Located in Chicago, the Driehaus Museum engages guests through architecture, art, and design within the 1883 Nickerson Mansion and the 1926 Murphy Auditorium. In this installment of “Field Notes,” Guest Services Coordinator Liz Ferry shares how the Museum’s rich interpretational scope, talented staff, and growing network of institutional connections help preserve these truly unique spaces and tailor the guest experience for maximum engagement. Driehaus Museum Executive Director Lisa Key will join other museum leaders on June 6 for the Closing Plenary of the SHGAPE Conference.
Minding the GAPE – April 2026
The 120th anniversary of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, birthright citizenship and Reconstruction scholarship, the golden age of soapbox oratory, Indigenous centenarians in California, April Fools’ images, anxiety over teenage rebellion in the 1920s, and much more.
SHGAPE at the 2026 OAH
In addition to holding the Council Business meeting and the Editorial Board meeting for the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, SHGAPE organized several events at the Organization of American Historians annual conference (April 16-19).
Minding the GAPE – March 2026
Sources for local women’s history research, interviews with this year’s SHGAPE prize winners, the continuity of imperial myths and Latin American intervention, the origins of the bird conservation movement, visualizing the mood of the 1929 stock market crash, and much more.
2026 SHGAPE Conference: Interview with Conference Chair Amy Louise Wood
SHGAPE is holding its first standalone conference from June 4-6 in Chicago. We are pleased to present an interview with the conference committee chair, Dr. Amy Louise Wood, who shares context for the decision to hold the conference and provides further details on what attendees can expect. Registration for the conference is currently open on the main SHGAPE website.
Minding the GAPE – February 2026
Carter G. Woodson and the origins of Black History Month 100 years ago, Olympics pin trading, valentines for your enemies, love letters in the stacks, preserving Ellis Island Hospital, animal rights during Reconstruction, spiritualism and UFOs, the suffrage movement on college campuses, and much more.
Minding the GAPE – January 2026
General strikes in U.S. history, the evolution of the driver’s license, patent medicine and medical misogyny, Reconstruction and Black countermemory, visualizing labor history in Minneapolis, and much more.
Minding the GAPE – December 2025
“Filmitis” in the early days of cinema, Christmas recipes from the Gilded Age, suffrage bake sales, the assassination of James A. Garfield and the American news cycle, the origins of New Year’s resolutions, and much more.
Tribute to Lloyd Ambrosius
The following is a tribute to Lloyd Ambrosius (1941-2024) by Dr. Jeannette Eileen Jones, who will be chairing the panel “Lloyd Ambrosius and His Historical Legacies” at the 2026 meeting of the Organization of American Historians in Philadelphia. The panel, solicited by SHGAPE, reflects upon and commemorates the tremendous accomplishments and broad impact of Lloyd Ambrosius, a leading expert on Woodrow Wilson and Wilsonian statecraft.
Minding the GAPE – October 2025
Ghost stories from historic sites, creepy clowns, murder ballads, asylums and conservatorship, the New Lost Cause, the origins of off-year gubernatorial elections, and much more.
SEX RADICAL: A New Film About a Woman Who Battled the Comstock Regime
Historians of the Gilded Age are certainly familiar with the nefarious deeds of the evangelical “vice-hunter,” Anthony Comstock, but they may not know the story of Ida Craddock, a sex educator, scholar, and sexual mystic who challenged Comstock face-to-face, and who inspired her contemporaries by her courage. SEX RADICAL, the latest film from award-winning writer/director Andy Kirshner tells Craddock’s remarkable story. It will premiere at the end of this month, both theatrically and online.
Minding the GAPE – September 2025
Bowling and women’s rights, public history at the Gilded Age mansions of Newport, playing with fire in turn-of-the-century New York City, the long history of political violence in the U.S., the return of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era Podcast, and much more