Past Events

The GBH BPL studio will host Outspoken Saturdays, a spoken word poetry event for emerging artists. Every first Saturday of the month, the series will be created in collaboration with spoken word artist Amanda Shea. Join us!

Registration is encouraged for this free event.

The 2020 book, Climate Crisis and The Global Green New Deal, by Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin is recognized as a major source of information about the climate change crisis and also the best solution, which involves science, politics and economics: "A survival manual for civilization" as Daniel Ellsberg called it. Dr. Pollin is an internationally recognized expert on the economics of the climate change crisis, the billions of people who will be affected, and the economic steps necessary for restoring our planet and civilization. Here, he explains in very accessible terms, the problem and the solution.

GBH is proud to be the exclusive public media partner of Open Streets Boston! Join us and grab your bike, rollerblades, skateboard, or walk through the car-free streets of Hyde Park. On Sunday, August 11, Hyde Park Ave. and River St. to Fairmount Ave. and Davison St. will be filled with live art, music, kid's activities, food trucks, resource tables and the opportunity to connect with neighbors and support local businesses!

The event is free and open to everyone!

When Women Ran Fifth Avenue: Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion is a glittering portrait of the golden age of American department stores and of three visionary women who led them. Journalist Julie Satow draws back the curtain to reveal the masterminds behind the creation and shopping experience at Hortense Odlum’s Bonwit Teller, Dorothy Shaver’s Lord & Taylor, and Geraldine Stutz’s Henri Bendel.

The twentieth century American department store was a palace of consumption where every wish could be met under one roof – afternoon tea, a stroll through the latest fashions, a wedding (or funeral) planned. It was a place where women, shopper and shopgirl alike, could stake out a newfound independence. Whether in New York or Chicago or on Main Street, USA, men owned the store buildings, but inside, women ruled. In this hothouse atmosphere, three women and their department stores rose to the top, Hortense Odlum (Bonwit Teller), Dorothy Shaver (Lord & Taylor), and Geraldine Stutz (Henri Bendel). They took great risks and forged new paths for the women who followed in their footsteps. Her new book captures the department store in all its glitz, decadence, and fun, and showcases the women who made that beautifully curated world go round.

Join us for this stylish account, an illustrated presentation by the author followed by a discussion with fashion curator Petra Slinkard.

American Experience presents a virtual PAST FORWARD conversation exploring the role of international politics and nationalism at the Olympic Games. This conversation is inspired in part by our streaming films The Boys of '36 and Jesse Owens.

In this conversation, panelists will examine the political motives behind competing at and hosting the Olympics. They will also question whether the Games themselves should be thought of as an event fostering peace or as a soft-power battleground for superpowers, examining the role of the United States in creating both of these perceptions. The conversation will seek to understand how the ambitions of individual athletes fit within a nation state's view of the Games as a means toward national glory, throughout history and today.

Panelists:

Dave Zirin writes about the politics of sports for the Nation Magazine. He is their first sports writer in 150 years of existence. Winner of Sport in Society and Northeastern University School of Journalism's 'Excellence in Sports Journalism' Award, Zirin is also the host of Edge of Sports Television on The Real News Network and the Edge of Sports Podcast. He has been called “the best sportswriter in the United States,” by Robert Lipsyte. Dave Zirin is, in addition, a columnist for the Progressive.

Kendra Gage is an Assistant Professor in Teaching in History at the University of California, Riverside. She received her doctoral degree from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in the department of History. Her research and teaching focus on 20th Century America, Sports and Olympics History, the American West, Black Feminist Thought and the Civil Rights Movement. She is currently reworking her manuscript for publication Creating the Black California Dream: Virna Canson and the Black Freedom Struggle in the Golden State's Capital, 1940-1988," which uses the life of Virna Canson as a lens for incorporating Sacramento's activities within the larger historical framework of the Civil Rights Movement.

The discussion will be moderated by Adriane Lentz-Smith. Adriane is an Associate Professor of History at Duke University, where she teaches courses on the Civil Rights Movement, Black Lives, Modern America, and History in Fact and Fiction. A scholar of African American history as well as the histories of the twentieth-century United States and the US & the World, Lentz Smith is the author of Freedom Struggles: African Americans and World War I (Harvard University Press, 2009), as well as numerous other scholarly articles and reviews.

This event will be live-streamed on our YouTube and Facebook pages.

Author Brian Rashad Fuller shares his own story of navigating the world, overcoming his family struggles, and eventually entering an educational system that he believes is inherently racist, damaging, and unhelpful.

GBH is proud to be the exclusive public media partner of Open Streets Boston! Join us and grab your bike, rollerblades, skateboard, or walk through the car-free streets of Jamaica Plain. On Sunday, July 21, Centre Street from Lamartine St. to South St. will be filled with live art, music, kid's activities, food trucks, resource tables and the opportunity to connect with neighbors and support local businesses!

The event is free and open to everyone! Over 200 community partners, local businesses, and organizations are excited to connect with you.

Timothy O'Sullivan is one of America’s most famous war photographers. His image A Harvest of Death, taken at Gettysburg, is an icon of the Civil War.  He also photographed the American West. Now writer Robert Sullivan shows us the artist’s life and work, the history of photography and our country, as he follows O’Sullivan’s path on his own personal exploration of the West.

O'Sullivan was among the first photographers to elevate the trade of photography to the status of fine art. The images of the American West he made while traveling with the surveys led by Clarence King and George Wheeler display a prescient awareness of what photography would become. At the same time, we know very little about O'Sullivan the man and landscapes he captured.

Robert Sullivan’s Double Exposure sets off in pursuit of these two enigmas. This book documents the author’s own road trip across the West in search of the places, many long forgotten or paved over, that O'Sullivan pictured. It also shows how changes to our country and its landscape were already under way in the 1860s and '70s, and how these changes were a continuation of the Civil War.

In celebration of the July 4 holiday, watch this fascinating presentation and discussion of one phrase from the Declaration of Independence, “the pursuit of happiness.”  With Jeffrey Rosen of the National Constitution Center and host of the We the People weekly podcast, we look at what this unalienable right meant to our nation’s Founders, how it defined their lives and became the foundation of our democracy.

In profiles six of our country’s most influential founders—Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton—this new, thought-filled book shows what pursuing happiness meant in their lives. It was a quest for being good, not feeling good, demonstrating a pursuit of lifelong virtue, not short-term pleasure. Among those virtues were the habits of industry, temperance, moderation, and sincerity. Their views were inspired by readings of the classical Greek and Roman moral philosophers. More than an elucidation of the Declaration’s famous phrase; The Pursuit of Happiness is a revelatory journey into the minds of the Founders. Join us to hear from Jeffrey Rosen and gain a deep, rich, and fresh understanding of the foundation of our democracy.

On June 1, 1774, British officials shut down the port of Boston as punishment for the dumping of East India Company tea six months earlier. Overnight, ship traffic stopped and the wharves fell silent.

In this lecture, Joseph M. Adelman discusses how Bostonians lost access to goods and work that they relied on and explore how working people coped with the economic fallout.