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The Institute for Historical Study
P. O. Box 5743  ·  Berkeley, California  94705

E-mail: information@tihs.org

Study Groups

History Play Reading The history play reading group meets about once a month, in the homes of members, to read aloud and discuss plays that deal with events set in the past. The first purpose of the group is to have fun--to enjoy the experience of reading aloud and exercising our histrionic skills. The second purpose, although more serious, is also immensely enjoyable -- to examine the ways in which playwrights have recreated the past, used historical sources, and altered the historical record for political or theatrical purposes. We consider the plays in relation to the times in which they were written and the issues that were important to the playwright and to the play's original audience. We do not always agree about how successful a writer has been in handling historical materials or in creating a theatrically effective play.
Over the more than ten years in which the group has been meeting we have read plays by Shakespeare, Schiller, Marlowe, Jonson, Shaw, Goethe, Kleist, Bulgakov and Büchner.  We have read one classical Japanese play, Chushingura, and the West's first historical drama, Aeschylus' The Persians. When we read Maxwell Anderson's Joan of Lorraine (which we did not much care for), we followed it by reading excerpts of other plays about St. Joan as well as portions of her trial transcript.

Twentieth-century plays we've read include Laurence Housman's Victoria Regina, R.C. Sheriff's Journey's End (set in the World War I trenches), Arthur Miller's The Crucible, Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons, John Osborne's Luther, Albert Camus' Caligula, Caryl Churchill's Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (about the English Civil War), Christopher Hampton's Tales from Hollywood (about European emigrés in Hollywood in the 1940s), Alan Bennett's The Madness of George III,  Brian Friel's Translations and Making History (both about Irish history), and August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.   In 1988-89, the group helped create a short play about the trial of Olympe de Gouges, a feminist of the French Revolution.

Getting through a full-length play usually takes at least two sessions, for we interrupt our reading frequently for discussion. Members take turns doing research on historical background, and our resident theater expert usually chimes in on matters relating to theater history, performance conditions, etc.

New recruits to the group are always welcome. For more information, contact Joanne Lafler at jwlafler@ix.netcom.com
Medieval Study Group The participants in the Medieval Study Group use both primary and secondary sources from the Medieval Period to touch on large topics such as medieval food and travel, the inquisition, the black plague, pilgrims and their routes, the cathars, Carolingian Renaissance, the medieval warm period and the little ice age, peasant revolts, feudalism (did it exist?), along with many others. We also have explored the lives of luminaries such as Charles Martel, Frederick Barbarossa, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Frederick II, Hrotswitha of Gandersheim, and Adelaide, empress of the Ottonian empire.
Usually one member makes an informal presentation on a topic of interest to themselves. Occasionally we all read the same book to discuss, or we invite a speaker.  We are a friendly group that meets once a month or so at the home of one of our members. The discussion is on the level of a graduate history colloquium. Most of the books we read are available at local libraries or in paperback. We also rely on the wealth of information now on the internet.

For further information contact John Rusk at information@tihs.org.

California Roundtable Comprised of historians involved in California history and the history of the West, the California Round Table meets quarterly to discuss their topics and hear a paper from a member of this sub-group of the IHS, or a member of the Institute who has taken a detour into the Round Table's area of interest.  For the past several years, we have followed this Round Table format at each meeting, held at a member's home.  Sometimes the topics are being prepared for publication, sometimes they are being pursued for personal interest.  California Round Table members have eclectic interests:  Some examples of past topics presented include the historic participation of Asians in San Francisco history, San Francisco newspaper coverage of Chinese and Japanese exclusion, women's religious orders in the Archdiocese of San Francisco, the history of the League of Women Voters in Berkeley, New Deal art and Diego Rivera's art in San Francisco, the history of the Grabhorn Press in Berkeley, early San Francisco history including Yerba Buena Village, the Russian-American heritage at Fort Ross, the contributions of the Jewish community to California history, and several in-progress biographies of late 19th and early 20th century California community leaders. 

We warmly welcome new members of the Institute to our meetings, and we always appreciate lively---and opinionated---discussions.

For further information, contact Jules Becker at  cubs4evr@aol.com  (Note that "evr" does not have the second "e".)

Biography Writers

 This support group helps each of us broaden the scope of our understanding of components and treatments in the field of biography. Members are studying and writing about individuals within a wide range of historical places and times.  Because the subjects encompass different periods, regions, cultures, occupations, and viewpoints, our critiques tend to concentrate on the essence of the discipline.  We are not experts in each other’s fields,  and therefore our approach is to examine intrinsic requirements of biographical composition and assess what the general reader needs to know.
 
We have refined our way of working together since our first meeting in late 2002.  For example, each writer distributed a Table of Contents with  brief chapter summaries.  This helped us to dispense with the problem of asking for more in the section under discussion when the author had allocated the “more”  to another place in the text. 

 We found that by emailing a few pages of our work to all members of the group in the week before a meeting, we can give more careful thought to the selection within its larger framework. .Our assistance to each other tends to address strategies for assembling a great deal of material to best explicate the subject while raising and retaining reader interest. Our familiarity with members’ subjects over the years gives us the opportunity to think through particular submissions less from the point of view of minor points of diction and more from whether the material in question would benefit from either more or less historical context or a revised perspective.    
 
At the meeting, each member in turn introduces the item they submitted for review, often explaining particular pains or joys their research or intricacies of interpretation are causing at the moment. Then the group talks over the material, mentioning especially successful items, topics that need clarification, possible improvements in viewpoint, the need for more or less discourse, and occasional tips on research sources. Besides the direct aid from such input, the process of examining, criticizing, and especially hearing about another’s problems often opens up new avenues for approaching our own subject. How to find and work with publishers adds another topic that everyone finds useful.
 
We schedule our meetings flexibly, adapting to personal schedules, and manage to meet about every six weeks. For more information contact Ellen Huppert at huppert2@earthlink.net.