Departmental Program Summary:

The Conservation Department at the American Philosophical Society is responsible for the preventive care as well as conservation treatment for items found in its diverse special collections library. This growing collection currently includes over 13 million manuscript leaves, 275,000 volumes and bound periodicals, thousands of prints and maps, and large audio, video, and digital holdings. The department is currently composed of two full-time conservators, an annual grant-funded intern, and occasional volunteers.

Position Description:

This entry level position aids in the preservation/ preventive conservation of the collections. This care includes treatment and documentation of individual items for a variety of materials such as manuscripts on paper, maps, ephemera, photographic materials, graphic works on paper, and manuscripts on parchment.

Responsibilities:

• Performs conservation treatment on primarily non-bound materials owned by the Library.
• Provides written and photographic documentation in accordance with the AIC Code of Ethics (including examination, condition and treatment reports, and photographic documentation).  
• Participates and assists in a wide range of preservation/ preventive conservation activities including disaster preparedness and recovery, pest management, minor mold remediation, examination and preparation of materials for loan, and environmental monitoring.
• Reviews and moves unprocessed boxed collections weighing up to 40 lbs.
• Assists in the general maintenance and organization of the conservation laboratory.  
• Assists in the preparation and display of materials for exhibition.
• Keeps abreast of current developments in the conservation field.
• Performs other duties as assigned. 

Qualifications:

• Master’s degree from an accredited graduate training program in conservation, with Master’s in hand prior to start date.
• Demonstrated working knowledge of conservation theory and practice. 
• Ability to wear a respirator and other personal protective equipment.
• Demonstrated computer skills including use of Microsoft Office Suite and Adobe Bridge/Photoshop.
• Demonstrated mastery of written and oral communication.
• Demonstrated success in a wide range of conservation treatment procedures and techniques.

The ideal candidate will have these additional qualities:

• Is highly organized.
• An interest in outreach and education through lab tours and use of social media.

The Society offers a competitive benefits package including health insurance, life insurance, long term disability, 403b with the employer match, and paid days off.

 The American Philosophical Society is an EOE. Successful applicants will be asked to show proof that they can legally work in the U.S. Applications will be accepted through February 28, 2018.

To apply upload CV or resume, a cover letter explaining qualifications for and interest in the position and three references (not letters of reference, please) to http://apply.interfolio.com/48348.

About the Library:  Founded in 1743, The American Philosophical Society’s library, located near Independence Hall in Philadelphia, is a leading international center for research in the history of American science and technology and its European roots, as well as early American history and culture. The Library houses over 13 million manuscript leaves, 275,000 volumes and bound periodicals, thousands of prints and maps, and large audio, video, and digital holdings. Outstanding historical collections and subject areas include the papers of Benjamin Franklin (14,000 letters and documents); Jefferson’s holograph of the Declaration of Independence; the American Revolution; the papers of Thomas Paine; 18th and 19th-century natural history; western scientific expeditions and travel including the original journals of Lewis and Clark; polar exploration; the papers of Charles Willson Peale, his family and descendants; American Indian languages; anthropology including the papers of Franz Boas; the papers of Charles Darwin and his forerunners, colleagues, critics, and successors; history of genetics, eugenics, and evolution; history of biochemistry, physiology, and biophysics; 20th-century medical research; and history of physics. The Library does not hold materials on philosophy in the modern sense.  

Gifts of $100–$249

APS News, annual print publication; copy of APS Proceedings of your choice (PDF or hard copy); invitations to special offer online programs

Gifts of $250–$499

Viewing of iconic treasures in the APS collections and lively discussion; APS Library & Museum curatorial evenings and exhibition previews

Gifts of $500–$999

APS publication of your choice; private events with APS staff and fellows and other scholars, including participating APS Members

Philosophical Circle, $1,000

• APS Meeting*, April OR November, guest invitation for two
• APS Museum collection private tour with curators (maximum of 6 participants per tour); for gifts of $1,500 or more, donors are invited to register for salon discussions and social gatherings with APS Librarian (please call Friends office at 215-599-4303 or email [email protected] for details)

Independence Circle, $2,500

• All of the above, plus APS Meetings* April AND November, guest invitation for two
• Sponsorship recognition of Friends of the APS virtual programs
• Invitation for two to an evening of fellowship among the treasures of Franklin's Library

Founder’s Circle, $5,000 | 1743 Circle $10,000

Nullo Discrimine Circle $25,000

Donors at these levels enjoy custom-designed tours and invitations to private receptions, including APS gatherings in Philadelphia and beyond, and other special occasions and opportunities.

