Fiction, Material Culture, and the Creation of a Mythic American Past

Home is closely entwined with a culture’s historical consciousness — how ordinary people come to know and understand their history over time. In its many manifestations the idea and the actuality of home in the 19th and early 20th centuries  was influenced by literary, religious, and architectural trends that centralized on domestic life. Visiting lecturer Harvey Green, professor of history at Northeastern University, will explain the evolution of popular historical consciousness as they relate to the concepts of “home” and “homeland” in the United States between 1820 and 1940, reviewing domestic artifacts and architecture, posters, prints, paintings, popular fiction, the vernacular landscape, folklore, and other published sources.