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Research Seminars

For 30 years Hagley’s research seminars have featured innovative works-in-progress essays to generate wide-ranging discussions among an interested audience.

Beginning in spring 2022 the seminars will move to an online format, meeting monthly on Zoom during the academic year from noon to 1:30 Eastern time. Seminars are open to the public and based on a paper that is circulated in advance. Copies may be obtained by registering for the seminar you wish to attend. Please email Carol Lockman at clockman@Hagley.org if you have any questions about the seminars.

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Upcoming Research Seminars

2024 - 2025 Series -- View Series PDF

April 23, 2025: Christopher Morris, “Nitrogen, Inc.: Global Chemical Conglomerates and the Little Guy”

The transformation of nitrogen from a scarce, expensive commodity that came from overseas to abundant, cheap commodity produced at home transformed the world for farmers. Morris' project tells that story from the bottom up, through the life of Ned Cobb, a little guy whose life was forever changed, for better and for worse, by the rise of a big American agro-chemical industry.

Past Research Seminars

2024 - 2025 Series -- View Series PDF

Che Yuen. “She’s a Killer”: Aerosols, Insecticides, and the Postwar American Home (March 26, 2025)
Maia Silber. “The ‘Stay-Overs’: Seasonal Farm Labor Migration and Public Employment Agencies, 1931-1973” (February 5, 2025)
Richard John. “The Folklore of Thurman Arnold: Anti-Monopoly in the Shadow of War” (December 18, 2024)
Evan Brown. “Keeping Score: Labor and Information on Baseball's Money Market” (November 13, 2024)
Philip Scranton. “Spare Parts: A Global History of a Modern Problem – The American Home Front in World War II” (October 9, 2024)
Amanda Marie Martinez. "The Industry is Playing People Cheap": The Failure to Diversify the Country Music Audience in the 1990s (September 11, 2024)

2023 - 2024 Series -- View Series PDF

Anna Andrzejewski. "Making Paradise: Living in South Florida’s Vacation and Retirement Communities" (May 29, 2024)
Brent Cebul. “Creating the Intern: Philanthropy, Universities, and the New Deal” (April 24, 2024)
Dr. Naa Oyo A. Kwate. “The Blacker the Bum Wine” (February 14, 2024)
Sam Schirvar. “Home and Hands”: Cherokee Nation and the Turn to Tribal Enterprise (January 17, 2024)
Ai Hisano. "Everyday Aesthetics: Industrial Design and the Senses in the United States from the 1920s to the 1950s" (October 25, 2023)
Adam Rome. “Sustainability on the Cheap: Walmart and the Challenge of Greening Retail” (September 13, 2023)

2022 - 2023 Series -- View Series PDF

Angus McLeod. “Schools and Economic Development in Antebellum Texas” (April 5, 2023)
Moeko Yamazaki. “Making the World on Time: The Vietnam War, Deregulation and the Birth of FedEx” (February 22, 2023)
Greg Hargreaves. “Hunger for Innovation: Fall Line Merchant Milling and the Gospel of Automation, 1735-1865” (December 14, 2022)
Isabelle Held. "Soft Power: Plastic Foams, Design, and Postwar Bodies" (November 16, 2022)
Hannah Tucker. “Creating an America Market: Slavery and Intercolonial Trade in the British Atlantic, 1698-1766” (September 14, 2022)

2021 - 2022 Series -- View Series PDF

Salem Elzway. Marxist Manipulators: Robots on the Line at Lordstown (May 18, 2022)
Karen Ward Mahar. "Eugenics and the Creation of the Business Executive, 1900-1920" (April 20, 2022)
Dylan Gottlieb. Dylan Gottlieb, "Good Taste: Yuppie Gourmet Culture in the Age of Inequality" (March 23, 2022)
Kelly Goodman. “Let’s Freeze Government Too”: The Business Campaign for Tax Limitation (February 23, 2022)

2019 - 2020 Series -- View Series PDF

Danya Pilgrim. Modest Dreams & Grand Ambitions: African American Caterers at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (May 21, 2020)
Karen Mahar. "The Right Kind of Man”: Masculinity, Identity, and the American Business Executive in the Early Twentieth Century (April 23, 2020)
Geoffrey Jones. Unconventional and Esoteric Values and Alternative Capitalism (March 26, 2020)
Daniel Wortel-London. Private Growth, Public Costs: Municipal Finance and Reform in New York City, 1877-1913 (January 23, 2020)
David Suisman. Sonic Warfare: Military Music, Labor, and Technology Since the Civil War (December 12, 2019)
Denise Sutton. Marketing Love: The Global Expansion of Romance Publishing Companies Mills & Boon and Harlequin Enterprises, 1930-1990 (September 12, 2019)

