Howard County Library System’s author events are a key component of the HCLS curriculum. Notable, best-selling, and local authors provide customers with enlightening experiences throughout the year. Bringing the community together to celebrate the literary arts is a hallmark of HCLS customer service. Join us for these opportunities to meet one of your favorite authors or discover someone new!
There are 14 upcoming classes.
Percy Jackson Escape Room (Online)
Date: 01/30/21Time: 4:00pm - 5:00pm
Branch: Online Branch
Age group: Ages 11-13 (Middle School), Ages 14 - 17 (High School)
Program type: STEM / STEAM
Description:
Calling all Demi-gods! Percy Jackson needs your help! He's held prisoner in the Labyrinth! Complete puzzles, riddles, and defeat monsters to find and rescue him. You have one hour!
Please register with an email address to receive an immediate registration confirmation with a link to join the class/event. This email will also contain the dial-in information if you wish to participate by telephone.
Forgotten Stories: Middle School Books for Black History Month (Online)
Date: 02/01/21Time: 4:00pm - 5:00pm
Branch: Online Branch
Age group: Ages 11-13 (Middle School), Ages 14 - 17 (High School)
Program type: Community & Culture
Description:
Looking for an inspiring read for Black History Month? A teen librarian recommends HCLS titles highlighting the accomplishments, struggles, and suppressed voices of people of color through history in middle school fiction and non-fiction. Then take the scavenger hunt challenge to learn about a little known African American hero.
Please register with an email address to receive an immediate registration confirmation with a link to join the class/event. This email will also contain the dial-in information if you wish to participate by telephone.
The Visionary Genius of Frederick Douglass (Online)
Date: 02/03/21Time: 7:00pm - 8:30pm
Branch: Online Branch
Age group: Ages 14 - 17 (High School), Ages 18+ (Adults)
Program type: History & Genealogy
Description:
University of Maryland historian Richard Bell explores the many facets of Frederick Douglass' incredible life as well as his family and career, and considers his impact upon our modern struggle to advance the cause of Black freedom in the United States.
Frederick Douglass was a visionary—a prophet who could see a better future that lay just beyond reach. His talents were nothing short of extraordinary and he put his exceptional gifts to use in the service of freedom, driving American slavery into the grave.
After the carnage of the Civil War, he played a central role in the re-founding of American Republic as well, and spent decades afterwards defending and perfecting it. Douglass, though, is so much more than another great man on a pedestal. He was the slave who dreamed of being a senator. He was the unlettered child with no formal schooling who wrote three autobiographies, becoming one of our greatest literary figures. His life bursts with contradiction and with change. He was the dignified, brilliant, and courageous freedom fighter who could sometimes be insecure, vain, and arrogant. He was the outspoken feminist who treated his own long-suffering wife like his servant. He was the fire-breathing insurgent who would eventually become an out-of-touch elder statesman. To understand how the boy born into bondage in 1818 became the Frederick Douglass that we hold in such esteem today, we must understand this man’s visionary genius not as innate, God-given, and infallible, but instead as the imperfectly beautiful product of growth, of change, of self-doubt, and of struggle.
Dr. Richard Bell is Professor of History at the University of Maryland. He holds a PhD from Harvard University and is author of the new book Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and their Astonishing Odyssey Home which is shortlisted for the George Washington Prize and the Harriet Tubman Prize. He has won more than a dozen teaching awards, including the University System of Maryland Board of Regents Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching, the highest honor for teaching faculty in the Maryland state system. He has held major research fellowships at Yale, Cambridge, and the Library of Congress and is the recipient of the National Endowment of the Humanities Public Scholar award. He serves as a Trustee of the Maryland Center for History and Culture, as an elected member of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, and as a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Learn more here.
Sponsored by Friends and Foundation of Howard County Library System with support from Howard County Historical Society, Carroll County Public Library, Prince George's County Memorial Library System, Ruth Enlow Library of Garrett County, and Worcester County Library.
Please register with an email address to receive an automatic confirmation email containing a link to join the webinar. This email will also include the dial-in information if you wish to participate by phone.
Bestie Beasties Books: Middle School Fiction and Nonfiction (Online)
Date: 02/08/21Time: 4:00pm - 5:00pm
Branch: Online Branch
Age group: Ages 11-13 (Middle School), Ages 14 - 17 (High School)
Program type: Fun & Games!
