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The Omohundro Institute is pleased to announce the appointment of four new Fellows.

Selected as the Institute’s Mellon Fellow for 2007–2008, Sarah Rivett elected to postpone taking up her fellowship until July 1, 2008. She is an assistant professor at Washington University in St. Louis, with a joint appointment in English and American Culture Studies. The author of several published articles, Sarah has presented papers at a number of conferences, including the joint Thirteenth Annual Omohundro Institute/Fifth Biennial Society of Early Americanists meeting held in Williamsburg in June 2007. Her dissertation, “Evidence of Grace: The Science of the Soul in Colonial New England,” was a finalist for the CGS/UMI Distinguished Dissertation Award in the Humanities in 2005. Sarah holds her doctorate in English from the University of Chicago. Although she will not be in residence full time in Williamsburg, we look forward to seeing her frequently during her fellowship year.

Another face we will enjoy seeing here periodically during the next academic year is the Institute’s 2008–2009 Mellon Fellow, Joseph F. Cullon. Like Sarah, Joe is no stranger to Williamsburg, having been part of a plenary panel discussion at the Thirteenth Annual Omohundro Institute/Fifth Biennial Society of Early Americanists meeting last June. An assistant professor of early American history at Dartmouth College, Joe received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 2003, with a dissertation titled “Colonial Shipwrights and Their World: Men, Women, and Markets in Early New England.” Having already developed an electronic database, Building New England’s Merchant Fleet: Business Networks and the Integration of the British Atlantic World, from the Massachusetts Shipping Register, 1697–1714, Joe is now at work on a book manuscript, currently titled “Work upon the Ark: Shipbuilding and the Launching of Colonial New England.”

We are assured of the more constant company of Mark Hanna, recipient of the residential NEH/Institute fellowship for 2007–2009. Mark deferred beginning his tenure for a year to accept a position on the history faculty at the University of California, San Diego. He joined current NEH/Institute fellow Rob Parkinson here in July. His dissertation, titled “The Pirates’ Nest: The Impact of Piracy on Newport, Rhode Island, and Charles Town, South Carolina, 1670–1740,” earned him a Ph.D. from Harvard in 2006. Among his many interesting pursuits, Mark has done a stint as guest lecturer in Maritime Studies at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and aboard the 140-foot brigantine SSV Corwith Cramer as it traveled from Key West to Port Antonio, Jamaica. (We assume the voyage stayed clear of any “pirates’ nests!”) Mark has received several grants and teaching awards as well as fellowships at the Huntington Library and the John Carter Brown Library. We’re glad to have him aboard.

Jonathan Eacott, the newly appointed Institute Fellow for 2008–2010, has postponed his fellowship for a year to join the history faculty at the University of California, Riverside. Jonathan received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan this spring. His dissertation, titled “Owning Empire: The Matter of India in the Anglophone World,” examines the cultural consequences of the trade between India, England, and Britain’s North American colonies and their effect on the growth of a new national identity in early republican America. We wish Jonathan well in his year at Riverside, where he will be a colleague of former Institute fellows Steven Hackel and Alexander Haskell (whose reflections on his fellowship appear in this newsletter), and look forward to welcoming him to Williamsburg in July 2009.