Events

The Jamaica Plain Historical Society is pleased to host Heather Clark who is the author of Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Path of Sylvia Plath. This acclaimed new biography of Sylvia Plath focuses on her remarkable literary and intellectual achievements, while restoring the woman behind the long-held myths about her life and art. With a wealth of never-before-accessed materials--including unpublished letters and manuscripts; court, police, and psychiatric records; and new interviews--Heather Clark brings to life the brilliant daughter…

The History Project invites the public to attend a panel and discussion on the history of LGBTQ migration in the 20th and 21st centuries. This program is supported by a grant from the Bridge Street Fund, a special initiative of Mass Humanities. Panelists include Eithne Luibhed, Ph.D. (Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, University of Arizona), Karma R. Chavez, Ph.D. (Associate Professor and Department Chair, Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies, University of Texas at Austin), Richard Iandoli, Esq.…

Award-winning historian, speaker and writer Kimberly A. Hamlin, PhD will reveal the fascinating story of the “fallen woman” who reinvented herself and became the “most potent factor” in the Congressional passage of the 19th Amendment. Offered by Ventfort Hall Mansion and Gilded Age Museum, Hamlin will her talk titled “Helen Hamilton Gardener, Fallen Woman, Free Thinker” via Zoom from her home in Cincinnati, Ohio. Hamlin’s talk is scheduled for Saturday, April 17 at 3:30 pm. Hamlin’s presentation is based on…

Mass Humanities invites you to celebrate the conclusion of this year’s Clemente Courses in the Humanities and the publication of the students’ essays on April 21, 2021. During the event, Clemente scholars will share their written work and discuss civic engagement with Smith, whose upcoming book is titled How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America. This spring, students in the Clemente Course in the Humanities studied and wrote about democracy in America as…

Let's cook up some history...from home! Join the OCHM staff from their home kitchens as we try our hand at historic recipes and local favorites. After you register, you’ll be emailed the recipe of the month and ingredient list so you can cook along with us, step-by-step, or just sit back and watch!

Join Dr. Daniel Gifford as he explores one of the stranger stories from the famous White City of 1893's World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Author of the new book The Last Voyage of the Whaling Bark Progress: New Bedford, Chicago, and the Twilight of an Industry, Gifford introduces us to the whaling bark Progress, a New Bedford ship transformed into a whaling museum for the Chicago fair. Traversing waterways across North America, the whaleship enthralled crowds from Montreal to Racine.…

Join the Jamaica Plain Historical Society to learn about the photographer Leon Hampartzoum Abdalian. Leon was born in 1884 in what was Cilician Armenia, then located in the Ottoman Empire (now modern Turkey). He migrated with his family to the United States in April of 1896 and they eventually settled in Jamaica Plain. It is believed that he was largely self-taught as a photographer. For most of the time he was photographing (1913 -1967) he also worked full-time as a…

Join us for an intimate and interactive multi-magician experience, performed live nightly. For the first time in 100 years, the secretive magic society The Conjurors’ Club pulls back the curtain for an interactive experience that redefines the face of modern magic. Take a front-row seat and immerse yourself in the arcane and mysterious with four different magicians. Physical distance can’t keep the amazing mind-reading, reality-bending illusions, and extraordinary transformations from reaching through the screen and directly into your home. As honorary…