Description:
Celebrate National Love Your Pet Day and all pets, both real and imagined, by learning about fun middle school fiction and nonfiction featuring great animal friends. Then play a version of Animal Headbands.
Please register with an email address to receive an immediate registration confirmation with a link to join the class/event. This email will also contain the dial-in information if you wish to participate by telephone.
Author works: Adam Schwartz "The Rest of the World" (Online)
Date: 02/11/21Time: 7:00pm - 8:00pm
Branch: Online Branch
Age group: Ages 18+ (Adults)
Program type: Book Clubs
Description:
The heroes in this acclaimed story collection are kids coming of age in a Baltimore that owes them better. They are studies of characters in crisis—delivered by a writer whose empathies illuminate the longings of teens and young adults forced to navigate complex moral choices. These teen and young adult characters rescue loved ones, plot hustles, seek redemption and refuse to give into despair. As our country grapples with who we are and the values we aspire to, this collection offers stories about resilient teens growing up in neighborhoods ravaged by systemic inequities.
By shaping kids’ struggles—their hopes and griefs and the sometimes impossible choices they confront— into narrative, Schwartz hopes to capture truths that reflect the strength, will, generosity and essential goodness so many Baltimore teenagers have shown him over the years.
Asked about what inspired him to write these stories, Schwartz says, "All eight stories in this collection are set in Baltimore, and they were all inspired by getting to know the teens in my classroom. Like many writers, I’m drawn to understand people—their struggles and triumphs, drives and disappointments, the forces that shape our identities. Writing these stories—carrying these characters around in my head—has been a way to transcribe the resilience I see in so many Baltimore teens.
"The students at my school are 16, 17, 18 or sometimes even older, but they’re kids. And Baltimore puts enormous pressure on some of them. The challenges kids in Baltimore face are often the consequence—direct or indirect—of systemic inequities that have been strangling Baltimore neighborhoods for generations: disinvestment, municipal neglect, mass incarceration, few job opportunities and unreliable public transportation. How does this landscape shape teenagers’ views of themselves and their prospects? How do kids hold onto their ideals when parts of the city are unraveling around them? In what ways are they sustained and nurtured by loved ones? For children trying to figure this maze out, what is the right way forward? These are the questions I’m trying to get my arms around in the book."
Adam’s stories have won Poets & Writers’ WEX Award, Philadelphia Stories’ Marguerite McGlinn contest, Baltimore City Paper’s story contest and have been published in Arkansas Review, Mississippi Review, Popshot Magazine, Raritan, The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review, Little Patuxent Review, and Saranac Review. His non-fiction has appeared in the Sewanee Review, Baltimore Sun, and the New York Daily News. He has an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis. For twenty-two years, he has taught high school in Baltimore City.
Please register with an email address to receive an immediate confirmation as well as a link and passcode to join this event. This email will also contain dial-in information if you wish to participate by phone.
| Presented with support from Ruth Enlow Library of Garrett County and Worcester County Library. |
Book Corner
Date: 02/19/21Time: 11:00am - 11:45am
Branch: Online Branch
Age group: Ages 18+ (Adults)
Program type: Book Clubs
Description:
Welcome to Book Corner! In this class we will talk about our current favorite reads and hear from you about your favorites. We will discuss fun questions about books: who is your favorite protagonist of all times, what you love most about the genre of your choice or which book changed your perspective...........the possibilities are endless and enticing.
Join us in our Book Corner every 3rd Friday of each month to talk about our favorite subject – books!
Please register with an email address to receive an immediate registration confirmation with a link to join the class/event. This email will also contain the dial-in information if you wish to participate by telephone.
John Shields Warm, Winter Cooking Demo (Online)
Date: 02/25/21Time: 7:00pm - 8:00pm
Branch: Online Branch
Age group: Ages 18+ (Adults)
Program type: Health & Wellness
Description:
Harford County Library System hosts a warm winter cooking demo with Chef John!
He'll prepare two dishes - Alva Crockett's Tangier Island 50 Clam Chowder (from Chesapeake Bay Cooking with John Shields) and an Apple Crepe Cake (from The New Chesapeake Kitchen). An absolute Harford County favorite, chef, author and television personality John Shields is the owner of the celebrated Gertrude's Restaurant at the Baltimore Museum of Art. John is often called "The Culinary Ambassador of the Chesapeake Bay," and he has written four popular cookbooks on the cuisine of the region.
