If These Walls Could Talk - The Historic House As An Artifact For Teaching History

Contact: MaryAlice Bonomo or Tricia Hardin
Phone: 301.283.2113 ext. 37
Email: programs@accokeek.org

The Accokeek Foundation is honored to have Dr. Barbara Clark Smith, Curator of Social History at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, as a speaker for its second lecture in the 2006 Robert Ware Straus Lecture Series. On Tuesday, May 9, Dr. Smith will talk about everyday life for ordinary planters in the 18th century and will describe social and cultural life in a typical small plantation household. Drawing on her experience as curator of the exhibit, "After the Revolution," she will describe the pleasures and pitfalls of using historic buildings to interpret the agricultural experience. The lecture will begin at 7:00 p.m. in the Accokeek Foundation's Education Center. There is no charge for this event.

Barbara Clark Smith has worked as Curator of Social History at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History since 1983. Her research ranges from the material culture of household life to forms of popular participation in the era of the American Revolution. Dr. Smith has curated exhibitions on such topics as household and community life in the early republic, costume and the construction of gender, and the history of housework. Her publications include After the Revolution: The Smithsonian History of Everyday Life in the Eighteenth Century; "Food Rioters and the American Revolution," William and Mary Quarterly, (1994); and "Revolution in Boston," for the National Park Service handbook for the Freedom Trail.