Hagley Center program officer Gregory Hargreaves interviews Lara Freidenfelds about her research into the history of marketers’ and advertisers’ intense targeting of pregnant women, and its implications for early pregnancy loss. In support of her project, Freidenfelds, a historian of science, received a research grant from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society.   

Pregnant women today face a barrage of advertising designed to lock-in brand loyalty during an emotionally and culturally sensitive time. The pressure to buy and consume and participate in the market may begin with the first hint of pregnancy. This was not always the case. Dr. Freidenfelds discovered that it took decades of deliberate effort to develop the techniques and infrastructures that pregnant women and new parents face today in American consumer culture. The story of one brand of baby bottle unlocked the fascinating tale. 

For more Hagley History Hangouts, and to learn more about the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society, visit us online at hagley.org.

The Myth of the Perfect Pregnancy: A History of Miscarriage in America with Lara Freidenfelds

In Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, Marcia Chatelain explores how fast food restaurants saturated black neighborhoods and became, as well, a focal point in the development of “black capitalism.” To tell this story, she charts a surprising history of cooperation among fast food companies, black capitalists, and civil rights leaders, who―in the troubled years after King's assassination―believed they found an economic answer to the problem of racial inequality. With the discourse of social welfare all but evaporated, federal programs under presidents Johnson and Nixon promoted a new vision for racial justice: that the franchising of fast food restaurants, by black citizens in their own neighborhoods, could finally improve the quality of black life. Synthesizing years of research, Franchise tells a troubling success story of an industry that blossomed the very moment a freedom movement began to wither. 

 

Marcia Chatelain is a professor of history and African American studies at Georgetown University, and is a leading public voice on the history of race, education, and food culture. The author of South Side Girls, Chatelain lives in Washington, DC. Franchise was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in History and the Hagley Prize for the best book in business history.

Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America with Marcia Chatelain

Hudson Maxim wanted his lake, and he didn’t mind twisting some arms to get it. The early-twentieth-century investor in Lake Hopatcong property wished to make it a destination for well-heeled travelers and pleasure seekers. Making his plans difficult were a cadre of challenges from intransigent executives, to the Morris Canal, to the hydrography of the lake itself.  

Environmental scholar Peter Astras, PhD candidate at St. Johns University, tells the tale of Lake Hopatcong as an object of desire, development, and indeterminate outcomes. Astras came to the Hagley Library to explore the Hudson Maxim papers, a collection that ranges across the wide array of the man’s business and personal interests. Through careful reading of the archive, he was able to piece together a story that situates the lake in broader context of economic and environmental change. 

For more Hagley History Hangouts, and more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society, visit us on line at www.hagley.org.

The Literary & Ecological History of Lake Hopatcong with Peter Astras

Historians of technology once famously asked, “does technology drive history?” Their answer was, “it depends.” The phenomena of history do not float atop of the changes within material practices and technology, but neither do they stand apart from them; the two are intimately entwined in the contingent, intermittent unfolding of history. The challenge for the historian is to open the black box of technology, and to make its social setting and connection explicit to allow for a better understanding of its role in continuity and change over time. 

Alexander Liebman, geographer and PhD candidate at Rutgers University, asks how this complicated set of interrelated factors have ramified upon the ground in agricultural spaces as twentieth-century engineers, planners, and others applied the technologies of computation and automation to farming. Among the major figures in this story was Arthur Hall, an engineer at Bell Laboratories and innovator in computerized agriculture. His patented 1970s-era “autofarm” aimed to save the small family farm by promoting the farmer from laborer to manager, and equipping him or her with a system of computerized, automated tools to grow, harvest, and process crops from a central indoor terminal. While Hall’s particular system did not change the world of agriculture, his ideas were part of a wider turn toward computer technologies as a solution to problems in American farming. In that regard, the “autofarm” is still with us, and is a touchstone in the history that has led to self-driving tractors and drone fleets of twenty-first-century American farms.   

In support of his research Liebman received funding form the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more Hagley History Hangouts and more information, visit us online at hagley.org.