You won't want to miss out on this fun and engaging evening!
Recipes for this FREE event will be included in the registration confirmation email.
This event will be presented virtually on ZOOM. Click here to register.
Hosted by Harford County Library with support from Howard County Library System.
Author Works: Brandon Hobson & "The Removed" (Online)
Date: 03/10/21Time: 7:00pm - 8:00pm
Branch: Online Branch
Age group: Ages 18+ (Adults)
Program type: Book Clubs
Description:
Steeped in Cherokee myths and history, a novel about a fractured family reckoning with the tragic death of their son long ago—from National Book Award finalist Brandon Hobson
“Brandon Hobson has given us a haunted work, full of voices old and new. It is about a family’s reckoning with loss and injustice, and it is about a people trying for the same. The journey of this family’s way home is full—in equal measure—of melancholy and love. The Removed is spirited, droll, and as quietly devastating as rain lifting from earth to sky.”
—Tommy Orange, author of There There
In the fifteen years since their teenage son, Ray-Ray, was killed in a police shooting, the Echota family has been suspended in private grief. With the family’s annual bonfire approaching—an occasion marking both the Cherokee National Holiday and Ray-Ray’s death, and a rare moment in which they openly talk about his memory—The mother, Maria, attempts to call the family together from their physical and emotional distances once more.
Drawing deeply on Cherokee folklore, The Removed seamlessly blends the real and spiritual to excavate the deep reverberations of trauma—a meditation on family, grief, home, and the power of stories on both a personal and ancestral level.
Preorder The Removed (February 2021) from Books with a Past.
Brandon Hobson is the author of the novel Where the Dead Sit Talking, which was a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction and winner of the Reading the West Book Award. His other books include Desolation of Avenues Untold and the novella Deep Ellum. His work has appeared in the Pushcart Prize anthology, The Believer, the Paris Review Daily, Conjunctions, NOON, and McSweeney’s, among other places. He is an assistant professor of creative writing at New Mexico State University and teaches in the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Hobson is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation Tribe of Oklahoma.
Please register with an email address to receive an automatic confirmation email with a link to join the event. This email will also contain the dial-in information if you would like to participate by phone.
| Sponsored by Friends and Foundation of Howard County Library System and presented with support from Carroll County Public Library, Charles County Public Library, Prince George's County Memorial Library System, Ruth Enlow Library of Garrett County, and Talbot County Free Library. |
Author works: Kirkland Hamill "Filthy Beasts" (Online)
Date: 03/17/21Time: 7:00pm - 8:00pm
Branch: Online Branch
Age group: Ages 18+ (Adults)
Program type: Book Clubs
Description:
A stunning, deeply satisfying story about how we outlive our upbringings. —Kirkus Reviews
Gripping, thought-provoking, and equal parts hilarious and wrenching, Filthy Beasts is the story of a once-wealthy family whose gilded lives fell to pieces.
Following a rancorous split from New York’s upper-class society, newly divorced Wendy and her three sons are exiled from the East Coast elite circle. Wendy’s middle son, Kirk, is eight when she moves the family to her native Bermuda, leaving the three young boys to fend for themselves as she chases after the highs of her old life: alcohol, a wealthy new suitor, and other indulgences. Kirk learns to maintain appearances and bury his inconvenient truths from the world, until he leaves the island, falls in love for the first time, and begins to discover the freedom of telling his truth.
Author Kirkland Hamill will discuss his memoir with Michaela Carter in this candid interview.
Kirkland Hamill has written for Salon and The Advocate, and was formerly the chief development and marketing officer at the National Center for Family Philanthropy. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland, with his husband and a dog named Blue.
Michaela Carter is a writer, painter, and award-winning poet. Her novel Further Out Than You Thought was an Indie Next List Pick, and was the Arizona Republic Critic’s Pick for Best Debut Author in 2014. Her poetry won the Poetry Society of America Los Angeles New Poets Contest, has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, and has appeared in numerous anthologies and journals. She is the cofounder of the independent bookstore the Peregrine Book Company in Prescott, Arizona, where she lives with her husband and two dogs. Her historical novel, Leonora In the Morning Light, about the artists Leonora Carrington and Max Ernst, and the art collector Peggy Guggenheim, is forthcoming from Avid Reader Press in April, 2021.
