WMQPage 7
By Kirsten Fischer August 17, 2016

How I learned to stop worrying and love Reader D

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

WMQ 6 min read
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By Keith Pluymers August 03, 2016

An old topic made new--iron in America

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

WMQ 7 min read
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By Josh Piker July 14, 2016

Summertime Blues: A Retraction.

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

WMQ 4 min read
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By Josh Piker July 06, 2016

The Need for Speed

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

WMQ 13 min read
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By Justin Roberts May 19, 2016

Familiar Sources and Forgotten Colonies

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

WMQ 7 min read
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By Josh Piker May 10, 2016

The Five-Reader Problem

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

WMQ 11 min read
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By Josh Piker May 03, 2016

“Coming Home”

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

WMQ 9 min read
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By Susanah Shaw Romney April 28, 2016

5,000 more words

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

WMQ 6 min read
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Daen_To Board & Nurse a Stranger_ALL
By Miles P. Grier April 19, 2016

No Second Fiddle

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

WMQ 9 min read
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By Emma Hart March 15, 2016

The “offal” difficulties of writing readable economic history

WMQ author (January 2016) Emma Hart looks at the difficulty of writing economic history. (She also kicks it off with a pretty good pun. How often does “offal” get to feature in jokes of any kind?) After two decades in the business, I realize that my historical interests are not the most popular preoccupations, even among specialists. I’m fascinated by… Read More

WMQ 7 min read
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By Christopher Parsons March 01, 2016

Ginseng's stimulating effect

In today’s post, WMQ (January 2016) author Christopher Parsons reflects on how the editorial process he went through with the article pushed him to reframe his understanding of the key players in the story—including the leafy one. by Christopher Parsons I know more about ginseng than I ever thought that I would, and I suspect that many of my friends and family… Read More

WMQ 7 min read
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By Josh Piker January 21, 2016

Getting Lost

Is the WMQ really in danger of “losing its way” as Gordon Wood says it is? Josh Piker looks at just what we mean when we talk about #VastEarlyAmerica and responds to that charge. Karin’s yearlong tour through #VastEarlyAmerica will be fascinating to follow, and I am very much looking forward to the conversations that ensue.  With those dialogues and debates… Read More

WMQ 15 min read
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