*APS Meetings are twice-yearly gatherings in Philadelphia during which elected APS Members and other distinguished scientists and scholars present lectures and symposia on diverse topics accompanied by lively intellectual exchange. 

The American Philosophical Society is a private, non-profit, tax-exempt, 501(c)(3) organization under the provisions of the Internal Revenue Code of the United States Department of the Treasury. The Society is registered as a charitable organization with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s Bureau of Charitable Organizations and is authorized to solicit charitable contributions under the conditions and limitations set forth under the Solicitation of Funds for Charitable Purposes Act. The official registration and financial information for the American Philosophical Society may be obtained from the Pennsylvania Department of State by calling toll free, within Pennsylvania, 1-800-732-0999. Registration does not imply endorsement.

The tax ID number for the American Philosophical Society is 23-1353269.

Contribute Now

For more information, please contact Alexis Anderson at 215-599-4303 or [email protected]. 

Check back regularly for schedule updates. Brown Bag lunches are held in the Library Hall Board Room (105 South Fifth Street) from 12-1pm unless otherwise noted. Food is not provided, so bring your sack lunch and join us!

Note: Beginning on March 24, Brown Bag will be held virtually via Zoom. To attend, please contact Adrianna Link at [email protected]. Please visit our "Virtual Offerings Page" for the most up-to-date schedule. 

Spring 2020 Calendar

January 7 – Jeffrey Appelhans (APS John C. Slater Bibliography Postdoctoral Fellow), "Catholic Persuasion, from Republicanism to Romanticism to Riots"

January 14 – Melanie Rinehart (APS Archivist), "Processing Garwin: A Project Update"

January 21 – Bethany Farrell (APS Digital Franklin Fellow), "The Art of Making Data for Every Scholar’s Pocket: Opening Benjamin Franklin’s Account Books"

January 28 – Cynthia Heider (APS Digital Projects Specialist), "Meaning-Making: Data, Discourse, and Advocacy within the American Settlement House Movement"

February 4 – Lila O'Leary Chambers (2019-2020 McNeil Center Consortium Fellow/New York University), "Liquid Claiming: Alcohol and Authority in Kalinago-English Interaction in the Leeward Islands, 1623-1700"

February 11– Jennifer Tucker (Associate Professor of History and Science in Society, Wesleyan University) [in collaboration with the Science History Institute], "Collecting the Future: Photography, Waste, & the Industrial Revolution"

February 18 – Angela Tapia (Spring 2020 The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Native American Scholars Initiative (NASI) Predoctoral Fellow), "Mujeres de Polleras: Weaving A Way of Being in the Altiplano Region"

February 25 – David Dunning (2019-2020 Leon and Joanne V.C. Knopoff Fellow/Princeton University), "Writing the Rules of Reason: Notations in Mathematical Logic, 1847-1937"

March 3 – Tracey deJong (APS Archivist) [part of Women's History Month]

March 10 – James Truitt (Swarthmore College), "Graceanna Lewis: Naturalist and Radical"  [part of Women's History Month]

March 17 [CANCELLED] –  Short-Term Fellows Presentation: Baligh Ben Taleb (2019-2020 The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow/University of Nebraska, Lincoln), “Reckoning with the Legacy of American Settler Colonialism: Treaty Claims and Western Shoshoni Quest for Justice,” and, Vedran Duančić (2019-2020 François André Michaux Fund Fellow/Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science, Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences), “Scientific Diaspora as a Resource in the Struggle Over Agrobiology in Socialist Yugoslavia”

