This year, CFHA’s Annual General Meeting will be held on Saturday, September 23rd.
The executive committee plans to present on the Threshing session held last October on “Reimagining the Future of the CFHA.” As CFHA moves forward, the executive welcomes thoughts, ideas, and blogs from members.
More information and a link to the online meeting are forthcoming. Please mark your calendars and plan to join us!
The London & Middlesex Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society is hosting an upcoming presentation tomorrow by Dave Zavitz on the history of Coldstream Friends. Join them this Saturday, January 7th, at 10am eastern time. This is a hybrid presentation, so you can register to attend over Zoom, or in person if you’re in the London, ON, area.
In this presentation, Dave Zavitz will cover the following questions:
Please see the London & Middlesex Branch event page for more details.
Reimagining the Future of CFHA
The new Executive Committee of the Canadian Friends Historical Association invites all interested parties to participate in a broad ranging session to help determine the future direction of CFHA. Rob Leverty, the Executive Director of the Ontario Historical Society, who has considerable experience with organizations like ours, will be present to help facilitate the discussion, and provide information.
The virtual session will take place on Zoom – Saturday, October 22nd at 1pm Eastern Time. Zoom link to follow.
At this time of transition, we are faced with some important questions and considerations:
Please consider participating in this important event!
CFHA is pleased to share information regarding the following event.
Please join the Conference of Quaker Historians and Archivists (CQHA) on three days in October for a set of virtual sessions foregrounding expanded approaches to the study of Quaker history and culture. The sessions are held over Zoom and there is no cost to attend. Registration is via Eventbrite.
CQHA’s October sessions have been chosen with a focus on interpretive approaches in mind. In each, CQHA is delighted to welcome both emerging and established practitioners in their areas of Quaker scholarship. Short CQHA informational briefings and the biennial CQHA business meeting will also be held as part of these sessions.
The sessions are scheduled for October 12, 19, and 26, beginning at 12:30 pm EDT. They are:
Graphic Novels: Quakers in Pictures and PrintWednesday, October 12, 2022
12:30-2:00 pm EDT | Session 2:00-2:30 pm EDT | CQHA Briefing
Presenters:
Marcus Rediker, Distinguished Professor, University of Pittsburgh
David Lester, Artist and musician (Mecca Normal) in Vancouver, Canada, and graphic novelist of Prophet against Slavery
Will Fenton, Associate Director, Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis, Stanford University
Katelyn L. Lucas, Tribal Historic Preservation Assistant for Delaware Nation and PhD Candidate, Temple University
Dash Shaw, American comic book writer/artist and animator, and cartoonist of Discipline (2021) published by the New York Review Comics
Description:
This session focuses on three historical graphic novels to consider issues of interpretation in presenting the Quaker past through the lens of graphic or visual presentation. David Lester and Marcus Rediker will discuss the collaboration of artist and historian in the making of Prophet against Slavery: Benjamin Lay, A Graphic Novel (Beacon Press, 2021), a graphic adaptation of Rediker’s biography of Benjamin Lay. Katelyn Lucas and Will Fenton will share insights from Ghost River: The Fall and Rise of the Conestoga (Library Company of Philadelphia, 2019), which reimagines the Paxton massacres of 1763 as an educational graphic novel, introducing new interpreters and new bodies of evidence to highlight Indigenous victims and their kin. Dash Shaw’s presentation will detail his process and the historical materials and references for Discipline (New York Review Comics, 2021), a graphic novel about a Quaker soldier in the American Civil War, which incorporates Civil War-era Quaker letters and diary entries. Together these presentations will give insights into innovative ways of engaging and imagining the Quaker past.
CQHA: A short briefing on CQHA and upcoming business will follow the presentation.
Thought and Action in Decolonizing Practices: A ConversationWednesday, October 19, 2022
12:30-1:00 pm EDT | CQHA Briefing 1:00-2:30 pm EDT | Session
Presenters:
Sa’ed Atshan, Director of Undergraduate Studies and Professor of Anthropology, Emory University
Paula Palmer, Co-Director of Toward Right Relationship, a project of the Indigenous Peoples Concerns committee of the Boulder Friends Meeting
Tanya Maus (moderator), Director, Peace Resource Center and Director, Quaker Heritage Center, Wilmington College
Description:
Focusing on academic practice and activism, this panel is devoted to a dialogue between Sa’ed Atshan and Paula Palmer regarding their interventions into upholding and uplifting the rights of first peoples and colonized peoples. Tanya Maus will moderate. Atshan’s scholarship has brought into focus the trauma of Palestinian identities including Queer and Quaker Palestinians as well as the potential for intersectional activism and solidarity among various constituents. Palmer’s lifework and activism have focused on the rights of Indigenous peoples. She witnesses the roles Quakers played in colonization and the forced assimilation of native children by means of the Quaker industrial boarding schools. Through dialogue, both participants will focus on the relationship between thought and practice, the various meanings of decolonization within the context of their work, and the necessity of restorative justice.
