We here at The Junto are happy to announce the addition of two new members to the blog!

Nora Slonimsky is a doctoral candidate in history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY) where she studies eighteenth and early nineteenth century trans-Atlantic intellectual property, legal studies, and book history. Her dissertation, “The Engine of Free Expression [?]: The Political Development of Copyright in the Colonial British Atlantic and Early National United States,” focuses on copyright as a conceptual and economic construct. In it, she explores the intersection of literary labor, nationalism, and press regulation with a focus on the role of copyright in the development of political coalitions. She also examines related print-practices such as cartography, seditious libel, authorial authority, and publishing contracts as well as relevant connections between intellectual property and manufacturing, trade agreements, and land speculation. For the 2015-2016 academic year, Nora will be a Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) fellow at Lehman College. She is an active member and former co-chair of the CUNY Early American Republic Seminar (CUNY EARS) and regularly contributes to Teaching United States History.

Christopher F. Minty is currently a Bernard and Irene Schwartz Fellow at the New-York Historical Society and The New School. His research focuses primarily on eighteenth-century political and cultural history. He is interested in the origins and development of the imperial crisis, particularly in New York City. He is also interested in the origins of American political practice, collective biography, print culture, sociability, friendship, and masculinity. He is currently developing his dissertation into a book entitled “United by Association”: Partisanship and the Origins of the American Revolution, which will offer a new interpretation of the coming of the Revolution that emphasizes the importance of partisanship in determining colonists’ allegiances. In addition to The Junto, Chris writes for Borealia, a group blog on early Canadian history. He has also contributed to The JuntoCast, Loyalist Trails, and various projects with the National Library of Scotland. He has taught at The New School, University of Edinburgh, University of Glasgow, and the University of Stirling, and, between 2010 and 2014, he was a Research Assistant at The Papers of Francis Bernard.

We hope you’ll join us in welcoming these two exciting young scholars to The Junto.