March 24 – Molly Nebiolo (2019-2020 Digital Humanities Fellow/Northeastern University), "Visualizing Early Colonial Philadelphia"

March 31 – Lisa Ruth Rand (2019-2022 Haas Fellow, Science History Institute), " Neocolonial Space: Orbital Allocation in the Age of the New International Economic Order, 1971-1979"

April 7 – Paul Myles, "The Rise of Thomas Paine and The Officers of Excise"

April 14 – Anisha Gupta (APS Assistant Conservator of Archival Materials), "To Counterfeit is Death: Benjamin Franklin's Anti-Counterfeiting Papermaking Techniques for Colonial Currency"

April 21 – Susan Laquer (APS Archivist), "Evidence of Genius: Barbara McClintock's Scientific Ephemera"

April 28 – Lise Puoyo (University of Pennsylvania), "Speaking to Kin: Abenaki Wampum Belts at Chartres"

May 5 – Baligh Ben Taleb (2019-2020 The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow/University of Nebraska), “Reckoning with the Legacy of American Settler Colonialism: Treaty Claims and Western Shoshoni Quest for
Justice”

May 12 – Vedran Duančić (2019-2020 François André Michaux Fund Fellow/Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science, Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences), “Scientific Diaspora as a Resource in the Struggle Over Agrobiology in Socialist Yugoslavia”

May 19 – Sean Fraga (Princeton University), "They Came on Waves of Ink”

May 26 – Joanna Hurd (Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation (WUDPAC)), "Have You Hurd? Introducing Paper Conservation Intern Joanna Hurd"

“Benjamin Franklin liked to eat. He liked to drink. He liked to entertain and be entertained. Franklin also loved knowledge and was a great promoter of its advancement.”

―Forward to Benjamin Franklin on The Art of Eating

Join us for an exciting collaboration of the American Philosophical Society and Library Company of Philadelphia—a jointly-developed seminar built around our rare documents and taught by our own experts that will give a small group the Benjamin Franklin learning experience of a lifetime! Course sessions will immerse participants in different periods in Franklin's life through selected course readings and the archival holdings of each institution. 

The seminar will alternate locations between the American Philosophical Society Library (105 South Fifth Street) and the Library Company of Philadelphia (1314 Locust Street). Seminar sessions will be from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., beginning with hands-on review of primary materials, followed by conversation over dinner. Tuition for the course is $2,000. For information and/or registration, please email Abigail Shelton at [email protected]. Payment must be received before your spot in the course can be confirmed. 

Schedule

Course Leaders

James N. Green is Librarian of the Library Company of Philadelphia, where he has worked since 1983. He holds degrees from Oberlin College (A.B.), Yale University (M. Phil.), and Columbia University (M.L.S). His three essays on printing and book publishing in America from 1680 to 1840 appear in the first two volumes of the collaborative History of the Book in America, published by the American Antiquarian Society (2000-2010) under the general editorship of David D. Hall. He is also co-author, with Peter Stallybrass, of Benjamin Franklin, Writer and Printer (Oak Knoll Press and the British Library, 2006). Jim serves on the board of Rare Book School at the University of Virginia and teaches courses there in the summer.

Patrick Spero is the Librarian of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia. As a scholar of early American history, Dr. Spero specializes in the era of the American Revolution. He has published over a dozen essays and reviews on the topic. He is the author of Fighting for Independence in the American West, 1765-1776 (W.W. Norton) as well as Frontier Country: The Politics of War in Early Pennsylvania, and the edited anthology The American Revolution Reborn: New Perspectives for the Twenty-First Century (both published by the University of Pennsylvania Press). Prior to his appointment at the American Philosophical Society, Patrick taught at Williams College where he served as Assistant Professor of History and Leadership Studies and received recognition for his integration of new technology in the classroom. Patrick has also held the position of Historian at the David Library of the Revolution and served on their Board of Trustees. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2009.

Pamela Webb

The American Philosophical Society is pleased to present the 2016 John Frederick Lewis Award to Pamela Webb in recognition of her book The Tower of the Winds in Athens – Greeks, Romans, Christians, and Muslims: Two Millennia of Continual Use.

