The Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife is pleased to announce the subject of its 2025 gathering, Recalling the Revolution in New England, to be held June 27–28 at Historic Deerfield. The conference keynote will be provided by Dr. Zara Anishanslin of the University of Delaware, author of the forthcoming book  The Painter’s Fire: A Forgotten History of the Artists who Championed the American Revolution.

The Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife (founded in 1976) is pleased to announce the subject of its 2024 gathering, Into the Woods: New England Forests in Fact and Imagination, to be held at Historic Deerfield June 28-29, 2024. The seminar invites proposals for papers and presentations that address the rich and varied histories of the relationship between the peoples of New England and adjacent areas and their forests.

One history, which I have been researching for my masters thesis, pertains to the story of Northfield’s nineteenth-century Methodist Crag Mountain Community and its most prominent resident, a free Black carpenter named Calvin Swan.

The 2025 Summer Lecture Series will take place both in person at the Deerfield Community Center and via Zoom from 7–8 p.m. (ET) on the following Thursdays: June 26, July 10, and July 17. 

Historic Deerfield, Inc., announced today that its President and Chief Executive Officer, Philip Zea, intends to step down and retire in the Spring of 2021. Zea has led Historic Deerfield since 2003. He also served Historic Deerfield for 18 years earlier in his career, from 1981 to 1999, concluding as Deputy Director and Chief Curator.

Clothing can often be a vessel for some of our most vivid memories. Garments can recall specific moments and important life events. Like the memories we cherish, saved clothing or its emblems preserves memory through tactile and visual senses. Martha Anna Abercrombie (1839-1923) of Lunenburg, Massachusetts, certainly tapped into this aspect of human nature when she assembled a swatch book of fabrics worn by her and her mother during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.