Posted in Institute Activities
First Ladies and Women’s Rights: From the Jacksonian Era to the Civil War, 1829-1861
As the country’s revolutionary past receded, the era of the Early Republic in the United States gave way to that of the Common Man.
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Despite the growing scholarly work at the intersection of religion and technology, how to characterize their relationship remains a matter of dispute for historians of technology. Some have argued that the problem arises arises from using poor terminology,
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Tourism is generally considered a leisure activity undertaken by vacationers during peacetime, and the majority of those served by the modern tourist industry are,
…
Posted in Institute Activities
In 1878, in what is now part of the Stanford University campus, Eadweard Muybridge lined up twelve cameras, each with a string attached to the shutter release,
…
Posted in Institute Activities
· The American Historical Association statement, which is printed in the spring edition of the IHS newsletter.
…
Posted in Institute Activities
The Y2K Problem and What it Means
On December 31, 1999, the world held its collective breath waiting to see if our computers could cope with the changeover to the year 2000.
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Saturday, March 16, 10:00 am, Monthly Program
Black Doctor: A Biography of James McCune Smith
Chris Webber discussed his latest book,
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, February 16, 2:00 pm, Monthly Program
A Program for Black History Month:
Black Swan Records and the Harlem Renaissance
The Story of the First Black-Owned Record Company, 1921-1923
A presentation by Bill Doggett
Black Swan Records was a beacon of promise,
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Jeopardy Doubled: Racialized Antisemitism, Interwar Boundaries, and the 1924 Immigration Act
The 1924 Immigration Act severely restricted immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe in favor of “Old Stock” immigrants from Northern and Western Europe.
…
Posted in Institute Activities
A presentation by Jim Gasperini
We have long used fire in rituals: sacred and secular; solemn and silly; from solstice bonfires to the Olympic torch to candles on a birthday cake. We are entering a season of ubiquitous ceremonial flames: the Hannukah menorah,
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, October 20, 2:00 pm, Monthly Program via Zoom.
Democracy Under Attack. THE CREOLE INCIDENT: The Beginning of the End of Slavery. View on the IHS YouTube channel.
J
ohn Hyde Barnard discussed a threat to democracy in the years 1836-42 when Southern Representatives acted to establish slavery under Federal Jurisprudence.
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, July 21, 2:00 pm 2024, Monthly Program via Zoom. View on the IHS YouTube channel.
A presentation by Peter Meyerhof
Chinese grape growers in the Sonoma Valley (1880)
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, July 21, 2:00 pm 2024, Monthly Program via Zoom.
A presentation by Esther Mordant
Shortly before Easter, 1144, a year at which Easter and Passover coincided, a 12-year-old boy, William, a tanner’s apprentice,
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, June 16, 2:00 pm, 2024 Monthly Program via Zoom. View on the IHS YouTube channel.
A presentation by Dan Kohanski
At almost any moment in recorded history, someone, somewhere, is at war. While wars are fought for many different reasons,
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, April 21, 2024
A presentation by Cathy Robbins
In her work in progress, A Torrid Splendor: Seeking Calabria, Cathy Robbins tells a story about a society’s fall from grace. Once upon a time Calabria was a jewel in the diadem of Magna Graecia,
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, March 17, 2024
View on the IHS YouTube channel.
A presentation by Dot Brovarney
Dot’s book, Mendocino Refuge: Lake Leonard & Reeves Canyon, is a multifaceted story of the people,
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, February 18, 2024
“Bringing History Alive From the Words of Those Who Were There“
A presentation by Judith Robinson
Author Judith Robinson tells stories from her historical and political biographies about the Hearst family,…
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, January 21, 2024 Monthly Program via Zoom.
October 31,…
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, November 19, 2023 Monthly Program via Zoom.
“Writing Harry Bridges: Labor Radical, Labor Leader“
A presentation by Robert Cherny
The iconic leader of one of America’s most powerful unions,…
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, October 15, 2023, Monthly Program via Zoom.
“Round Table on Historians’ Work”
A Conversation with Rob Robbins and Oliver Pollak
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, September 17, 2023, Monthly Program via Zoom. View on the IHS YouTube channel.
“How We Domesticated Fire, and Fire Domesticated Us“
A Presentation by Jim Gasperini
Jim is nearing completion of his cultural history of fire,…
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, August 20, 2023, Monthly Program via Zoom.
“First Ladies and Women’s Rights: Daughters of the Enlightenment“
A Presentation by Elizabeth Thacker-Estrada and Patricia Southard
Ms.…
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, June 18, 2:00 pm, Monthly Program via Zoom. View on the IHS YouTube channel.
“A Brief History of the End of the World”
A Presentation by Dan Kohanski
Many religions expect the end of the world to happen eventually.
