For Goodfellow History Lecture, UC-Davis Prof to Focus on Creole Influence in the 13 Colonies

CHESTERTOWN, MD—John Smolenski, associate professor of history at the University of California, Davis, will deliver the annual Guy F. Goodfellow Memorial Lecture at 4:30 p.m., Wednesday, October 26, in Litrenta Lecture Hall, John S. Toll Science Center, on the Washington College campus (300 Washington Avenue). The talk is free and open to the public.

In his talk, Smolenski will highlight some of the commonalities the American colonies shared with other colonial outposts of the time. He has argued that the 13 colonies that eventually became the United States were, like their counterparts in Latin America and the Caribbean, creole societies that emerged as Old World habits, values, and practices were transformed in a New World setting.

Smolenski holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in history from Yale University and a master’s in anthropology and doctorate in history from the University of Pennsylvania. His book Friends and Strangers (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010) traces the creation of a creole culture among Quakers during Pennsylvania's first five decades. It will be available for purchase at a book signing following the talk.

The Guy F. Goodfellow Memorial Lecture Series was established in 1989 to honor the memory of a history professor who taught at Washington College for three decades. Each year the series brings a distinguished historian to campus to lecture and spend time with students in emulation of Dr. Goodfellow’s vibrant teaching style.

Visiting Historian Explores Role of the Public and Limits of Power in Continental Congress

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Historian Benjamin Irvin will discuss a little known event involving Martha Washington when he delivers the annual Guy F. Goodfellow Memorial Lecture at Washington College on Tuesday evening, April 5. Irvin’s lecture, “The Republican’s New Clothes: The Continental Congress Learns to Live by Its Own Articles of Association, 1774-1775,” will take place at 7 p.m. in Litrenta Lecture Hall, Toll Science Center, on the College campus. A book signing will follow.

Irvin, who teaches history at the University of Arizona, will delve into an episode involving the Continental Congress and the local patriots of Philadelphia in 1775. In late November of that year, Congress members planned a ball in honor of Martha Washington, who would soon pass through the city on her journey to meet her husband, who was stationed in Cambridge. Why did this simple night of dancing provoke some Philadelphians to threaten to tear down the City Tavern? Irvin’s answer illuminates the state of the Continental Congress and its powers and limitations in the early days of our country’s life.

Irvin is the author of two books, Clothed in Robes of Sovereignty: The Continental Congress and the People Out of Doors (Oxford University Press, 2011) and Samuel Adams: Son of Liberty, Father of Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2002), as well as numerous articles and reviews. He is also the recipient of many fellowships in the area of American history, including the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship from the McNeil Center for Early American Studies (2003-2005) and the Kate B. and Hall J. Peterson Fellowship from the American Antiquarian Society (2000).

The Guy F. Goodfellow Memorial Lecture was established in 1989 in honor of a history professor who had taught at Washington College for 30 years. The endowed lecture series brings distinguished historians to campus to speak and interact with students in emulation of Dr. Goodfellow’s vibrant teaching style.

Historian Sets the Record Straight on the 'Whiskey Rebellion' at Washington College

Chestertown, MD — Terry Bouton, Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, will present "Dumbing Down the Past: Our Muddled Memory of the So-Called 'Whiskey Rebellion'" at Washington College's Casey Academic Center on Tuesday, November 18, at 4:30 p.m.

The event is this year's Guy F. Goodfellow Memorial Lecture. The lecture series was established in 1989 to honor the memory of the late history professor who had taught at Washington College for 30 years. The intent of the endowed lecture series is to bring a distinguished historian to campus each year to lecture and to spend time with students in emulation of Dr. Goodfellow's vibrant teaching style.

Bouton is the author of Taming Democracy: "The People," the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution, which Publishers Weekly hailed as "a rare book—scholarly yet written with verve, readable for pleasure as well as for knowledge." Taming Democracy, winner of the Philip S. Klein Book Prize of the Pennsylvania Historical Association, is a critical re-evaluation of America's post-Revolutionary period.

Americans are fond of reflecting upon the Founding Fathers as selfless patriots who came together to force out the tyranny of the British and bring democracy to the land. But as Bouton contends in his provocative book, the Revolutionary elite often seemed as determined to squash democracy after the War of Independence as they were to support it before the conflict.

