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Events

The staff of the Maryland State Archives presents educational programs to the community to share information about our collections. We invite you to participate in our upcoming events or to view recordings of our past programs. If you have a suggestion for a program topic or search tip you would like to see here in the future, please email your recommendation to msa.helpdesk@maryland.gov. Thank you for your support.


Past Events

View recordings of past lectures, seminars, tours and workshops, as well as helpful training videos on how to use various records in our collections in our free online Presentation Library.


Upcoming Events



Drew Shuptar-Rayvis

April Virtual Lunch and Learn - Mayaisuwàk (They Speak in One Voice): The Oral History and History of Place of Maryland's Eastern Shore Tribal Communities and Remnant Descendants


Thursday, April 11, 2024 at 1:00pm
Presented by Drew Shuptar-Rayvis
Online Event

Meet Drew Shuptar-Rayvis (Pekatawas MakataWai'U/ Sëk Xàskwim - Black Corn) a Citizen and Cultural Ambassador of the Pocomoke Indian Nation. In 2023-2024, Drew worked for the Maryland State Archives as a research and preservation specialist under an extension of the Mayis Indigenous peoples project known as T.O.H.P. (The Oral History Project, which is also the phonetic spelling of the Algonkian word for friend) to record the oral histories, life ways, traditions and regional memories of places with Maryland's Eastern Shore tribal communities and several who are or were in the bounds of the eastern shore.

In this lecture, Drew will discuss his work with Mayis and T.O.H.P., and go into highlights from the oral history interviews, speaking of some of the joys and issues tribal communities still face, among them climate change and cultural erasure.

Drew Shuptar-Rayvis (Pekatawas MakataWai'U/ Sëk Xàskwim - Black Corn) ) holds a cum laude Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology and Sociology from Western Connecticut State University and a Certificate Degree in Archaeology from Norwalk Community College. A true American of the mid-Atlantic region, his family includes indigenous Pocomoke, Pennsylvania Dutch, Welsh, Swiss, English, Scots Irish, Boyko Ukrainian, and Ashkenazi/Sephardic Jewish heritage. He honors all of his ancestors as a practicing living historian and regularly participates in colonial-era reenactments, interpretations, and public educational events.

He works diligently in the research and preservation of the Eastern Woodland languages, particularly Renape, Nanticoke, and Southern Unami Dialect. He is also educated in the many European languages in use during the Colonial period. He was the first garden manager of Western Connecticut State University's Permaculture Garden, and practices Native horticulture. In July 2021, Drew was elected Cultural Ambassador of the Pocomoke Indian Nation of Maryland.

Drew currently works for the Maryland State Archives as a research and preservation specialist, working with tribal oral histories and lifeways, as well as an Algonkian historical consultant with the New Amsterdam History Center and. He has also been featured in various historical films and has modeled for historical artists Don Troiani, Michael Keropian and David Hasseler.



Frederick Douglas

May Virtual Lunch and Learn - “Writing the Biography of Frederick Douglass and the Bailey/Douglass Family: Scenes from the Archives”


Thursday, May 9, 2024 at 1:00pm
Presented by Ezra Greenspan
Online Event

This talk will survey selected sources for the writing of a comprehensive, historical biography of Frederick Douglass and the Bailey/Douglass family. It will proceed scenically in the manner of an illustrated historical panorama, matching documentary evidence (chosen mostly from Maryland archives) to central events in the history of one of our country's most remarkable families from the 1660s to the fall of Richmond in 1865.

Ezra Greenspan, Edmund and Louise Kahn Chair in the Humanities, Emeritus at Southern Methodist University, is a literary, cultural, and media historian who has written biographies of Walt Whitman, G. P. Putnam, and William Wells Brown. He is currently writing a comprehensive biography of Frederick (Bailey) Douglass and his generic family, whose coverage will run from 1634 into the twentieth century.



Chessie

June Virtual Lunch and Learn - “The Best Evidence Yet for an Anomalous Animal”: Documenting the Cultural History of Chessie the Sea Monster


Thursday, June 13, 2024 at 1:00pm
Presented by Dr. Eric A. Cheezum
Online Event

Dr. Eric A. Cheezum will present on his new book, Chessie: A Cultural History of the Chesapeake Bay Sea Monster, telling the story of the Bay's legendary cryptid, and will describe the research methodology involved in uncovering its history. Dr. Cheezum explores the project's origin as his dissertation and its long gestation and path to publication, along with the extensive research and interviews that made the work possible, and some of the key figures and connections whose generosity ensured that the facts of Chessie's amazing career were brought to the surface. As Chessie's story will show, truth really is stranger than fiction!

Eric A. Cheezum is a native of the Eastern Shore of Maryland. He received his B.A. in History from Salisbury State University in 1999, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in History from the University of South Carolina in 2002 and 2008, respectively. Besides Chessie: A Cultural History of the Chesapeake Bay Sea Monster (Johns Hopkins, 2024), he is the co-author of Woodrow Wilson (CQ Press, 2003) with Kendrick A. Clements. He is an adjunct professor at Chesapeake College in Wye Mills, Maryland and a full-time farmer.

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