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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.

Subscribe to the Hagley Monthly Newsletter to receive the latest updates and reminders about our conferences and seminars

Upcoming Research Seminars

2025 - 2026 Series -- View Series PDF

Wed, Feb 4 2026:
Kevin Dwyre (University of Delaware).
“Calling All Jobs: Postwar Labor's Alternative Vision for the Automated Future”

In the post-World War II United States, unions and management waged an ideological struggle for control of automation. This paper will chart this struggle, outlining both management’s market-oriented position as well as how sections of the labor movement advanced their own vision of the automated future. Ranging from early retirement and worker retraining programs financed through automation funds to a Technological Clearing House for national planning, proposed by unions was a social democratic politics of expanded collective bargaining prerogatives and federal policy intervention.
Wed, Apr 29 2026:
Diane E. Bockrath.
“Art, Business, and …Christmas Cards: The American Artists Group”

In 1934, Russian Jewish immigrant and committed Socialist Samuel Golden (1895-1963) launched what might seem to be an unlikely new endeavor: he started a Christmas card business. The company, American Artists Group (AAG), was founded with a three-fold vision to provide income for artists struggling during the Great Depression; democratize American art by bringing it into the average person’s home in accessible ways; and elevate the quality of Christmas cards on the market, which Golden felt had become tawdry and substandard. The group began with thirty-eight prominent artists representing a cross-section of American artistic styles and mediums, eventually expanding to more than 400 members and producing original designs as late as the 1990s.

Past Research Seminars

2025 - 2026 Series -- View Series PDF

Ben Kletzer (Marshall University).
“Full Steam Ahead for the First Five-Year Plan: How Technocrats Developed Railways and Transformed the Chinese Economy, 1952-1957.”
(Wed, Dec 17 2025)
Christy Chapin (University of Maryland-Baltimore County).
“American Country Banks: Fragility, Risky Lending, & Creative Marketing, 1870s-1920s”
(Wed, Nov 19 2025)
Cody Patton (Montana State University-Billings).
“Nature’s Brew: Water and Brewing in American Beer”
(Wed, Oct 29 2025)

2024 - 2025 Series -- View Series PDF

Christopher Morris.
“Nitrogen, Inc.: Global Chemical Conglomerates and the Little Guy”
(Wed, Apr 23 2025)

Che Yuen.
“She’s a Killer”: Aerosols, Insecticides, and the Postwar American Home
(Wed, Mar 26 2025)
Maia Silber.
“The ‘Stay-Overs’: Seasonal Farm Labor Migration and Public Employment Agencies, 1931-1973”
(Wed, Feb 05 2025)
Richard John.
“The Folklore of Thurman Arnold: Anti-Monopoly in the Shadow of War”
(Wed, Dec 18 2024)
Evan Brown.
“Keeping Score: Labor and Information on Baseball's Money Market”
(Wed, Nov 13 2024)
Philip Scranton.
“Spare Parts: A Global History of a Modern Problem – The American Home Front in World War II”
(Wed, Oct 09 2024)
Amanda Marie Martinez.
"The Industry is Playing People Cheap": The Failure to Diversify the Country Music Audience in the 1990s
(Wed, Sep 11 2024)

2023 - 2024 Series -- View Series PDF

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

2022 - 2023 Series -- View Series PDF

Angus McLeod.
“Schools and Economic Development in Antebellum Texas”
(Wed, Apr 05 2023)
Moeko Yamazaki.
“Making the World on Time: The Vietnam War, Deregulation and the Birth of FedEx”
(Wed, Feb 22 2023)
Greg Hargreaves.
“Hunger for Innovation: Fall Line Merchant Milling and the Gospel of Automation, 1735-1865”
(Wed, Dec 14 2022)
Isabelle Held.
"Soft Power: Plastic Foams, Design, and Postwar Bodies"
(Wed, Nov 16 2022)
Hannah Tucker.
“Creating an America Market: Slavery and Intercolonial Trade in the British Atlantic, 1698-1766”
(Wed, Sep 14 2022)