Please register with an email address to receive an immediate registration confirmation with a link to join the class/event. This email will also contain the dial-in information if you wish to participate by telephone.
Harriet Tubman and Harriet Beecher Stowe (Online)
Date: 03/23/21Time: 7:00pm - 8:30pm
Branch: Online Branch
Age group: Ages 14 - 17 (High School), Ages 18+ (Adults)
Program type: History & Genealogy
Description:
“So you’re the little lady who started this great war!” said President Abraham Lincoln in the fall of 1862 when he finally met Harriet Beecher Stowe. This “little lady” was the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin a roller-coaster anti-slavery novel that had become a huge best-seller after its publication in 1852. Lincoln and many other people at the time believed that Stowe’s novel had caused the Civil War by intensifying public sentiment against slavery in the North and by spurring a reactionary surge of proslavery feeling in the states that would later secede from the United States to form the Confederate States of America. But Lincoln might just have well have been talking to and about Harriet Tubman. Like Stowe, Tubman’s activism advanced the fight against slavery and edged this country closer to Civil War. As the most famous conductor on the Underground Railroad, Tubman and her allies built an antislavery escape network that stretched from the bowels of the slave South all the way into British Canada. Join us for a talk about both of these American icons with University of Maryland historian Dr. Richard Bell.
Dr. Richard Bell is Professor of History at the University of Maryland. He holds a PhD from Harvard University and is author of the new book Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and their Astonishing Odyssey Home which is shortlisted for the George Washington Prize and the Harriet Tubman Prize. He has won more than a dozen teaching awards, including the University System of Maryland Board of Regents Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching, the highest honor for teaching faculty in the Maryland state system. He has held major research fellowships at Yale, Cambridge, and the Library of Congress and is the recipient of the National Endowment of the Humanities Public Scholar award. He serves as a Trustee of the Maryland Center for History and Culture, as an elected member of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, and as a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Learn more here.
Sponsored by Friends and Foundation of Howard County Library System with support from Howard County Historical Society, Carroll County Public Library, Charles County Public Library, Prince George's County Memorial Library System, Ruth Enlow Library of Garrett County, Talbot County Free Library, and Worcester County Library.
Please register with an email address to receive an automatic confirmation email containing a link to join the webinar. This email will also include the dial-in information if you wish to participate by phone.
Women & the American Revolution (Part 1 of 4) (Online)
Date: 04/07/21Time: 12:00pm - 1:00pm
Branch: Online Branch
Age group: Ages 14 - 17 (High School), Ages 18+ (Adults)
Program type: History & Genealogy
Description:
The revolutionary war was fought on battlefields, in forests, and on the homefront—and the contributions of American women shaped the fight at every turn. They did this in every way imaginable, and while some prospered and thrived when the war came, others faltered and fell. Many American women fought for the patriot cause while almost as many others fought to stop them. The incredible spectrum of female participation in America’s founding conflict defies easy categorization and reminds us that the legacy of the revolution for American women was not simple, single, or remotely cut and dried. This four-part course examines the varied roles of women in the American Revolution. Lecture one explores the life of Jane Mecom, the beloved but beggared sister of Benjamin Franklin whose rollercoaster ride through the American Revolution illuminates the experiences of other women on society’s bottom ranks. Lecture two pushes deep into the war itself to reconstruct the wartime experiences of Deborah Sampson, the 21-year-old weaver who disguised herself as a man to serve 17 distinguished months in George Washington’s Continental Army. Lecture three tells the story of Molly Brant, the Native Mohawk woman who spent the war trying to hold together the fragile military alliance between the Iroquois League and the British Army. Lecture four then follows the story of the American Revolution into the Early Republic, using the life of Maine midwife Martha Ballard to understand how women’s lives changed—and stayed the same—after the patriots won the war.
Part 1. Jane Mecom: This first lecture reconstructs the American Revolution from the perspective of Jane Mecom, the widow of a Boston shopkeeper—and the favorite little sister of Benjamin Franklin. During the war, Jane would be menaced by soldiers and made a refugee. She would lose her home and her possessions. All this was sadly typical for many other poor women brought low by the revolutionary crisis.
