Book Event with Martha Sandweiss (AB ’75, Yale Ph.D ’85)

The Harvard Club of the United Kingdom

invites to you to a book talk with

Martha Sandweiss ,(AB ’75, Yale Ph.D ’85), Professor Emerita at Princeton University on her recent book The Girl in the Middle: A Recovered History of the American West, with David Reynolds, FBA as Interlocutor

There will be a Q & A moderated by Professor Reynolds
followed by a drinks reception.

Cost:
HCUK Members £15
Non-HCUK Members £20

Professor Sandweiss will be talking about her new book, which was inspired by the haunting image of an unnamed Native child and is a recovered story of the American West. In 1868, celebrated Civil War photographer Alexander Gardner travelled to Fort Laramie to document the federal government’s treaty negotiations with the Lakota and other tribes of the northern plains. Gardner, known for his iconic portrait of Abraham Lincoln and his visceral pictures of the Confederate dead at Antietam, posed six federal peace commissioners with a young Native girl wrapped in a blanket. The hand-labelled prints carefully name each of the men, but the girl is never identified. As The Girl in the Middle goes in search of her, it draws readers into the entangled lives of the photographer and his subjects.

Spinning a spellbinding historical tale from a single enigmatic image, The Girl in the Middle reveals how the American nation grappled with what kind of country it would be as it expanded westward in the aftermath of the Civil War.

The speaker, Martha (“Marni”) A. Sandweiss (Harvard A.B. ’75; Yale PhD ’85), is Professor of History Emerita at Princeton University. A leading scholar of the history of the American West, she has written numerous prize-winning books including Print the Legend: Photography and the American West, Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception across the Color Line and, most recently, The Girl in the Middle: A Recovered History of and the American West, recently shortlisted for the prestigious Cundill Prize. A past-president of the Society of American Historians and the Western History Association, she is also the founding director of The Princeton & Slavery Project.

The evening’s interlocutor is David Reynolds, a Fellow of the British Academy and Emeritus Professor of International History at the University of Cambridge and is our Fellow host for the evening’s space.