Centering on Pennsylvania, the symbolic center of the story of democracy's rise during the Revolution, Bouton shows how this radical shift in ideology spelled tragedy for thousands of common people. It was the narrowing of popular ideals that led directly to the misnamed Whiskey and Fries rebellions, popular uprisings during the 1790s that were both put down by federal armies.

A booksigning will follow Bouton's November 18 lecture at Washington College. Admission to "Dumbing Down the Past: Our Muddled Memory of the So-Called 'Whiskey Rebellion'" is free and open to the public.

November 7, 2008

USC Professor Explores Colonial New England's 'Face of the Land' at Washington College

Chestertown, MD — Dr. Karen Haltunnen, Professor of History at the University of Southern California, will present "The Face of the Land: Natural Histories of Colonial New England, 1790-1876" at Washington College's Casey Academic Center Forum on Tuesday, March 25, at 4:30 p.m.

"The Face of the Land," this year's Guy F. Goodfellow Memorial Lecture, is being presented by the Washington College Department of History and the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience.

Dr. Halttunen is an authority on U.S. cultural and intellectual history. She is the author ofConfidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830-1870(1982) and Murder Most Foul: The Killer and the American Gothic Imagination (1998). Her current work, which thematically relates to her upcoming lecture at Washington College, is on landscape and antiquity in 19th century New England.

The Guy F. Goodfellow Memorial Lecture Series was established in 1989 to honor the memory of the late history professor who had taught at Washington College for 30 years. The intent of the endowed lecture series is to bring a distinguished historian to campus each year to lecture and to spend time with students in emulation of Dr. Goodfellow's vibrant teaching style.

Admission to "The Face of the Land: Natural Histories of Colonial New England, 1790-1876" is free and open to the public.

March 12, 2008

Goodfellow Lecture Examines Northern Echoes of the American Revolution, November 20

Chestertown, MD, November 1, 2006— The Washington College Department of History's annual Guy F. Goodfellow Memorial Lecture and the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience welcome Alan Taylor, professor of history at the University of California at Davis, speaking on "John Graves Simcoe's Counter-Revolution: Northern Echoes of the American Revolution," Monday, November 20, at 4:30 p.m. in the Litrenta Lecture Hall of the John S. Toll Science Center. A book signing will follow. The event is free and the public is invited to attend.

Dr. Alan Taylor serves as professor of history at the University of California at Davis, where he has taught courses in early American history, the history of the American West, and the history of Canada since 1994. He is the author of five books including Liberty Men and Great Proprietors: The Revolutionary Settlement on the Maine Frontier, 1760-1820 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), William Cooper's Town, Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early Republic, (New York: Viking Penguin, 2001), Writing Early American History (2005), and The Divided Ground (2006). William Cooper's Town won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for American history as well as Bancroft and Beveridge prizes, and American Colonies received the 2001 Gold Medal for Non-Fiction from the Commonwealth Club of California.

His next book project, The Civil War of 1812, will examine the political rupture of North America affected by conflict between the American republic and the British Empire. In addition to his several book ventures, he is a contributing editor for The New Republic, and is active in the History Project at UCDavis, which provides curriculum support for K-12 teachers in history and social studies. In 2002, he won the University of California at Davis Award for Teaching and Scholarly Achievement and the Phi Beta Kappa, Northern California Association, Teaching Excellence Award.

The Guy F. Goodfellow Memorial Lecture Series was established in 1989 to honor the memory of the late history professor who had taught at Washington College for 30 years. The intent of the endowed lecture series is to bring a distinguished historian to campus each year to lecture and to spend time with students in emulation of Dr. Goodfellow's vibrant teaching style.

For more information please visit the C.V. Starr Center site at http://starrcenter.washcoll.edu

Can Our Nation's Laws Protect Our Kids? History and Challenges to Policies for Children, Talk March 1

Chestertown, MD, February 9, 2006 — Washington College's Guy F. Goodfellow Memorial Lecture Series presents "Can We Protect Our Kids? History and the Persistent Challenges of American Policies for Children," a talk by Michael C. Grossberg, the Sally M. Reahard Professor of History at Indiana University, Wednesday, March 1, at 5:00 p.m. in the College's Hynson Lounge. The event is free and the public is invited to attend.

A professor of history and law—and co-director of the Indiana University Center on Law, Society, and Culture—Grossberg specializes in the intersection of law and family in American society. His lecture will examine the history of child protection laws in the United States since the 1870s, assessing issues such as child labor, juvenile justice, social reform, disabilities, and child abuse.

