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Uncommon Sense

Listening and Learning: Welcoming Liz Covart and Ben Franklin’s World to the OI

We’ve got big news to share. Today we’re welcoming Liz Covart –and Ben Franklin’s World­—to the OI full-time.  Liz is our new Digital Projects Editor, with primary responsibility for the podcast and the many new platforms we’re exploring to highlight outstanding early American scholarship. In January of 2016 we  announced a new partnership with Liz, a series called… Read More

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A Message from Liz Covart

I’m excited to announce that I’ve joined the staff at the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture as its new Digital Projects Editor. Read More

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What if They Gave an Environmental History Workshop and no Environmental Historians Came?

Today's post is by James Rice, Tufts University, Convener of the most recent William and Mary Quarterly—Early Modern Studies Institute (WMQ-EMSI) workshop, “Early American Environmental Histories,” which took place at The Huntington Library, May 19–20. A list of participants and their papers follows his post. Read More

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A short introduction to a very short introduction of IP

Today’s post is a reprint from yesterday’s edition of The Scholarly Kitchen. In it, Karin Wulf reviews the Very Short Introduction to Intellectual Property by Siva Vaidhyanathan (Oxford University Press). Intellectual property is the culmination of brain work:  ideas made manifest are legally defined and protected to variously advance the interests of their creators and the public good. Intellectual… Read More

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Comparing Apples and Oranges, Floors and Ceilings in Digital Scholarship

This post by the WMQ's Josh Piker originally appeared on The Scholarly Kitchen, a blog about "What's Hot and Cooking in Scholarly Publishing."  Read More

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Announcing the Digital Collections Fellowship Recipients

The Omohundro Institute is pleased to announce the 2017 (and first) recipients of the Lapidus Initiative Fellowships for Digital Collections. The purpose of these fellowships is to bring scholars and collections specialists together to digitize, and in turn, make widely available, important early American archival materials. Andrew Sluyter and Lauren Coats will digitize approximately 1400 surveys, housed by… Read More

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History and Institutional Memory

  Exterior, Bruton Parish church It was a bright, hot, beautiful Virginia spring day when we paid our respects to Thad Tate (1924–2017) at Williamsburg’s Bruton Parish Church, his longtime congregation. As Director of the Omohundro Institute (1972–1989), and Editor and Book Review Editor of the William and Mary Quarterly before that, Thad’s formal association with… Read More

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Writing Early American History with Sound

Today’s post is by Liz Covart, the Lapidus Initiative Assistant Editor for New Media and host of Ben Franklin’s World. I’ve been thinking a lot about horses. Specifically, what a Narragansett Pacer mare would have sounded like galloping on a dirt road in mid-April in the dead of night.[1] If I were a bystander, I might hear the… Read More

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Meddling Metals in Early Virginia

Jamestown Rediscovery-Omohundro Institute fellow Karin Amundsen discusses the work she undertook while in Williamsburg last fall. The next round of JR—OI fellowship applications is due April 17.  Read More

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Exciting News from the NEH

National Endowment for the Humanities programs have been incalculably important to the shared understanding of the early American past. We are delighted to announce two successful NEH applications in support of the Omohundro Institute’s programs this year. The OI was awarded grants both for our residential postdoctoral fellowship program and for the Georgian Papers Programme. The OI-NEH Postdoctoral Fellowship… Read More

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Lemon Symposium “Black Revolutionary Thought from Gabriel to Black Lives Matter”

The Omohundro Institute is proud to support the Lemon Project at William & Mary. Lemon Project Fellow Sarah Thomas, Ph.D. candidate in History at William & Mary, brings us this account of the seventh annual Lemon Project symposium. Read More

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That New Book Smell: Early 2017 Edition

Associate Editor Nadine Zimmerli lays bare a usually private OI ritual, in the process asking what's the thing about things? Read More

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