While patronage and pagan cult are important topics for classical scholars, Pamela Webb’s goals are to create greater awareness of and familiarity with the Tower of the Winds among scholars who concentrate on post-classical Athens and to make available in a single volume analyses of each of the building’s periods of occupation.  

Investigations of classical monuments in the city generally have placed their greatest emphasis on the religious and civic structures on the Akropolis and in the Agora, including the two most important buildings that continued in use from antiquity through the Ottoman periods – the Parthenon and the Erechtheion.  It is Webb’s belief that the Tower of the Winds, which stood below these monuments at the foot of the hill, should assume a more prominent place in investigations of Athens’ classical (and later) history.  

A great deal is known about Greek temples and stoas and theaters and other types of religious and civic buildings.  Little physical evidence remains, however, of architecture and implements that served the academic and scientific spheres of ancient life.  The Academy is gone, as is the Lyceum, the libraries at Pergamon and Alexandria (and its great lighthouse), Archimedes’ orreries, and most other such impressive creations from the Hellenistic Period.  But the Tower of the Winds stands, the tangible product of one of the many great mathematical and engineering minds of the time.  Because this building survives, an extensive set of accurate vertical sundials has come down to us.  The physical structure, supported by literary sources, supplies evidence of a figured weather vane that worked in coordination with the largest display of representations of the winds from antiquity.  The water-run device from the interior of this monument may be long gone and its specific form resists identification, but remnants of the system that powered it provide material proof of its size and complexity.  This great Octagon is a unique connection to the past.

That the Tower was important to the intellectual life of Hellenistic and Roman Athens cannot be denied.  Defining its role in Late Antiquity is far more problematic.  How it functioned as a classical building consecrated for Christian use certainly raises intriguing questions, however, for evidence suggests it may have served as a martyrium for the Apostle Philip.

Pamela Webb is a Classical Archaeologist specializing in Greek and Roman architecture and sculpture.  She has an M.A. and Ph.D. in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology from Bryn Mawr College and is the author of Hellenistic Architectural Sculpture (1996).  She has taught at Swarthmore College, Rosemont College, Villanova University and, for a number of years, was a Visiting Associate Professor at Bryn Mawr College where she is currently a Research Associate.  Her present book is part of a larger project (Hellenistic Architectural Sculpture, Vol. 2) for which she has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Philosophical Society.   

In 1935 the Society established the John Frederick Lewis Award with funds donated by his widow.  The award recognizes the best book or monograph published by the Society in a given year.  Members of the selection committee were Glen W. Bowersock (chair), Professor Emeritus of Ancient History, Institute for Advanced Study; Julia Haig Gaisser, Professor Emeritus of Latin, Eugenia Chase Guild Professor Emeritus in the Humanities, Bryn Mawr College; and Noel M. Swerdlow, Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and Astrophysics and of History, University of Chicago.

2017 Autumn General Meeting
Olaf Sporns

The recipient selected for the 2017 Patrick Suppes Prize for a body of outstanding work in mathematical or experimental psychology or cognitive neuroscience, is Olaf Sporns “in recognition of his transformation of the understanding of the relation of brain to behavior.”  Dr. Sporns is Distinguished Professor, Provost Professor, and Robert H. Shaffer Chair in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Indiana University.

Olaf Sporns has pioneered a new and revolutionary way of thinking about brain function – based on mapping and modeling the brain as a complex network.  He is the founder of brain connectomics, an approach that focuses on the way that highly distributed networks carry out behavior and cognition.  This work has had a highly significant impact in neuroscience, where scientists now see that brain structure and function depend on distributed and dynamic networks.

Sporns’ research has been formal, mathematical and computational.  His work pioneered the application of graph theory to the analysis of brain connectivity, resulting in the very first large-scale connectivity maps of the human brain.  These maps revealed a set of highly central network hubs that link distinct functional communities, communities that carry out behavioral tasks and processes.  He has also shown how the structural connections shape the ever changing patterns of the brain’s spontaneous and evoked activity.

