#VastEarlyAmerica Archives

By Editor January 11, 2024

"Colonial Anarchy, Indigenous Power" - a lecture by Matthew Kruer

Join us for the 2023-2024 William and Mary Quarterly Lecture by Matthew Kruer (University of Chicago) at 5:00 pm ET on February 6, 2024 in William & Mary’s Blow Hall, room 334. The lecture is titled “Colonial Anarchy, Indigenous Power: ‘Bacon’s Rebellion’ and the Susquehannock Nation.” Reservations are not necessary and seating will be first-come, first-served. Kruer will reexamine… Read More

2 min read

By Karin Wulf July 01, 2021

Blue Sky for the Fourth of July

By Karin Wulf, Executive Director of the Omohundro Institute If there is a year for blue sky thinking—aspirational, bold, and collaborative—this is it. In five years the United States will mark the semi-quincentennial—the 250th anniversary—of its Declaration of Independence. There will be fireworks, there will be speeches, and surely there will be hotdogs. There will also be a host… Read More

AcrossAmerica1776 4 min read

By Holly White October 06, 2020

Reading on Elections in Vast Early America

Want to learn more about elections and voting in early America? We’ve compiled a list of suggested books, articles, and online resources that you might find helpful. We either used these works ourselves for production research or they were suggested by our guests. Happy researching! Books Richard R. Beeman, The Varieties of Political Experience in Eighteenth-Century America Christopher M. Read More

Ben Franklin's World 6 min read

By oieahc March 19, 2020

Researching and Teaching VastEarlyAmerica

The following is a loosely (and necessarily imperfectly) organized set of online resources for researching and teaching about VastEarlyAmerica. We invite you to add suggestions to the list by leaving your comments via the form below or by contacting martha.howard@wm.edu directly. Resources Slavery Studies Freedom on the Move A database of… Read More

#VastEarlyAmericadigital projectsGeorgian Papers Programmeteaching 8 min read

By oieahc September 30, 2019

Introducing Commonplace.online

By Joshua R. Greenberg, editor of Commonplace.online What is it like for a scholar to read the entire back catalog of a publication without a specific research or teaching agenda in mind? For me, it has been like assembling a very complicated jigsaw puzzle. Let me explain. As of September 30th, Commonplace: the journal of early American life has… Read More

7 min read

By oieahc September 18, 2019

A symposium on digitizing #VastEarlyAmerica

by Molly O’Hagan Hardy Next week, The Omohundro Institute will host a group of scholars working in special collections, academia, and grant funding agencies to discuss the past, present, and future of the digitization of the vast early American record. Specifically, the group will focus on the Lapidus Initiative Digital Collections Fellowships, an effort the… Read More

digital projects 7 min read

By oieahc August 30, 2019

County Plats: Evidence of a 17th-Century Virginian Cartographic Culture

by Nathan Braccio Today’s post is courtesy of Nathan Braccio, an Omohundro Institute–Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation fellow. Nathan spent a month in Williamsburg at the OI and Jamestown this summer. During my month in Williamsburg I conducted research for my dissertation, “Parallel Landscapes: Algonquian and English Spatial Epistemologies 1500-1700.” While the bulk of my research focuses on how New England… Read More

fellowships 10 min read

By oieahc August 08, 2019

Teaching the Jerks

Today’s post comes from Doug Winiarski, author of Darkness Falls on the Land of Light: Experiencing Religious Awakenings in Eighteenth-Century New England, published in 2017 by the Omohundro Institute with our partners at the University of North Carolina Press. Winner of the Bancroft Prize and several other awards, it… Read More

teaching 6 min read

By oieahc June 07, 2019

Getting the most out of the 2019 OI annual conference

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

conferences 9 min read

By oieahc June 06, 2019

Data Management for #VastEarlyAmerica

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

conferences 6 min read

By oieahc May 31, 2019

Origins of a collaboration

by Elizabeth A. Dolan and Ahmed Idrissi Alami 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… Read More

WMQ 7 min read

By oieahc May 02, 2019

Must Early America Be Vast?

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

#VastEarlyAmerica 15 min read

"Colonial Anarchy, Indigenous Power" - a lecture by Matthew Kruer

Blue Sky for the Fourth of July

Reading on Elections in Vast Early America

Researching and Teaching VastEarlyAmerica

Introducing Commonplace.online

A symposium on digitizing #VastEarlyAmerica

County Plats: Evidence of a 17th-Century Virginian Cartographic Culture

Teaching the Jerks

Getting the most out of the 2019 OI annual conference

Data Management for #VastEarlyAmerica

Origins of a collaboration

Must Early America Be Vast?

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"Colonial Anarchy, Indigenous Power" - a lecture by Matthew Kruer

Blue Sky for the Fourth of July

Reading on Elections in Vast Early America

Researching and Teaching VastEarlyAmerica

Introducing Commonplace.online

A symposium on digitizing #VastEarlyAmerica

County Plats: Evidence of a 17th-Century Virginian Cartographic Culture

Teaching the Jerks

Getting the most out of the 2019 OI annual conference

Data Management for #VastEarlyAmerica

Origins of a collaboration

Must Early America Be Vast?

Recent Posts

A Folder of One’s Own: Hannah Lawrence Schieffelin’s Life in Poetry

J.E. Morgan

Noel Edward Smyth

Subscribe to the Blog

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