Sunday, July 21, 2:00 pm 2024, Monthly Program via Zoom.
A presentation by Peter Meyerhof
Chinese grape growers in the Sonoma Valley (1880)
The history of the early Chinese who lived in the Sonoma Valley has been almost forgotten.
…
Blog Archives
Monthly Program: The Early Chinese of Sonoma Valley
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Posted in Institute Activities
Posted in Institute Activities
Monthly Program: The Norwich Blood Libel
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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,
…
Monthly Program: Judaism, Christianity, and War
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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,
…
Monthly Program: A Torrid Splendor: Can this book be saved?
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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,
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Monthly Program: Mendocino Refuge: A World Apart and A Part of the World
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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,
…
Monthly Program: Bringing History Alive From the Words of Those Who Were There
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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,…
Monthly Program: Writing “Letters to Berlin: Writings of a German Jewish Refugee”
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Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, January 21, 2024 Monthly Program via Zoom.
“Letters to Berlin: Writings of a German Jewish Refugee“
A presentation by Peter Crane
October 31,
A presentation by Peter Crane
October 31,…
Monthly Program: Writing “Harry Bridges: Labor Radical, Labor Leader”
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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,…
Monthly Program: Round Table on Historians’ Work
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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
How do historians work? How do they decide what to study,
…
Monthly Program: How We Domesticated Fire, and Fire Domesticated Us
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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,…
Monthly Program: First Ladies and Women’s Rights: Daughters of the Enlightenment
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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.…
Monthly Program: A Brief History of the End of the World
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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.
…
Monthly Program: One Picture — Several Stories: The Petrograd Children’s Colony in Russia and America
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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,…
Monthly Program: “Designed for Large Explosions” – The Port Chicago explosion and the Manhattan Project
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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,
…
Monthly Program: Kissing Cousins: The Artistic Lives of San Francisco’s Albert M. Bender and Anne M. Bremer
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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.
…
Monthly Program: The Who, What, When, Where, How and Why of Paraplegic Vivian Edward’s Transcontinental Goat Cart Odyssey, 1907-10
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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.
…
Monthly Program: Mindful Surrealism: Practice-Based Research in San Francisco
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Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, January 15, 2022 2:00 pm, Monthly Program via Zoom.
Mindful Surrealism: Practice-Based Research in San Francisco
A Presentation by Nathan Foxton
A Presentation by Nathan Foxton
Surrealism is a cultural and art historical movement that evolved over the 20th century,
…
Monthly Program: The Genocide in California’s Closet
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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.
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Monthly Program: Eternal Flames: Excerpt from a work in progress
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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,
…
Monthly Program: How to Create Your Own Legacy Book
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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.
…
Public Program: Writing and Revising Narrative History
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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
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.
…
Monthly Program: The Joy of Life: Impressionists and Post-impressionists in Russia
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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,
…
Monthly Program: General Vallejo’s Efforts to Establish a Mission in Santa Rosa
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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.
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Monthly Program: Second Wave Feminism in a Post War Suburban Synagogue
by
Posted in Institute Activities
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, May 15, 2:00 pm, via Zoom
A Presentation by Michael Several
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.
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Monthly Program: Why the Jews Won’t Accept Jesus, and Why This Is a Problem for Christians
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Posted in Institute Activities
A video of this presentation can be viewed on our YouTube Channel.
Saturday, April 16, 2022 10:00 am
From the start, Christians have made special efforts to convert Jews. With rare exception, however, Jews have never been interested. Focusing mainly on Christianity’s first few centuries,
…
Monthly Program: Matera and the Sassi: From National Shame to International Fame
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Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, March 20 2022 A video of this presentation can be viewed on our YouTube Channel.
A Talk by Marilyn L. Geary
Its troglodyte residents ravaged by poverty and disease, its rock-walled churches all but forgotten,…
Monthly Program: George Daniel de Monfreid: Post-Impressionist Trailblazer & Gauguin’s Best Friend
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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.
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Monthly Program: Beyond Genealogy -Tips and Techniques for Researching and Presenting Family History Online
by
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Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, January 16, 2:00 pm.
A Talk by Jim Gasperini
The internet can bring life to a tree of boxes listing who begat whom. Jim will show how – using The Colburn Chronicles,
…
Monthly Program: The Four Wars That Shaped George Orwell, From the “Great” One to the “Cold” One
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Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, December 19, 2:00 pm
A Talk by Peter Stansky
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,
…
Monthly Program: Exploring Indigenous California History
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Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, November 21, 2:00 pm
Ann Harlow presented
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,
…
Monthly Program: Organized Crime, Big Business, and the Corruption of American Democracy
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Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, October 12, 7:00 pm
Jonathan Marshall presented
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.
