Ramsey County Historical Society Presents

Elizabeth Duclos-Orsello, Modern Bonds: Redefining Community in Early 20th C Saint Paul

Tuesday, March 12, 2019
7:00 pm
East Side Freedom Library

If you missed the presentation, you can watch it at the following links:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EastSideFreedomLibrary/videos/601328617047594/
YouTube (somewhat better quality): https://youtu.be/MSZaVKkHuEw

Free and open to all. No reservations needed.

Join RCHS for History Revealed, our program series featuring presentations and tours from the best of local historians, authors and archaeologists, with a wide range of topics drawn from the heritage and traditions of Ramsey County.

What does “community” mean and how did it come to signify everything from close friends to the entire world? Elizabeth Duclos-Orsello returns to St. Paul to talk about her new book, Modern Bonds: Redefining Community in Early Twentieth Century St. Paul, which considers how community was reconceptualized in the first decades of the twentieth century. Using St. Paul as an example, she mines a wide range of materials to show how everyday practices and materials — fiction, photography, architecture, public parks, the winter carnivals — unite and divide citizens across lines of gender, class, and race, while remaking the definition of “community.” Duclos-Orsello makes sense of the complex set of activities, policies and practices that not only gave birth to modern America but continue to shape life today.  In this interactive lecture/discussion she will share key ideas and examples from the book with the goal of opening up conversations and motivating action in the here and now as much as offering a new synthesis of cultural, social and intellectual history of the early 20th century.

Copies of the book will be available for purchase and signing.

Elizabeth Ann Duclos-Orsello is professor and chair of interdisciplinary studies and coordinator of American studies at Salem State University.