Longfellow Speaker Series"The Past and Present Here Unite..."From November through April, a series of conversations with scholars, poets, and community leaders will explore the ways in which the histories of this 265-year-old house resonate today. The Longfellow Speaker Series (formerly Fall Lecture Series) takes place annually and is free and open to the public. 
Thursday, November 7 | 6:00-7:30 PM The Great Abolitionist: Charles Sumner and the Fight for a More Perfect UnionHybrid event: Register to attend in-person or online Speaker: Stephen Puleo Acclaimed author and historian Stephen Puleo will discuss his newest book, The Great Abolitionist: Charles Sumner and the Fight for a More Perfect Union (St. Martin’s Press, 2024), the groundbreaking biography of a forgotten civil rights hero and close friend of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. In the tempestuous mid-19th century, as slavery consumed Congressional debate and America careened toward civil war and split apart–when the very future of the nation hung in the balance–Charles Sumner’s voice rang strongest, bravest, and most unwavering. Where others preached compromise and moderation, he denounced slavery’s evils to all who would listen and demanded that it be wiped out of existence.Before and during the Civil War, at great personal sacrifice, Sumner was the conscience of the North and the most influential politician fighting for abolition. Through the force of his words and his will, he moved America toward the twin goals of abolitionism and equal rights, which he fought for literally until the day he died. He laid the cornerstone arguments that civil rights advocates would build upon over the next century as the country strove to achieve equality among the races. The Great Abolitionist is the first major biography of Charles Sumner to be published in over 50 years. Acclaimed historian Stephen Puleo relates the story of one of the most influential political figures in American history with evocative and accessible prose, transporting readers back to an era when our leaders exhibited true courage and authenticity in the face of unprecedented challenges. This talk will be followed by a Q&A and book signing (books available to purchase). 
Thursday, December 12 | 6:00-7:30 PM Bostonian Poetry Before Longfellow: Adventures in Literary ArchaeologyHybrid event: Register to attend in-person or online In this program, two Boston College English professors will discuss American poetry published in Boston during the Revolutionary and Early National periods. Christy Pottroff will construct a rich contextual analysis of several artifacts that appear in surviving records related to Phillis Wheatley Peters and her husband John Peters, and consider what a nose ring, eight old coats, four silver spoons, and a neighborhood park in Boston can teach us about their lives. Paul Lewis will discuss forgotten works he and Boston College English majors recovered when they read through the 4,500 poems included in the fifty-nine magazines published in Boston between 1789 and 1820. Taken together, their work is replete with moments of discovery that have brought literary history and specific poems to life. Paul Lewis is a professor emeritus at Boston College, past president of the Poe Studies Association, the curator of exhibitions on literary Boston, and the neologist who coined the word “Frankenfood.” The author of books and articles on humor, American literature, gothic fiction, and literary Boston, Lewis edited The Citizen Poets of Boston: A Collection of Forgotten Poems, 1789-1820, for the University Press of New England. He is now writing a book on the first responses to Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven." 
Thursday, April 10 | 6:00-7:30 PM A Fan and A Shared History: The Longfellow Family and the Ties between China and 19th-Century BostonHybrid Event: Register to attend in-person or online In 1865, the renowned American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow hosted a special dinner at his house in celebration of receiving a gift from China: an elegant paper fan with his poem “A Psalm of Life” inscribed in Chinese (one of the first English poems translated into Chinese) by a Chinese official named Dong Xun. Among the guests at the dinner was Longfellow’s close friend, Anson Burlingame, who was then the American minister in China and brought the fan to Longfellow. A few years later, Burlingame would serve as China’s Envoy Extraordinary and High Minister Plenipotentiary and lead a Chinese delegation to the West to sign China’s first equal treaty after the Opium Wars. Another friend at the dinner was Senator Charles Sumner, the staunch abolitionist and unwavering defender of Chinese migrants against the surging anti-Chinese violence in the nation. The Longfellow family’s connections with China later would be represented by Longfellow’s oldest son, Charles, who was an avid world traveler and visited Asia several times (including his trips to China in 1873-1874 and again in 1891). His life and his large collection of Chinese artifacts reflected the broad patterns of American interest in China and Asia in the late 19th century. This talk will draw on the Longfellow family papers and tell the stories not just about the prominent American poet and his family and friends but also about American society and about the shared history of the United States and China. With the rising tensions in U.S.-China relations in our current time and with political leaders and public media often focusing on geopolitics and trade war, it is important to understand the deep historical ties between the two nations and the rich personal and cultural interactions that bind them together. Lisong Liu is professor of history at Massachusetts College of Art and Design and specializes in Chinese migration, Asian American history, and U.S.-China relations. He is also an associate in research at Harvard’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and a member of the International Advisory Committee for the Chinese Heritage Center at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He is currently working on a book on the history of Chinese cultural presence and migrant experience in Boston.
January-April 2025 events will be announced soon!
Recorded Past Lectures2023Preserving LGBTQ+ History in Our Communities, Ben Garcia and Joan Ilacqua 2022Not Just Roommates: Queer Historic Preservation, Ken Turino and Danielle Bennett Unearthing the Past at Longfellow House-Washington's Headquarters, Joel Dukes 2021Fanny Longfellow's "Etheral Baby" and Her Moment in the History of Medicine, Tegan Kehoe in conversation with Kate Hanson Plass |
Last updated: October 31, 2024