2022 Blount Postal History Symposium speakers

The Twelfth Blount Postal History Symposium: Political Systems, Postal Administrations, and the Mail

Hosted by the Smithsonian National Postal Museum on Zoom
December 8 – 9, 2022 from 9 – 5:30 pm ET
Registration is free but required.

Co-sponsored by the American Philatelic Society and the American Philatelic Research Library

In countries around the world, postal administrations and their missions, practices, and regulations serve as reflections and agents of state goals and ideals. Like the administrations, be they privatized, quasi or fully governmental, these ideals and goals can vary widely. In all cases, they shape the relationship that citizens, subjects, or residents have to the mail and the post office, including their expectations and decisions on how and when to use them. By sending and receiving mail or by using other offered services, individuals participate in communities or networks - familial, commercial, social, or other. Moreover, the acts of using and engaging - even the potential for these - with postal services may simultaneously reinforce and challenge the postal administration and its political foundations.

The schedule for the presentations listed below will be available later this autumn.

If you are interested in attending the event in person, please register for the Zoom meeting so that you’ll receive the link in the case of any last-minute changes, but, more importantly, contact Susan Smith (smithsu@si.edu) directly. Registration spaces for those that want to attend in person will be limited and will be provided first come, first serve.

Register here

Speakers:

• Zachary Agatstein, “Hitler’s Mundane Messengers: The Banal Nationalism of Third Reich Postage Stamps”
• Alison Bazylinski, “Rethinking Postal Politics: The National Association of Letter Carriers Ladies’ Auxiliary, 1905 – 1925”
• Diane DeBlois and Robert Dalton Harris, “Big Mail: from Public Good to Private Profit”
• Laura Goldblatt and Richard Handler, “The Eagle, the Rocket, and the Moon: US Postal Iconography at the End of History”
• Pérola Goldfeder, “’Gathering Vassals Around the Throne’: The Political Economy of Postal Communications in 19th Century Brazil”
• Rebecca Brenner Graham, "The End of Sunday Mail, 1888-1912" 
• Aristide M. Lavey, “Politico-Philatelic Semiosis in Russia’s 2014 Crimea Issues" 
• Rocio Moreno Cabanillas, “The Reform Postal Systems in the Process of Structuring and Construction of Imperial States in the 18th Century”
• Francesco Morriello, “From Three Months to Three Seconds: The Evolution of Mail Delivery from the Renaissance to the Present Day” 
• Guillermo Navarro Oltra, “Historical Figures on Franco’s Postage Stamps: The Catholic Monarchs”
• Daniel A. Piazza, “The “Fascist Style” in Italian Philately, 1922-1941” 
• K. Andrea Rusnock, “Postal Politics: Soviet Stamps of World War II”
• Roger Santala, “Lion or Eagle: Sovereignty, a Postal Authority, and the Mails, Finland 1890-1918”
• Earl Toops, “Regime Change in Vietnam:  Issues of the Provisional Revolutionary Government and Restoration of Postal Services in the Defeated South”