Agroecological Farming: Prehistories of Agriculture’s Digital Turn with Alexander Liebman

In this edition of Hagley History Hangout, Hannah Farber discusses her new prize-winning book, Underwriters of the United States, with Roger Horowitz. Her book traces how American maritime insurers used their position at the pinnacle of global trade to shape the formation of the United States. During American Revolution, they helped the U.S. negotiate foreign loans, sell state debts, and establish a single national bank. Afterward, they increased their influence by lending money to the federal government and to its citizens. Even as federal and state governments began to encroach on their domain, maritime insurers adapted, preserving their autonomy and authority through extensive involvement in the formation of commercial law. Leveraging their claims to unmatched expertise, they operated free from government interference while simultaneously embedding themselves into the nation’s institutional fabric. Farber’s book received the Hagley Prize for the best book in business history in 2023.  

Hannah Farber is assistant professor of history at Columbia University.

For more Hagley History Hangouts and more information on the Center for the history of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library, visit us online at hagley.org.

Underwriters of the United States: How Insurance Shaped the American Founding with Hannah Farber

Americans love coffee, but the coffee in American cups has changed a lot over the years. Three waves of coffee consumer culture washed over the twentieth-century United States: the mass commodity wave, the differentiation wave, and the aficionado’s wave. With each wave came changes to the way Americas bought, prepared, and consumed coffee. Present throughout the decades, however, has been the Chemex coffeemaker designed in the 1930s by chemist and industrial designer Peter Schlumbohm.
	Uncovering the story of the Chemex coffeemaker is Clark Barwick, cultural historian and teaching professor of business communication at Indiana University. Using the Schlumbohm collection of scrapbooks and papers held in the Hagley Library, Barwick discovered how a desire for a cleaner cup of coffee, and a knack for marketing and promotion, led Schlumbohm to create and share the Chemex with the world. More than eighty years later, the device is still a beloved standard piece of equipment among coffee lovers everywhere.
	In support of his work, Barwick received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more information on funding opportunities, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.

Tasteful Design: Peter Schlumbohm & the Chemex Coffeemaker with Clark Barwick

Work tires folks, and if fatigue is allowed to continue unabated, it can wear them right out. Studies of industrial and workplace fatigue during the first half of the twentieth century sought to address this pressing social and economic problem. But for whose benefit: labor or capital?

The dissertation research of Tina Wei, PhD candidate at Harvard University, demonstrates that this matter was of real concern to labor unions, business owners, management, and research scientists. Using multiple sources, including the records of the National Industrial Conference Board held at the Hagley Library, Wei explores how concept of industrial fatigue changed over time from a primarily physical matter to one focused on mental and emotional states. 

In support of her work, Wei received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more information on our funding opportunities, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.

Tired!: Industrial and Workplace Fatigue, 1900-1950 with Tina Wei

The DuPont firm was a leader in workplace and community safety communications during the twentieth century. This had been baked into the company culture from the first, as gunpowder manufacturing made essential. What changed over time were the techniques and media of communication, and the intended audience targeted by the company’s messaging.

In her latest research, Madison Krall, assistant professor of communication studies at Seton Hall University, explores the wealth of health and safety materials generated by the DuPont company during the twentieth century. From posters to motion pictures, the firm deployed a wide array of media to promote safety in the workplace and beyond. DuPont wished to convince the public that its products were safe, and to convince employees and community members that safety was their responsibility. 

In support of her work Dr. Krall received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more Hagley History Hangouts, and more information visit hagley.org.

Health, Safety, & Risk Communication at DuPont in the Twentieth Century with Madison Krall

The political meaning of industry depends upon its context. Following the Second World War, Native American tribal governments engaged in a program of industrial development meant to secure the political self-determination of their nations. Initially concerned with attracting capital investment to reservation communities, by the 1970s native governments had moved on to become investors in wholly owned tribal enterprises. 

In his dissertation research, Sam Schirvar, PhD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania uncovers a story that is both surprising and revealing of deeper patterns in American history. While outsiders saw industrial development as a means to efface native communities and tribal governments, tribal leaders themselves saw it as a means to self-determination. While the wider American economy was moving toward privatization of enterprise, Native Americans were creating publicly owned industries. Industry can mean different things to different people at different times. 

In support of his research Schirvar received the Louis Galambos National Fellowship in Business and Politics from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information on our funding opportunities, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.