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, May 21, 2:00 pm, Monthly Program via Zoom.
“One Picture — Several Stories: The Petrograd Children’s Colony in Russia and America.”
A Presentation by Maria Sakovich
The identification of a photograph found in a Sakovich family album has revealed over the course of 30 years a little-known and unusual,…
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, March 19, 2:00 pm, Monthly Program via Zoom.
“Designed for Large Explosions” – The Port Chicago explosion and the Manhattan Project
A Presentation by Daisy Brown Herndon
Daisy Brown Herndon, a former school librarian,
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, March 19, 2:00 pm, Monthly Program via Zoom.
Kissing Cousins: The Artistic Lives of San Francisco’s Albert M. Bender and Anne M. Bremer
A Presentation by Ann Harlow
When Anne M.
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, February 19, 2:00 pm, Monthly Program via Zoom
The Who, What, When, Where, How and Why of Paraplegic Vivian Edward’s Transcontinental Goat Cart Odyssey, 1907-10
A Presentation by Oliver B.
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, January 15, 2022 2:00 pm, Monthly Program via Zoom.
Surrealism is a cultural and art historical movement that evolved over the 20th century,
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, December 18, 2022 2:00 pm, Monthly Program via Zoom. View on the IHS YouTube channel.
The Genocide in California’s Closet
A Presentation by Robert Aquinas McNally
Most Californians are unaware that in the second half of the 19th century their state sponsored and funded a campaign to exterminate its Indigenous peoples — a mass atrocity known under contemporary international law as genocide.
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, October 16, 2:00 pm, Monthly Program via Zoom. View a video of this presentation here.
Eternal Flames: Excerpt from a work in progress
A Presentation by Jim Gasperini
Jim presented a chapter of his work in progress,
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, September 18, 2:00 pm, Monthly Program via Zoom.
How to Create Your Own Legacy Book
A Presentation by Margaretta Mitchell
Margaretta is both photographer and writer, who always brings research and history into her books.
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, August 21, 2:00 pm, Public Program. view a video of this presentation here.
Writing and Revising Narrative History
A Presentation by Megan Kate Nelson
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, July 17, 2:00 pm, Monthly Program via Zoom.
The Joy of Life:
Impressionists and Post-impressionists in Russia
A Presentation by Marina Oberatova
Russia has one of the world’s best collections of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings. It rivals the holdings of French museums—especially when it comes to the masterpieces of Paul Gauguin,
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, June 19, 2:00 pm, via Zoom.
A Presentation by Peter G. Meyerhof
In 1834, all of the 19 missions in Alta California were turned over to civil administrators who were to take over secular control from the mission priests and arrange distribution of assets including the land to the baptized Native Americans who had worked there.
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Between 1968 and 1979, women at the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center wrote and produced five musical comedies. These productions are an example of women forging a presence in an institution that barred them from equal participation in religious ritual and prevented them from fully participating in temple governance.
…
Posted in Institute Activities
A video of this presentation can be viewed on our YouTube Channel.
Saturday, April 16, 2022 10:00 am
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Its troglodyte residents ravaged by poverty and disease, its rock-walled churches all but forgotten,…
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, February 22, 2:00 pm
A Talk by Laure Latham
The French artist George Daniel de Monfreid (1856-1929) broke from mainstream impressionism early on, becoming a leading voice of the post-impressionist movement in his country.
…
Posted in Institute Activities
The internet can bring life to a tree of boxes listing who begat whom. Jim will show how – using The Colburn Chronicles,
…
Posted in Institute Activities
A Talk by Peter Stansky Peter Stansky will discuss how Orwell was shaped by his experiences of living through four wars: the First World War while he was growing up; the Spanish Civil War,
…
Posted in Institute Activities
An informal talk for Native American Heritage Month about my recent adventures in developing a group and blog site on “Honoring Indigenous Peoples,” formulating a land acknowledgment, paying Shuumi land tax,
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Bay Area author Jonathan Marshall offers an original take on an old subject, political corruption, and challenges the myth of a past golden age of American democracy.
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, September 19, 2:00 pm
Taryn Edwards presented
San Francisco’s historic cable cars have reopened! Beloved by tourists and locals alike, the cable cars are integral to the development, character, and culture of San Francisco. Join Taryn Edwards for a peek into her research about the cable car’s surprising origins and an update on the life of Andrew Smith Hallidie,
…
Posted in Institute Activities
A Wall Street lawyer’s Civil War project to help preserve the Union inadvertently ended up empowering women and paving the way to health-care reform.
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, July 18, 2:00 pm
Peter Meyerhof presented
Solomon Schocken (1842-1932) was a Jewish immigrant who rose quickly to considerable significance in Sonoma and beyond, through his own business ventures and as a mentor to several future entrepreneurs.