Grossberg is the author of numerous books and articles on legal and social change. His 1985 book,Governing the Hearth, Law and the Family in Nineteenth-Century America, received the American Historical Association's Littleton-Griswold Prize in the History of Law and Society. Additionally, he publishedA Judgment for Solomon: The d'Hauteville Case and Legal Experience in Antebellum America in 1996 and co-edited the volume American Public Life and the Historical Imagination in 2003. He is currently co-editing the Cambridge History of Law in the United States.

An active force in public policy research, Grossberg is currently leading a project to devise guidelines for genetic testing in child custody cases. He has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment of the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Newberry Library, and the American Bar Foundation, and has been a Fellow at the National Humanities Center.

The talk is sponsored by the Guy F. Goodfellow Memorial Lecture Series, established in 1989 to honor the memory of the history professor who had taught at Washington College for 30 years. The series brings distinguished historians to campus each year to lecture and to spend time with students in emulation of Goodfellow's vibrant teaching style.

Before Seneca Falls: The History Of Women's Rights In The Early American Republic, Talk March 2

Chestertown, MD, February 22, 2005 — The Washington College's Department of History and the Guy F. Goodfellow Memorial Lecture Series present “Women's Rights Before Seneca Falls,” a lecture by Rosemarie Zagarri, Professor of History, George Mason University, Wednesday, March 2, at 4:30 p.m. in the College's Hynson Lounge. Professor Zagarri's talk will be based on her book-in-progress, Petticoat Government: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic. The event is free and open to the public.

Professor Zagarri holds a Ph.D. for Yale University and has taught early American history at George Mason University since 1994. She is the author of two books, A Woman's Dilemma: Mercy Otis Warren and the American Revolution(Harlan-Davidson, 1995) and The Politics of Size: Representation in the United States, 1776-1850 (Cornell University Press, 1987). She also edited David Humphrey's “‘Life of General Washington' with George Washington's ‘Remarks'” (University of Georgia Press, 1991) and has published articles in The Journal of American History, The William and Mary Quarterly,American Quarterly, and Reviews in American History. In the spring of 1993, the Fulbright Commission appointed her Thomas Jefferson Chair in American Studies at the University of Amsterdam. In 1997-98, she received a research Fellowship for College Teachers from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

She is currently working on a project examining the role of gender and America's first political parties.

The Guy F. Goodfellow Memorial Lecture Series was established in 1989 to honor the memory of the late history professor who taught at Washington College for 30 years. The intent of the endowed lecture series is to bring a distinguished historian to campus each year to lecture and to spend time with students in emulation of Dr. Goodfellow's vibrant teaching style.

Goodfellow Lecture Puts Globalization In Historical Perspective, March 17 At Washington College

Chestertown, MD, February 25, 2004 — The Washington College Department of History's annual Guy F. Goodfellow Memorial Lecture welcomes Louis Galambos, professor of history at Johns Hopkins University, speaking on “The Global Workplace in Historical Perspective,” Wednesday, March 17, at 7:30 p.m. in the College's Hynson Lounge. The event is free and the public is invited to attend.

Dr. Louis Galambos serves as professor of economic and business history at Johns Hopkins University and is the editor of The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower. He has taught at Rice University, Rutgers University and Yale University, and has served as President of the Business History Conference and the Economic History Association. A former editor of The Journal of Economic History, he has written extensively on U.S. business history, on business-government relations, on the economic aspects of modern institutional development in America, and on the rise of the bureaucratic state, giving him a long and deep historical perspective on the phenomenon of economic globalization. His books includeCompetition and Cooperation: The Emergence of a Modern Trade Association, The Public Image of Big Business in America, 1880-1940, America at Middle Age, The Rise of the Corporate Commonwealth and Anytime, Anywhere: Entrepreneurship and the Creation of a Wireless World. Galambos is president and a principal of the Business History Group, a consulting organization, and has been an historical consultant to Merck & Co., Inc., Pacific Telesis Group, AT&T, and the World Bank Group. In addition to editing The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, he has edited (with Robert Gallman) the Cambridge University Press series Studies in Economic History and Policy: The United States in the Twentieth Centuryand is currently co-editor (with Geoffrey Jones) of the Cambridge Studies in the Emergence of Global Enterprise.

