Recent Events

In May 2019, the Hagley Program two-day visit by Dr. Joy Lisi Rankin, author the path-breaking recent book A People’s History of Computing in the United States (2018). Dr. Rankin gave a public lecture “A History of Computing Citizenship,” which exploring the relationship between community and citizenship in the formative years of networked computing in the 1960s and ’70s, and led a colloquium titled “The Pipeline Fallacy: My Work as a Woman around STEM.”

In May 2018, the Hagley Scholars hosted a screening of Bombshell: The Heddy Lamar Story at the Hagley Library and held a discussion with the director Alexandra Dean. The local NPR station picked up the event, too.

In 2017,  the Hagley Scholars Working Group was relaunched as a group to read and comment on particpants’ works in progress, to discuss readings in common, and investigate issues pertinent to the history of capitalism, technology, and culture. 

Since 2014, the Hagley Scholars have invited numerous authors to Delaware for their Book Talk Series highlighting recent publications in capitalism, technology, and culture. During these intimate conversations, the Hagley Scholars speak with their guests about not only the content of their works, but also their perspectives on the process of researching, writing, and publishing history. Since 2014, the Hagley Scholars have met with the following experts:

  • Joseph A. McCartin, Georgetown University, Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike that Changed America (Oxford, 2011)
  • Kendra Smith-Howard, University at Albany-SUNY, Pure and Modern Milk: An Environmental History since 1900 (Oxford, 2014)
  • Bryant Simon, Temple University, Everything but the Coffee: Learning about America from Starbucks (University of California, 2009)
  • Jenifer Van Vleck, Yale University, Empire of the Air: Aviation and the American Ascendancy (Harvard, 2013)
  • Joshua Clark Davis, University of Baltimore, From Head Shops to Whole Foods: The Rise and Fall of Activist Entrepreneurs (Columbia, 2017)