The Blue Humanities:
Reimagining America’s Maritime History

Illustrated talk by Associate Professor of History at the University at Albany, State University of New York, Christopher L. Pastore, who gives a fast-paced tour through America’s maritime history and explores how and why sea stories have changed over time.

Presented at the Museum Sunday, August 30, 2026.

Hosted by HLFM director Pierce Rafferty.

During the early twentieth centuries maritime topics drew considerable interest, but by the second half the ocean’s past had fallen from favor. More recently, historians, geographers, and literary scholars have breathed new life into salty subjects, filling shelves with books organized around the idea of the “blue humanities.” Intended for fishermen, sailors, and beach combers alike, this lecture explores why the field has faced this ebb and flood—and provides a winter reading list in the process.

Christopher L. Pastore

Christopher L. Pastore is Associate Professor of History at the University at Albany, State University of New York, where he teaches courses in environmental history, early America, and the Atlantic world. He holds a Ph.D. in American History and M.S. in college teaching from the University of New Hampshire, an M.F.A. in nonfiction Creative Writing from New School University, and a B.A. in Biology from Bowdoin College. He is the author of Temple to the Wind: The Story of America’s Greatest Naval Architect and His Masterpiece, Reliance (Lyons Press, 2005) and Between Land and Sea: The Atlantic Coast and the Transformation of New England (Harvard University Press, 2014). He is currently writing an environmental history of the Atlantic world with working title of A Thousand Thousand Slimy Things: A Natural History of the Sea from the Bottom Up.

PHOTO CREDIT: Winslow Homer, Boys in a Dory, 1873, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons