Connecticut Museum of Culture and History

Lunch and Learn: Prescribing from the Bookshelf: Bibliotherapy and the use of Books as Medicine
2022-02-15 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | CT
Have you ever turned to a book for consolation? Treasured the escape of a novel? Found comfort in a poem, self-help book, or simply from reading the newspaper?
Please join us for a virtual presentation by Historian Mary Mahoney on bibliotherapy, or the use of books as medicine. This talk will offer an exploration of the varied ways readers, doctors, and librarians have imagined books as medicine in the past. Focusing on case studies from 1800 to the present, we’ll explore some of the earliest imaginings of books on a shelf as vials of medicine that could treat all manner of ills. This talk will explore some of the earliest literary prescriptions at nineteenth-century asylums, question what books made the best medicine in the trenches of World War I, and beyond. Readers who prescribe themselves literary cures will learn they are not alone in the practice, and are in fact part of a larger story about the contested uses of reading.
This virtual program is free. To secure a spot, register now. You will receive an email confirmation with the Zoom link attached, and we will send you a reminder on the day of the program.
Questions? Contact Jennifer Busa, Public Programs and Special Events Coordinator, at jennifer_busa@chs.org.
About the Speaker
Mary Mahoney is a historian who studies the uses of books as medicine, or bibliotherapy. Earning her Ph.D. in History from UCONN in 2018, she is currently writing a history of bibliotherapy in the United States from 1800 to the present. She is also the co-host of the American Girls Podcast.
If you would like to make a donation to help the CMCH keep history alive, please click here. Or, to learn about the benefits of museum membership, click here!
Image: Bedside Library Service, circa 1918. American Library Association Archives

Lunch and Learn: Meet Albert Walker from Glastonbury, the Magician Who Liked Large Noses
2022-01-25 12:00 - 13:00
Please join us for a virtual presentation by Robert Olson for a discussion of the life and magic of Albert Walker. Walker worked a variety of jobs throughout his lifetime to support himself. He made cigars, played the fiddle, repaired clocks, made guns, kept bees, farmed for his father, and worked in different factories. Walker kept details of all of this in his 32 pocket diaries. Robert Olson spent six months, reading and transcribing the diaries, which are housed at the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History. They not only detailed much of his work but also his family life, and what he did for fun. He loved performing, especially as a magician.
Reading the diaries and letters in this amazing collection allowed Olson to get to know Albert Walker, as a magician, a family man, and a highly skilled metal worker. Walker is gone, but these diaries are almost like having him whisper in your ear. “Here I am, please get to know me!”
This virtual program is free. To secure a spot, register now. You will receive an email confirmation with the Zoom link attached, and we will send you a reminder on the day of the program.
Questions? Contact Jennifer Busa, Public Programs and Special Events Coordinator, at jennifer_busa@chs.org.
About the Speaker
Robert Olson is an historian, with a focus on the performing arts. He worked at Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts for over 25 years as the Director of Crafts and Special Events. His work in researching magic as a performing art enabled him to recreate the magic of Richard Potter, the first American to be a successful magician in the early 1800s. His recreated shows have been performed at historical societies and museums throughout the United States, including Canada and Great Britain.
Image: Robert Olson in costume, as magician Richard Potter. Courtesy of Robert Olson
If you would like to make a donation to help the CMCH keep history alive, please click here. Or, to learn about the benefits of museum membership, click here!

Lunch and Learn: Accounting for Labor in Colonial Connecticut
2021-12-07 12:00 - 13:00
Please join us for a virtual presentation by Dr. Caylin Carbonell. Dr. Carbonell is a New England Regional Fellowship Consortium (NERFC) fellow who conducted research at the CMCH this past summer.
In seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Connecticut, the household was the primary site of the economy. Although we often think of white male household heads as the principal movers and shakers of the colonial economy, household economies depended equally on the collaborative labor of a mixed group of dependents, including their wives and children, as well as indentured, hired, and enslaved laborers. However, since surviving records from the colonial period were primarily authored by white male household heads, the labor of these other household members often remains hidden from historians.
Using these same account books as well as other family papers and records that survive in the collections of the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History, this presentation will consider how we might use these sources to locate the collaborative and often hidden labor of women, children, and both free and unfree household laborers. This talk will offer an overview of the collaborative labor that drove the early New England economy as well as an introduction to strategies that researchers might take to uncover the histories of those individuals often thought to be missing from colonial archives.
This virtual program is free. To secure a spot, register now. You will receive an email confirmation with the Zoom link attached, and we will send you a reminder on the day of the program.
Questions? Contact Jennifer Busa, Public Programs and Special Events Coordinator, at jennifer_busa@chs.org.
About the Speaker
Caylin Carbonell is a historian of early America who focuses on unfreedom and domestic labor in colonial New England. As an NEH fellow with the Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture, she is working on her first book manuscript, which approaches issues of race, gender, and power in colonial North America through innovative archival practices that reveal grounded stories of everyday life. Previously, she received her Ph.D. in History from William & Mary in 2020 and served as the Hench Post-Dissertation Fellow at the American Antiquarian Society.
If you would like to make a donation to help the CMCH keep history alive, please click here. Or, to learn about the benefits of museum membership, click here!
