number of elementary substances, one of which is fire.
Jim Gasperini explores the long journey to understanding fire as a physical phenomenon: how we got from the notion of fire as an element to the modern conception of combustion. He shows how our modern understanding finally emerged from a dramatic competition among English, Swedish, and French scientists in the late eighteenth century.
Jim Gasperini is the Institute's webmaster and former Vice-President of its Board. This presentation is based on a chapter from his book, Fire in the Imagination: from the Burning Bush to Burning Man. See more about Jim’s background and his work in progress at https://jimgasperini.com.
What Is Fire?
A presentation by Jim Gasperini
A diagram of the four elements for a 1472 edition of "De natura rerum"
Antoine Lavoisier conducting an experiment
Jim Gasperini is the Institute's webmaster and former Vice-President of its Board. This presentation is based on a chapter from his book, Fire in the Imagination: from the Burning Bush to Burning Man. See more about Jim’s background and his work in progress at https://jimgasperini.com.
You are welcome to invite friends and colleagues to attend.
The presentation will be recorded, and posted on YouTube. If you don’t want to be on the recording, just make sure your video is off. And please remember to mute your microphone!
You are welcome to invite friends and colleagues to attend.
The presentation will be recorded, and posted on YouTube. If you don’t want to be on the recording, just make sure your video is off. And please remember to mute your microphone!