Nick Popper, BRE
Today’s post comes from Nick Popper, new Book Review Editor at the William and Mary Quarterly. The first reviewers of William Robertson’s landmark 1777 History of America tended towards rapturous praise. In June of that year, a review appeared in both the Scots Magazine and the Monthly Review exclaiming that “From the close of the fifteenth century we date the… Read More
Welcome Carolyn Arena, new OI-NEH Fellow
Carolyn Arena is a historian of the Atlantic World, focusing on histories of native peoples in the Americas and slavery. Dr. Arena is the 2017-2019 National Endowment of the Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow at the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. Prior to joining the Omohundro Institute, she completed her PhD at Columbia University with funding from Foreign… Read More
Welcome the 2017 Scholars' Workshop
The 2017 Scholars’ Workshop has convened in Williamsburg. Thanks to the Lapidus Initiative, six scholars are braving the heat to work on book and article projects with the OI’s editorial staff. Zack Dorner is a lecturer in history at Stanford University. He is working on a chapter from his book project on the globalization of British medicines in… Read More
Getting the iTunes Feature
iTunes promoted Ben Franklin’s World as a featured podcast the week of July 3, 2017. This was quite special for an independent, non-celebrity hosted podcast and since the feature appeared, many have asked me both how I got iTunes to feature Ben Franklin’s World and what the feature meant for its download statistics. These are great questions and as the Omohundro Institute strives to help scholars further the reach and impact of their work by getting their scholarship in front of the right audience, I’m happy to share the answers. Read More
When Did America Really Become Independent?
Eliga Gould is Professor of History at the University of New Hampshire and the author most recently of Among the Powers of the Earth: The American Revolution and the Making of a New World Empire. When I teach the American Revolution, I often ask my students, when did the United States become independent? The conventional… Read More
Transitions at the OI: Au Revoir, Brett
Today is the end of our fiscal year, as anyone who has been getting and reading our encouragement to make a gift to the OI Associates knows. For non-profits, that end of the fiscal year is an important moment to take stock of our resources and to make firmer commitments for the coming year. We are immensely grateful to… Read More
Listening and Learning: Welcoming Liz Covart and Ben Franklin’s World to the OI
We’ve got big news to share. Today we’re welcoming Liz Covart –and Ben Franklin’s World—to the OI full-time. Liz is our new Digital Projects Editor, with primary responsibility for the podcast and the many new platforms we’re exploring to highlight outstanding early American scholarship. In January of 2016 we announced a new partnership with Liz, a series called… Read More
What if They Gave an Environmental History Workshop and no Environmental Historians Came?
Today's post is by James Rice, Tufts University, Convener of the most recent William and Mary Quarterly—Early Modern Studies Institute (WMQ-EMSI) workshop, “Early American Environmental Histories,” which took place at The Huntington Library, May 19–20. A list of participants and their papers follows his post. Read More
A short introduction to a very short introduction of IP
Today’s post is a reprint from yesterday’s edition of The Scholarly Kitchen. In it, Karin Wulf reviews the Very Short Introduction to Intellectual Property by Siva Vaidhyanathan (Oxford University Press). Intellectual property is the culmination of brain work: ideas made manifest are legally defined and protected to variously advance the interests of their creators and the public good. Intellectual… Read More