by Edward E. Andrews, Associate Professor of History at Providence College and author of “Tranquebar: Charting the Protestant International in the British Atlantic and Beyond” in the January 2017 edition of the William and Mary Quarterly Read More
Today’s post comes from Geoffrey Plank, professor of History at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. His article “Quakers as Political Players in Early America” appears in the January 2017 edition of the William and Mary Quarterly. I have been studying early Quaker history, with increasing intensity, for more than fifteen years now. When Joshua Piker asked… Read More
by Benjamin L. Carp Publishing in this issue of the William and Mary Quarterly felt like a homecoming for me. When John Demos taught “The Social History of the American Revolution” during my junior year, he assigned Alfred F. Young’s award-winning 1981 article on the shoemaker George Robert Twelves Hewes. Young included a few lines about Hewes’s apparent… Read More
Today’s post comes courtesy of Gabriel Cervantes, author of “Learning from Stephen Burroughs: Republication and the Making of a Literary Book in the Early United States” in the October 2016 issue of the William and Mary Quarterly. by Gabriel Cervantes When I first started working on Stephen Burroughs’s Memoirs, I realized that the narrative uses poetry in clever ways. Read More
Today’s post is from Josh Piker, Editor of the William and Mary Quarterly. There are certain little things about the Quarterly that I will never be able to change. Some of those—like the journal’s cover—I wouldn’t change if I could. Of course, Karin Wulf has made it very clear that, forced to choose between the journal’s cover and its Editor,… Read More
Some Reflections on Vastness and the Word Count by Samuel Fisher, WMQ author (October 2016) I suppose it’s safe to say that the vastness of early America is a bit of a preoccupation in these parts. Big, expansive frameworks are the norm now; that much we know. The hard part comes when we try to actually put them to… Read More
I have been Editor for over two years, and I’ve yet to publish my first issue. I don’t like to rush into things. April 2016’s issue has been out for over five months now, but that wasn’t my first issue. For those of you in the northern hemisphere, July 2016’s issue arrived in your mailbox just as the heady… Read More
(Pictured left to right) Frances Bell, Emily Wells, Kaila Schwartz, Cody Nager, Holly Gruntner, Chris Slaby, Mitch Oxford, and Ravynn Stringfield. Not pictured: Rebecca Capobianco The OI partners with the College of William & Mary’s Lyon G. Tyler Department of History to administer the Editorial Apprenticeship Program. The decades-long program introduces entering graduate students to the practices… Read More
In today’s post, WMQ author Michael D. Breidenbach (July 2016) reflects on the beginning and end of historical writing. by Michael D. Breidenbach An unavoidable task in historical writing is beginning and ending within particular time periods, dates, or moments. But while a published article denotes its end—the publication date—historical writing often does not admit of a beginning. The genesis of an… Read More
by Kirsten Fischer In today’s post, WMQ author Kirsten Fischer (July 2016) delves into her relationship with Reader D and how their interaction ultimately influenced her piece. Powerful intellectual opposition to one’s ideas is a disturbing, provoking, and very useful thing. That’s what I learned from Reader D, the anonymous reviewer who went to great lengths to refute the arguments… Read More
In this week’s post, Keith Pluymers (July 2016) describes the shifts in perspective that led him to reconsider a well-worn topic and ultimately to publish his first piece in the William and Mary Quarterly. by Keith Pluymers In 2013 while on a Mellon Research Fellowship at the Virginia Historical Society, a combination of archival discovery and a fortuitous meeting with a… Read More
by Josh Piker There’s good news and bad news. The good news is that the evidence suggests that potential authors of William and Mary Quarterly articles read my posts and take seriously what I say there. The bad news is that, because of the good news, what I said in one particular post is no longer accurate. Last July,… Read More