We’re very excited to announce that Casey Schmitt has accepted an invitation to become The Junto‘s newest contributor. 

Casey is a PhD candidate in History at the College of William & Mary. She holds an MA in history from the University of Utah, where she wrote an excellent thesis on the British Asiento, illicit trade, and the limits of empire in the eighteenth-century Caribbean, focusing specifically on the conflict surrounding the War of Jenkins’ Ear and the siege of Cartagena de Indias. An article based on that research entitled “Virtue in Corruption: Privateers, Smugglers, and the Shape of Empire in the Eighteenth-Century Caribbean,” is forthcoming in Early American Studies. Casey’s current research looks at the circulation of knowledge between slaveholders of different empires in the greater Caribbean of the seventeenth century, particularly on the codification of slave law. She has authored two guest posts at The Junto, the first on the value of storytelling and the use of primary source audiobooks in the classroom and the second on the benefits and drawbacks of large, comparative projects for graduate students and young scholars.

We’re happy to have Casey aboard, and look forward to her future contributions here at the blog and to the larger field of early American history. Please join us in welcoming Casey!