Lecture series explores contemporary history's biggest questions
The Presidio Trust launched a new lecture series last month featuring some of the nation’s preeminent historians. “Contemporary Historians at the Presidio: Voices and Views 2011” debuted Wednesday, May 11 at the Golden Gate Club.
The series is the first of its kind sponsored by the Trust. The presentations will explore issues specific to the Presidio, as well as themes in American and world history that put the Presidio’s extraordinary past into a larger context.
“Because the Presidio’s history is particularly connected to national and international history, it is the perfect platform for this type of programming,” says Dr. Randolph Delehanty, the Presidio Trust’s historian
The series’ first lecture, “Global Historic Preservation Now!” examined the challenges facing the preservation and conservation of culturally significant places around the world. Frank G. Matero, professor of architecture and former chair of the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation at the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania talked about sites as varied as the fortifications of Cairo and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and from the American Southwest to ancient sites in Turkey.
Contemporary Historians at the Presidio was designed to appeal to a wide audience. Upcoming talks will focus on what the creation of the Port of San Francisco meant to the city; the role women played in chronicling life in the 19th century American West; and what popular films of the 1930s and 1940s tell us about how Americans viewed themselves during World War II, the different ways in which women and minorities were portrayed, and how certain former stereotypes were merely replaced by others.
The series expands the Trust’s history programming and will ultimately become part of the programming for the park’s new heritage center. “It’s a way for the public to use the park as a portal to the study of history,” says Delehanty. “We’re giving voice to the great variety of interests in contemporary history, and to the many different ways in which history is being studied.”
The lecture series continues on June 16 at 7 p.m. with “The Transcontinental Railroads and Wars Better Left Unfought,” featuring Richard White of Stanford University. Professor White will examine the motivations and effects of the transcontinental railroads. Among the justifications for federal funding of the railroads was the need to save California for the Union, but by the time real construction got underway, the Civil War was over and California was safe. Promoters then changed their rationale to subduing Indian peoples, but if the railroads had not been built, there would have been no need for most of the Indian wars that followed. The railroads were built ahead of demand, floundered in bankruptcy, and created political and economic problems that plagued the West for a generation.
All lectures in the series are held at the Golden Gate Club in the Presidio (135 Fisher Loop) and are free. For more information and a complete schedule of lectures, visit www.presidio.gov/calendar.
The series is the first of its kind sponsored by the Trust. The presentations will explore issues specific to the Presidio, as well as themes in American and world history that put the Presidio’s extraordinary past into a larger context.
“Because the Presidio’s history is particularly connected to national and international history, it is the perfect platform for this type of programming,” says Dr. Randolph Delehanty, the Presidio Trust’s historian
The series’ first lecture, “Global Historic Preservation Now!” examined the challenges facing the preservation and conservation of culturally significant places around the world. Frank G. Matero, professor of architecture and former chair of the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation at the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania talked about sites as varied as the fortifications of Cairo and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and from the American Southwest to ancient sites in Turkey.
Contemporary Historians at the Presidio was designed to appeal to a wide audience. Upcoming talks will focus on what the creation of the Port of San Francisco meant to the city; the role women played in chronicling life in the 19th century American West; and what popular films of the 1930s and 1940s tell us about how Americans viewed themselves during World War II, the different ways in which women and minorities were portrayed, and how certain former stereotypes were merely replaced by others.
The series expands the Trust’s history programming and will ultimately become part of the programming for the park’s new heritage center. “It’s a way for the public to use the park as a portal to the study of history,” says Delehanty. “We’re giving voice to the great variety of interests in contemporary history, and to the many different ways in which history is being studied.”
The lecture series continues on June 16 at 7 p.m. with “The Transcontinental Railroads and Wars Better Left Unfought,” featuring Richard White of Stanford University. Professor White will examine the motivations and effects of the transcontinental railroads. Among the justifications for federal funding of the railroads was the need to save California for the Union, but by the time real construction got underway, the Civil War was over and California was safe. Promoters then changed their rationale to subduing Indian peoples, but if the railroads had not been built, there would have been no need for most of the Indian wars that followed. The railroads were built ahead of demand, floundered in bankruptcy, and created political and economic problems that plagued the West for a generation.
All lectures in the series are held at the Golden Gate Club in the Presidio (135 Fisher Loop) and are free. For more information and a complete schedule of lectures, visit www.presidio.gov/calendar.
