Radcliffe: Shepherding the Blackwell Family into the Digital Age, A Panel Discussion

Date: 

Tuesday, October 13, 2015, 4:15pm

Location: 

Sheerr Room, Fay House, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

For more information, see the Radcliffe Events page.

The Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute recently digitized five Blackwell Family collections, which span from 1784 to 1981 and detail the activities of a remarkable family of prominent leaders in crucial 19th and 20th social movements, including abolition, prohibition, health care, women's suffrage, and education.  With the support of  a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, nearly 190,000 pages of correspondence, diaries, financial records, photographs, drawings, writings, and other papers are now online.

This event will begin with a demonstration of the digital content by Pablo Morales Henry, an archivist and programmer at the Schlesinger Library, and will be followed by a panel discussion—moderated by historian Susan Ware—about how the new materials, and online access to them, can generate new information and insights for students and scholars. The panelists are: 

  • John Frederick Bell, History of American Civilization, Harvard University—PhD 2017 (expected)
  • Melanie Gustafson, Associate Professor in the Department of History, University of Vermont
  • Richard S. Newman, Director, The Library Company of Philadelphia
  • Elizabeth Reis, Professor, Women's & Gender Studies, University of Oregon, and Visiting Professor, Macaulay Honors College, CUNY

The event will conclude with a reception in the Schlesinger Library, where an exhibition features items from the Blackwell Collection.