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Thursday July 22 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM PDT
Author Stephen E. Barton introduced his new book, J. Stitt Wilson: Socialist, Christian, Mayor of Berkeley. Faced with the dramatic extremes of wealth and poverty that characterized Gilded Age America, Wilson (1868-1942) gave up a promising career in the ministry to advocate for “applied Christianity”—a democratic and socialist economy based on caring and cooperation that would embody Jesus’s message of love.
…
Posted in Institute Activities
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,
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, May 16, 2:00 pm, Monthly Program, via Zoom. Richard Hurley presented:
This multimedia show chronicles the adventures (and misadventures) of the nearly 17,000 young men who volunteered for the Union army during the Civil War. Moved by passionate patriotism,…
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, April 18, 2:00 pm, Institute member David Goldberg on
A Family History
a photographic historical essay using the language of contemporary visual art
This essay sits at the space where family and history intersect.
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Beth Wright (daughter of longtime IHS member Georgia Wright) will provide practical information and guidance to help aspiring authors succeed with their self-published books. The webinar will include tips on how to find and work with the most suitable editors and other book publishing professionals;…
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, October 18, 2 pm, Monthly Program via Zoom. Anne Evers Hitz presented:
Lost Department Stores of San Francisco: Six Bygone Stores That Defined an Era
In the late nineteenth century, San Francisco’s merchant princes built grand stores for a booming city,
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Saturday, September 26, 1:00 pm, Public Program via Zoom – pre-registration required
Part of San Francisco History Days, this event is co-sponsored by the California Historical Society and the California African American Museum.
Join Susan D. Anderson,
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, September 20, Monthly Program: Black History in Marin County: From the Spaniards to the Great Migration
IHS member Marilyn Geary presented unique stories of Black individuals who made their marks amid the biases of a predominantly white society.
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, July 26, 2 pm: Mills College history professor emeritus and 40-year Institute member Bert Gordon presented “Exploring the Links between Tourism and War, based on the research for Bert’s most recent book, War Tourism: Second World War France from Defeat and Occupation to the Creation of Heritage,
…
Posted in Institute Activities
A lecture with Elizabeth Pepin Silva
Sunday, August 16 2020 at 2:00 PM
via Zoom
Ms. Silva is a documentary filmmaker, photographer, writer, and former day manager of the historic Fillmore Auditorium. She grew up all around the Bay Area
…
Posted in Institute Activities
A lecture with Professor Emeritus Robert Cherny
Thursday, October 3, 2019 at 6:30 PM
Presidio Interfaith Chapel
The murals at Coit Tower were completed 85 years ago, in the early summer of 1934. They were, at the time, the largest art project funded by the New Deal, and they influenced other New Deal art across the country.
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Monthly Program for May: Exhibit Talk and Tour at the Richmond Museum of History
Sunday, May 19, 2019 at 2 pm
Richmond Museum of History, 400 Nevin Avenue, Richmond
Prof. Oliver B. Pollak will give a talk and a tour of the exhibit: Pioneers to the Present,
…
Posted in Institute Activities
Friday, September 28 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm: South Asians in the South Bay: The Privileged Immigrants – with Jeevan Zutshi
Offered in partnership with the Indo-American Community Federation and the Mechanics’ Institute, IACF founder Jeevan Zutshi will talk about the South Asian community that has developed in Fremont,
…
Writing and Revising Narrative History
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.
In 1925 the fraternal organization Native Sons of the Golden West invited the rector of San Francisco's Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Cathedral to hold a service in the chapel at Fort Ross, the first since 1841. A small group of recently-arrived refugees from the Bolshevik revolution along with their pastor and the rector of the Santa Rosa Episcopal Church made their way to this former Russian settlement on the coast of Sonoma County on the Fourth of July to join the American Sons in their celebration and to hold the first 20th-century service in the small, modest wooden chapel. Over the past one hundred years Northern California Orthodox churches have continued this unique Fourth of July tradition. Long-time Institute member Maria Sakovich will preview her keynote talk for the October conference “The Story of Orthodoxy at Fort Ross, Then and Now.”
Maria Sakovich (MPH, MA) is a public historian and independent scholar who researches, writes, and has developed exhibits and presentations in the areas of immigration, family, and community history. She joined the Institute in 1992 and received her MA in history in 2002. For many years she has been documenting the history of the refuge-emigrants from Russia who arrived in San Francisco in the 1920s and 1930s. Their experiences have been included in several of her articles which have appeared in anthologies and journals as well as online. Her booklet The Chapel at Fort Ross: 150 Years of Russian and California History (2019) will be reprinted in a limited edition for the October conference (to be held in Santa Rosa, California.