Manufacturing Self-Determination: Industry on Native American Reservations with Sam Schirvar

Large technological systems can be vulnerable to manipulation, perhaps especially when they are centralized, monopolistic, and complacent. That was the situation in American telecommunications in the early 1960s when a generation of hackers developed techniques to manipulate the Bell telephone system to their advantage, a practice known as phone phreaking. 

In his dissertation research, Jacob Bruggeman, PhD candidate at the Johns Hopkins University, digs into the technology and politics of hackers, tracing their trajectory from anti-establishment actors on the fringes of technological systems, to positions of influence and control over the very same systems. In parallel to these developments in the hacker community, major organizations, both public and private, adopted new positions and policies designed to secure the system.

In support of his research, Bruggeman received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, please visit us online at hagley.org

Securing the System: Phone Phreaks, Hackers, and Political Order, 1963-2013 with Jacob Bruggeman

American households are awash in expensive credit card debt. But where did all this debt come from? In this history of the rise of postwar American finance, Sean H. Vanatta shows how bankers created our credit card economy and, with it, the indebted nation we know today.
 
America’s consumer debt machine was not inevitable. In the years after World War II, state and federal regulations ensured that many Americans enjoyed safe banks and inexpensive credit. Bankers, though, grew restless amid restrictive rules that made profits scarce. They experimented with new services and new technologies. They settled on credit cards, and in the 1960s mailed out reams of high-interest plastic to build a debt industry from scratch.
 
In the 1960s and ’70s consumers fought back, using federal and state policy to make credit cards safer and more affordable. But bankers found ways to work around local rules. Beginning in 1980, Citibank and its peers relocated their card plans to South Dakota and Delaware, states with the weakest consumer regulations, creating “on-shore” financial havens and drawing consumers into an exploitative credit economy over which they had little control. We live in the world these bankers made.

In support of his work, Dr. Vanatta received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.

Plastic Capitalism: Banks, Credit Cards & the End of Financial Control with Sean Vanatta

Ben Spohn interviews Mark Aldrich about his 2018 book, Back on Track American Railroad Accidents and Safety 1965-2015. This period marked a decline in safe operating on American railroads through the 1970s which were followed by a period of increased safety and profitability for American railroads. Aldrich makes the case that the joint factors of economic deregulation through the Staggers Act and the federalization of railroad safety via the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) drew attention to safety issues on the railroad like poor track condition, unsafe grade crossings, or engineer fatigue and left railroads with not only incentives to become safer, but enough money in their coffers to adequately shore up these safety concerns. 

Mark Aldrich is the Marilyn Carlson Nelson Professor of Economics emeritus at Smith College. Back on Track American Railroad Accidents and Safety 1965-2015 is a sequel to Aldrich’s earlier book on railroad safety, Death Rode the Rails: American Railroad Accidents and Safety, 1828-1965. As part of his research for Back on Track Aldrich visited the archives at Hagley. His upcoming book on energy transitions: The Rise and Fall of King Coal American Energy Transitions in an Age of Markets 1800-1940 will be out in early 2025. 

In support of his research Aldrich received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information and more Hagley History Hangouts visit us online at hagley.org.

Back on Track American Railroad Accidents and Safety 1965-2015 with Mark Aldrich

Far from the battlefield the First World War spurred a massive increase in industrial output in the United States. Arms and armaments, ships and steel, a vast stream of materiel poured from American factories, mines, and mills to feed the insatiable maw of war. The consequent strain placed on American railroad infrastructure left it vulnerable to environmental disruption, such as that caused by the great blizzard of 1916-17. These developments marked a significant chapter in the environmental history of American industry. 

In this episode of the Hagley History Hangout we chat with Gerard Fitzgerald, visiting fellow at the Greenhouse Center for Environmental Humanities at the University of Stavanger and lecturer in the Department of Engineering and Society at the University of Virginia, whose latest research considers the environmental context of industrialization in the United States during World War One. 

In support of his work Fitzgerald has received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.


The Nature of War: Environment and Industry in the U.S. During WWI with Gerard Fitzgerald

Our previously scheduled episode featuring Alessandra La Rocca Link has been postponed. In lieu of which, we present this recording made during the Hagley Author Talk featuring David Suisman hosted on February 27th, 2025 by the Hagley Museum and Library. 

