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Uncommon Sense

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By Editor April 01, 2025

BJ Lillis

Welcome BJ Lillis, 2025-2026 OI-NEH Postdoctoral Fellow BJ Lillis is an early American historian specializing in the intersections between Indigenous history, Atlantic slavery, and settler-colonial political economy. They are currently the Hench Post-Dissertation Fellow at the American Antiquarian Society, and received their Ph.D from Princeton University in 2024. Their project A Valley Between Worlds: Slavery, Dispossession, and the Creation… Read More

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By Editor April 01, 2025

Patrick Barker

Welcome Patrick Barker, 2025-2026 OI-NEH Postdoctoral Fellow Patrick Barker is an assistant professor of History at Miami Dade College–Hialeah Campus. He received a Ph.D. in History from Yale University in 2023. In 2024, his dissertation—“‘She Would Cut Canes No Longer: Slavery and Everyday Struggle in Trinidad, 1769-1834”—was awarded the Richmond Brown Dissertation Prize from the Southern Historical… Read More

fellowships 4 min read
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By Kaitlin Tonti July 11, 2024

A Folder of One’s Own: Hannah Lawrence Schieffelin’s Life in Poetry

By Kaitlin Tonti (Hollins University) Kaitlin Tonti was the recipient of an Omohundro Institute—Mount Vernon Digital Collections Fellowship in 2018. This post describes the work she undertook as a fellow. You can read more about the project here. During my fellowship at the New York Public Library (NYPL) in the summer of 2018, I stumbled… Read More

fellowships 7 min read
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By Editor April 29, 2024

J.E. Morgan

J.E. Morgan, 2023-2024 OI-NEH Postdoctoral Fellow J.E. Morgan is a historian of gender, race, and sexuality and the intersections of culture and law in the Anglo-Atlantic of the long eighteenth century. Dr. Morgan completed her doctorate in history at Emory University in 2021 and has received research support from the Cromwell Foundation and American Legal Society and the McNeil… Read More

fellowships 2 min read
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By Editor April 26, 2024

Noel Edward Smyth

Welcome Noel Edward Smyth, 2023–2024 OI-NEH Postdoctoral Fellow Noel E. Smyth is an assistant professor of History at Vassar College and is a historian of the Native American South, Afro-Indigenous Caribbean, and the Atlantic World, specializing in Indigeneity, slavery, and settler colonialism. He received his PhD in History from the University of California, Santa Cruz (2016). He has previously… Read More

fellowships 3 min read
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By Editor April 26, 2024

Catie Peters

Welcome Catherine (Catie) Peters, 2024–2025 OI-NEH Postdoctoral Fellow Catherine (Catie) Peters is an interdisciplinary historian of the Caribbean whose research centers on overlapping diasporas, intimacy, and the environment. She received her PhD in American Studies from Harvard University in 2021. Dr. Peters has held postdoctoral fellowships at Yale University and Tufts University, where she has also taught courses… Read More

fellowships 3 min read
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By Editor April 26, 2024

Hannah Abrahamson

Welcome Hannah R. Abrahamson, 2024–2025 OI-NEH Postdoctoral Fellow Hannah R. Abrahamson is Assistant Professor of Latin American History at College of the Holy Cross where she teaches courses on early modern Latin America, Indigenous history, and histories of gender and sexuality. She earned her Ph.D. from Emory University in 2022, which received dissertation awards from the Latin American… Read More

fellowships 2 min read
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By Editor February 15, 2024

Revolutionary Narratives, Part 3

Reconsidering Commemorations at the U.S. 250th This past summer, over twenty OI Associates from the U.S. and Canada rose out of their beach chairs once a week to tune into an OI Coffeehouse on the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. Organized by Maria DiBenigno, Hilary Miller, and Amy Speckart, three members of the Revolutionary… Read More

#VastEarlyAmerica 7 min read
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By Editor February 14, 2024

Revolutionary Narratives, Part 2

Reconsidering Commemorations at the U.S. 250th This past summer, over twenty OI Associates from the U.S. and Canada rose out of their beach chairs once a week to tune into an OI Coffeehouse on the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. Organized by Maria DiBenigno, Hilary Miller, and Amy Speckart, three members of the Revolutionary… Read More

#VastEarlyAmerica 12 min read
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By Editor February 13, 2024

Revolutionary Narratives, Part I

Reconsidering Commemorations at the U.S. 250th This past summer, over twenty OI Associates from the U.S. and Canada rose out of their beach chairs once a week to join an OI Coffeehouse titled “Revolutionary Narratives: Reconsidering Commemorations at the U.S. 250th.” Organized by Maria DiBenigno, Hilary Miller, and Amy Speckart, three members of the Revolutionary Narratives working group,… Read More

#VastEarlyAmerica 9 min read
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By Alex Borucki and José Luis Belmonte Postigo September 26, 2023

A Cuban Angle on the Revolution

By Alex Borucki (University of California, Irvine) and José Luis Belmonte Postigo (Universidad de Sevilla) The authors’ article, “The Impact of the American Revolutionary War on the Slave Trade to Cuba” was published in the July 2023 William and Mary Quarterly. You can read the abstract here. How does the essay relate to your larger project and/or more… Read More

WMQ 8 min read
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PG_A Cuban Angle on the Revolution
By OI July 26, 2023

Emerging Scholars at ASWAD 2023

The OI is pleased to support the attendance of these emerging scholars at the Biennial Conference of the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD) & the Convening of the International Congress of African and African Diaspora Studies (ICAADS), August 2-5, 2023, at the University of Ghana–Legon, Accra, Ghana. The OI is supporting scholars on the… Read More

11 min read
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Recent Posts

April 1, 2025

BJ Lillis

April 1, 2025

Patrick Barker

July 11, 2024

A Folder of One’s Own: Hannah Lawrence Schieffelin’s Life in Poetry

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