Part 2. Deborah Sampson: This second lecture tells the extraordinary story of Deborah Sampson, the young Massachusetts woman who disguised herself as a man named Robert Shurtlieff in order to fight in the Continental Army. It poses some simple questions: Who was she? Why she did she do it? How did she get away with it? And how did her wartime adventures in George Washington’s Army change her life?
Part 3. Molly Brant: This third lecture explores the American Revolution in Indian Country by focusing upon a Native Mohawk known to us as Molly Brant, the widow of a powerful British diplomat. Straddling two worlds – British and Iroquois – Molly spent the war trying to the fill the political vacuum created by her husband’s death and quickly emerged as the most important military and cultural broker in Native America.
Part 4. Martha Ballard: This last lecture tells the story of a Maine midwife named Martha Ballard, a quiet, dutiful wife, a busy mother, and a kind neighbor whose life was lived entirely in some very small towns. For that reason, perhaps, although she lived through many exciting changes in urban women’s sexual and political circumstances, her life seems – on the surface at least – to have been almost untouched by the 18thcentury gender revolution.
Dr. Richard Bell is Professor of History at the University of Maryland. He holds a PhD from Harvard University and is author of the new book Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and their Astonishing Odyssey Home which is shortlisted for the George Washington Prize and the Harriet Tubman Prize. He has won more than a dozen teaching awards, including the University System of Maryland Board of Regents Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching, the highest honor for teaching faculty in the Maryland state system. He has held major research fellowships at Yale, Cambridge, and the Library of Congress and is the recipient of the National Endowment of the Humanities Public Scholar award. He serves as a Trustee of the Maryland Center for History and Culture, as an elected member of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, and as a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Learn more here.
Please register with an email address to receive an automatic confirmation email containing a link to join the webinar. This email will also include the dial-in information if you wish to participate by phone.
Women & the American Revolution (Part 2 of 4) (Online)
Date: 04/14/21Time: 12:00pm - 1:00pm
Branch: Online Branch
Age group: Ages 14 - 17 (High School), Ages 18+ (Adults)
Program type: History & Genealogy
Description:
The revolutionary war was fought on battlefields, in forests, and on the homefront—and the contributions of American women shaped the fight at every turn. They did this in every way imaginable, and while some prospered and thrived when the war came, others faltered and fell. Many American women fought for the patriot cause while almost as many others fought to stop them. The incredible spectrum of female participation in America’s founding conflict defies easy categorization and reminds us that the legacy of the revolution for American women was not simple, single, or remotely cut and dried. This four-part course examines the varied roles of women in the American Revolution. Lecture one explores the life of Jane Mecom, the beloved but beggared sister of Benjamin Franklin whose rollercoaster ride through the American Revolution illuminates the experiences of other women on society’s bottom ranks. Lecture two pushes deep into the war itself to reconstruct the wartime experiences of Deborah Sampson, the 21-year-old weaver who disguised herself as a man to serve 17 distinguished months in George Washington’s Continental Army. Lecture three tells the story of Molly Brant, the Native Mohawk woman who spent the war trying to hold together the fragile military alliance between the Iroquois League and the British Army. Lecture four then follows the story of the American Revolution into the Early Republic, using the life of Maine midwife Martha Ballard to understand how women’s lives changed—and stayed the same—after the patriots won the war.
Part 1. Jane Mecom: This first lecture reconstructs the American Revolution from the perspective of Jane Mecom, the widow of a Boston shopkeeper—and the favorite little sister of Benjamin Franklin. During the war, Jane would be menaced by soldiers and made a refugee. She would lose her home and her possessions. All this was sadly typical for many other poor women brought low by the revolutionary crisis.
Part 2. Deborah Sampson: This second lecture tells the extraordinary story of Deborah Sampson, the young Massachusetts woman who disguised herself as a man named Robert Shurtlieff in order to fight in the Continental Army. It poses some simple questions: Who was she? Why she did she do it? How did she get away with it? And how did her wartime adventures in George Washington’s Army change her life?
Part 3. Molly Brant: This third lecture explores the American Revolution in Indian Country by focusing upon a Native Mohawk known to us as Molly Brant, the widow of a powerful British diplomat. Straddling two worlds – British and Iroquois – Molly spent the war trying to the fill the political vacuum created by her husband’s death and quickly emerged as the most important military and cultural broker in Native America.
