Joseph M. Bagley is the city archaeologist of Boston, a historic preservationist, and a staff member of the Boston Landmarks Commission. He has worked for multiple local and state historic preservation offices, including the Maine Historic Preservation Commission and the Massachusetts Historical Commission. In 2016, he published his award-winning first book, 'A History of Boston in 50 Artifacts' (Brandeis University Press).

Hear from three Boston leaders who are driving for equity in healthcare. Hear about their latest efforts to fight for support and make space for more choices as they help advance access to healthcare services for everyone.

Dr. Famiglietti is an internationally recognized expert on hydrology, the Earth’s water system. His focus is the freshwater crisis resulting from climate change and agricultural practices, and how the crisis is already affecting global populations and food production. His research team uses satellites and develops advanced computer models to track how freshwater availability is changing around the world.

In this program, Dr. Famiglietti explains the causes and development of the freshwater crisis and the urgent necessity of governmental policies to address the rapidly diminishing supply of water. Public understanding of the problem is essential.

Jay Famiglietti is a Global Futures Professor in ASU's School of Sustainability, where he serves as the Director of Science for the Arizona Water Innovation Initiative. He also holds affiliated faculty appointments in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, and in the Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems.

atherine McKittrick is Professor of Gender Studies and Canada Research Chair in Black Studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada, where she researches in areas of Black studies, anti-colonial studies, and critical-creative methodologies. She has authored multiple articles and is a former editor at Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography. Her books include Dear Science and Other Stories and Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle. She also edited and contributed to Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis. Recent and forthcoming projects include the limited-edition boxset Trick Not Telos, a collaboration with Liz Ikriko and Cristian Ordóñez, and the tryptic honoring NourbeSe Philip On the Declension of Beauty. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has a Ph.D. in Women’s Studies from York University.

Cosponsored by the Boston College Program in African and African Diaspora Studies.

Join the Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation for a captivating Mill Talk on the history of Levi Strauss, the man behind one of the most enduring names in American fashion, and the brand he built. Tracey Panek, Historian and Director of Archives at Levi Strauss & Co., will explore how a Bavarian immigrant in the 19th century built a brand that revolutionized workwear and became a global icon in fashion, culture, and everyday utilitarian clothing.

This talk is especially fitting at the Charles River Museum, the site of Francis Cabot Lowell’s first cotton textile mill, where America’s industrial revolution transformed fabric production and laid the foundation for the mass manufacturing of textiles—including the denim that would later become synonymous with Levi’s. Discover how industrial ingenuity, from early denim to Strauss’s patented riveted jeans, shaped the way we produce and wear clothing today – and how it continues to shape fashion worldwide.

Tracey Panek is the Historian for Levi Strauss & Co. and Director of Archives at the company’s world headquarters in San Francisco. She manages the day-to-day workings of the Levi Strauss & Co. Archives as a key corporate asset, answering historical questions, assisting designers, brand managers, executives and other employees whose work requires historical materials in the Archives. She regularly hunts for unique vintage Levi’s® garments and unusual Levi’s® items to add to the Archives.

Anger and fear are anchoring our political and religious life. This anger fear has warped our sense of how to be national and religious community that is moral community. Political discourse is uncivil; religious discourse is confrontational. Whether members of Congress are holding their party’s line or members of denominations are holding a doctrinal line, there is partisan polarization. At the heart of this polarization is absolutist morality. Womanist moral imagination helps us to answer this question: How do we generate and facilitate authentic moral community?

Dr. Marcia Y. Riggs has an undergraduate degree in religion from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, a Master of Divinity degree from Yale University Divinity School and a PhD in religion/ethics from Vanderbilt University. Her teaching career began at Drew University Theological School in Madison, New Jersey; she joined the faculty of Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, GA in 1991. In April of 2006, Dr. Riggs was inaugurated as the seminary’s first J. Erskine Love Professor of Christian Ethics and retired as professor emerita on August 1, 2024. The Marcia Riggs Commons, a residential hall and space for communal gatherings, was dedicated on the campus of the seminary in 2022. Her 20 years of ordained ministry were served in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.

Join The Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation for the kickoff of their special exhibition, 'Rediscovering Waltham’s Harpsichord History', which will examine the story of Frank and Diane Hubbard, founders and operators of Hubbard Harpsichords manufacturers of instruments and kits for almost 50 years.

Through their work, Greater Boston became a center of the revivial of the harpsichord as an instrument and Early Music as a genre. Mark Kroll has written the definitive book on chronicling this important period of music history and collected dozens of firsthand accounts of the principal players, workers, and artisans associated with the ‘Big Three’ harpsichord shops in Greater Boston – Hubbard in Waltham, William Dowd and Eric Herz, both in Cambridge.

Kroll will give a talk that sets the context in which the Hubbards’ shop at the Lyman Estate carriage house expanded to the old Cotton Picker Building of the Boston Manufacturing Factory site on Moody Street. Hubbard Harpsichords pioneered the use of DIY kits that became popular in the 1960s and 70s, many of which were built in this mill complex.

This Mill Talk marks the grand opening of Rediscovering Waltham’s Harpsichord History, a special exhibition on the artisanship, industry, and art of designing and building harpsichords, exemplified by those of the Hubbard shop. This three-month exhibition will include a full harpsichord, wood-bending frames, tools and materials of the trade, and imagery from the Hubbard shop that centers the workers who created instruments and kits for decades on site. Over the course of its installation, the program will include music, informational talks, panel discussions, and other special events to bring this almost-forgotten part of Waltham’s and Greater Boston’s music history back to the forefront.