Research Seminars

2025 - 2026 Series -- View Series PDF

• October 29, 2025:
  Cody Patton (Montana State University-Billings).
  “Nature’s Brew: Water and Brewing in American Beer”

  This chapter is the fifth in Patton's book manuscript, a more-than-human-history of beer production in the United States and explores the post-World War II consolidation of the American brewing industry by looking at the role of water in the brewing process and the construction of chain breweries throughout the United States.

• November 19, 2025:
  Christy Chapin (University of Maryland-Baltimore County).
  “American Country Banks: Fragility, Risky Lending, & Creative Marketing, 1870s-1920s”

  This chapter investigates the ground-level operations of American “country” banks—the smallest unit banks—between the 1870s and 1920s. Compared to larger banks, most country banks were poorly capitalized and poorly managed. Their survival largely rested on correspondent relations with city banks.

• December 17, 2025:
  Ben Kletzer (Marshall University).
  “Full Steam Ahead for the First Five-Year Plan: How Technocrats Developed Railways and Transformed the Chinese Economy, 1952-1957.”

  In 1952-1957, the People’s Republic of China’s China National Railways operated based on a marriage of convenience between the pre-revolutionary railway technical intelligentsia and the Communist Party of China (CCP). The railway technical intelligentsia governed the new state-owned railways, working as managers and engineers.