Suisman discusses his latest book, "Instrument of War: Music and the Making of America's Soldiers."

From the publisher: "Since the Civil War, music has coursed through the United States military. Soldiers have sung while marching, listened to phonographs and armed forces radio, and packed the seats at large-scale USO shows. “Reveille” has roused soldiers in the morning and “Taps” has marked the end of a long day. Whether the sounds came from brass instruments, weary and homesick singers, or a pair of heavily used earbuds, where there was war, there was music, too.
 
Instrument of War is a first-of-its-kind study of music in the lives of American soldiers. Although musical activity has been part of war since time immemorial, the significance of the US military as a musical institution has generally gone unnoticed. Historian David Suisman traces how the US military used—and continues to use—music to train soldiers and regulate military life, and how soldiers themselves have turned to music to cope with war’s emotional and psychological realities. Opening our ears to these practices, Suisman reveals how music has enabled more than a century and a half of American war-making. Instrument of War unsettles assumptions about music as a force of uplift and beauty, demonstrating how it has also been entangled in large-scale state violence.
 
Whether it involves chanting “Sound off!” in basic training, switching on a phonograph or radio, or cueing up an iPod playlist while out on patrol, the sound of music has long resonated in soldiers’ wartime experiences. Now we all can finally hear it."

For more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library, and for more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.

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Instrument of War: Music and the Making of America’s Soldiers with David Suisman

Kodak enjoyed dominance over the international photography market for much of the twentieth century. Part and parcel of that success was dominance over the science of photography, achieved and maintained by a worldwide network of research laboratories. 

In his latest research Joris Mercelis, assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University, finds that the international network of Kodak research laboratories had two primary functions. In the shorter term their function was problem solve the tricky process of manufacturing photographic film in the different environmental conditions prevailing in different world regions, a process that proved difficult to standardize. In the longer term, and perhaps more significantly, Kodak laboratories conducted novel and cutting-edge research into the fundamentals and applications of photographic science. 

In support of his work Dr. Mercelis received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society, including a NEH-Hagley postdoctoral fellowship. For more information and more Hagley History Hangouts visit us online at hagley.org.

To make a donation underwriting this program and others like it please visit our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/underwriting-donation-tickets-1470779985529?aff=oddtdtcreator


The Long Shadow of Kodak: Markets and Science in Twentieth Century Photography with Joris Mercelis

While popular memory may have forgotten them, about half of the sailors, soldiers, missionaries, tradesmen, and colonists that made up the Spanish Empire were black, people who were part of the African diaspora. Studying their history allows scholars new ways to research and interpret Spanish colonialism, perhaps especially in the Pacific context.

Dr. Leo Garofalo, Virginia Eason Weinmann 1951 Professor of History at Connecticut College, is laying the foundation for generations of new research on the Black Pacific. In his work on Afro-Andeans he has illuminated the central role played by the black people of Spanish Peru in the expansion of Iberian power across the Pacific Ocean. As skilled sailors and shipbuilders they built and operated the ships, charted the routes, and advanced the missions that formed the very marrow of imperial might. Focus on the African diaspora as it emanated across the Atlantic and Indian oceans accompanying and staffing Iberian imperial projects, underscores the intersection of the two streams in the Pacific and the creation of a Black Pacific world.

In support of his work Garofalo received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History  Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org. 

To make a donation underwriting this program and others like it please visit our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/underwriting-donation-tickets-1470779985529?aff=oddtdtcreator

Afro-Andean Sailors and Shipbuilders in Spanish America and the Black Pacific with Leo Garofalo

During the Cold War, rival superpowers the USA and the USSR vied with one another for world dominion in many arenas: military, diplomatic, and even haute coture. In the latter connection, French designers played arbiter, judging the synthetic textiles developed under capitalist and communist systems for their value in fashion.

In her dissertation project, Monica Geraffo, PhD candidate at the University of California at Los Angeles, discovers why synthetic textiles played such a central role in the Cold War rivalry between political blocs. Using the extensive DuPont company records held in the Hagley Library, Geraffo highlights the shared interests of chemical firms, fashion houses, and political leaders, which aligned around synthetic textiles in the Cold War context.