…
Monthly Program: Out of the Fog: The Surprising Origin Story of the Cable Cars
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Posted in Institute Activities
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,
…
Monthly Program: George Templeton Strong, the Civil War Sanitary Commission, and the Women’s Movement
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Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, August 15, 2:00 pm, Monthly Program, via Zoom.
Christopher Webber presented
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.
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Monthly Program: Solomon Schocken: Sonoma’s Preeminent Jewish Entrepreneur
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Posted in Institute Activities
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.
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The Social Crusader: Berkeley Mayor J. Stitt Wilson’s Lifelong Quest for a Just Society
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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.
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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
by
Posted in Institute Activities
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,
…
Monthly Program: Richard Hurley, “Campaigns of the California Volunteers”
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Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, May 16, 2:00 pm, Monthly Program, via Zoom. Richard Hurley presented:
Campaigns of the California Volunteers
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,…
Monthly Program: David Goldberg, A Family History
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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.
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Monthly Program: a special webinar
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Posted in Institute Activities
Posted in Institute Activities
Sunday, March 21, 2:00 pm,
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;…
Monthly Program: Lost Department Stores of San Francisco
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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,
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Revealing San Francisco’s Hidden 19th-Century Black History: A Tour of California Historical Society Artifacts
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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,
…
Monthly Program: Black History in Marin County
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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.
…
Monthly Program: Exploring the Links between Tourism and War
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Posted in Institute Activities
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,
…
Harlem of the West: The Fillmore Jazz Era and Redevelopment
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Posted in Institute Activities
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
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The Coit Tower Murals: Visual Feast, Political Controversy, Decades of Neglect, and a Spectacular Restoration
by
Posted in Institute Activities
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.
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Monthly Program – Museum Exhibit Talk and Tour
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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,
…
South Asians in the South Bay
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Posted in Institute Activities
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,
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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.Sunday, October 20, 2:00 pm, Monthly Program via Zoom.
John Hyde Barnard is a member of the American Historical Society and the Phi Alpha Theta History Honor Society, and was recently elected to the board of directors for the Institute for Historical Studies, San Francisco. Although John attended Saddleback Community College, California State University at San Marcos, University of California at Riverside and Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles, he did not participate in academia or practice law. Instead, he pursed and continues in an active career as a musician, arranger, producer, publicists, performer and musical director. He discovered the Creole Incident as a student at Saddleback Community College and was accepted into the doctoral program at U.C. Riverside to form a dissertation on the subject.
You are welcome to invite friends and colleagues to attend.
Democracy Under Attack. THE CREOLE INCIDENT: The beginning of the end of slavery.
A presentation by John Hyde Barnard
J
ohn Hyde Bernard discusses a threat to democracy in the years 1836-42 when Southern Representatives acted to establish slavery under Federal Jurisprudence. The Creole Incident describes a calculated and premeditated course of action taken by a handful of radical abolitionists, in concert with certain Congressmen, to break the stranglehold of slavery’s representation in Congress. They turned to a slave revolt onboard the brig Creole to help make their case. At the heart of the story is the love between two slaves and their determination to be free. Events reach a climax when the British government has to decide the fate of the Creole slaves now imprisoned in the Bahamas on charges of mutiny and murder. These two stores combine to set in motion a series of dramatic floor fights in the United States House of Representatives¬—with the struggle for power between North and South hanging in the balance. A true historical incident that is an American story—for all Americans.
John Hyde Barnard is a member of the American Historical Society and the Phi Alpha Theta History Honor Society, and was recently elected to the board of directors for the Institute for Historical Studies, San Francisco. Although John attended Saddleback Community College, California State University at San Marcos, University of California at Riverside and Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles, he did not participate in academia or practice law. Instead, he pursed and continues in an active career as a musician, arranger, producer, publicists, performer and musical director. He discovered the Creole Incident as a student at Saddleback Community College and was accepted into the doctoral program at U.C. Riverside to form a dissertation on the subject.
You are welcome to invite friends and colleagues to attend.
You are welcome to invite friends and colleagues to attend.
We need a volunteer to write a short report on the presentation for the newsletter. If you would like to volunteer, please contact the program coordinator (Dan Kohanski).
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!