Home > Uncommon Sense > 124

• Support the Institute
• About Us
• Conferences
• Colloquium
• Fellowships
• Online Resources
• Tucker Papers
• Prizes
• Publications
• Uncommon Sense
• WMQ

The Institute has never, at least in recent memory, had a busier summer. Following the Council and Executive Board meetings in May, which coincided with the visit of Queen Elizabeth II to Williamsburg, several of us traveled to Los Angeles to participate in the second William and Mary Quarterly/USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute workshop. This intellectually invigorating meeting examined “The Cultural History of Eighteenth-Century America” from a variety of disciplinary perspectives with the aim of determining whether “the cultural” can properly be considered a valid analytical domain and, if so, how and what its practice contributes to the process of constructing the larger historical narratives of that period. The discussions were lively and intense. Workshop convener Michael Meranze will craft an essay on the insights and conclusions that emerged from the work presented for a forthcoming issue of the Quarterly.

We came home from California to make the final preparations for the event that has now taken its place in Institute lore as the “mother of all conferences” but is more formally known as the Institute’s Thirteenth Annual Conference and the Society of Early Americanists’ Fifth Biennial Conference. Nearly five hundred people attended this joint venture, held June 7–10 at the College of William and Mary, with a Saturday afternoon excursion to Jamestown. The photographs displayed in this newsletter's Scrapbook offer glimpses of the activities but do not effectively convey the excitement and energy the meeting’s seventy sessions generated, in spite of a couple of meltingly hot summer days. The cross-disciplinary dialogue that characterized the presentations and discussions reflected the diversity of interests that account for the vitality of scholarship across the broad field of early American studies. The success of this collaborative effort required many months of hard thinking and hard work by a group of dedicated individuals. The Institute’s Fredrika J. Teute and SEA president Dennis Moore (Florida State University) ably and creatively chaired the program committee, assisted by Rhys Isaac as the representative of the Institute’s Council. The members of the committee who so willingly invested considerable time and energy in shaping the program include Stephen Carl Arch (Michigan State University), Wendy Bellion (University of Delaware), Holly Brewer (North Carolina State University), Mendy C. Gladden (OIEAHC), Mark Kamrath (University of Central Florida), SEA vice president Thomas Krise (University of Central Florida), Edward Larkin University of Delaware), Sally M. Promey (Yale University), Jeffrey H. Richards (Old Dominion University), Marion Rust (University of Virginia), Mark Valeri (Union Theological Seminary), and Karin Wulf (College of William and Mary). We thank them all for the memorable experience they organized for us.

The summer ended as it had begun, with a conference. On August 8–12, the Institute convened in Ghana “The bloody Writing is for ever torn”: Domestic and International Consequences of the First Governmental Efforts to Abolish the Atlantic Slave Trade. The meeting far exceeded my expectations in terms of the quality of the presentations, the size of the audience, and, most importantly, the successful incorporation of scholars and graduate students based in sub-Saharan Africa into the community of historians who work in institutions of higher learning in the Americas, the Caribbean, and Europe.

When I began planning this conference three years ago, the Institute’s fundamental goal, as always, was to enrich the world of scholarship and the life of the mind as directed by our founding commitment to research and publication. But at some point I began to realize that the expansive character of the overture that we were making to scholars and graduate students of history throughout sub-Saharan Africa was virtually unprecedented. Pe rhaps our keynote speaker, Professor Adiele E. Afigbo of Nigeria’s Ebonyi State University, said it best when he noted that this was the first pan-African conference of historians held in Africa since 1961! The heroic men and women who work under extraordinarily difficult conditions to continue a tradition of African scholarship can tell you better than I what the opportunity to participate meant to them. A first sample—an email from Joseph Ushie of the University of Uyo in Nigeria, reprinted with his permission (click here)—will give you an introduction to their reactions, and more of the responses we have received will follow in the Winter issue of Uncommon Sense. Our African colleagues had much to teach us and we, them, and the dialogues that occurred both formally and informally were exceptionally valuable for all of us. These conversations and encounters enhanced, deepened, and expanded not only the knowledge of individual participants but also the larger universe of historical understanding and encouraged us to believe that we have meaningfully begun the process of incorporating our African colleagues into the transnational community of scholars.

As you know from the announcement on the Institute’s listserv, H-OIEAHC, the conference proceedings are available online at http://oieahc.wm.edu/conferences/ghana/sessions.html. I hope you will take a look. Both a DVD of the conference and a special issue of the William and Mary Quarterly are in the works, and you may expect a fuller and more varied report on what took place in Ghana and any plans that develop to build upon that beginning in the next issue of Uncommon Sense.

The very full agenda that the Institute has pursued this summer has taken place while the ongoing work we do—editing and producing the Quarterly and books; planning for the next round of fellowship competitions, colloquia, and conferences; training editorial apprentices—has also gone on. That we have been able to manage it all is due to a very dedicated and extremely hardworking staff—and to the support provided by the people whose names are listed in the final pages of this newsletter. Without the Associates, there would be far fewer and far less ambitious initiatives. For what your generosity makes possible, for all that you contribute to the Institute, we thank you, the Institute’s 1,113 Associates for 2007.