In support of her research, Geraffo received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.

To make a donation underwriting this program and others like it please visit our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/underwriting-donation-tickets-1470779985529?aff=oddtdtcreator


A Stretch of the Imagination: Synthetic Fabrics and the Cold War with Monica Geraffo

In this interview, Dr. Bryce Evans discusses his research into food at the Irish pavillion in the 1939 World's Fair, and his use of materials from the Hagley Library for his project.

Dr. Evans is Senior Lecturer in History at Liverpool Hope University.

Stories from the Stacks is an ongoing program from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society featuring interviews with researchers who share the excitement of discovering the rich and varied historical materials in the Hagley Library’s collections. Listen to additional episodes at www.hagley.org/storiesfromthestacks.


Stories From The Stacks: Bryce Evans on how Guinness saved Ireland in World War II

Building international cooperation is a slow, painstaking process, one made more difficult when some people don’t see the need for it. To businesses, however, international cooperation is positively necessary as a means to secure intellectual property rights, market share, and profit opportunities. 

In his dissertation research, Joël Praz, PhD student at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, is uncovering the significance of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, an international patents union today administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. Using numerous collections held in the Hagley Library, Praz has found that private businesses in the United States began to value international cooperation around patent law increasingly after the Second World War.

In support of his work Praz received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information and more Hagley History Hangouts visit us online at hagley.org.

To make a donation underwriting this program and others like it please visit our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/underwriting-donation-tickets-1470779985529?aff=oddtdtcreator

The Power of Patents: Global Intellectual Property, 1880-1950 with Joël Praz

In this interview with Roger Horowitz, Ana Maria Otero-Cleves discusses the place of important objects in her book Plebian Consumers, especially textiles, machetes, and patent medicine. Otero-Cleves also elaborates on the crucial importance of Hagley’s Lanman and Kemp collection due to its extensive correspondence with Colombian merchants in the late 19th century to obtain supplies for its patent medicines.

From the publisher: “Plebeian Consumers is both a global and local study. It tells the story of how peasants, day workers, formerly enslaved people, and small landholders became the largest consumers of foreign commodities in nineteenth-century Colombia, and dynamic participants of an increasingly interconnected world. By studying how plebeian consumers altered global processes from below, Ana María Otero-Cleves challenges ongoing stereotypes about Latin America's peripheral role in the world economy through the nineteenth century, and its undisputed dependency on the Global North. By exploring Colombians' everyday practices of consumption, Otero-Cleves also invites historians to pay close attention to the intimate relationship between the political world and the economic world in nineteenth-century Latin America. She also sheds light on new methodologies and approaches for studying the material world of men and women who left little record of their own experiences.”

In support of her work, Otero-Cleves received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information and more Hagley History Hangouts visit us online at hagley.org.

To make a donation underwriting this program and others like it please visit our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/underwriting-donation-tickets-1470779985529?aff=oddtdtcreator


Plebian Consumers: Foreign Goods in Nineteenth-Century Colombia with Ana Maria Otero-Cleves

American labor unions struggled to adjust to the changing dynamics of the world economy during the mid-to-late twentieth century. Charting this complex process is Dr. Melanie Sheehan, assistant professor of history at Hartwick College and recent Hagley-NEH postdoctoral fellow. 

Sheehan has discovered that during the post-WWII moment, union economists supported trade liberalization as a means of multiplying the comparative advantages enjoyed by U.S. producers and exporters so long as it was accompanied by aid to impacted industries and displaced workers. However, while trade liberalization proceeded apace, and foreign competition rapidly gained ground against American made goods, the planned and hoped-for aid failed to materialize. This forced unions to reassess their commitment to liberal trade policies, as their industries, first textiles, then steel, and finally automotives, faced the implications of increasingly efficient foreign competition.

In support of her work Dr. Sheehan received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.

To make a donation underwriting this program and others like it please visit our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/underwriting-donation-tickets-1470779985529?aff=oddtdtcreator.


