About the Speakers Dr. Kimberly Alexander is on the faculty of the History Department at the University of New Hampshire, where she is Director of Museum Studies and Senior Lecturer. Alexander is a James Hayes Research Fellow for 2023-2024, awarded by the UNH Center for the Humanities. She has held curatorial positions at several New England museums, including the MIT Museum, Peabody Essex Museum, and Strawbery Banke. Her most recent books are Treasures Afoot: Shoe Stories from the Georgian Era (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018), which won an Honor Award from Historic New England in 2019, and Fashioning the New England Family (Massachusetts Historical Society, 2021). Zara Anishanslin is a scholar and public historian who specializes in looking at history through material culture. An Associate Professor of History and Art History and the Director of the American Civilization Program at the University of Delaware, she focuses on Early American and Atlantic World History. Her first book, Portrait of a Woman in Silk: Hidden Histories of the British Atlantic World (Yale University Press, 2016) showed how making, buying, and using goods in the 18th century British Atlantic world tied its inhabitants together while allowing for different views of the Empire. When not in the classroom or archives, Anishanslin talks history on a wide variety of podcasts and TV shows and consults on exhibitions, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s early American galleries and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton: The Exhibition. Anishanslin is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the David Center for the American Revolution at the American Philosophical Society. Her next project, Under the King’s Nose: Ex-Pat Patriots during the American Revolution (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press), will be published in 2025. Lori Erickson Fidler is Associate Director of Collections for Revolutionary Spaces. She manages the object collections and archives, overseeing collections care, planning, and documentation. Before joining Revolutionary Spaces, Fidler held positions as Curator and Collections Manager, in addition to working as a museum collections and exhibitions consultant. She holds both a bachelor of arts and a master of science in anthropology with a focus on archaeology and museum studies. About the Moderator Martha McNamara is an art and architectural historian who specializes in the visual and material culture of New England. McNamara is Director of the New England Arts and Architecture Program and Co-Director of Architecture in the Department of Art at Wellesley College where she teaches courses in American art and architectural history, historic preservation, the history of cities, and material culture studies. She currently serves as Board Chair of Revolutionary Spaces.
Old South Meeting House
About the Artists AMANDA SHEA Amanda Shea is a two-time Boston Music Award-winning Spoken Word Artist. Shea is an artist, performer, educator, artivist, publicist, host, and curator. She co-founded and curated six iterations of Activating ARTivism, a community festival to amplify POC through art, activism, and resistance. Her work can be found in the Museum of Fine Arts, The Boston Globe, TEDX, TEDXRoxbury, Netflix, Prime Video, BBC News, GBH, and much more. Shea will be releasing her first book, Pieces of Shea, in the spring of 2024. Amanda's work examines her personal life experiences, social justice issues, and healing through trauma utilizing art as the tool. ANITA D. Anita D. is a spoken word artist from Brockton, Massachusetts. Formally a slam competitor, Anita has been on the San Diego Slam Team as well as the House Slam Team of Boston. She has been a finalist in both the National Poetry Slam and the Individual World Poetry Slam. Her work centers around her personal life experiences and covers topics of generational trauma, mental health, domestic violence, women’s rights, and more. She has been featured on the platforms All Def Poetry and Button Poetry where she was acknowledged twice as “Best of Boston.” D. RUFF D. Ruff is a Roxbury-bred spoken word poet, author of "Staying on 94: Tales from a Misguided Soul," Creative Director of Boston Pulse Poetry program, and has been the co-host of the "if you can Feel It, you can Speak It" Open Mic movement for the last 13 years. He has been writing and performing for over 20 years, most recently in the NAACP convention and the Isabella Stewart Gardner production called "Dear Mr. McKeller." Most of his poems stem from personal experiences and his environments and therefore range in topics from black love and heartbreak to inequality and black culture. D. Ruff performs with inspiring passion in hopes that any black body will also want to find a way to express themselves, find that “tribe” and achieve their greatness, with the intention of leaving the cycle of hurt, pain, and negativity right where it was showcased. About the Advisor DANIEL CARPENTER Daniel Carpenter is the Allie S. Freed Professor of Government and Chair of the Department of Government in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Professor Carpenter's research on petitioning appears in his book Democracy by Petition: Popular Politics in Transformation, 1790-1870, which was awarded the J. David Greenstone Prize of the American Political Science Association, the Seymour Martin Lipset Prize of the American Political Science Association and the James P. Hanlan Book Award of the New England Historical Association. He graduated from Georgetown University in 1989 with distinction in Honors Government and received his doctorate in political science from the University of Chicago in 1996. He taught previously at Princeton University (1995-1998) and the University of Michigan (1998-2002).
