Connecting Peer Review and Pedagogy in the Classroom
by Edward E. Andrews, Associate Professor of History at Providence College and author of “Tranquebar: Charting the Protestant International in the British Atlantic and Beyond” in the January 2017 edition of the William and Mary Quarterly Read More
Homesick for the Quarterly
by Benjamin L. Carp Publishing in this issue of the William and Mary Quarterly felt like a homecoming for me. When John Demos taught “The Social History of the American Revolution” during my junior year, he assigned Alfred F. Young’s award-winning 1981 article on the shoemaker George Robert Twelves Hewes. Young included a few lines about Hewes’s apparent… Read More
Clarifying the purposely obscure
Today’s post comes courtesy of Gabriel Cervantes, author of “Learning from Stephen Burroughs: Republication and the Making of a Literary Book in the Early United States” in the October 2016 issue of the William and Mary Quarterly. by Gabriel Cervantes When I first started working on Stephen Burroughs’s Memoirs, I realized that the narrative uses poetry in clever ways. Read More
Jamestown, Peru?
Today’s post comes from Christopher Heaney, Assistant Professor, Penn State, 2016-2018 Barra Postdoctoral Fellow, McNeil Center for Early American Studies, and WMQ author (October). “Do we really need a ‘Peruvian Atlantic’ … ?” asked Reader B. For the sake of my argument, I couldn’t help but agree. The original subtitle of what became my essay in this fall’s issue of the… Read More
The Notes You Don’t Play
Some Reflections on Vastness and the Word Count by Samuel Fisher, WMQ author (October 2016) I suppose it’s safe to say that the vastness of early America is a bit of a preoccupation in these parts. Big, expansive frameworks are the norm now; that much we know. The hard part comes when we try to actually put them to… Read More
My First Issue
I have been Editor for over two years, and I’ve yet to publish my first issue. I don’t like to rush into things. April 2016’s issue has been out for over five months now, but that wasn’t my first issue. For those of you in the northern hemisphere, July 2016’s issue arrived in your mailbox just as the heady… Read More
Beginning and Ending with Footnotes
In today’s post, WMQ author Michael D. Breidenbach (July 2016) reflects on the beginning and end of historical writing. by Michael D. Breidenbach An unavoidable task in historical writing is beginning and ending within particular time periods, dates, or moments. But while a published article denotes its end—the publication date—historical writing often does not admit of a beginning. The genesis of an… Read More
How I learned to stop worrying and love Reader D
by Kirsten Fischer In today’s post, WMQ author Kirsten Fischer (July 2016) delves into her relationship with Reader D and how their interaction ultimately influenced her piece. Powerful intellectual opposition to one’s ideas is a disturbing, provoking, and very useful thing. That’s what I learned from Reader D, the anonymous reviewer who went to great lengths to refute the arguments… Read More
An old topic made new--iron in America
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
Meet the 2016 Scholars' Workshop
The 2nd annual Omohundro Institute Scholars’ Workshop began July 5. As last year, six untenured scholars are gathered at the OI for two weeks of intensive discussion, editing and meetings with the OI’s publications team. Each scholar also has the option to stay in Williamsburg and continue to work for up to two weeks after the workshop ends. Read More