2021 - 2022 Series -- View Series PDF

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

2019 - 2020 Series -- View Series PDF

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

2018 - 2019 Series -- View Series PDF

Regina Lee Blaszczyk.
The Synthetics Revolution and the Senses
(Thu, Apr 25 2019)
Jennifer Black.
Policing Fakes: Early Trademark Regulation in the U.S.
(Thu, Apr 04 2019)
Jessica K. Burch.
A New Deal for Direct Sales: How Direct Sales Firms Helped Create Modern Non-Employment, 1910–1935
(Thu, Feb 07 2019)
Laura Puaca.
Domesticating Disability: The Creation of Assistive Devices for Disabled Homemakers in the Post-WWII U.S.
(Thu, Jan 10 2019)
A. J. Murphy.
Corporatizing Defense: Management Expertise and the Transformation of the Cold War U.S. Military
(Thu, Dec 06 2018)
Seth Lunine.
Groundbreaking Technology: California Dynamite and the Eastern Frontier, 1866-1886
(Thu, Oct 25 2018)
Nadia Berenstein.
A Flavor You Can’t Forget: NuGrape Soda, Synthetic Chemistry, and Modern Thirst
(Thu, Sep 20 2018)

2017 - 2018 Series -- View Series PDF

Jessica Levy.
Black Empowerment, Global American Business, and the Post-Jim Crow/Apartheid City
(Thu, Apr 26 2018)
Kendra Smith-Howard.
The Messy Work of Cleaning Up: Economy, Policy, and the Disposable Diaper, 1936–1996
(Thu, Mar 22 2018)
Adam Rome.
DuPont and the Limits of Corporate Environmentalism
(Thu, Feb 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
(Thu, Jan 18 2018)
Marcus Anthony Allen.
The Black Saver Paradigm: Understanding Black Capitalism in 19th Century Baltimore
(Thu, Nov 16 2017)
Emanuela Scarpellini.
The Invention of Democratic Beauty: Avon Products in Italy
(Thu, Oct 12 2017)
Alexandra Hui.
Making Muzak Natural: The sounds of life, death, and the lyre bird in the built environment, 1950–1970
(Thu, Sep 14 2017)

2016 - 2017 Series -- View Series PDF

Jeannette Estruth.
Silicon Valley Conservation: Redefining Environmental and Labor Politics, 1970-199
(Thu, May 18 2017)
Andrew Russell.
Stories about Maintenance- Recasting the Histories of Technology, Business, Labor, and Organizations
(Thu, Apr 20 2017)
Tyler Anbinder.
New York's Famine Irish Immigrants
(Thu, Feb 16 2017)
Amrys Williams.
Reimagining the Modern Farm: Ecological Development and 4-H’s New Deal for Agriculture
(Thu, Jan 19 2017)
Amanda Casper.
New Business from Old Houses - Promoting Electricity through Home Alteration in Progressive Era Philadelphia
(Thu, Dec 08 2016)
Joseph Malherek.
Does Motivation Matter?
(Thu, Nov 03 2016)
Lee Vinsel.
The Rise and Fall of the First American Auto Safety Network, 1919-1940
(Thu, Oct 06 2016)

2015 - 2016 Series -- View Series PDF

Jonathan Free.
Capitalizing on Crisis
(Wed, May 18 2016)
Philip Scranton.
This Grave New World: Global Postwar Transformations in Business Practices
(Wed, Apr 13 2016)
Rebecca Kobrin.
Credit to the Nation: Jewish Immigrants, the World of Immigrant Banking and American Finance, 1873-1914
(Wed, Feb 17 2016)
Benjamin R. Cohen.
The New Food Police: Controlling Homes and Bodies in the Early Age of Manufactured Foods
(Wed, Dec 09 2015)
Rachel Gross.
Miracle Materials: Synthetic Fibers and the Construction of Comfort in Outdoor Recreation
(Wed, Nov 18 2015)
Bryant Simon.
The Hamlet Imperial Food Products Fire: Business Relocation, Tragedy, and the Geography of Silence in Post-New Deal America
(Wed, Sep 16 2015)

2014 - 2015 Series -- View Series PDF

Chantal Rodriguez.
Unfit for Work
(Thu, Apr 23 2015)
Mark Rose.
Supermarket Banks
(Thu, Mar 26 2015)
Tiago Saraiva.
Cloning California: Oranges and American Democracy in the Global Mediterranean
(Thu, Feb 19 2015)
Stephen Mihm.
Loose Screws and Standard Sizes: The Many Measures of Modernity
(Thu, Dec 11 2014)
Jesse LeCavalier.
Walmart and the Architecture of Logistics
(Thu, Nov 06 2014)
Roger Horowitz.
Man-O-Manischewitz, What a Wine!
(Thu, Oct 02 2014)