CQHA: A short briefing on CQHA and upcoming business will precede the presentation.
Quakers and NetworksWednesday, October 26, 2022
12:30-2:00 pm EDT | Session 2:15-3:15 pm EDT | CQHA Business Meeting
Presenters:
Esther Sahle, Research Associate in Global History, Freie Universität Berlin
Michael F. Suarez, S.J., Professor of English and Director of Rare Book School at the University of Virginia
James Truitt, Senior Archives Technician, Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College
Description:
New attention to network analysis in the humanities has invited new opportunities to explore the dense set of religious, economic, and social interconnections that characterize historical Quakerism. In this session, Esther Sahle will revisit what we know on the development and significance of Quaker business networks, contextualizing them within broader social and economic developments of the long eighteenth century. Michael Suarez will discuss the essential role played by Transatlantic Quaker networks in the campaign to abolish the slave trade, c.1787–1807. James Truitt will introduce participants to Friendly Networks, an online project that maps social networks within archival sources using the journals of eighteenth-century New Jersey minister John Hunt together with EAC-CPF and TEI, widely-used standards for authority control and text encoding.
CQHA: The biennial CQHA Business Meeting will follow the presentation.
Please see CQHA’s website for full information, or contact the organizers by email at [email protected].
Please be reminded that this Saturday, the 24th of September, we will hold:
THE 50th ANNIVERSARY ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING OF
THE CANADIAN FRIENDS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
Zoom invitation forthcoming on Friday!
From 1-2 p.m. Eastern (Toronto) time we will conduct our business.
From 2:30-3:30 our annual lecture will be presented by former and oncoming member of the Executive Committee, Kyle Jolliffe, who will provide us with “a look back at the first year of the Canadian Friend,” with a brief response by the current editor of the CF, Tim Kits.
CFHA is in a time of transition, so please consider joining the new Executive as a volunteer, and help continue and move forward the work of our Association.
Thank you, and hope to see you on Saturday!
Jeffrey Dudiak, Chair
This year, CFHA’s Annual General Meeting will be held on Saturday, September 24th.
The business portion of the AGM will take place from 1:00 – 2:00pm EDT. All members are encouraged to attend.
The business portion will be followed by the program portion from 2:30 – 3:30pm EDT and is open to everyone.
More information and a link to the online meeting are forthcoming. Please mark your calendars and plan to join us!
Please join the Conference of Quaker Historians and Archivists (CQHA) on three days in June, for a set of virtual sessions foregrounding expanded approaches to the study of Quaker history and culture. Registration for the June sessions is now open. Sessions are free to attend but you must be registered via Eventbrite to access the Zoom details.
CQHA’s June sessions have been chosen with a methodological focus in mind. The sessions are scheduled for June 14, 22, and 28, each at 12:30-2:00 pm EDT. They are:
Researching Quaker History Online: A WorkshopTuesday, June 14, 2022 | 12:30-2:00 pm EDT
Presenters: Mary Crauderueff, Susan Garfinkel, Emily Higgs Kopin
Research in the digital age increasingly requires new tools, methods, and sources. Presenters in this hands-on session will demonstrate some of the most useful tools for conducting Quaker history research online. Speakers will cover scanned Quaker meeting records available through Ancestry.com; architectural survey of Quaker meeting houses in the Historic American Buildings Survey; contemporary born-digital online resource; and, archived websites in the Internet Archive.
History from Things: Quaker Material and Visual CultureWednesday, June 22, 2022 | 12:30-2:00 pm EDT
Presenters: Laura Keim, Isabella Rosner, Anne Verplanck
Attention to material and visual culture extends our ability to understand the past as lived experience. Presenters in this session share case studies from their research that profile material and visual culture artifacts and methods to shed new light on Quaker history: Quaker material life at Philadelphia’s Stenton, home to six generations of the Logan family; a seventeenth-century needlework suite from London’s Shacklewell School; and, applying methodological tools for interpreting Quaker portraiture.
Quakers in the Field: Ethnographic and Oral HistoriesTuesday, June 28, 2022 | 12:30-2:00 pm EDT
Presenters: Alex Primm, Rebecca Hamilton-Levi, Oscar Lagusa Malande
Oral histories, interviews, and ethnographic research present rich opportunities to work closely with living informants to collect and preserve first-hand accounts of recent and current events. Presenters in this session share background and methods used in contemporary contexts: oral history projects including early work with elder Friends and current research in the Ozarks; the QuakerSpeak bi-weekly video series featuring first-person narratives by and for contemporary Friends; and, ethnographic fieldwork among Kenyan Quakers in the post-missionary/colonial era.