Part 4. Martha Ballard: This last lecture tells the story of a Maine midwife named Martha Ballard, a quiet, dutiful wife, a busy mother, and a kind neighbor whose life was lived entirely in some very small towns. For that reason, perhaps, although she lived through many exciting changes in urban women’s sexual and political circumstances, her life seems – on the surface at least – to have been almost untouched by the 18thcentury gender revolution.
Dr. Richard Bell is Professor of History at the University of Maryland. He holds a PhD from Harvard University and is author of the new book Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and their Astonishing Odyssey Home which is shortlisted for the George Washington Prize and the Harriet Tubman Prize. He has won more than a dozen teaching awards, including the University System of Maryland Board of Regents Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching, the highest honor for teaching faculty in the Maryland state system. He has held major research fellowships at Yale, Cambridge, and the Library of Congress and is the recipient of the National Endowment of the Humanities Public Scholar award. He serves as a Trustee of the Maryland Center for History and Culture, as an elected member of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, and as a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Learn more here.
Please register with an email address to receive an automatic confirmation email containing a link to join the webinar. This email will also include the dial-in information if you wish to participate by phone.
Women & the American Revolution (Part 3 of 4) (Online)
Date: 04/21/21Time: 12:00pm - 1:00pm
Branch: Online Branch
Age group: Ages 14 - 17 (High School), Ages 18+ (Adults)
Program type: History & Genealogy
Description:
The revolutionary war was fought on battlefields, in forests, and on the homefront—and the contributions of American women shaped the fight at every turn. They did this in every way imaginable, and while some prospered and thrived when the war came, others faltered and fell. Many American women fought for the patriot cause while almost as many others fought to stop them. The incredible spectrum of female participation in America’s founding conflict defies easy categorization and reminds us that the legacy of the revolution for American women was not simple, single, or remotely cut and dried. This four-part course examines the varied roles of women in the American Revolution. Lecture one explores the life of Jane Mecom, the beloved but beggared sister of Benjamin Franklin whose rollercoaster ride through the American Revolution illuminates the experiences of other women on society’s bottom ranks. Lecture two pushes deep into the war itself to reconstruct the wartime experiences of Deborah Sampson, the 21-year-old weaver who disguised herself as a man to serve 17 distinguished months in George Washington’s Continental Army. Lecture three tells the story of Molly Brant, the Native Mohawk woman who spent the war trying to hold together the fragile military alliance between the Iroquois League and the British Army. Lecture four then follows the story of the American Revolution into the Early Republic, using the life of Maine midwife Martha Ballard to understand how women’s lives changed—and stayed the same—after the patriots won the war.
Part 1. Jane Mecom: This first lecture reconstructs the American Revolution from the perspective of Jane Mecom, the widow of a Boston shopkeeper—and the favorite little sister of Benjamin Franklin. During the war, Jane would be menaced by soldiers and made a refugee. She would lose her home and her possessions. All this was sadly typical for many other poor women brought low by the revolutionary crisis.
Part 2. Deborah Sampson: This second lecture tells the extraordinary story of Deborah Sampson, the young Massachusetts woman who disguised herself as a man named Robert Shurtlieff in order to fight in the Continental Army. It poses some simple questions: Who was she? Why she did she do it? How did she get away with it? And how did her wartime adventures in George Washington’s Army change her life?
Part 3. Molly Brant: This third lecture explores the American Revolution in Indian Country by focusing upon a Native Mohawk known to us as Molly Brant, the widow of a powerful British diplomat. Straddling two worlds – British and Iroquois – Molly spent the war trying to the fill the political vacuum created by her husband’s death and quickly emerged as the most important military and cultural broker in Native America.
Part 4. Martha Ballard: This last lecture tells the story of a Maine midwife named Martha Ballard, a quiet, dutiful wife, a busy mother, and a kind neighbor whose life was lived entirely in some very small towns. For that reason, perhaps, although she lived through many exciting changes in urban women’s sexual and political circumstances, her life seems – on the surface at least – to have been almost untouched by the 18thcentury gender revolution.
