Entangled Lives: Stories about the Working Women of Early Hadley and Northampton
Marla R. Miller, Director of the Public History Program and Professor of History, University of Massachusetts Amherst
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Date:
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Thursday, June 24, 2021 at 7 pm
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Details:
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This public talk will be presented via Zoom. Admission is a sliding scale: $0 to $20.
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Pieced quilt, "King David's Crown," attributed to Susan Lorinda Brigham (Munroe) Shepherd (1821-1897)
of Northampton, circa 1850. PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID STANSBURY |
Professor Miller will share stories uncovered in the writing of her latest book Entangled Lives: Labor, Livelihood, and Landscapes of Change in Early Massachusetts (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019).
The records, artifacts, and homes of Valley families in the era of and after the American Revolution yield glimpses into a wide range of experience, from the White and Native women who labored as domestic servants, to enslaved and free Black workers, to White tavernkeepers and caregivers. Learning about how these stories have been both preserved and obscured helps us think about our own roles as pastkeepers today. |
Marla Miller’s primary history research interest is U.S. women's work before industrialization. Her book The Needle's Eye: Women and Work in the Age of Revolution (UMass Press, 2006) won the Costume Society of America's Millia Davenport Publication Award for the best book in the field for that year. In 2009 she published an edited collection, Cultivating a Past: Essays in the History of Hadley, Massachusetts (UMass Press). Her book Betsy Ross and the Making of America (Holt, 2010) was a scholarly biography of that much-misunderstood early American craftswoman; the book was a finalist for the Cundill Prize in History at McGill University and was named to the Washington Post's "Best of 2010" list.
In 2016, with UMass Amherst colleague Max Page, she published Bending the Future: Fifty Ideas for the Next Fifty Years of Historic Preservation in the United States (UMass Press).
She is currently president of the National Council on Public History. Her Ph.D. is from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
In 2016, with UMass Amherst colleague Max Page, she published Bending the Future: Fifty Ideas for the Next Fifty Years of Historic Preservation in the United States (UMass Press).
She is currently president of the National Council on Public History. Her Ph.D. is from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.