Please see CQHA’s website for full information, or contact the organizers by email at [email protected].
Join us Saturday, May 28th, for the final lecture in CFHA’s Quakerism in the Atlantic World series. The series has provided a wonderful opportunity to gather over the past five months to hear speakers present on their research and engage in the broader Quaker scholarly community. CFHA is pleased to welcome Dr. Robynne Rogers Healey and Erica Canela who will present on their chapter, “‘Our Dear Friend Has Departed This Life”: Memorial Testimony Writing in the Long Eighteenth Century.”
The virtual series runs every second Saturday. All lectures will take place at 0900 Pacific / 1200 Eastern / 1700 UK on Zoom. Following the chapters of the volume, each short lecture will run for thirty minutes and include a discussion period at the end. All are welcome to attend the lectures and are we encourage you to share the registration link with friends and colleagues who will find the series of interest. Please register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cfha-lecture-series-quakerism-in-the-atlantic-world-tickets-241366051357
Robynne Rogers Healey is a professor of history and the co-director of the Gender Studies Institute at Trinity Western University in British Columbia, Canada. She is associate editor (history) of the Brill series Research Perspectives in Quaker Studies, convenes the Conference of Quaker Historians and Archivists, and serves as publications chair for the Canadian Friends Historical Association. Her publications include From Quaker to Upper Canadian: Faith and Community Among Yonge Street Friends, 1801–1850 (2006); Quaker Studies: An Overview, The Current State of the Field (2018, with C. Wess Daniels and Jon Kershner); Quakerism in the Atlantic World, 1690–1830 (2021), and many articles and chapters in the field of Quaker history, especially related to eighteenth-century topics and the evolution of the peace testimony. She is currently working on two projects: a small monograph on Quaker quietism and a collaborative project on nineteenth-century Quaker women.
Erica Canela is a final-year part-time PhD candidate in religion and theology at the University of Birmingham, UK. Her thesis is titled “Quakers and Religious Identity in Herefordshire and Worcestershire: From Civil Wars to the Eve of Toleration, c. 1640–1688.” She is the recipient of several awards for her work in Quaker history, including the David Adshead Award and the Gerald Hodgett Award. Her article “The Commendable Life and Noble Death of Humphrey Smith” was recently published in Quaker Studies, and she is writing two volumes for the Brill Research Perspectives in Quaker Studies series on early Quakerism.
CFHA is dedicating this lecture series to Gordon Thompson in recognition of his enthusiasm for sharing Quaker history as a way to keep us connected during the pandemic. We rejoice in Gord’s tremendous contributions to CFHA. Always mentioning the great accomplishments and potential for CFHA, our Association is so much stronger because of Gord’s leadership and many contributions.
Join us Saturday, May 7th, for the penultimate lecture in CFHA’s Quakerism in the Atlantic World series. The previous eight lectures have proven wonderful opportunities for thoughtful dialogue and engagement in the broader Quaker scholarly community. We’re excited to welcome our next presenter, Dr. Rosalind Johnson. She will present on her chapter, “’Quakers and Marriage Legislation in England in the Long Eighteenth Century.”
The virtual series runs every second Saturday. All lectures will take place at 0900 Pacific / 1200 Eastern / 1700 UK on Zoom. Following the chapters of the volume, each short lecture will run for thirty minutes and include a discussion period at the end. All are welcome to attend the lectures and are we encourage you to share the registration link with friends and colleagues who will find the series of interest. Please register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cfha-lecture-series-quakerism-in-the-atlantic-world-tickets-241366051357
Rosalind Johnson is visiting fellow at the University of Winchester, UK. She works as a researcher for a county history project in Wiltshire and previously taught at the universities of Winchester and Chichester. Her principal research interests lie in the field of religious history in the long eighteenth century, particularly the history of Quakers. She is currently working on the history of Quakers and marriage, and on the history of Quakers in the city of Salisbury, UK, and is particularly interested in the position of women in religious groups, in expressions of popular piety, and in examining how nonconformists interacted with their conformist neighbours. Her publications include “The Case of the Distracted Maid: Healing and Cursing in Early Quaker history,” Quaker Studies (June 2016) and “The Lives of Ejected Hampshire Ministers After 1662,” Southern History (2014). She is currently researching the extent of Quaker faithfulness to the tithe testimony.
CFHA is excited to share the following news!
The Canadian Yearly Meeting Archives Committee is delighted to announce the re-opening of the Canadian Quaker Library and Archives on May 2, 2022. CQLA recently announced the appointment of a new archivist and are now ready to welcome guests back to the archives.
CFHA members and others interested are invited to join us for a short online celebration of this event at 7 pm Eastern on May 2. Find the Zoom link below.
