Liberty Bell, Philadelphia, National Park Service photo This post accompanies “Celebrating the Fourth,” episode 245 of Ben Franklin’s World. At the bottom of the post you can find suggested readings on celebrating independence in the early United States and a special bonus clip from Shira Lurie. The Fourth of July is a noisy holiday. From… Read More
OI Executive Director Karin Wulf’s statement is followed by a statement from Professor Lisa Wilson of Connecticut College, and a statement from the current Council of the Omohundro Institute. Taking Account of Sexual Harassment “I was at an “Institute of Early American History and Culture” (now known as the Omohundro Institute) mixer at the Organization of American Historians annual… Read More
Adopt these strategies when attending the OI 25th annual conference next week (June 13-15) at the University of Pittsburgh and remember to join us on Twitter at #OIAnnual2019. by Carl Keyes (Assumption College) Are you attending your first Omohundro Institute conference and want to get the most out of it? Here are some… Read More
Join Jessica M. Parr for the 2019 THis Camp, “Digital Management for Historians: a system for keeping track of data including syllabi, projects, and research” on Thursday, June 13, 2:00 pm, at the 25th annual OI conference at the University of Pittsburgh. by Jessica M. Parr, Simmons University Like so many things these… Read More
The authors of “Muhammad Kabā Saghanughu’s Arabic Address on the Occasion of Emancipation in Jamaica” (William and Mary Quarterly, April 2019) discuss how they came to collaborate on the piece. Beth: Our collaborative journey began with an unexpected find. I’d traveled to the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland in Belfast to read Sir Lionel Smith’s family papers. The archive included personal… Read More
“A Lady & Children,” mezzotint (1780), British Museum. This post accompanies “Motherhood in Early America,” episode 237 of Ben Franklin’s World. It was originally posted at the Junto and has been lightly revised. Human reproduction is simultaneously unchanged and radically different over time and across cultures. This paradox has preoccupied… Read More
H.E. Hayward and Slave Nurse Louisa, Missouri History Museum, St. Louis, Missouri. This post accompanies “Motherhood in Early America,” episode 237 of Ben Franklin’s World. Mother’s Day offers opportunities to reflect upon motherhood in relation to ethnicity and class. Racial discrimination and poverty mean that a narrow conceptualization of biological motherhood associated with domestic care and nurture is not applicable to all in the past or present. This is especially true when considering the lives of enslaved women, for whom motherhood was a double-edged sword and many of whom endured a complex relationship with mothering. Women knew that their babies held pecuniary value to slaveholders and that they might be forcibly separated from their offspring at any time. Maternal love for children therefore co-existed alongside more ambivalent attitudes towards motherhood among enslaved women who rightly feared that their children might be wrenched away or otherwise fail to survive under the slave regime. Read More
Spoiler: I think yes. But it’s complicated. You may have seen this meme about historians, with “it’s complicated” mocked as the weak battle cry of our profession. I would argue that there is ample demonstration, from contemporary politics to technology, that an appreciation of complexity is newly resurgent. And so it is with vigor, rather than chagrin that I… Read More
The “Joshua Piker” that Joshua Piker’s title is referring to here is not the Editor, author, and noted clothes horse, but rather the one who occasionally appears in the acknowledgments of articles and essays. Often these acknowledgments are for Joshua Piker’s work on essays that were submitted to the William and Mary Quarterly but not published there. Some of… Read More
Historians participate in a lot of conversations about public engagement. Discussions revolve around questions of what it means to engage “the public,” how we should define “the public,” whether authoring op-eds, blog posts, and Twitter threads count as a public history practice, and whether historians do enough to make their work accessible to non-specialists. Read More
Learn more about paleography at our first Transcribathon on Saturday, March 23, 2019, in the Ford Classroom, ground floor of Swem Library, on the campus of William & Mary. We will begin at 11:00 a.m. and continue until 4:00 p.m. Participants are welcome to drop in for an hour or to stay all afternoon. Lunch and snacks will be available. Julie Fisher will lead… Read More
March 5th marked the 249th anniversary of the Boston Massacre. Over the past three weeks, Ben Franklin’s World: A Podcast about Early American History has explored this event and its complicated history with scholars Eric Hinderaker, Patrick Griffin, and Mitch Kachun. In episode 228, “The Boston Massacre,” Eric Hinderaker, distinguished professor of History… Read More