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Adult Discussion Groups

Transforming New York State in the 19th Century

This series explores the changes taking place in American society throughout the 19th century, and looks at how these trandformations played out in upstate New York. Each session centers on a book selected by Gregg Lighfoot, a graduate student in the History Department of Cornell University

 

The series opens with a discussion of In Hope Liberty: Culture, Community, and Protest Among Northern Free Blacks, 1700-1860, James and Lois Horton's important treatment of class, race, and culture in the Colonial North.


 

This session focuses on A Shopkeepers Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, Paul E. Johnson's landmark study of the national, regional, and local impacts of the Second Great Awakening, which began in Western New York.


 

A discussion of Carol Sheriff's The Artifical River: The Erie Canal and the Paradox of Progress, 1817-1862, which examines the impact of the Erie Canal on the lives of ordinary people.


 

The series concludes with a conversation about Mixed Harvest: The Second Great Transformation in the Rural North, 1870-1930, Hal Barron's illuminating study of the transformation of the northern U.S. from an agricultural society ot an urban and industrial one.