Heading to the AHA in Boston this weekend? After you get sick of schmoozing in hotel lobbies, reading name tags, dozing off during sessions, and trying to convince editors that you are writing the next Pulitzer-prize winning history book, you may want to head over to Minute Man National Historic Park, drop $100, and make your own eighteenth-century “Great Coat.” Or, if male outerwear is not for you, how about constructing a sacque back gown for your next ball.
These are just two of the workshops being conducted by The Hive–a living history community designed to help you “develop, improve, and grow 18th century impressions.”
If you hang around Boston after the AHA, you can also take courses in advanced tailoring and gun tune-up. Learn how to make a cartridge box, an open-front English gown, or a banyon. Or perhaps you may want to enroll in a class called “Power-Horn 101.”
Not interested in shelling out the money to create your own artifact or article of clothing? Then why not attend a free lecture or clinic on one of the following topics: 18th Century Lace, Making Your Breeches Fit, Sewing Bees, Leatherworking, Men’s Watches, Monmouth Caps, Hair Tricks for Women, Raising Babies the 18th Century Way, Cross Stitching for Children, or Intro to Spinning,
This is like a Star Trek convention for historical re-enactors and material culture enthusiasts. I have a few students who are now probably wondering why they didn’t choose to attend college in the Boston area.
RECOMMENDED READING
THIS WEEK: The Conference of Faith and History AHA session on Eugene McCarraher’s The Enchantments of Mammon 
American Historical Association Annual Meeting Omicron update 
Anyone who wants to believe that Independence Day is a Christian holiday should read Frederick Douglass’s “What to a Slave is the Fourth of July?” David Barton speaks at First Baptist-Dallas. 
On the slaveholder Jonathan Edwards and the Christians who read him
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