The Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum will continue its multidisciplinary lecture series later this month.
The series features scholars in the humanities and the natural sciences. Participating speakers include recipients of several professional prizes, such as the prestigious MacArthur “Genius” Prize, and others who have since received important accolades and fellowships in their respective areas of research.
The series is produced through a grant from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation.
Scheduled are:
Sept. 28. Andrew Lipman, associate professor of History at Barnard College, for a lecture based on his award-winning book The Saltwater Frontier: Indians and the Contest for the American Coast. 7 p.m.
In The Saltwater Frontier, Lipman tells the previously untold story of how the ocean became a “frontier” between colonists and Indians. Lipman’s analysis focuses on how the English and Dutch empires both tried to claim the same patch of coast between the Hudson River and Cape Cod, transforming the sea itself into an arena of contact and conflict.
Nov. 2. Wambui Ippolito, an award-winning landscape designer and author, will talk on the contributions immigrants have made to the American landscape.
American landscapes have been altered, reshaped, and diversified by intense immigrant activities. Much like waves of earlier settlement, today’s immigrants continue to change the land through their gardening activities. These individuals introduce plants and practices that are beneficial and problematic to the land, forever transforming the American terrain, the museum says. 7 p.m.
Dec. 7. Greg Steinmetz, author of The Richest Man Who Ever Lived: The Life and Times of Jacob Fugger, will talk about his book, American Rascal: How Jay Gould Built Wall Street’s Biggest Fortune.
In American Rascal, Steinmetz recounts the story of Jay Gould, one of the 19th Century’s most well known robber barons, whose bare-knuckled tactics made him wealthier than Rockefeller and led Wall Street to institute its first reforms. He tells how Gould became a notorious figure at the age of 24, when he paralyzed the economy and nearly topped President Ulysses S. Grant in the Black Friday market collapse of 1869 as he sought to corner the gold market. 7 p.m.