The polls have closed, and the votes are in! With nearly 1,000 votes cast in all the rounds, competition was fierce, but, we finally have a winner in this year’s March Madness tournament. Continue reading
Guest Post: A Recap of Situation Critical!
Today’s post is by John Garcia, a Ford Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the American Antiquarian Society.
“Historians treat theory the way rattlesnakes approach small mammals. They either strike to kill or swallow whole. The latter often amounts to death by citation.”[1] David Waldstreicher’s statement on the problematic status of critical theory in Early American Studies appeared in a 2005 WMQ forum reconsidering the public sphere as a category for analysis. Must historians always view theoretical work through an antagonistic empiricism, or, just as unreflectively, swallow theory whole? Perhaps the tide is turning towards new theoretical engagements, as historians and literary scholars recognize that theories are themselves continually subject to refinement in relation to historical research. A recent conference at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, entitled Situation Critical!: Critique, Theory, and Early American Studies, offered a plethora of keynote lectures and panel presentations surveying older critical models and offering new approaches with which future work in Early American Studies might engage.
Guest Review: Andrew Lipman, The Saltwater Frontier
Today’s guest poster is Bryan Rindfleisch, Assistant Professor of History at Marquette University.
Andrew Lipman, The Saltwater Frontier: Indians and the Contest for the American Coast (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015).
When most people think of European colonization in New England and New Netherland, we think in very terrestrial terms. This familiar narrative includes the fur and wampum trades, treaties and the negotiations over land, and conflicts such as the Pequot War, Kieft’s War, King Philip’s War, and so on. But Andrew Lipman, an assistant professor of history at Barnard College, flips this entire terrestrial story upon its head. He does this with one simple question: “What if we considered this contested region not just as a part of the continent but also as part of the ocean?” In doing so, Lipman recovers the astonishing maritime contexts of seventeenth-century America, where both Indigenous and European peoples encountered, collaborated with, and fought against one another on the water just as much as they did on the land. This, then, is the provocative beginning to Lipman’s Bancroft Prize-winning The Saltwater Frontier: Indians and the Contest for the American Coast (Yale University Press, 2015).[1] Continue reading
Junto March Madness Semi-Final Results and Finals Voting
After a little bit of fun on Friday, it’s back to our regularly-scheduled March (er, April) postings, and the last week of March Madness. Over 150 of you voted to choose finalists in our semi-final; read on to find out who goes head-to-head in the last round! Continue reading
A Junto Announcement!
After nearly three-and-a-half years, we are preparing to move on to the next level. Continue reading
Revisiting New England’s Legal Development: Review of Chandler, Law and Sexual Misconduct
Abby Chandler, Law and Sexual Misconduct in New England, 1650-1750: Steering Toward England (Burlington: Ashgate, 2015).
Between 1650 and 1750, the courts of Maine, Rhode Island, and Essex County, Massachusetts heard 1,843 cases concerning sexual misconduct. These suits, which concerned matters including rape, sodomy, adultery, and sex outside of marriage, are the subject of Abby Chandler’s new book, Law and Sexual Misconduct in New England, 1650-1750: Steering Toward England (Ashgate, 2015). By examining three jurisdictions not previously studied by historians of law and sexuality, Chandler complicates standard narratives of the extent to which New Englanders adhered to English law. She also engagingly reconstructs the familial and neighborhood conflicts that shaped individual cases.[1]
The Significance of Old Historiography in American History
In designing courses, professors and teachers face a number of competing claims for time and attention: skill development appropriate to the level of the course, the content described in the course catalog, campus, system, or state requirements for content, the primary sources and scholarship that will promote the best discussions and consideration of the course topic. As many of us have written here at the Junto, not to mention elsewhere, much therefore ends up on the cutting room floor—and some of it painfully so.
Junto March Madness Elite Eight Results and Final Four Voting
Almost 150 of you voted in this last round of March Madness. Results and final four match-ups are available after the jump! Continue reading
Junto March Madness Elite Eight Voting
Happy Wednesday! Runoff results are in, and it’s time for Elite Eight Voting to begin! Onward! Continue reading
Junto March Madness Sweet Sixteen Results
You guys, when I remarked how unusual it was for there to be a tie in March Madness, that was NOT an invitation to tie a bunch of other brackets. And yet, here we are. Continue reading
The Junto 