Born after an enthusiastically received continuing education class from the Christopher Wren Association, EARS meets at least twice a semester for discussion of an early American history text. Moderated by Karin Wulf and the OI staff, the discussions are free, open to all, and the public is warmly encouraged to attend. All of the books listed below should be available on amazon.com or via most major bookstores. All meetings are held in the Omohundro Institute conference room.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Early American Reading Series has been suspended until further notice.
2019–20 academic year schedule:
- Tuesday, October 15, 2019: Mary Sarah Bilder, Madison’s Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention
- Tuesday, November 12, 2019: Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War
- Tuesday, February 18, 2020 at 3:00 p.m.: Zara Anishanslin, Portrait of a Woman in Silk: Hidden Histories of the British Atlantic World
- Tuesday, March 3, 2020 at 5:30 p.m.: Douglas Winiarski, Darkness Falls on the Land of Light: Experiencing Religious Awakenings in Eighteenth-Century New England
Tuesday, March 24, 2020 at 4:00 p.m.-CANCELED: Julia Gaffield, Haitian Connections in the Atlantic World
If you would like to join the group or receive more information, contact Martha Howard at 757-221-1115 or Martha.Howard@wm.edu.
Books read by the group in previous years include:
- T.H. Breen and Stephen Innes, “Myne Own Ground”: Race and Freedom on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, 1640–1676
- Kathleen Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarch: Gender, Race and Power in Colonial Virginia
- John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America
- Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge
- Flora Fraser, Princesses: The Six Daughters of George III
- Annette Gordon-Reed and Peter S. Onuf, Most Blessed of the Patriarchs: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination
- Jane Kamensky, A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley
- Mary Kelley, Learning to Stand and Speak: Women, Education, and Public Life in America’s Republic
- John Ruston Pagan, Anne Orthwood’s Bastard: Sex and Law in Early Virginia
- Michel-Rolp Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, 20th Anniversary Edition
- Jennifer Van Horn, The Power of Objects in Eighteenth-Century British America
- Wendy Warren, New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America
- Michael Witgen, An Infinity of Nations: How the Native New World Shaped Early North America
