The Connecticut Gravestone Network Annual Symposium
Sat. March 20th

East Hartford South Senior Center
70 Canterbury St.
East Hartford, CT
9am-4pm

Admission $5 for CGN members
$10 for general public
Pay at the door

Lecture topics:

9:30 am
Traditional Introduction for First Time Attendees
Basics of Preservation and Reading Old Burying Grounds
by Ruth Brown

10:45 am
The 2009 Talcottville Civil War Monument Restoration
by John Spaulding

Lunch Break

1:15 pm
The Resurrection of Pine Island’s Cemetery History
by Holly Cuzzone & Dana Laird

2:30 pm
Hartford’s First Burying Grounds and some of their Mysteries
by Ruth Brown

Visit with Exhibitors, enjoy the lectures,
Try your hand at stone carving
Have some lunch and share some stories.

For more information:
Ruth Shapleigh-Brown
860-643-5652
www.ctgravestones.com

Here is a conference I hope to be attending in a few weeks…maybe I’ll see you there?

Cranky

==================

CONF:  The Past’s Digital Presence: Database, Archive, and Knowledge Work in the Humanities

Feb. 19-20, 2010 (New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.)

A Graduate Student Symposium at Yale University

Graduate students from around the globe will address how databases and other digital technologies are making an impact on our research in the humanities during this interdisciplinary symposium.

Keynote Speaker: Peter Stallybrass, Walter H. and Leonore C. Annenberg Professor in the Humanities, University of Pennsylvania

Colloquium Speaker: Jacqueline Goldsby, Associate Professor, University of Chicago

Closing Roundtable:
Rolena Adorno, Reuben Post Halleck Professor of Spanish, Yale University
Edward Ayers, President, University of Richmond
Willard McCarty, Professor of Humanities Computing, King’s College London
George Miles, Curator, Western Americana Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

**REGISTER NOW: Registration for this conference is now available online at http://www.regonline.com/Checkin.asp?EventId=803136.  Advanced registration is required by February 5, 2010. However,  there is no registration fee for university affiliates.**

For more information and conference program, please visit our website (http://digitalhumanities.yale.edu/pdp/) or email us at pdp@yale.edu.  Also join our Facebook Group (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=129956528514&ref=mf) and follow us on Twitter (http://twitter.com/PDP2010).

Email: pdp@yale.edu
Visit the website at http://digitalhumanities.yale.edu/pdp

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Be safe and have fun!!!

Seasons Greetings and Happy New Year to all the followers of The New England Anomaly!

May you have a great holiday season no matter where you are or what you celebrate.

Have yourself a groovy little Solstice!
Cranky Yankee

If you haven’t heard, the Connecticut Eastern Railroad Museum was vandalized just before Halloween with thousands of dollars in damage.

Benefit show to raise funds to help with repairs on damage by vandals recently at the Connecticut Eastern Railroad Museum in Willimantic, CT.

Six local rocking bands have donated their time and talents to help with this effort.

PLASTICBOX
THE COVERS
SISTERS AND BROTHERS
SHOTGUN TRUST
YO-YO MAN
DORIAN JAMES BAND

Hope to see you there.

Cranky

Some big changes FINALLY coming in The New England Anomaly.

I’ve been grousing for years that the website (not the blog) needs overhauling, but I get too busy (and too lazy) to fix it. If you noticed, the blog did get a slight design change a month or so ago so it’s easier to read. The time is over due to do the same with the site itself.

Thanks to some good friends and business associates, I am taking the first steps to make The New England Anomaly a better website. You will not notice the changes at first…it’s all “behind the scenes.” But hopefully by February, the site will be less ugly, more user-friendly, and have more up-to-date information.

Thank you for your patience (because I don’t have enough of my own).

Cranky

John Brown: The Connecticut Roots of an American Legend
150th Anniversary Program

Tuesday Wednesday December 2nd at 12:30, Old State House, Hartford
Wednesday December 2nd at 7pm, Norwich Historical Society, Sidney Frank Center
Norwich Free Academy
Thursday December 3rd at noon, Litchfield Historical Society, Litchfield, CT
Thursday December 3rd at 7pm, Torrington Historical Society, Torrington, CT

A spoken word and picture performance to debut on the 150th anniversary of his execution, “John Brown: The Connecticut Roots of an American Legend,” explores why America never forgets John Brown, whose activism blazed a trail on America’s journey of freedom.

