The Junto is happy to present the second episode of “The JuntoCast,” our new monthly podcast featuring Juntoists discussing issues related to early American history, academia, pedagogy, and public history.
In our second episode, Kenneth Owen, Michael D. Hattem, Roy Rogers, and Eric Herschthal use the recent MCEAS conference, “The American Revolution Reborn,” as a springboard to launch into a discussion on questions of periodization, Atlantic and global contexts, the limits of “republicanism,” and the value of recovering “lived experience.”
You can click here to listen to the mp3 in a new window or right-click to download and save for later. You can also subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.
Note: Please bear with us. The first few episodes will be experimental as we try to find the best method for recording a podcast with 3 or 4 participants, all in different locations. The podcast will appear at least once per calendar month and the length of the podcast will likely vary anywhere from fifteen to forty-five minutes. In addition, we will be introducing “Meet The Juntoists,” a series of much briefer podcasts in which a Juntoist talks about his or herself and their past and current work. These will appear in-between regular podcast episodes. As always, any feedback will be greatly appreciated, including suggesting future topics to be covered.
The Junto 
Thanks again for another great cast. I like the discussion on periodization because, of course, simply the act of thinking about setting limits on a “time of revolution” introduces a number of new questions and concerns. I think this cast did a great job of at least touching on some of these questions, like marking the “end” of the American Revolution with 1789 because the Constitution fundamentally altered the context of the revolutionary political discussion, as well as talking about issues like Colin Calloway’s upcoming article about a much longer revolutionary experience among Shawnees. The Atlantic perspective to me has always seemed to defy periodization of any sort because of its massive scale and the need to make everything “fit.” Thus quite arguable dates for a “beginning” and “end” are set without as strong an basis as the 1789 end date for the American Revolution.
A better approach, in my opinion, was articulated in Karen Halttunen’s “Grounded Histories: Land and Landscape in Early America,” (William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 68, No. 4 (October 2011), pp. 513-532). While it is mostly about spacial and environmental history, it inevitably led to a discussion about “microhistories” like William Cooper’s Town or A Midwife’s Tale. The Atlantic as a whole is ever present in work like this and historical experiences are rooted in the much larger trans-national experience, but this approach can easily account for local or regional variation and change while providing strong evidence to periodize the Age of Revolution. Oddly, going smaller in the Atlantic World seems like the best way to understand the massive context surrounding perhaps unknowing participants.
Love the casts, keep it up!
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