Event: Massachusetts Historical Society Graduate Student Reception

Massachusetts Historical Society

Graduate Student Reception

Thursday, September 19, 2013

6:00-8:00 p.m.

The Massachusetts Historical Society, a top-notch resource for American history scholars, is hosting an open house for graduate students of history, American Studies, and related fields. This is a great opportunity for graduate students to network with other students and faculty from other universities and learn about what MHS has to offer! 

For more information, contact Kate Viens or check MassHist.org for updates.

“Work! Save!! Win!!!”: Selling the Cost of World War I in America - Part 2: Four-Minute Men

Four-Minute Men

            Visuals weren’t the only approach the government used to sell Liberty Bonds. They had salesmen in the flesh, as well.  The so-called “Four-Minute Men” were a masterful collaboration between the Committee of Public Information and local volunteer groups.

A poster promoting the Four Minute Men.
Courtesy of Library of Congress.

            Initially proposed to Committee of Public Information (CPI) director George Creel by a stranger named Donald Ryerson, the idea was initially to have a respected member of the community speak during the four minutes it took to change silent movie reels at a movie theater. During that time, a slide explaining that the man would be speaking for four minutes was projected on the screen, and declared approved by the CPI.[1]

While the organization was not exclusively aimed to sell bonds, it did spend almost four of the program’s 17 active months during the war doing precisely that.[2] Like the posters advertising the Liberty Loans, the Four-Minute Men were generally positive and fact-based in the beginning, focusing on the impressive achievements of the American people and the needs of their allies. As time went on though, instructions from the CPI became more colored with negative depictions of Germans, and atrocity stories were greatly encouraged.[3]

A new focus: Cultural History of America!

The previous incarnation of this blog hoped to focus on the history of my home city of Boston. In that capacity, I ultimately wrote very little and had trouble maintaining my enthusiasm. After deciding to reconsider the Boston History Blog last year, the page went completely silent while I attended graduate school at University of Massachusetts-Boston, where I am pursuing my MA in History.

In this year of study, I've found that my interest in history lies rather firmly in cultural history. I've written a number of papers, done loads of research, and have discovered plenty of things about American culture that are of great interest to me, and I hope will be to you, as well. With this in mind, I am assembling a new collection of short articles, series' of articles, book reviews, etc. which I will be posting starting July 4 on this page. Posts will come twice a week, and will focus primarily on cultural history of the American home front during the World Wars. I will, from time to time, deviate from that period, but 20th century will be the page's primary focus.

What do I mean by "cultural history?" I've seen a lot of definitions. For my purposes, cultural history will deal with the social, political and cultural life of the American people at home. This means anything from the political motivations of bond drives to ethnic groups' support or opposition to the war at home to community efforts to grow food.

I'm very excited about this work, and hope to be able to share it with you.

I've also created a new twitter handle: @CulturalHistUSA. Please follow us and bookmark this page. I look forward to being part of the online dialogue about how Americans came to be Americans through collective cultural experience.

Best,
Matt Wilding

South Boston Historical Society visits local schools

The South Boston Historical Society and Mt. Washington Bank put together a "history slam" presenting historical education programming to five city schools in just one day!



Watch the mash-up!

James McPherson delivered at Lowell Lectures

Historian James McPherson (Princeton University) didn’t set out to be a Civil War expert. Presenting his talk “Why the Civil War Still Matters” at the Boston Public Library as part of the Lowell Lectures series, Prof. McPherson explained that upon entering graduate school at Johns Hopkins in the late 1950s, he had an interest in studying southern history, which as a Midwesterner, he found “exotic and mysterious.”

It was the Civil Rights movement of his era that brought him to study the Civil War and Reconstruction. In the midst of forced school desegregation, McPherson wanted to learn more about how the 13^th-15^th amendments that were called on came to be, and how they hadn’t been properly implemented for almost 100 years.

With this introduction, McPherson spoke for just over a half hour about the legacy and significance of the Civil War in the modern world. Citing the conflict as the most popular history subject among Americans due to its closeness to them, its drama and death toll, and its larger-than-life characters, he touched on a greater, more subtle significance: The Civil War was a fight over two different kinds of liberties.

Read more after the jump