Emma Jones Lapsansky

Special Collections : Magill Library
(personal site)

Current Professional/Research Interests:

Family and community life, ante-bellum cities; architecture, material culture and community planning; religion and popular culture in nineteenth-century America; Quaker history; the American West; historical interpretation for popular audiences.

Public Lectures and workshops: Army Corps of Engineers, Brandywine Museum, Cliveden National Historic Site, Fraunces Tavern, Museum, Mercer Museum, University of Pennsylvania, West Chester University, Smithsonian Institution, other colleges, universities, historical societies, museums, senior citizens' groups, radio and television interviews.

Consultant: Afroamerican Historical and Cultural Museum, Atwater-Kent Museum, Chester County Historical Society, Historic Philadelphia, Inc., Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Pennsylvania Humanities Council, Philadelphia Maritime Museum, Please Touch Museum for Children, Bucknell University Department of History.

Grants Application Reviewer: American Council of Learned Societies, Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Library Company of Philadelphia, National Endowment for the Humanities.

Community Service: 1992-95 Advisory Committee Friends Council on Education, 1986- Pemberton Grant Subcommittee Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Friends, 1986-95 School Oversight Committee Lansdowne Friends School, 1978-96 Board of Trustees Friends Central School

Education

• Ph.D., American Civilization, University of Pennsylvania, 1975
  (Concentration in American Social History and Material Culture,
  with Anthony N. B. Garvan)
  
• M.A., American Civilization, University of Pennsylvania, 1969
  
• B.A., American History, University of Pennsylvania, 1968
  
• Rare Book School, Columbia University, Summer, 1991
  
• Summer Institute, Winterthur Museum, 1969
  
• College of Information Studies, Drexel University, 1996
  

Recent Professional Experience

• July 1995 Professor of History and Curator, Special Collections, Haverford College
  
• July 1990 Assoc Professor of History and Curator, Special Collections Haverford College
  
• Spring, 1990 Visiting Lecturer, History Princeton University
  
• 1988-95 Adjunct Professor, African American Studies University of Pennsylvania
  
• 1973-90 Asst/then Assoc Professor, History (Assoc Dean, 1984-86),Temple University
  

Recent Publications, Presentations, Professional Activity

Monographs and edited volumes:

• Quaker Aesthetics: Reflections on a Quaker Ethic in American Design and Consumption, 1720-1920. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003, edited with Anne A. Verplanck.
• Neighborhoods in Transition: William Penn's Dream and Urban Reality. (Garland Press, 1994)
  
• "A View to Encourage Emigration:"* The Colonizationalist Correspondence of Benjamin Coates 1851-69, with Margaret Hope Bacon, forthcoming from Pennsylvania State University Press.
  

Pamphlet:

• "Making it Home:" The Black Presence in Pennsylvania.(Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1990; 2nd edition, 2001)

Recent Articles:

• Pennsylvania 1800-1850” in Pennsylvania: A People's History, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003;
  
• "New Eyes for Invisibles" in Quaker-Minority Relations," Quaker History, (90:1, Spring, 2001);
  
• Entries in Billy G. Smith, ed. Encyclopedia of Colonial America (2003); entries in Margery Post Abbott, et al, Historical Dictionary of Quakerism (2002); Encyclopedia of Violence, (2001); Encyclopedia of Contemporary Culture, (2001)
• “The World the Agitators Made: The Counterculture of Agitation in Urban Philadelphia," in The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women's Political Culture in Antebellum America, Jean Fagan Yellin and John C. Van Horne, eds. (1994).
  
• “'Discipline to the Mind:' The Banneker Institute of Philadelphia, 1854-1872," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, (January, 1993).
  
• "Feminism and Freedom: Black Women's Strategies in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia," Pennsylvania of Magazine of History and Biography, (January, 1989).
  

  Book Reviews in: Journal of American History, Journal of the Early Republic, Journal of Southern History, Quaker History, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography; Enterprise and Society (2000, 2002), Quaker Studies(2002); Women's Review of Books (2001, 2002).

Recent Invited Lectures and Appearances

• Forgotten Alternatives, Remembering Possibilities, 1750 and 2050," Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission Conference on Pennsylvania Black History, 2002.
  
• "Early Philadelphia: Chaos and Character," Cliveden National Historic Site Winter Institute, 2002.
  
• "Free Produce, Free People: The Climate of Reform in Antebellum Philadelphia," Drexel University, 2002.
  
• "ThePhiladelphia Cope Family and Nineteenth-Century Reform," Awbury Arboretum, 2001.
  
• "Visualizing a World of Innocence: Quaker Leaders and their Lives," Pendle Hill, 2001.
  
• "Spiritual Wellness in College," Guilford College, 2001.
  
• "From Friendly Persuasion to Murder Among Friends: Quakers in the Eyes of 'World's People'," Chester Quarter, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Religious Society of Friends, 2001.
  
• "Confronting Spirituality: Religion and Diversity in Modern America," Germantown Friends School, 2001
  
• "Rethinking Feminism, Freedom, and Community", Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission Black History Conference, 2001.
  
• "Memory and History," Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums, 2001.
  Video/Radio appearances in PBS documentary, "Woman of Steel: Rebecca Lukens," on Quaker women (2002); WHYY Radio on Delaware Valley African American history (2000);

Professional Activities

• 2000- Executive Committee, Organization of American Historians
  
• 2002 Consultant, Social Studies Curriculum, School District of Philadelphia.
  
• 2001 Evaluated workshops on family history for Germantown Historical Society
  
• 2001 Evaluated lecture series “Building the Arsenal of Freedom" for Pennsylvania Humanities Council
  
• 2001 Advisor, Chester County Historical Society, “Just Over the Line” exhibition on the Underground Railroad, 2001
  
• 2001 Advisor, Paradigm Productions PBS documentary, "The Good War and Those Who Refused to Fight It", on pacifism in World War II
  
• 2001 Reviewed high school American history text for Prentice-Hall
  
• 1997-2000 Advisor, Pennsylvania Humanities Council: "Raising Our Sites" project for updating museum exhibitions to better include women and minorities
  
• 1998- Manuscript referee for SUNY Press, Pennsylvania State University Press, Journal of American History, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Journal of American History.
  
• 1996 Director, NEH Summer Institute, “Religion and Diversity in American Society”
  
• 1995-97 Chair, Organization of American Historians, Committee on the Status of Women in the Historical Profession
  
• 1990- Board of Directors, Friends' Historical Association
  
• 1990- Publications Review Committee Pendle Hill Pamphlets
  
• 1991 Program Committee Pennsylvania Historical Assn.
  
• 1991 Consultant, Faculty Workshops on Diversity in Curriculum, Millersville University and Indiana University of Pennsylvania
  
• 1984-1990 Editorial Board of Review Temple University Press
  
• 1984-85 Advisor, Philadelphia Alliance for Teaching Humanities in the Schools (PATHS)
  
• 1982-94 Editorial Board, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography