This is a hybrid event.  Visitors may attend in-person in the Visitor Center Auditorium or virtually on Zoom.  In the event of inclement weather, this will be a virtual-only event.  Registrants will be notified.

Join University of Pennsylvania professor Kathleen M. Brown as she discusses her book Foul Bodies: Cleanliness in America, winner of the Organization of American Historians’ Lawrence Levine Book Prize for cultural history and the Society of the History of the Early American Republic Book Prize. Foul Bodies explores early America’s evolving perceptions of cleanliness, along the way analyzing the connections between changing public expectations for appearance and manners, and the backstage work of grooming, laundering, and housecleaning performed by women. Brown provides an intimate view of cleanliness practices and how such forces as urbanization, immigration, market conditions, and concerns about social mobility influenced them. Broad in historical scope and imaginative in its insights, this book expands the topic of cleanliness to encompass much larger issues, including religion, health, gender, class, and race relations.

Registration is required.  Log-in information will be provided at registration.