Yesterday and Today: Land Grants, 19th-Century Federal Policy and New Mexico Poverty A Brainpower and Brownbags Lecture

Experts on the early history of baseball, Mable Dodge Luhan, Edith Warner, and hippies will participate in the second half of the 2013 Brainpower & Brownbags Lecture Series. Organized by Tomas Jaehn of the museum’s Fray Angélico Chávez History Library, the lectures are free and open to the public (and, yes, you can bring a lunch). Each lecture begins at noon in the Meem Community Room; enter through the museum’s Washington Avenue doors. Seating is limited.

Mark your calendars. The schedule:

Wednesday, July 24: Marni Sandweiss on “Beyond the Edge: One Photograph, Many Stories, and the Violent World of the Reconstruction West.”

Sandweiss is a professor of history at Princeton University, specializing in the American West, visual culture and public history. Her books include Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line (Penguin, 2010); Print the Legend: Photography and the American West (Yale University Press, 2004) and Laura Gilpin: An Enduring Grace (Amon Carter Museum, 1986).

Wednesday, Aug. 21: Jeff Laing on “That Championship Season (1888): The Santa Fe Ancients’ Pennant Race of the New Mexico Baseball League.” 

Laing, a Santa Fe resident, is a retired English and drama teacher whose new book is Bud Fowler: Baseball’s First Black Professional (McFarland, 2013).

Thursday, Sept. 19: Lois Rudnick on “Constructing the Land of Enchantment: The Writings and Patronage of Henderson, Dodge Luhan, and Austin.”

Rudnick, a Santa Fe resident, has written extensively on Mabel Dodge Luhan, including her newest book, The Suppressed Memoirs of Mabel Dodge Luhan: Sex, Syphilis, and Psychoanalysis in the Making of Modern American Culture (University of New Mexico Press,2012). She is a professor emerita of American studies at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

Wednesday, Oct. 16: Sherry Smith on “Hippies, Indians and the Fight for Red Power.”

Smith, a distinguished professor of history and associate director of the Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University, speaks on her latest book(Oxford University Press, 2012). She is also the author of Reimagining Indians: Native Americans through Anglo Eyes, 1880-1940 (OUP, 2000).

Wednesday, Nov. 13: Mike Scarborough on “Yesterday and Today: Land Grants, 19th-Century Federal Policy and New Mexico Poverty.”

Scarborough is the author of Trespassers on Our Own Land (Dog Ear Publishing, 2012).

Note: This lecture is a substitute for the originally scheduled, Brian King on “Edith Warner: Freedom and Spiritual Awakening at the Base of Los Alamos Mesa.” Brian King on “Edith Warner: Freedom and Spiritual Awakening at the Base of Los Alamos Mesa.” 

Wednesday, Dec. 18: Cliff Mills on “Deconstructing Hacienda de Los Martinez, Ranchitos de Taos.”

Mills is a Santa Fe photographer.

The Brainpower & Brownbags Lecture Series is generously supported by the Herzstein Family Endowment Fund and the Plaza Café.