Monthly Program: How to Create Your Own Legacy Book

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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. Since 2015, she has been producing a legacy series of books that serve as catalogues of bodies of work. She is currently working on a book about a year living in Spain in 1959-60. In her talk, Margaretta will use her publications to help those of you who want to create your own legacy book, including how to self-publish your work.

“My legacy series began with Iconographies in 2015 when I had an exhibition of 20×24 Polacolor prints at Photo Gallery in Oakland, California. The meaning of a work of art can penetrate many layers. For me, pursuing meaning in this 20×24 series involved research, a kind of playful exploration of themes from the past that matched my thinking at that time. Influenced by the writing of Panofsky, I believe that the study of the humanities, especially art, is profoundly useful because the past is a reality that shapes us even if we do not realize it. Thus, we can say that the past is part of everything we do or think—or even reject.”
 
Margaretta K. Mitchell is a well-established artist, photographer, writer and educator. Besides photographic commissions and portraiture, she exhibits her fine art photography nationally. She is the author of five books, including Recollections: Ten Women of Photography, Ruth Bernhard: Between Art and Life, and The Face of Poetry. Since 2015 she has been publishing a series of legacy books that focuses on her 50 years of work in photography. She is a contributor of both text and images to many more books and publications. Her latest book, Dreamscapes and Destinations, grew out of the period of pandemic lockdown. Margaretta has taught at UC Berkeley and UC and UCSC Extension. Her website is margarettamitchell.com.

California and the West Events

Fall 2020: Revealing San Francisco’s Hidden 19th-Century Black History: A Tour of California Historical Society Artifacts, lecture by Susan D. Anderson, SF History Days (video here)

Summer 2020: Harlem of the West: The Fillmore Jazz Era and Redevelopment, online lecture by Elizabeth Pepin Silva

Fall 2019: An event-filled two-day excursion to Sacramento

Fall 2019:  Tour of Marin Civic Center and presentation by member Bonnie Portnoy on The Man Beneath the Paint: Tilden Daken

Summer 2019: Reading of Judith Offer's play, Scenes from the Life of Julia Morgan

Fall 2018: Public Program, "South Asians in the South Bay: The Privileged Immigrants"

Spring 2018: Excursion to Niles area of Fremont with historic train ride and silent film museum

Spring 2018: The California and the West study group initiated the two public programs on "The Future of the Past in the Digital Age" and Benjamin Madley's talk on An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846–1873.

Fall 2017: Martinez Adobe Fandango; Public Program: “Siberia and California: Connections During the Russian Revolution and Civil War”

Fall 2016: Amador County

Summer 2016: San Francisco Presidio

Winter 2016: Berkeley History Center

Spring 2015: Sonoma Plaza

Winter 2015: San Francisco Public Library

Summer 2014:  Red Oak Victory and World War II Homefront National Historic Park, Richmond

Spring 2014:  Los Gatos History Museum, "American Bohemia: The Cats Estate in Los Gatos”

Winter 2014:  Tour of California Historical Society exhibition on Juana Briones, January 25

Summer 2013:  Green Gulch Farm Zen Center visit, August 15

Spring 2013: Visits to Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum and the McCune Collection at the Vallejo Public Library, April 13

Jewish History Group Upcoming Meeting

The Jewish History Study Group meets on Zoom the second Sunday at 9:00 a.m. Pacific time. Louis Trager facilitates.

Writers Group Upcoming Meetings

Saturday, November 1, 10 am, via Zoom. Steve Barton will present.

Public Programs

Sunday, August 21, 2:00 pm, Public Program via Zoom.
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.

Next Monthly Program

Saturday, October 18, 10:00 am, Monthly Program via Zoom.
Listening with Intention: From Humboldt to a Statewide Storytelling System
A presentation by Tammy Farmer (with a brief demo by Zack Ellis founder of TheirStory)
California has deep local histories but no shared pipeline that takes an oral history interview from consent, transcript, archive, short captioned clip to citable archive across university systems. Tammy Framer is piloting a practical, human-centered workflow in Humboldt County. It includes participant-centered consent, narrator-reviewed transcripts, light indexing, and short clips that always point back to the full source. The aim is simple: Listen • Archive • Research • Advocate — meeting today’s attention spans with oral history storytelling using TheirStory. Tammy is facilitating a second campus session with Cal Poly Humboldt and TheirStory in November. She is making this presentation to IHS to be sure she is asking all the right questions in a non-biased collection framework. The goal is to get people and communities talking again.   The presentation will focus on three phases:
  1. Empowering Seniors in Humboldt County (IRB-approved pilot)
  2. Oral History Van to bridge the access gap (like Bookmobile or Bloodmobile)
  3. A shareable statewide model (CCC/CSU/UC)
Tammy Farmer is a BA candidate in Leadership Studies at Cal Poly Humboldt and a former volunteer firefighter/EMT and 911 operator. Zack Ellis (TheirStory) will give a brief, non-sales demo showing how transcript-based clipping, captions, and open exports support the workflow . TheirStory is an end-to-end oral history and audiovisual research platform used by over 120 universities and cultural institutions to streamline their process for recording, transcribing, indexing, editing, and making accessible the audiovisual stories of their communities. (See this article from the University of Connecticut on their use of TheirStory.)
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!

About Us

The Institute for Historical Study is a community of researchers, writers, and artists. Our common bond is a devotion to history in its many forms. Through wide-ranging programs, we share research, ideas, and practical advice and provide a public forum for the discussion of history. 

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We Promote:

  •  the study and discussion of history outside the traditional classroom setting
  •  research, writing, performances, exhibitions, and other expressions of historical study
  •  non-traditional and interdisciplinary areas of study as well as traditional approaches to history

 

 

Member News

Member Honored for Book Proposal
Member Liz Schott was recently awarded the Biographers International Organization’s (BIO) Hazel Rowley Prize for her book proposal for Useful and Beautiful: The Life of Dorothy Wright Liebes. Given to first-time biographers who are not under contract with a publisher, the Hazel Rowley Prize is named after the author of Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage and who was “a passionate advocate for the art and craft of biography.”To be considered for the award, Schott wrote a 20-page proposal that included a synopsis of the book, chapter titles, a writing sample (she submitted a full chapter per the recommendation of the Institute’s Writers’ Group), comparable books, and a CV. In a congratulatory email, she was told, “We were struck by the quality of your writing, argument about why Dorothy Wright Liebes merits a biography, and organization in researching and executing the work.”
The prize includes cash, a year’s membership in BIO, admission to the annual conference, and—best of all a careful reading of the proposal by an established literary agent.

Our Newest Member
Tammy Farmer, a community advocate with over a decade of experience, is studying for a BA in Leadership Studies at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt. She is the founder of the Oral History Van, her capstone project, which brings mobile oral history studios to rural elders, recording their stories and channeling their lived experiences back to the university for research and advocacy on aging and caregiving. She launched a stationary pilot, Empowering Seniors in Humboldt County, with Institutional Review Board approval. The longterm vision projects three trustworthy and visible rotating vans that will return to sites regularly to promote nontraditional, interdisciplinary historical study. She plans to pursue an MA in Public History.

Members:  Please submit news of your history-related publications, lectures, awards, research finds, etc. to info@instituteforhistoricalstudy.org.

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We welcome all men and women who have a commitment to historical study, which may be demonstrated in one or more of the following ways...

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Institute for Historical Study
1399 Queens Road
Berkeley, CA 94708
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