Details:
This event takes place in person at Charis and on Crowdcast, Charis' virtual event platform. This event is free, but registration is required for virtual attendance. Register at the link above to attend virtually. Please read the in-person event guidelines at the bottom of this page to be sure you can participate in the event. Charis welcomes Kathleen B. Casey in conversation with Robin Morris for a discussion of The Things She Carried: A Cultural History of the Purse in America, which reveals how bags, sacks, and purses provided the methods and materials for Americans' activism, allowing carriers to transgress critical boundaries at key moments. For generations of Americans, the purse has been an essential and highly adaptable object, used to achieve a host of social, cultural, and political objectives. In the early 1800s, when the slim fit of neoclassical dresses made interior pockets impractical, upper-class women began to carry small purses called reticules, which provided them with a private place in a world where they did not have equal access to public space. Although many items of apparel have long expressed their wearer's aspirations, only the purse has offered carriers privacy, pride, and pleasure. This privacy has been particularly important for those who have faced discrimination because of their gender, class, race, citizenship, or sexuality. The Things She Carried reveals how bags, sacks, and purses provided the methods and materials for Americans' activism, allowing carriers to transgress critical boundaries at key moments. It explores how enslaved people used purses and bags when attempting to escape and immigrant factory workers fought to protect their purses in the workplace. It also probes the purse's nuanced functions for Black women in the civil rights movement and explores how LGBTQ people used purses to defend their bodies and make declarations about their sexuality. Kathleen Casey closely examines a variety of sources--from vintage purses found in abandoned buildings and museum collections to advertisements, photograph albums, trade journals, newspaper columns, and trial transcripts. She finds purses in use at fraught historical moments, where they served strategic and symbolic functions for their users. The result is a thorough and surprising examination of an object that both ordinary and extraordinary Americans used to influence social, cultural, economic, and political change. About the Author Kathleen B. Casey is the Director of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Furman University, where she is also a Professor of History. Kathleen is the author of two books, including The Prettiest Girl On Stage is a Man. She’s interested in how small things reveal big, textured stories about the past and present. When she’s not reading, or writing, teaching, she fosters dogs. About the Interviewer Robin Morris is Associate Professor and Chair of History at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia where she teaches courses in modern US history, Southern history, and public history. She holds a PhD in History from Yale University, an MA in Southern Studies from University of Mississippi, and a BA from Queens University of Charlotte. Prior to graduate study, Morris was an educator at the Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte, North Carolina and a middle school social studies teacher in Tunica, Mississippi. She is an Atlanta area native and attended Kindergarten through 12th grade in DeKalb County Public Schools. Morris authored Goldwater Girls to Reagan Women: Gender, Georgia, and the Growth of the New Right with University of Georgia Press in 2022. The book traces women’s political activism from the foundation of the Georgia Federation of Republican Women in the 1950s through the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1980s. She worked with a committee from Antioch AME Church and a team from University of West Georgia to create a digital archive of the first African American church in Decatur, GA. The site is at www.antiochamehistory.org and participants co-authored an article about the community history process in Digital Community Engagement: Partnering Communities with the Academy on University of Cincinnati Press in 2020. The event is free and open to all people, but we encourage and appreciate a donation of $5-20 in support of the work of Charis Circle, our programming non-profit. Donate on Crowdcast or via our website: www.chariscircle.org/donate or in person at the event. Charis Books is a fully wheelchair accessible space with on site van accessible parking, two ramps, and additional overflow accessible parking nearby. Additional accessibility information can be found on the Accessibility page of our website. In-person event guidelines: - All attendees must wear a face mask during the event. - We will begin seating people at 7:00 PM ET. - This event will be live-streamed via Crowdcast. Register at the link above to attend virtually. - As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event. If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request specific accessibility accommodations, please contact info@charisbooksandmore.com or call the store at 404-524-0304. Please contact us at info@chariscircle.org or 404-524-0304 if you would like ASL interpretation at this event. If you would like to watch the event with live AI captions, you may do so by watching it in Google Chrome and enabling captions: Instructions at If you have other accessibility needs or if you are someone who has skills in making digital events more accessible please don't hesitate to reach out to info@chariscircle.org. By attending our event, whether in person or virtually, you agree to our Code of Conduct: Our event seeks to provide a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, age, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, religion (or lack thereof), class, or technology choices. We do not tolerate harassment in any form. Unsolicited sexual language and imagery are not appropriate. Anyone violating these rules will be expelled from this event and all future events at the discretion of the organizers. Please report all harassment to Charis staff immediately or email info@chariscircle.org.