Dr. Richard Bell is Professor of History at the University of Maryland. He holds a PhD from Harvard University and is author of the new book Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and their Astonishing Odyssey Home which is shortlisted for the George Washington Prize and the Harriet Tubman Prize. He has won more than a dozen teaching awards, including the University System of Maryland Board of Regents Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching, the highest honor for teaching faculty in the Maryland state system. He has held major research fellowships at Yale, Cambridge, and the Library of Congress and is the recipient of the National Endowment of the Humanities Public Scholar award. He serves as a Trustee of the Maryland Center for History and Culture, as an elected member of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, and as a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Learn more here.
Please register with an email address to receive an automatic confirmation email containing a link to join the webinar. This email will also include the dial-in information if you wish to participate by phone.
Women & the American Revolution (Part 4 of 4) (Online)
Date: 04/28/21Time: 12:00pm - 1:00pm
Branch: Online Branch
Age group: Ages 14 - 17 (High School), Ages 18+ (Adults)
Program type: History & Genealogy
Description:
The revolutionary war was fought on battlefields, in forests, and on the homefront—and the contributions of American women shaped the fight at every turn. They did this in every way imaginable, and while some prospered and thrived when the war came, others faltered and fell. Many American women fought for the patriot cause while almost as many others fought to stop them. The incredible spectrum of female participation in America’s founding conflict defies easy categorization and reminds us that the legacy of the revolution for American women was not simple, single, or remotely cut and dried. This four-part course examines the varied roles of women in the American Revolution. Lecture one explores the life of Jane Mecom, the beloved but beggared sister of Benjamin Franklin whose rollercoaster ride through the American Revolution illuminates the experiences of other women on society’s bottom ranks. Lecture two pushes deep into the war itself to reconstruct the wartime experiences of Deborah Sampson, the 21-year-old weaver who disguised herself as a man to serve 17 distinguished months in George Washington’s Continental Army. Lecture three tells the story of Molly Brant, the Native Mohawk woman who spent the war trying to hold together the fragile military alliance between the Iroquois League and the British Army. Lecture four then follows the story of the American Revolution into the Early Republic, using the life of Maine midwife Martha Ballard to understand how women’s lives changed—and stayed the same—after the patriots won the war.
Part 1. Jane Mecom: This first lecture reconstructs the American Revolution from the perspective of Jane Mecom, the widow of a Boston shopkeeper—and the favorite little sister of Benjamin Franklin. During the war, Jane would be menaced by soldiers and made a refugee. She would lose her home and her possessions. All this was sadly typical for many other poor women brought low by the revolutionary crisis.
Part 2. Deborah Sampson: This second lecture tells the extraordinary story of Deborah Sampson, the young Massachusetts woman who disguised herself as a man named Robert Shurtlieff in order to fight in the Continental Army. It poses some simple questions: Who was she? Why she did she do it? How did she get away with it? And how did her wartime adventures in George Washington’s Army change her life?
Part 3. Molly Brant: This third lecture explores the American Revolution in Indian Country by focusing upon a Native Mohawk known to us as Molly Brant, the widow of a powerful British diplomat. Straddling two worlds – British and Iroquois – Molly spent the war trying to the fill the political vacuum created by her husband’s death and quickly emerged as the most important military and cultural broker in Native America.
Part 4. Martha Ballard: This last lecture tells the story of a Maine midwife named Martha Ballard, a quiet, dutiful wife, a busy mother, and a kind neighbor whose life was lived entirely in some very small towns. For that reason, perhaps, although she lived through many exciting changes in urban women’s sexual and political circumstances, her life seems – on the surface at least – to have been almost untouched by the 18thcentury gender revolution.
Dr. Richard Bell is Professor of History at the University of Maryland. He holds a PhD from Harvard University and is author of the new book Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and their Astonishing Odyssey Home which is shortlisted for the George Washington Prize and the Harriet Tubman Prize. He has won more than a dozen teaching awards, including the University System of Maryland Board of Regents Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching, the highest honor for teaching faculty in the Maryland state system. He has held major research fellowships at Yale, Cambridge, and the Library of Congress and is the recipient of the National Endowment of the Humanities Public Scholar award. He serves as a Trustee of the Maryland Center for History and Culture, as an elected member of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, and as a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Learn more here.
Please register with an email address to receive an automatic confirmation email containing a link to join the webinar. This email will also include the dial-in information if you wish to participate by phone.
