Deerfield, Mass. (April 23, 2019) --- Historic Deerfield will host the 44th meeting of the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife on Saturday, June 22, 2019. The one-day conference, titled "Entertainments at Taverns and Long Rooms in New England, 1700-1900," features nine lectures on the amusements, traveling exhibitions, and beverage-making traditions that characterized American taverns in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Beginning with a major update on the variance between refined and popular culture, the program moves to new studies on magic lanternists, sleight-of-hand artists, and waxwork proprietors, followed by an analysis of drinking “Punch,” the principal social beverage of alehouses. Afternoon sessions include a talk on the nearby Barnard Tavern and presentations on the role of social dances and on phrenology sideshows. The program concludes with a talk on taverns in Charleston, South Carolina. A complimentary tour of the recently completed Barnard Tavern will be available on Friday afternoon. Books on tavern entertainers and other publications by conference speakers will be available for purchase; selected papers from this conference will be published by the Dublin Seminar.
The 44th annual meeting in the Dublin Seminar series, "Entertainments at Taverns and Long Rooms in New England, 1700-1900" will take place at Historic Deerfield, Deerfield, Massachusetts. Housing is available at group rates at local hotels.
For the complete conference schedule of lectures, please visit
Advance registration for the conference is available online or a registration form can be downloaded at www.historic-deerfield.org. Registrants may request complimentary lecture abstracts through e-mail. For information and registration by telephone, contact Julie Orvis at (413) 775-7179 or events@historic-deerfield.org.
The Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife is a continuing series of conferences, exhibitions, and publications whose purpose is to explore everyday life, work, and culture in New England's past. Founded on the premise that traditional lore and material folk culture are rapidly disappearing in New England, the series focuses attention on emerging areas of folk studies, regional and local history, cultural geography, historical archaeology, and vernacular and antiquarian studies. Conferences are held in June or July of each year with concurrent exhibitions at participating museums and art galleries. Dublin Seminar conferences are sponsored by Historic Deerfield.
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