As the new semester nears and The Junto moves ever closer to entering its third(!) year, we are extremely pleased and proud to announce two additions to our lineup of contributors. 

Our first new member is Mark Boonshoft. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in early American history at Ohio State University, where he also co-organizes the Ohio Seminar in Early American History and Culture. Mark’s dissertation traces the development of educational and cultural institutions in the mid-Atlantic and upper South from the First Great Awakening to the early nineteenth century. He has published an article in New York History and has a forthcoming article in the Journal of the Early Republic. Mark has written two guest posts for The Junto, including the memorable “WFAN” post on the role of sports in popular historical thinking and, most recently, one on strategies for teaching undergraduates political parties and alignments in the early republic. Mark has also been a guest panelist on The JuntoCast, contributing to an episode on the Great Awakening.

Our second new member is Emily Merrill. Emily is a PhD candidate in the History Department at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on issues of gender and military history in the British Atlantic world during the 18th century and her dissertation is entitled, “Judging Empire: British Military Courts and the Politics of the Body.” You may remember her recent guest post that “excited” Seth Rockman by using the court martial of a British army officer during the 1780s to explore relationships between class privilege, the judicial system, and incarceration.

We are happy to welcome Mark and Emily as regular contributors and full-fledged Juntoists, with all the rights and privileges pertaining thereto. We hope you’ll join us in both welcoming these two exciting junior scholars to the blog and looking forward to their contributions to the blog and the field of early American history.