Joseph M. Bagley is the city archaeologist of Boston, a historic preservationist, and a staff member of the Boston Landmarks Commission. He has worked for multiple local and state historic preservation offices, including the Maine Historic Preservation Commission and the Massachusetts Historical Commission. In 2016, he published his award-winning first book, 'A History of Boston in 50 Artifacts' (Brandeis University Press).

Dr. Famiglietti is an internationally recognized expert on hydrology, the Earth’s water system. His focus is the freshwater crisis resulting from climate change and agricultural practices, and how the crisis is already affecting global populations and food production. His research team uses satellites and develops advanced computer models to track how freshwater availability is changing around the world.

In this program, Dr. Famiglietti explains the causes and development of the freshwater crisis and the urgent necessity of governmental policies to address the rapidly diminishing supply of water. Public understanding of the problem is essential.

Jay Famiglietti is a Global Futures Professor in ASU's School of Sustainability, where he serves as the Director of Science for the Arizona Water Innovation Initiative. He also holds affiliated faculty appointments in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, and in the Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems.

Katherine McKittrick is Professor of Gender Studies and Canada Research Chair in Black Studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada, where she researches in areas of Black studies, anti-colonial studies, and critical-creative methodologies. She has authored multiple articles and is a former editor at Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography. Her books include Dear Science and Other Stories and Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle. She also edited and contributed to Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis. Recent and forthcoming projects include the limited-edition boxset Trick Not Telos, a collaboration with Liz Ikriko and Cristian Ordóñez, and the tryptic honoring NourbeSe Philip On the Declension of Beauty. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has a Ph.D. in Women’s Studies from York University.

Cosponsored by the Boston College Program in African and African Diaspora Studies.

Join the Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation for a captivating Mill Talk on the history of Levi Strauss, the man behind one of the most enduring names in American fashion, and the brand he built. Tracey Panek, Historian and Director of Archives at Levi Strauss & Co., will explore how a Bavarian immigrant in the 19th century built a brand that revolutionized workwear and became a global icon in fashion, culture, and everyday utilitarian clothing.

This talk is especially fitting at the Charles River Museum, the site of Francis Cabot Lowell’s first cotton textile mill, where America’s industrial revolution transformed fabric production and laid the foundation for the mass manufacturing of textiles—including the denim that would later become synonymous with Levi’s. Discover how industrial ingenuity, from early denim to Strauss’s patented riveted jeans, shaped the way we produce and wear clothing today – and how it continues to shape fashion worldwide.

Tracey Panek is the Historian for Levi Strauss & Co. and Director of Archives at the company’s world headquarters in San Francisco. She manages the day-to-day workings of the Levi Strauss & Co. Archives as a key corporate asset, answering historical questions, assisting designers, brand managers, executives and other employees whose work requires historical materials in the Archives. She regularly hunts for unique vintage Levi’s® garments and unusual Levi’s® items to add to the Archives.

Anger and fear are anchoring our political and religious life. This anger fear has warped our sense of how to be national and religious community that is moral community. Political discourse is uncivil; religious discourse is confrontational. Whether members of Congress are holding their party’s line or members of denominations are holding a doctrinal line, there is partisan polarization. At the heart of this polarization is absolutist morality. Womanist moral imagination helps us to answer this question: How do we generate and facilitate authentic moral community?

Dr. Marcia Y. Riggs has an undergraduate degree in religion from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, a Master of Divinity degree from Yale University Divinity School and a PhD in religion/ethics from Vanderbilt University. Her teaching career began at Drew University Theological School in Madison, New Jersey; she joined the faculty of Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, GA in 1991. In April of 2006, Dr. Riggs was inaugurated as the seminary’s first J. Erskine Love Professor of Christian Ethics and retired as professor emerita on August 1, 2024. The Marcia Riggs Commons, a residential hall and space for communal gatherings, was dedicated on the campus of the seminary in 2022. Her 20 years of ordained ministry were served in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.

The Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation hosts harpsichordist and historian Mark Kroll.

This talk uncovers the story of Frank Hubbard, William Dowd, and Eric Herz—three visionary artisans who transformed Greater Boston into a global hub for historical harpsichord building in the 20th century. From the origins of the harpsichord in Renaissance Europe to the revival of historically informed instrument-making in postwar America, this lecture weaves together music, craftsmanship, and cultural history. Learn how these builders preserved centuries-old traditions while innovating for modern audiences—and how their legacy lives on in instruments, apprentices, and the music they helped bring back to life.


Kroll sets the context in which the Hubbards’ shop at the Lyman Estate carriage house expanded to the old Cotton Picker Building of the Boston Manufacturing Factory site on Moody Street. Hubbard Harpsichords pioneered the use of DIY kits that became popular in the 1960s and 70s, many of which were built in this mill complex.

Mark Kroll’s distinguished career as a performer, scholar and educator spans a period of more than fifty years. He has appeared in North and South America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia as a recitalist and chamber musician, winning critical praise for his expressive playing and virtuosity. He has also performed as concerto soloist with the world’s major orchestras and served as harpsichordist for the Boston Symphony from 1979-2008. Kroll’s extensive list of recordings includes the music of Bach, Handel, Scarlatti, Biber, Duphly, Balbastre, Royer, Schubert, and Hummel; a 10-disc set of the complete pièces de clavecin of François Couperin; critically acclaimed CDs of contemporary harpsichord music; and Dutilleux’s Les Citations with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players.