For an 'Orderly' Globalization: Managed Liberalization in US Labor, 1945-1990 with Melanie Sheehan

Businesses tell stories about themselves, in their advertising, in their marketing, and in their corporate biographies. Official or authorized histories of corporations form a distinctive thread in the literature in business history. 

In his latest book project, Dr. Lee McGuigan, assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, is researching the official corporate history as a distinctive form of media and mode of communication. His initial findings suggest that corporations used their official histories for various purposes; to reify their identity, to promote their accomplishments, or to define their internal culture, depending on the intended audience.

In support of his work, Dr. McGuigan received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.

To make a donation underwriting this program and others like it please visit our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/underwriting-donation-tickets-1470779985529?aff=oddtdtcreator.


An Official History of Official Corporate Histories with Lee McGuigan

Innovation plays a role in the beauty and fashion industry as it does in any line of business. New products, new techniques, and new markets animate the industry, and punctuate its history.

In her latest book project, Dr. Denise Sutton, associate professor at the City University of New York, examines several case studies in fashion and beauty innovation. From ready-to-wear apparel for pregnant women, to beauty products for people of color, to Kevlar attire in hazardous workplaces, each case demonstrates the centrality of innovation to the business of fashion.

In support of her work Dr. Sutton received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.

To make a donation underwriting this program and others like it please visit our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/underwriting-donation-tickets-1470779985529?aff=oddtdtcreator.


Innovation and Markets in the Beauty and Fashion Industry with Denise Sutton

The United States drug tests its citizens more than any other country and ties the rights one enjoys, rights to keep one’s baby, to do one’s job, or to vote or move freely, to the results of a given drug test. While Americans lead the world in drug consumption, they also lead the world in drug testing.

In her latest book project, Dr. Laura Browder, professor at the University of Richmond, uncovers the history of drug testing in the United States. From 1930s concerns about drunk drivers and heroin addled horses, to 21st century legacies of the War on Drugs that link child custody and job security to drug test results, Browder shows how American citizenship became tied to the chemical composition of one’s blood. 

In support of her work, Dr. Browder received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.

To make a donation underwriting this program and others like it please visit our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/underwriting-donation-tickets-1470779985529?aff=oddtdtcreator


Chemical Citizenship: A History of Drug Testing in the United States with Laura Browder

In this episode we interview Janick Marina Schaufelbuehl about her new book Crusading for Globalization: US Multinationals and Their Opponents Since 1945. 

From the publisher: “The first book to shed light on what caused corporate executives to pursue a pro-globalization agenda over the last eight decades. 
 
Crusading for Globalization tells the story of an extraordinarily influential group of business executives at the helms of the largest US multinational corporations and their quest to drive globalization forward over the last eight decades. Janick Marina Schaufelbuehl argues that the spectacular expansion of international investment, trade, and production after 1945 cannot be understood without considering the role played by these corporate globalizers and the organization they created, the US Council (today’s United States Council for International Business). By shaping governmental policy through their congressional lobbying and close connections to successive presidential administrations, US Council members, including executives from General Electric, Coca Cola, and IBM, among others, consistently fought for ever more market deregulation, culminating in the creation of the World Trade Organization in 1995. 
 
Crusading for Globalization is also a book about those who opposed the growing might of multinationals. In the years immediately after World War II, resistance came from business protectionists, before labor and policymakers from the Global South joined the effort in the early 1970s. Schaufelbuehl breaks new ground by offering a panorama of this early anti-globalization movement, and by showing how the leaders of multinationals organized to limit its political influence. She also examines continuities between this early movement and the opposition to globalization that emerged at the beginning of the twenty-first century from the left and the populist right and discusses how business responded by promoting corporate social responsibility and voluntary guidelines. 
 
The first book to shed light on what caused corporate executives to pursue a pro-globalization agenda and to examine their methods for dealing with their opponents, Crusading for Globalization reveals the historical roots of today’s disparities in wealth and income distribution.” 

