The 2nd annual Omohundro Institute Scholars’ Workshop began July 5. As last year, six untenured scholars are gathered at the OI for two weeks of intensive discussion, editing and meetings with the OI’s publications team. Each scholar also has the option to stay in Williamsburg and continue to work for up to two weeks after the workshop ends. Read More
by WMQ Editor Josh Piker At the risk of invoking one of my many least favorite Tom Cruise movies—or, as a quick Google search informs me, what looks to be a more recent (but even more uninspired) movie based on a video game—I’d like to talk for a minute about the need for speed. Last year, I blogged about my… Read More
by Alexandra Finley I originally encountered the name Omohundro during my first year of graduate school, when I was an editorial apprentice at the Institute. During our training, then-director Ron Hoffman met with the apprentices to tell us the history of the organization, including how it came to be the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. Dr. Read More
by Karin Wulf Over the years people have wondered about the name “Omohundro.” Many have asked about the derivation of the name itself and about why the OI carries the name. But there are always questions, too, about how the Omohundro name might be connected to the early Virginia economy that was dependent on the exploitation of enslaved people. Read More
Gentlemen in Jacobean London were fascinated by Virginia and its inhabitants. They pranced before King James dressed like “Virginians” with feathers entwined in their hair. They wrote poems that compared the rapture of discovering their mistress’ body to the glory of exploring the “New-found-land”. They invested in the Virginia Company, and when it went bankrupt,… Read More
Ashli White (University of Miami), recently completed a short-term fellowship at the Omohundro Institute. In today’s post, she outlines her research project and talks about what she found while here. by Ashli White I arrived to the Institute at the beginning of this month to conduct some research for my project that explores the political, social, and cultural history of objects… Read More
Washington DC and the University of Maryland, 2–5 June, 2016 Traduttore, traitore; translatio studii; translatio imperii. The matter of translation is central to the study of the histories, literatures, and cultures of the early Americas, where speakers of indigenous, Indo-European, African, and Asian languages negotiated what words meant and who had the power to wield them. From nuanced accommodations… Read More
WMQ author Justin Roberts reflects on the unexpected route that led him to the article on British plantation management in Barbados that appears in the April issue. by Justin Roberts As I was writing my first book about British Atlantic plantation management in the late eighteenth century, I found myself burrowing back further in time with my research questions. As I… Read More
by Josh Piker It will, I suspect, come as no surprise to hear that the relationship between authors and those scholars who serve as readers for article manuscripts is an ambivalent one. I try to recruit five readers’ reports for each essay that goes out for peer review. A not insignificant part of my job consists of finding ways… Read More
Fissiparous. Centrifugal. Pluralization. A-synthetic. Comes to find that when I blog about #vastearlyamerica, my inbox fills up with fifty-cent words. Each of those words captures potential consequences of the expansive nature of our field. Fragmentation, dispersal, diversity, scale, incoherence. I’ve been hearing a lot about these topics since “Getting Lost?” was posted a few months… Read More
In today’s post, WMQ author Susanah Shaw Romney (April 2016) answers the following: “WMQ articles are capped at 10,000 words (plus notes). If you had 5,000 more words to play with, how would the article be different?” by Susanah Shaw Romney This article started out as a paper I submitted to the WMQ-EMSI Workshop on Women in Early America. The paper I wrote then… Read More
In today’s post, WMQ author Miles P. Grier (January 2016) reflects on the editing process at the William and Mary Quarterly and how his background as a literary scholar affected that experience. I ain’t gonna play no second fiddle / Cause I’m used to playing lead —Perry Bradford by Miles P. Grier In a 2008 Forum, published simultaneously in… Read More