by M. Scott Heerman In this post, WMQ author M. Scott Heerman discusses what he would have done with a larger word limit for his article, “Abolishing Slavery in Motion: Foreign Captivity and International Abolitionism in the Early United States,” in the April 2020 issue. Through September 30, you can read this article for free on the OI… Read More
In this post, WMQ author Jenny Shaw recounts how she came to research and write the story of Susannah Mingo for the April 2020 issue. Through September 30, you can read this article for free on the OI Reader. We will close the beta period of the OI Reader on October 1. After that, all… Read More
In this post, WMQ author Tamara Plakins Thornton recounts how she came to understand eighteenth-century globes and how that changed the way she needed them illustrated for her article in the April 2020 issue. Through September 30, you can read this article for free on the OI Reader. We will close the beta period of the OI Reader… Read More
...The new version of the OI Reader will be accessible via your desktop computer as well as other devices and will allow us to create digital content more easily than before. It will also have a feature of particular use to all the Very Odd Ducks of #VastEarlyAmerica: accurate (and stable) citation information readily available for every word. Read More
by Molly O’Hagan Hardy Molly O’Hagan Hardy’s article “Archives-Based Digital Projects in Early America” appeared in the July 2019 issue of the William and Mary Quarterly. If this article succeeds, it is because the composition of it, like the projects it describes, are the result of back and forth, give and take, what we often call “collaborative” production but… Read More
Allan Greer reflects on his experience publishing his piece “Settler Colonialism and Empire in Early America” in the July 2019 edition of the William and Mary Quarterly. The July edition includes the forum “Settler Colonialism in Early American History,” edited by Jeffrey Ostler and Nancy Shoemaker. by Allan Greer, McGill University For authors, one of the great attractions… Read More
by Joshua Piker, editor of the William and Mary Quarterly Traditionally, of course, if there’s a season for cleaning, it is understood to be spring, not summer. But for a variety of reasons, spring here at stately Quarterly manor—aka, the basement of Swem Library—was devoted to the more elemental task of keeping my head above water amidst the rush of… Read More
by Joshua Piker, Editor of the William and Mary Quarterly Those of you who have read my blog posts over the last five years know that I believe wholeheartedly in transparency in the publication process. I’ve blogged about manuscript submission numbers, the seasonal fluctuation of those numbers, the time a manuscript spends in peer review, rejection rates, and the… Read More
by Nicholas Radburn and Justin Roberts, co-authors of “Gold Versus Life: Jobbing Gangs and British Caribbean Slavery” in the April 2019 issue of the William and Mary Quarterly A question that we were frequently asked while writing our WMQ essay on jobbing gangs was “what is co-authorship like?” That we were asked this question so often highlights… Read More
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
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
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