Ben Franklin's WorldPage 3
By oieahc November 06, 2018

Doing History: Writing Biography

Today’s post accompanies “Considering John Marshall Part 2,” episode 211 of Ben Franklin’s World and part of the Doing History 3 series. You can find supplementary materials for the episode on the OI Reader app, available through iTunes or Google Play. In prior weeks, Michael McGandy has written about biography from the perspective of a publisher and interviewed numerous historians of early America about why they chose to write biographies. Today, he conducts an in-depth conversation about the process of writing biography with historian and biographer Cynthia Kierner. Read More

Ben Franklin's WorldDoing History 24 min read
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By Michael J. McGandy October 30, 2018

Doing History: Reconceiving Biography

Today’s post accompanies “Considering John Marshall Part 1,” episode 210 of Ben Franklin’s World and part of the Doing History 3 series. You can find supplementary materials for the episode on the OI Reader app, available through iTunes or Google Play. By Michael J. McGandy When asked to consider the prospects for biography, Annette Gordon-Reed and Peter Onuf reflected on their experience researching and writing as a team: But positioning Jefferson in his time and, more importantly for us, in his place, enabled us to see and know his world and the world of his contemporaries a little better. The pay-off for us is in the nuances, in glimpses of the dynamics of family life, in the performance of mastery, in the ways he fashioned himself as a patriarch. Biography can show us the way to good history; a good historical understanding is the prerequisite and justification for a worthwhile biography. The reciprocal relationship that Annette and Peter highlight here is, I think, an important insight. Not only are biography and history connected by processes of research and writing, they are associated with respect to the goals of a “worthwhile biography.” In sum: big-picture history without a fine sense of individual experience is as deficient as is detailed biography that lacks a strong sense of context, place, and pattern. Read More

Ben Franklin's WorldDoing History 33 min read
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By Michael J. McGandy October 23, 2018

Doing History: Arguing Biography

Today’s post accompanies “Considering Biography,” episode 209 of Ben Franklin’s World and part of the Doing History 3 series. You can find supplementary materials for the episode on the OI Reader app, available through iTunes or Google Play. By Michael J. McGandy I am an editor, I admit, who is wary of biography. When a junior scholar working on her first book raises the prospect of writing a biography or a book with a strong biographical line, I sound a note of caution. Are there other ways, I ask, of telling this story? I wonder if the author knows how biography is evaluated in the scholarly community. Frankly, I question, are the virtues of this form worth the manifest danger of putting her career at risk? Read More

Ben Franklin's WorldDoing History 19 min read
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By Holly White October 12, 2018

Happy 4th Birthday, Ben Franklin's World!

This week the Omohundro Institute’s award winning podcast, Ben Franklin’s World: a Podcast about Early American History turned four years old! This made us wonder, how would Ben have celebrated? Turns out his letters might offer us some hints. In 1767, Ben gifted a poem to Mary Stevenson for her birthday: “You’d have the… Read More

Ben Franklin's Worlddigital projects 4 min read
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