Crusading for Globalization: US Multinationals and Their Opponents with Janick Marina Schaufelbuehl

Ryan Tate (Ph.D. candidate at Rutgers University) discusses his research on the development of coal mining in the Fort Union coal formation in the American West during the 1970s. See more at hagley.org/storiesfromthestacks

The Energy Crisis in the American West

In this author talk on "Industrial Design for Modern Life," Dr. Danielle Shapiro explores the life and career of John Vassos, a Greek émigré who rose from anonymity as an advertising artist to become one of the pioneering founders of the industrial design profession. As the Radio Corporation of America's (RCA) leading designer, Vassos shaped the aesthetics of modern technology in the postwar era and became one of the most influential industrial designers of the twentieth century.

Hagley Museum and Library Author Talks

John Vassos: Industrial Design for Modern Life

In this recorded lecture "Bulldozer: Demolition and Clearance of the Postwar Landscape," Francesca Russello Ammon explores how postwar America came to equate this destruction with progress. 
Although the decades following World War II were marked by rapid growth and construction in the United States, those years were also a time of large-scale destruction.

In order to clear space for new suburban tract housing, interstate highways, and urban renewal projects, wrecking companies demolished buildings and earth-moving contractors leveled land at an unprecedented rate and scale.

How the Bulldozer Remade Postwar America with Francesca Russello-Ammon:

In the 1950s, Vladimir K. Zworykin, an engineer recently retired from research at RCA, looked at the rising cost of health care and the shortage of medical personnel in America, and decided to do something about it. His solution was to apply computer engineering techniques to the problems of health care and medical diagnosis. To do so, Zworykin established an interdisciplinary research group of engineers, statisticians, and physicians, and tasked them with developing computer programs capable of aiding medical diagnosis. 

In this episode of Stories from the Stacks, Andrew Lea, PhD candidate in the history of science and medicine at the University of Oxford, discusses the work of Zworykin and company, tracing the origins of the push for bio-medical computing, its uneven reception in the medical world, and the unfolding legacy the movement has left. The Zworykin project focused on hematology, and worked on diagnostic software to assist the identification of blood diseases. Translating a vast and incomplete body of organic conceptions of disease into objective, numerical, and standardized concepts legible to machines proved to be an almost insuperable challenge. Paper technologies, such as the Cornell Medical Index, that standardized medical data gathering, aided computerization.

Using Hagley Library collections, including the Vladimir K. Zworykin papers, and the David Sarnoff Research Center records, Lea discovered that the advent of computer-aided diagnosis elicited mixed reactions from the medical profession. The first demonstration of the technology, which took place in 1957 at the RCA labs in Camden, NJ, sparked decades of debate over the art versus the science of medicine. Does computerization dehumanize health care, or does it rationalize and thereby improve health care? Is there a need for diagnostic programming when the majority of health care involves not diagnosis but ongoing disease management? Is human cognition reducible to computerized functions, or do computers undermine the clinical authority of the physician? Initially debated in the twentieth century, these questions continue to shape the twenty-first-century conversation about health care. 

To support his use of Hagley Library collections, Lea received a Henry Belin du Pont research grant from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society. More information on funding opportunities for research at Hagley can be found at www.hagley.org/research/grants-fellowships.

For more Stories from the Stacks, go to www.hagley.org, or subscribe on your favorite podcatcher.

Interview by Amrys Williams. Produced by Gregory Hargreaves.

Image: “Two of RCA Victor's famous staff of television research engineers, Dr. V.K. Zworykin (left) and E.W. Engstrom, examine a new piece of equipment at the Camden Laboratories.” Television, 1945-1950, PC20110303_456, Box 46, Chamber of Commerce of the United States photographs & audiovisual materials, Series II. Nation’s Biusiness photographs (Accession 1993.230.II), Audiovisual Collections & Digital Initiatives Department, Hagley Museum & Library, Wilmington, DE 19807.

Programming Health: Early Bio-Medical Engineering & Computer Diagnosis with Andrew Lea

THE TRANSPACIFIC MIDDLE

Gregory Hargreaves interviews Sunny Xiang about her book project “The Transpacific Middle,” in support of which, Xiang, an assistant professor at Yale University, received an exploratory grant from the Hagley Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society.

In “The Transpacific Middle,” Xiang discusses her research on the culture of the American Cold War in Asia through the lens of ephemeral literature, including fashion magazines, pulp fiction, & advertisements. In so doing, Professor Xiang raises methodological questions about the nature of evidence, investigation, and the archive itself.

Hagley Museum and Library

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