2018 - 2019 Series -- View Series PDF

Regina Lee Blaszczyk. The Synthetics Revolution and the Senses (April 25, 2019)
Jennifer Black. Policing Fakes: Early Trademark Regulation in the U.S. (April 4, 2019)
Jessica K. Burch. A New Deal for Direct Sales: How Direct Sales Firms Helped Create Modern Non-Employment, 1910–1935 (February 7, 2019)
Laura Puaca. Domesticating Disability: The Creation of Assistive Devices for Disabled Homemakers in the Post-WWII U.S. (January 10, 2019)
A. J. Murphy. Corporatizing Defense: Management Expertise and the Transformation of the Cold War U.S. Military (December 6, 2018)
Seth Lunine. Groundbreaking Technology: California Dynamite and the Eastern Frontier, 1866-1886 (October 25, 2018)
Nadia Berenstein. A Flavor You Can’t Forget: NuGrape Soda, Synthetic Chemistry, and Modern Thirst (September 20, 2018)

2017 - 2018 Series -- View Series PDF

Jessica Levy. Black Empowerment, Global American Business, and the Post-Jim Crow/Apartheid City (April 26, 2018)
Kendra Smith-Howard. The Messy Work of Cleaning Up: Economy, Policy, and the Disposable Diaper, 1936–1996 (March 22, 2018)
Adam Rome. DuPont and the Limits of Corporate Environmentalism (February 15, 2018)
Dara Orenstein. Free Ports for Refugees': How the U.S. Turned a Warehouse for Duty-Free Garbanzo Beans into an Internment Camp for European Jews (January 18, 2018)
Marcus Anthony Allen. The Black Saver Paradigm: Understanding Black Capitalism in 19th Century Baltimore (November 16, 2017)
Emanuela Scarpellini. The Invention of Democratic Beauty: Avon Products in Italy (October 12, 2017)
Alexandra Hui. Making Muzak Natural: The sounds of life, death, and the lyre bird in the built environment, 1950–1970 (September 14, 2017)

2016 - 2017 Series -- View Series PDF

Jeannette Estruth. Silicon Valley Conservation: Redefining Environmental and Labor Politics, 1970-199 (May 18, 2017)
Andrew Russell. Stories about Maintenance- Recasting the Histories of Technology, Business, Labor, and Organizations (April 20, 2017)
Tyler Anbinder. New York's Famine Irish Immigrants (February 16, 2017)
Amrys Williams. Reimagining the Modern Farm: Ecological Development and 4-H’s New Deal for Agriculture (January 19, 2017)
Amanda Casper. New Business from Old Houses - Promoting Electricity through Home Alteration in Progressive Era Philadelphia (December 8, 2016)
Joseph Malherek. Does Motivation Matter? (November 3, 2016)
Lee Vinsel. The Rise and Fall of the First American Auto Safety Network, 1919-1940 (October 6, 2016)

2015 - 2016 Series -- View Series PDF

Jonathan Free. Capitalizing on Crisis (May 18, 2016)
Philip Scranton. This Grave New World: Global Postwar Transformations in Business Practices (April 13, 2016)
Rebecca Kobrin. Credit to the Nation: Jewish Immigrants, the World of Immigrant Banking and American Finance, 1873-1914 (February 17, 2016)
Benjamin R. Cohen. The New Food Police: Controlling Homes and Bodies in the Early Age of Manufactured Foods (December 9, 2015)
Rachel Gross. Miracle Materials: Synthetic Fibers and the Construction of Comfort in Outdoor Recreation (November 18, 2015)
Bryant Simon. The Hamlet Imperial Food Products Fire: Business Relocation, Tragedy, and the Geography of Silence in Post-New Deal America (September 16, 2015)

2014 - 2015 Series -- View Series PDF

Chantal Rodriguez. Unfit for Work (April 23, 2015)
Mark Rose. Supermarket Banks (March 26, 2015)
Tiago Saraiva. Cloning California: Oranges and American Democracy in the Global Mediterranean (February 19, 2015)
Stephen Mihm. Loose Screws and Standard Sizes: The Many Measures of Modernity (December 11, 2014)
Jesse LeCavalier. Walmart and the Architecture of Logistics (November 6, 2014)
Roger Horowitz. Man-O-Manischewitz, What a Wine! (October 2, 2014)