A 4th event I forgot to mention is a symposium at the Manship House here in Jackson this coming Monday (9th).  Here’s a tidbit from the MDAH site:

March Symposium Examines Victorian Dining Practices

On Monday, March 9, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., the Manship House will present Dinner Is Served, a symposium exploring Victorian foodways and the role of the dining room. Guest speakers include Mamie Gasperecz and Carolyn Bercier from the Hermann-Grima/Gallier Houses in New Orleans, master grainer Malcolm Robson, Millsaps College instructor Amy Forbes, and architectural historian Todd Sanders. For more information call 601-961-4724 or email the Manship House.

The role of the dining room may seem, at first glance, to be an arcane subject, but in fact, it tells us a lot about a culture and the lifestyles of each generation. This combination of social history, material culture, and architecture to really examine society, both in history and today, is one of the great strengths of the vernacularist perspective. Or at least it’s a way of looking at history that I have personally found most helpful and really enlightening.

If you’re super-interested in exploring the dining room outside of this symposium and in a period before the Victorian, you should get Barbara Carson’s Ambitious Appetites: dining, behavior, and patterns of consumption in federal Washington.

Categories: Architectural Research, Jackson, Preservation People/Events, Vernacular Architecture