This year again, all Valley Talks will be presented in a hybrid format, meaning guests have the option to attend the presentation in person at the Museum or virtually through Zoom. In checkout, make sure to select the correct ticketing option that reflects how you would like to attend the presentation.
The Museum of Work & Culture, a Rhode Island Historical Society Museum, will host its annual Valley Talks series featuring six free lectures celebrating the Blackstone Valley's history, concluding Sunday, March 22 at 1:30 pm.
The political and economic rights of noncitizen immigrants in the United States varied greatly on a state-by-state basis in the century between the Civil War and the Civil Rights era. In his book Disparate Regimes: Nativist Politics, Alienage Law, and Citizenship Rights in the United States, 1865–1965, author Brendan Shanahan argues that the proliferation of these debates and laws produced disparate regimes of citizenship rights in the American political economy on a state-by-state basis. It further illustrates how nativist state politics and alienage policies helped to invent and concretize the idea that citizenship rights meant citizen-only rights in law, practice, and popular perception in the United States.
Brendan A. Shanahan is a Lecturer in the Department of History and an Associate Research Scholar in Canadian Studies at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University. He teaches courses on North American immigration and citizenship policy and comparative US and Canadian political and legal history. He served as a postdoctoral associate at Yale's Center for the Study of Representative Institutions, earned his PhD and MA from the University of California, Berkeley, and received his BA from McGill University. His work has appeared in The Catholic Historical Review, Law and History Review, TIME, and the Washington Post, among other publications. He previously interned at the Museum of Work and Culture in Woonsocket, RI.
The Museum’s 2026 Valley Talks series is presented by the Museum of Work & Culture Preservation Foundation and the RI AFL-CIO.
The Rhode Island Historical Society, the state's oldest and only statewide historical organization, is dedicated to honoring, interpreting and sharing Rhode Island's past to enrich the present and inspire the future. Founded in 1822, the RIHS is an advocate for history as a means to develop empathy and 21st -century skills, using its historical materials and knowledge to explore topics of timeless relevance and public interest. As a Smithsonian Affiliate, it is dedicated to providing high-quality, accessible public programming and educational opportunities for all Rhode Islanders through its four sites: the John Brown House Museum, the Museum of Work & Culture, the Mary Elizabeth Robinson Research Center and the Aldrich House.
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