Roundtable: A Letter to Dear America

June 5, 2017 By Sara Georgini in Founding Fiction, Roundtables, Special Features Tags: 18th Century, 19th Century, 20th Century, American Revolution, Atlantic History, Atlantic World, Children's literature, Civil War, Early Republic, fiction, Founding Fiction, Gender, historical fiction, Irish, literature, Native Americans, Navajo, New England, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Publishing, religion, Scholastic, Sioux, South Carolina 2 Comments

Today’s Founding Fiction post is by Lindsay M. Chervinsky, a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University. Her manuscript is titled, “The President’s Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution.” Follow her @lmchervinsky.

Each book in the Dear America series portrays a diary of a young fictional woman that explores her experience during one specific year in American history. The first-person account shares observations of well-known events or places, as well as the daily struggles of an “average” girl’s life. A number of these diaries take place in #VastEarlyAmerica. A few examples include A Journey to the New World: The Diary of Remember Patience Whipple, which tells the story of the Mayflower crossing in 1620; The Winter of Red Snow: The Revolutionary War Diary of Abigail Jane Stewart, which shares one woman’s experience in Valley Forge in 1777; and Look to the Hills: The Diary of Lozette Moreau, which examines the struggles of a French slave girl in the New York Colony in 1763. The series was discontinued in 2004, but Scholastic republished many of the originals in 2010 and continues to produce new volumes today. Continue reading →

13 Revolutions +1

June 22, 2016 By Sara Georgini in Digital History, Interview, Public History Tags: 13 colonies, 18th Century, 19th Century, 20th Century, 21st century, academia, Adams, African-American history, American Revolution, American Revolutionary War, Archives, Atlantic History, Constitution, cultural history, Data, DH, Digital History, digital humanities, digital technology, Early Republic, Founders, Franklin, Gender, Independence, Jefferson, law, museums, pedagogy, Popular History, Print Culture, Public History, Publishing, race, religion, research, science and technology, Slavery, Smithsonian Institution, teaching, Technology, UX, Washington Leave a comment

Diego Rivera and Bertram D. Wolfe, “Portrait of America,” 1934

When John Adams looked back on the American Revolution (something he liked to do), he reflected that, “The Revolution was in the Minds and Hearts of the People.” The colonists’ drive to independence marked a new era of American history, Adams thought, when “Thirteen Clocks were made to Strike together; a perfection of Mechanism which no Artist had ever before effected.” Scholars have struggled to frame the experience of the Revolution in picture and on the page. How can we use digital tools to curate collections of revolutionary culture and #vastearlyamerica for use in the classroom?

Today, The Junto chats with Darren Milligan, Senior Digital Strategist at the Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access, about the Smithsonian Learning Lab, which encourages us to make, use, and share new galleries of history. Continue reading →

Guest Post: Racial Violence and Black Nationalist Politics

August 18, 2015 By Jessica Parr in Guest Posts Tags: 19th Century, 20th Century, African-American history, Black Nationalism, Guest Posts 3 Comments

Guest poster Keisha N. Blain (@KeishaBlain) is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Iowa. She is a regular blogger for the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS). She is currently completing her first book entitled, Contesting the Global Color Line: Black Women, Nationalist Politics, and Internationalism. This post shares some additional insights into the racial violence Benjamin Park discussed following the Charleston shooting.

Members of the UNIA in Harlem, 1920s. Image: Black Business Network

Someone recently asked me why the black women activists I study were so determined to leave the United States. It was a question I had been asked many times before. As I often do, I explained the complex history of black emigration, highlighting how these women’s ideas were reflective of a long tradition of black nationalist and internationalist thought. I acknowledged the romantic utopian nature of these women’s ideas. However, I also addressed the socioeconomic challenges that many of these women endured and explained how the prospect of life in West Africa appeared to be far more appealing—especially during the tumultuous years of the Great Depression and World War II. I spoke about black women’s ties to Africa and the feelings of displacement many of them felt as they longed for a place to truly call home. It was the same feeling of displacement to which the poet Countee Cullen alluded when he asked a simple yet profound question: “What is Africa to me?”

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