Photographs of Tuskegee Institute

The American Antiquarian Society has a collection of fifty-six photographs depicting life in and around Tuskegee Institute, in Tuskegee, Alabama, ca. 1890-1915, taken by an unknown photographer. The campus, now known as Tuskegee University, is depicted here during the tenure of the school’s first president Booker T. Washington. Under Washington's leadership, students learned trades while also constructing the school's buildings brick by brick.

Hawaiian Engravings

Hawaiiana at the American Antiquarian Society includes an assortment of more than thirty rare engravings produced by students at the Lahainaluna Seminary on the island of Maui. An intaglio press was introduced at this institution about 1834 and was used to teach students the skills of copperplate engraving and printing. The students produced maps, landscape views, portraits, and depictions of native floral.

Access

The collection has been inventoried below and has been digitized

The News Media and the Making of America, 1730-1865

The history of America has always been intimately entwined with the history of communications media—and that has always been changing. This exhibition broadly explores the interconnectedness of American news media, in all its formats, with changes in technology, business, politics, society, and community from 1730 to 1865.

Reclaiming Heritage: Digitizing Early Nipmuc Histories from Colonial Documents

This online exhibition effectively creates a digital archive of several Algonquian-language printed books and pamphlets, or wussukwhonk as they are called in the Nipmuc language. The manuscript collections featured here include town records, land deeds, and account books.

Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution

Twenty-eight years after he published Original Meanings, Jack Rakove reflects on how debates over deciphering the original meaning of the Constitution’s many clauses now dominate American constitutional jurisprudence. He proposes that while one might assume such inquiries would be inherently historical in nature──asking what the framers of the Constitution intended particular clauses to mean, or what its ratifiers or early commentators understood these provisions to imply──the application of these inquiries today has in fact taken another course.

Domestic Impressions: The Visual and Material Culture of the American Family Home, 1750-1890

Led by Katherine C. Grier

The Center for Historic American Visual Culture (CHAViC) encourages and facilitates the use and understanding of popular images by scholars in a variety of disciplines including American studies, gender studies, history, art history, literature, and theatre. The 2013 Summer Seminar, Domestic Impressions: The Visual and Material Culture of the American Family Home, 1750-1890 will be held July 7-12, 2013 at the American Antiquarian Society, 185 Salisbury Street, Worcester, MA.