Born in Torrington, raised in Connecticut’s Western Reserve (Ohio), Brown was the quintessential, puritanical, entrepreneurial, evangelist, a Connecticut type familiar (and in some places reviled) in early America. The Raid on Harpers Ferry was the news story of the decade and one of the most divisive and influential events in American history. It paved the way for Lincoln and made the Civil War inevitable.

This richly-illustrated program provides a fresh, visually-rich interpretation of an epic American story told by Connecticut’s master storyteller and public humanities scholar, William Hosley. Taking special note of its Connecticut Valley connections, Hosley explores the roots of Brown’s vision and madness, chronicling his influence and influences and unraveling a complex web of local connections that made Brown’s story possible and kept it alive for a century and a half since his death.

Part history, part travelogue, the program features an abundant array of art and artifacts from public collections in Connecticut and from the Adirondacks to Kansas. Audiences will learn the events in Brown’s life leading up to Harper’s Ferry and discover the layers of meaning that kept this story alive among African-Americans, who regarded Brown as a hero and the first white American to walk the talk of racial equality and social justice; in the South, where he was regarded as a blood-thirsty war monger, and among former neighbors and associates in Ohio, Connecticut, New York and Massachusetts who, by in large, “praised the man, but not the deed.”

Contact: William Hosley, 860-944-8349 or wnhosley@snet.net

CALL FOR PAPERS
“New England Self-Fashioning: Portraits and Presentations, 1700-1950″

A symposium sponsored by the Grace Slack McNeil Program for Studies in American Art at Wellesley College and the Office of Academic Programs at Historic Deerfield
Date: March 13, 2010
Location: Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA

Iconic images of New England include rocky shorelines, pristine town commons with white-steepled churches, and, perhaps, declining mill towns. While recent scholarship has explored how the cultural construction of New England as a place has changed over time, very little attention has been paid to questions of self-representation and visual identity.

A one-day symposium will explore the people of New England through their visual and material representations from the 18th through the 20th centuries. How have the residents of New England been portrayed individually or in groups? How have they chosen to represent themselves – in what contexts and in which media? How, in particular, has portraiture and self-presentation in New England presented an alternate view of the region?

We particularly invite papers that will explore portraiture and self-fashioning through a variety of lenses from paintings on canvas, to prints and photography, mixed media, moving images, sculpture, fashion, architectural patronage and interior design. Explorations of portraits in various media that juxtapose or inter-weave text and image and papers that explore the topic using interdisciplinary sources or methods are also particularly encouraged.

Please submit 250-word proposals and a two-page c.v. via electronic mail to Martha McNamara mmcnamar@wellesley.edu and Josh Lane lane@historic-deerfield.org. Proposals should be theoretical or analytical in nature rather than descriptive and should include the title of the paper and the presenter’s name.

For further information, please contact Martha McNamara (mmcnamar@wellesley.edu) or Josh Lane (lane@historic-deerfield.org). The deadline for submissions is January 15, 2010.

Posted on H-New England:

Call for Papers:
“The New England Planters in the Maritimes: The Next Generation”

The Planter Studies Centre of Acadia University invites proposals for its fifth conference on the New England Planters. This conference will be held at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada on 17-20 June 2010, marking the 250th anniversary of the arrival of the Planters. The conference theme is “the next generation,” an exploration of the development of communities, religious and social institutions, family networks, economic activity, politics and warfare, and Planter relations with other ethnic groups subsequent to their arrival in the 1760s.

The deadline for submissions is 15 January 2010. Proposals should be less than 250 words, and the author should include a brief biography or c.v. Proposals for panels or workshops are also welcome. While the selection of papers is rigorous, the conference has an impressive history of bringing together internationally-recognized academics, junior scholars, independent researchers and genealogists in productive and provocative sessions. Registration fees will be waived for graduate students, and students who are presenting can apply for financial assistance.

Dr. Gwen Davies is scheduled to open the conference with the Esther Clark Wright Lecture on Thursday, 17 June 2010. During the conference, the Atlantic Living Heritage Association is organizing a Planter encampment, recreating a civilian settlement from the late 18th Century on Acadia’s campus.

The Planter Studies Centre supports and promotes research on the New England Planters, a group of more than 8000 settlers from New England who relocated to the Maritime region between 1759 and 1768. Each of the previous four Planter conferences resulted in a collection of articles, and we anticipate producing a collection containing the best articles from the 2010 conference.

For more information, contact
Dr. Stephen Henderson, Chair
Planter Studies Centre
Acadia University
902.585.1283
stephen.henderson@acadiau.ca
http://libguides.acadiau.ca/Planter/