A blog post by Karin Wulf Note: This is the last blog post by Karin Wulf in her role as executive director of the Omohundro Institute. Her final day at the head of the team is today. We congratulate her and wish her the best of luck in her new role as the Director and… Read More
by Karin Wulf This week I learned, via a paper my son is writing, that the molecules in rubber are polymers, meaning that they are shaped like a chain. In a resting state those molecules bunch up in a chaotic tangle, but, when you stretch them, like when you stretch a rubber band, the chains sort themselves into clean… Read More
by Karin Wulf My first “update” email to the OI staff about COVID-19 was on Friday, March 13th. Over the last two months I’ve added to that email regularly in what is now an absurdly long thread, but which I keep going as a reminder of how little time has passed while so much has changed. We also opened… Read More
Today the OI joins with its publishing partner for books, the University of North Carolina Press, in a limited agreement for our books to appear in the Internet Archive’s National Emergency Library. We do this as a good faith effort to engage with the… Read More
by Karin Wulf Around the world we are experiencing an extraordinary simultaneous crisis. COVID-19, the coronavirus that has caused a pandemic, is affecting people very differently across geography and individual circumstances but we are all in its grip. Here at the OI we are now working fully remotely, our home campus at William & Mary is closed and classes have moved… Read More
By Karin Wulf The 1619 Project continues to attract a lot of readers and responses. On March 6 the editor of the New York Times Magazine, Jake Silverstein, and the principal author of the New York Times 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones, convened scholars at the Times Center for a conversation centered on one of the issues that has been most provocative: slavery and American Revolution. I… 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
by Karin Wulf 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… Read More
This article was originally published in the Winter 2019 issue of Humanities magazine, a publication of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Some of the images used in the article are under copyright and appear only on the NEH’s site. by Karin Wulf American history courses usually begin with the peopling of the Americas, then move on to European colonization and the… 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
by Karin Wulf Why be a joiner? Don’t make me pull out that de Tocqueville quote about the importance of voluntary associations in civil society. Besides, it’s not necessary to quote a tourist in early nineteenth-century America to observe a truism: organizations bring people and their talents together. The Omohundro Institute has a single mission: to support early American… Read More
The Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture is delighted to announce that Catherine E. Kelly begins this month as our Editor of Books. Her appointment brings the OI’s books program into an exciting new era. Its deep traditions and reputation for excellent scholarship are a vital foundation for the innovations we seek to foster and support. Read More