Please join the Conference of Quaker Historians and Archivists on three days in October, for part two of our 2022 series of virtual sessions foregrounding expanded approaches to the study of Quaker history and culture. Part one of our virtual series took place in June (see below).
Our October sessions have been chosen with a focus on interpretive approaches in mind. In each, we are delighted to welcome both emerging and established practitioners in their areas of Quaker scholarship.
We will also hold short CQHA informational briefings and our biennial CQHA business meeting as part of these sessions.
>> Please visit our Eventbrite page to register.
The sessions are:
Graphic Novels: Quakers in Pictures and Print
Wednesday, October 12, 2022
12:30-2:00 pm EDT | Session
2:00-2:30 pm EDT | CQHA Briefing
Presenters:
Description:
This session focuses on three historical graphic novels to consider issues of interpretation in presenting the Quaker past through the lens of graphic or visual presentation. David Lester and Marcus Rediker will discuss the collaboration of artist and historian in the making of Prophet against Slavery: Benjamin Lay, A Graphic Novel (Beacon Press, 2021), a graphic adaptation of Rediker’s biography of Benjamin Lay. Katelyn Lucas and Will Fenton will share insights from Ghost River: The Fall and Rise of the Conestoga (Library Company of Philadelphia, 2019), which reimagines the Paxton massacres of 1763 as an educational graphic novel, introducing new interpreters and new bodies of evidence to highlight Indigenous victims and their kin. Dash Shaw’s presentation will detail his process and the historical materials and references for Discipline (New York Review Comics, 2021), a graphic novel about a Quaker soldier in the American Civil War, which incorporates Civil War-era Quaker letters and diary entries. Together these presentations will give insights into innovative ways of engaging and imagining the Quaker past.
CQHA: A short briefing on CQHA and upcoming business will follow the presentation.
1:00-2:30 pm EDT | Session
Presenters:
Description:
Focusing on academic practice and activism, this panel is devoted to a dialogue between Sa’ed Atshan and Paula Palmer regarding their interventions into upholding and uplifting the rights of first peoples and colonized peoples. Tanya Maus will moderate. Atshan’s scholarship has brought into focus the trauma of Palestinian identities including Queer and Quaker Palestinians as well as the potential for intersectional activism and solidarity among various constituents. Palmer’s lifework and activism have focused on the rights of Indigenous peoples. She witnesses the roles Quakers played in colonization and the forced assimilation of native children by means of the Quaker industrial boarding schools. Through dialogue, both participants will focus on the relationship between thought and practice, the various meanings of decolonization within the context of their work, and the necessity of restorative justice.
CQHA: A short briefing on CQHA and upcoming business will precede the presentation.
12:30-2:00 pm EDT | Session
2:15-3:15 pm EDT | CQHA Business Meeting
Presenters:
Description:
New attention to network analysis in the humanities has invited new opportunities to explore the dense set of religious, economic, and social interconnections that characterize historical Quakerism. In this session, Esther Sahle will revisit what we know on the development and significance of Quaker business networks, contextualizing them within broader social and economic developments of the long eighteenth century. Michael Suarez will discuss the essential role played by Transatlantic Quaker networks in the campaign to abolish the slave trade, c.1787–1807. James Truitt will introduce participants to Friendly Networks, an online project that maps social networks within archival sources using the journals of eighteenth-century New Jersey minister John Hunt together with EAC-CPF and TEI, widely-used standards for authority control and text encoding.
CQHA: The biennial CQHA Business Meeting will follow the presentation. There will be a short break before the meeting begins.
These CQHA virtual sessions are offered at no cost, but registration is required. We will meet over Zoom.
>> Please visit our Eventbrite page to register.
>> Questions? See our FAQs or contact us by email.
Our thanks to Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College for their Zoom hosting.
Our first three sessions took place in June. The original announcement follows:
Please join the Conference of Quaker Historians and Archivists on three days in June, for part one of our 2022 series of virtual sessions foregrounding expanded approaches to the study of Quaker history and culture. Part two of our virtual series is planned for October.
Our June sessions have been chosen with a methodological focus in mind. In each, we are delighted to welcome both emerging and established practitioners in their areas of Quaker scholarship.
>> Please visit our Eventbrite page to register
The sessions are:
Researching Quaker History Online: A Workshop
Tuesday, June 14, 2022 | 12:30-2:00 pm EDT
Presenters:
Description:
Research in the digital age increasingly requires new tools, methods, and sources. Presenters in this hands-on session will demonstrate some of the most useful tools for conducting Quaker history research online. Mary Crauderueff will describe the scanning project through which four Quaker colleges contributed records to Ancestry.com and then guide participants through how to use the digital collection to browse and search Quaker meeting records. Susan Garfinkel will walk participants through using the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) and related archives to research Quaker meeting house architecture online. Emily Higgs Kopin will introduce participants to using born-digital 20th- and 21st-century sources and archived websites in the Internet Archive. Workshop participants will also receive a list of useful resources for online Quaker research.
History from Things: Quaker Material and Visual Culture
Wednesday, June 22, 2022 | 12:30-2:00 pm EDT
Presenters:
Description:
Attention to material and visual culture extends our ability to understand the past as lived experience. Presenters in this session share case studies from their research that profile material and visual culture artifacts and methods to shed new light on Quaker history. Laura Keim will profile Quaker material life at Stenton, the 1730 country estate of James Logan, secretary to William Penn, and eventual home to six generations of the Logan family plus a diverse community of servants and enslaved Africans. In “Studying Quakerism Through Stitch,” Isabella Rosner will explore a seventeenth-century needlework suite from Shacklewell School to unlock stories of needlework education amongst early London Friends. In "Tools for Interpreting Quaker Portraits,” Anne Verplanck will address how the methods of material and visual culture can contribute to our understanding of the role of portraiture in Quakers' lives.
Quakers in the Field: Ethnographic and Oral Histories
Tuesday, June 28, 2022 | 12:30-2:00 pm EDT
Presenters:
Description:
Oral histories, interviews, and ethnographic research present rich opportunities to work closely with living informants to collect and preserve first-hand accounts of recent and current events. Presenters in this session share background and methods used in contemporary contexts. Alex Primm will discuss several oral history projects including his early work with elder Friends in Bucks County and Philadelphia and his recent book Ozark Voices, describing the methodologies, challenges, and benefits of conducting oral history interviews in specific settings. In "Welcome to QuakerSpeak: Using Film and YouTube to Document Quaker Thought Today,” Rebecca Hamilton-Levi will profile this bi-weekly video series featuring first-person narratives by and for contemporary Friends from a variety of backgrounds, which also reaches a broadly diverse audience online. In “Developing An African Quaker Oral History: Ethnographic Research and Interviewing among Kenyan Quakers,” Oscar Lugusa Malande will share lessons learned through his ethnographic work in the field among Kenyan Quakers, as part of a research methodology exploring changes that have taken place in the post-missionary/colonial era of Kenyan Quakerism.
These CQHA virtual sessions are offered at no cost, but registration is required. We will meet over Zoom.
>> Please visit our Eventbrite page to register
>> Questions? See our FAQs or contact us by email.
Our thanks to Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College for their Zoom hosting.