The Guy F. Goodfellow Memorial Lecture Series was established in 1989 to honor the memory of the late history professor who had taught at Washington College for 30 years. The intent of the endowed lecture series is to bring a distinguished historian to campus each year to lecture and to spend time with students in emulation of Dr. Goodfellow's vibrant teaching style.

For more information on upcoming lectures and events at Washington College, visithttp://calendar.washcoll.edu.

Speaker To Discuss The 2000 Presidential Election And The Context Of American Suffrage March 4

Chestertown, MD, February 25, 2003 — Washington College's Guy Goodfellow Memorial Lecture presents “Election 2000 and the Limits of American Democracy,” a lecture by Alexander Keyssar, Professor of History and Social Policy, Harvard University, on Tuesday, March 4, at 4:30 p.m. in the College's Hynson Lounge. The lecture is free and the public is invited to attend.

While the conflict with Iraq and the war on terrorism have preoccupied our nation since September 11, 2001, before that fateful day few subjects commanded our attention more than the controversy surrounding George W. Bush's upset of Al Gore for America's top political position. Dr. Keyssar is the author of the 1986 book, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, which was named the best book in U.S. history by the American Historical Association and the Historical Society and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and Los Angeles Times Book Award. In his lecture, Dr. Keyssar will examine the 2000 presidential election in the light of his research on the history of suffrage in America. Although the history of suffrage has been portrayed as a steady and gradual extension of the franchise to broader categories of American society, Dr. Keyssar argues that this history has been consistently challenged by doubts about democracy itself, resistance to expansion of suffrage, and by measures meant to reduce opportunities to vote. The 2000 election brings to the forefront the questions of disenfranchisement, the limitations of the Electoral College, and the role of the Supreme Court in presidential selection and has caused Americans once again to consider the strengths and weaknesses of democracy in the United States, who has the right to a voice, and how the voices of American citizens should be balanced in the election of their leaders. Dr. Keyssar will offer insights into those debates and suggest how our political process will continue to evolve from its contentious foundations.

The Guy F. Goodfellow Memorial Lecture Series was established upon Dr. Goodfellow's death in 1989 to honor the memory of the history professor who had taught at Washington College for 30 years. The intent of the endowed lecture series is to bring a distinguished historian to campus each year to lecture and spend time with students in emulation of Dr. Goodfellow's vibrant teaching style.

Goodfellow Lecture to Explore the Friendship of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams

Chestertown, MD, November 26, 2001 — Washington College and the Goodfellow Lecture Series present "A Curtain of Separation: The Friendship of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams," a lecture by Professor Barbara Oberg of Princeton University. The talk will be held Wednesday, November 28, 2001 at 7:30 p.m. in the College's Miller Library, Sophie Kerr Room. The public is invited to attend.

Oberg (Ph.D. University of California, Santa Barbara, 1974) is a lecturer with the rank of professor at Princeton and specializes in eighteenth-century Anglo-American history and the political and intellectual history of the American Revolution and early republic. She is the co-author of Benjamin Franklin, Jonathan Edwards and the Representation of American Culture (1993) and Federalists Reconsidered (1998), and she is the general editor of the Papers of Thomas Jefferson project at Princeton.

With the publication of the recent best-selling biographies of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, how should we look back on these compatriots? What common vision did they share and where did they differ? Has the pendulum swung too far away from Jefferson and has his reputation been undermined in light of recent research? Oberg's lecture will address these questions.

The Guy F. Goodfellow Memorial Lecture Series was established upon Goodfellow's death in 1989 to honor the memory of the history professor who had taught at Washington College for 30 years. The intent of the endowed lecture series is to bring a distinguished historian to campus each year to lecture and spend time with students in emulation of Dr. Goodfellow's vibrant teaching style.

Journalist James Fallows Examines How the Media Undermines Democracy

Chestertown, MD, March 15, 2001 — James Fallows, author and former editor of U.S. News & World Report, will explore "Breaking the News: How the Media Undermines Democracy" on Tuesday, April 3, 2001, at 7:30 p.m. in Washington College's Hynson Lounge. The public is invited to attend.

Former speech writer for President Jimmy Carter, Fallows has over 20 years of experience as an editor with publications such as Atlantic Monthly and U.S. News & World Report and as a freelance journalist and writer covering American politics, foreign affairs, military policy and the computer industry. Fallows' books include More Like Us: Making America Great Again (1989), an examination of American business competition with Japan; National Defense (1981), a penetrating look at the defense establishment; and Looking at The Sun (1994), a examination of contemporary East Asian society and economics. His latest work, Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy (1997), has drawn acclaim and inspired controversy as it sharply looks at a growing, politically-tied media elite that focuses on ideological spin over the nuances and substance critical to solving America's political and societal problems.