The NIH-funded Human Connectome Project carries forward a research agenda that was strongly influenced by the ideas Sporns formulated years earlier. He and others are now contributing to connectome projects aimed at animal models, development across the life span, and implications for mental disorders.

The Patrick Suppes Prize honors accomplishments in three deeply significant scholarly fields, with the prize rotating each year between philosophy of science, psychology or neuroscience, and history of science.  The Patrick Suppes Prize in Psychology or Neuroscience is awarded for a body of outstanding work which consists of at least three articles published within the preceding six years.  The work considered in psychology is either in mathematical or experimental psychology.  The work considered in neuroscience is in system not cellular neuroscience.

The selection committee members were Richard M. Shiffrin (chair) Distinguished Professor, Luther Dana Waterman Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences, and Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science, Indiana University: John G. Hildebrand, Regents Professor of Neuroscience, University of Arizona; and Jeroen G. W. Raaijmakers, Professor of Cognitive Psychology, University of Amsterdam.

2017 Autumn General Meeting
Douglas S. Massey

The recipient of the 2017 Henry Allen Moe Prize in the Humanities is Douglas S. Massey in recognition of his paper “The Mexican-U.S. Border in the American Imagination” presented to the Society at its April 2015 Meeting and published in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, volume 160, no. 2, June 2016.  Doug Massey is the Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University.

Douglas S. Massey is a sociologist who has made the study of segregation and immigration his life’s work.  In this essay he rehearses in part his well-established arguments about the counter-intuitive relationship between undocumented immigration and border enforcement along the United States/Mexico border since the late 1970s.  Despite the fact that the flow of undocumented migrants had stabilized, the presumed threat from Latino immigration was given new force through media exaggeration, political exploitation, and even academic pronouncement.  The militarization of the border and the concomitant multiplication of the federal budget for border patrol by a factor of thirteen between 1986 and 2010, paradoxically led to an increase in the net rate of unauthorized migration, and subsequent acceleration of undocumented population growth north of the border.  Whereas earlier migration had been concentrated on border states, the new growth was spread throughout the United States.  What had been a circular flow of male workers was transformed into a rapidly growing resident population of undocumented families.

Massey’s focus is on the political, social, and emotional force of the idea of the southern border itself.  He provides a succinct history of its emergence as a symbolic demarcation in the American mind, tracing its early construction after Mexico’s independence from Spain in 1821, followed by the subsequent abolition of slavery there in 1830.  The Mexican American War, fought over both territory and slavery, led to the final establishment of the border in 1853.  Both racial and economic concerns were at stake in the following century, when moments of border enforcement alternated with periods of relative lack of attention in the United States.

More recently the symbolic power of the Mexican border has enabled fear-mongering that goes beyond immigration, to include claims that radical Islamists are being disguised as Mexican immigrants, and that the Ebola virus is being imported through the southern border.  Massey calls attention to ways in which the historical obsession with the Mexican border, now reinforced by such spurious claims, has meant that the defense of this border above all has come to stand for national security.  The enormous resources devoted to enforcement have produced a border economy that thrives on the unproven theory of the value of border enforcement as a means of deterring undocumented immigration. Massey’s essay does not propose political or social solutions to the question of immigration across the southern border, but provides an illuminating examination of how a border can come to be endowed with symbolic force in the absence of factual evidence.  His deft presentation of this powerful argument renders his essay accessible to readers from fields in the humanities outside his own specialization.

The prize was established in 1982 by a gift from the widow of Henry Allen Moe, to honor the longtime head of the Guggenheim Foundation and president of the American Philosophical Society from 1959 to 1970. It pays particular tribute to his firm commitment to the humanities and those who pursue them.  The prize is awarded annually to the author of a paper in the humanities or jurisprudence read at a meeting of the Society.  

Members of the selection committee were Elizabeth Cropper (chair), Dean, Center for Advanced Study in the  Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art; Michael McCormick, Goelet Professor of Medieval History, Harvard University; Brent Shaw, Andrew Fleming West Professor of Classics, Princeton University.