Old State House
Matthew Wilding
Old South Meeting House
Dr. John Edward Hasse, long-time music curator at the Smithsonian and Duke Ellington’s biographer, plays stirring video clips of these songs that inspired, motivated, and advocated for what Martin Luther King called for in his “I have a dream” speech: that we all be judged not by the color of our skin, “but by the content of our character.” He will also play works by W.C. Handy and Duke Ellington that helped lay the musical foundation for the Civil Rights movement.
Boston Public Library - Rabb Lecture Hall
Dart Adams Malia Lazu Shanique Rodriguez Jill Calistra Lilly Marcelin Amanda Shea
Old South Meeting House
Rachel Slade spent a decade in the city magazine trenches at Boston magazine—first as the design editor, ultimately as executive editor. In 2015, she helped steer Boston to a top national award from the City and Regional Magazine Association. Her two-part story about Boston’s secretive planning and development agency won national awards and laid the groundwork for Mayor Michelle Wu’s sweeping reforms to the city's planning processes. In 2016, Yankee magazine ran Slade’s long-form narrative about the sinking of the container ship El Faro. A CRMA finalist for reporting, the story led to the national bestselling book, Into the Raging Sea. Into the Raging Sea earned starred reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly; the Maine Literary Award for nonfiction; the Massachusetts Honor Book Award; and the Mountbatten Award for Best Book from the Maritime Foundation UK. It was a NYT Notable Book, an NYT editors’ pick, an Amazon editors’ pick for Best History, and among NPR’s Best Books, Paste magazine’s best books, Longread’s best books, Inc. Magazine’s 7 Best Business Books, the Maine Edge’s favorite books, and Book Scrolling best history books. In 2021, Into the Raging Sea was adapted for a Harvard Business School case study. In 2023, Down East magazine named Slade’s book one of its top 25 “New Maine Classics.” Slade’s second book, Making It in America: The Almost Impossible Quest to Manufacture in the USA (and How It Got That Way), Pantheon/Penguin Random House, came out 1/9/24. Slade’s editing and writing have won national awards in civic journalism, reporting, criticism, and reader service. She earned her BA in political science from Barnard College and a Master of Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania. She splits her time between Brookline, Massachusetts, and Rockport, Maine. Michelle Tolini Finamore, Ph.D., is a fashion and design historian, curator, and author. She has curated numerous exhibitions, including the recent Fashioning America: Grit to Glamour, as well as the groundbreaking Gender Bending Fashion, #techstyle, Hollywood Glamour: Fashion and Jewelry from the Silver Screen, and Think Pink at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She has written numerous articles for both the scholarly and popular press on topics as varied as American fashion, menswear, contemporary fashion, sustainability, studio jewelry, and food history. Her books include Hollywood Before Glamour: Fashion in American Silent Film, Fashioning America: Grit to Glamour, Gaetano Savini: The Man Who Was Brioni, and Jewelry by Artists: In the Studio, 1940-2000. Michelle has taught courses on fashion/design/film history at Northeastern University, Rhode Island School of Design, Massachusetts College of Art, and the Fashion Institute of Technology. She has also interviewed fashion luminaries such as Hamish Bowles, Fern Mallis, Isaac Mizrahi, Liz Goldwyn, Hussein Chalayan, Diane Pernet, Viktoria Modesta, Virgil Ortiz, and Rodarte on stage.
Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation
June Millington—guitarist and founding member of all-female rock band Fanny—will converse with Emm Gryner—independent singer/songwriter, bassist, and pianist—about Fanny, music, and activism. The main content will conclude with a musical performance. This program is part of the Boston Public Library's Lowell Lecture Series and their “Revolutionary Music: Music for Social Change” programmatic theme.
Boston Public Library - Rabb Lecture Hall
Dr. Sonja Kreibich took up her post as the Consul General of Germany to the New England States in July 2022. Before arriving in Boston, she served at the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Berlin as the Head of Division for Pan African Issues, Southern Africa and the Great Lakes from 2018-22. Prior to this, she served as the Head of Unit for European Migration Policy from 2014-2018, and as press spokesperson in the Speaker’s Office from 2002-2006. Sonja’s roles within the Foreign Office have taken her abroad to the German Permanent Mission to the UN in New York as well as to the German Embassy in Bucharest, Romania. She studied law at the University of Bonn and at the University of Edinburgh and obtained a doctorate from the University of Bonn. Mustafa Soykurt is the Consul General of France in Boston, held the position of Technical Advisor for European Affairs at Matignon, in the offices of Édouard Philippe, Jean Castex and Élisabeth Borne. He had previously held the position of spokesperson, head of the press service of the Embassy of France in Italy (2016-2020) and had served in the Permanent Representation of France to the European Union in Brussels ( 2012-2016). In Paris, he worked at the Quai d'Orsay in the Directorate General for Globalization (2009-2012) and at the Ministry of Economy and Finance (2003-2009).
Boston Public Library - Rabb Lecture Hall
Steven A. Cook
Foley & Lardner LLP
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