Fallows' talk is sponsored by Washington College's Goldstein Program in Public Affairs, now celebrating its 10th anniversary. Established in honor of the late Louis L. Goldstein, a 1935 alumnus and Maryland's longest-serving elected official, the Goldstein Program sponsors lecture series, symposia, visiting fellows, travel and other projects that bring students and faculty together with leaders experienced in developing public policy.

The Guy F. Goodfellow Memorial Lecture Series was established upon Goodfellow's death in 1989 to honor the memory of the history professor who had taught at Washington College for 30 years. The intent of the endowed lecture series is to bring a distinguished historian to campus each year to lecture and spend time with students in emulation of Dr. Goodfellow's vibrant teaching style.

Talk to Address the Civil War in the American Memory

Chestertown, MD, March 14, 2001 — Dr. David Blight, Professor of History at Amherst College, will address the topic "Healing and Justice: The Problem of the Civil War in American Memory" on Thursday, March 22, 2001, at 4:30 p.m. in the Sophie Kerr Room of Washington College's Miller Library. The free talk is sponsored by the Guy F. Goodfellow Memorial Lecture Series and the public is invited to attend.

Dr. Blight received his Ph.D. in American History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1985. He has concentrated his studies on the Civil War, Reconstruction, African-American history, and American intellectual and cultural history. He is the author of the recently published book, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Belknap Press, 2001).

Dr. Blight will examine the myths and reinterpretations of the Civil War that have been fostered in America since the end of the war and are still popularized today in American politics and society.

In an recent editorial for The Washington Post, Dr. Blight wrote: "Let us be clear about the nature of the Lost Cause and the state's rights doctrines historically tied to the Confederacy. After the Civil War, the Lost Cause took root in the South in an admixture of physical destruction, the psychological trauma of defeat, the revitalization of a Democratic Party that resisted Reconstruction, white supremacy, racial violence and--with time--an abiding sentimentalism that disseminated countless images of 'faithful' slaves. The Lost Cause also became for many white southerners a web of organizations and rituals, a civil religion that assuaged their sense of loss."

The Guy F. Goodfellow Memorial Lecture Series was established upon Goodfellow's death in 1989 to honor the memory of the history professor who had taught at Washington College for 30 years. The intent of the endowed lecture series is to bring a distinguished historian to campus each year to lecture and spend time with students in emulation of Dr. Goodfellow's vibrant teaching style.

Lecture Considers Washington's Attitudes Toward Death and the Afterlife

Chestertown, MD — Peter R. Henriques, a noted professor of history at George Mason University in Arlington, Va., is the guest of The Guy F. Goodfellow Memorial Lecture Series at Washington College in Chestertown. Dr. Henriques' lecture, "He Died as He Lived: George Washington's Final Struggle with the Grim King," focuses on what Washington thought about death and the afterlife in the context of his Enlightenment beliefs. Set for Thursday, Nov. 11, at 7 p.m., in the Sophie Kerr Room of Miller Library, the lecture is free and open to the public.

Henriques teaches American and Virginia history with special emphasis on Virginia and the American Revolution and the Virginia Founding Fathers. His upcoming book on Washington's death and funeral in commemoration of the bicentennial of Washington's death is to be published by the Mount Vernon Ladies Association. His other writings include "The Final Struggle between George Washington and the Grim King: Washington's Attitude toward Death and Afterlife," in "Virginia Magazine of History and Biography," Winter 1999; "Major Lawrence Washington vs. The Rev. Charles Green: A Case Study of the Squire and the Parson," in VMHB, April 1992; "An Uneven Friendship: The Relationship between George Washington and George Mason," VMHB, April 1989; "George Washington-William Payne Fight: A New Explanation," Northern Virginia Heritage, October 1983; "The Amiable George Washington," NVH, Feb. 1978.

The Guy F. Goodfellow Memorial Lecture Series was established upon Goodfellow's death in 1989 to honor the memory of the history professor who had taught at Washington College for 30 years. The intent of the endowed lecture series is to bring a distinguished historian to campus each year to lecture and spend time with students in emulation of Dr. Goodfellow's vibrant teaching style.