Join us for “Currents and Exchanges in Vast Early America” — the OI 28th Annual Conference at the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina. Co-sponsored with the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World program at the College of Charleston, the… Read More
28th Annual OI Conference “Currents and Exchanges in Vast Early America” The 28th Omohundro Institute annual conference will take place in Charleston, South Carolina, with the support of the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World (CLAW) Program at the College of Charleston from Thursday, June 12 to Saturday, June 14, 2025. The program committee, co-chaired by Joyce Chaplin (Harvard University) and Matthew… Read More
November 12, 2024 at 5:00 pm ET Joseph Clark, University of Kentucky “Witch Hunts in the Tropical Ice Age” Join us at our new offices, 427 Scotland Street, for this session and all following sessions. REGISTER HERE… Read More
by Kevin Dawson As a cultural historian of the African diaspora who employees the paradigms of Atlantic history to trace the cultural traditions of enslaved Africans who were forcibly uprooted and transplanted in the Americas, I was both impressed and inspired by the possibilities digital research offers for adding depth and breadth to our understandings early American history. Scholars… Read More
This post comes to us from James Rice (Tufts University), author of “Early American Environmental Histories” in the July 2018 issue of the William and Mary Quarterly. by James Rice In a recent series of Uncommon Sense posts, Karin Wulf, Ann Little, Anna Mae Duane, and Lynne Withey celebrated the 75th anniversary year of the Omohundro Institute by… Read More
Today’s post, by July 2018 WMQ authors Matthew Mulcahy and Stuart Schwartz, authors of “Nature’s Battalions,” comes in response to the following question: “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 Matthew Mulcahy and Stuart Schwartz Our article “Nature’s Battalions” was born out of our… Read More
Today’s post is by Nathaniel Holly, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at William & Mary. He attended Robert Morrissey’s VastEarlyAmerica lecture at W&M, an annual event that the OI sponsors in conjunction with various departments on campus, on Monday, October 2. Vast in its Vastness: Borderlands Hide Paintings and the Historical Processes of Early America by Nathaniel… Read More
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
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
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
Our series on the roundtables from this summer’s annual conference continues with a post from John Easterbrook. He recently received his PhD from the Department of English at New York University, where he completed his dissertation, “The Political Ecology of Early Anglo-American Writing, 1609-1847.” Our roundtable on “Environment and Agency in Early America” originated with a question posed to… Read More