Happy Mother’s Day! Consider our gift to the mothers amongst our readership to be the following links, links, and more links… Continue reading
Tag Archives: Benjamin Franklin
The Week in Early American History
Happy Sunday! With the excitement from March Madness still ringing through the halls at The Junto, we look forward to bringing you more great content on a wide range of issues in early American history in the coming weeks (including an interview with Mike Jarvis, our champion!). In the meantime, let’s head right to this week’s links!
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The History Carousel, Episode 2: Historical Fathers and Junto Dads
Today’s episode, “Historical Fathers and Junto Dads,” features Joseph Adelman, Christopher Jones, Ben Park, and Rachel Herrmann discussing historical ideas about fatherhood in early America, and the challenges of being dads in academia. Continue reading
The Week in Early American History
Here are your early American history headlines… Continue reading
The Week in Early American History
The Week in Early American History
Are you looking for a break from a busy weekend of watching the NFL playoffs? Or maybe you need some light relief while finishing up your syllabi for the new semester? Never fear, The Week in Early American History is here!
(All I’ll say is that it’s not because I’m British that I’m angry at the Patriots this weekend.)
On with the links! Continue reading
The Week in Early American History
I may be imagining things, but it seems that every time I take a turn with TWEAH there’s a major weather event going on outside my window. That may not be the case, but this edition comes to you with the first New England snow of the season. So if you’re stuck inside this morning, or just back from shoveling, take a few minutes to make a hot drink and see where The Junto may lead you.
Reptiles of America
Thanks to the Comte de Buffon’s comprehensive Natural History, every European in the eighteenth century knew that the American environment was conducive only to degeneration. Still, Buffon admitted, “though Nature has reduced all the quadropeds of the new world, yet she has preferred the size of reptiles, and enlarged that of insects.” As his Dutch colleague Cornelis de Pauw put it, giant insects and venomous snakes “so unhappily distinguish this hemisphere” from the more hospitable side of the Atlantic.[1] Leaving aside insects for the moment, reptiles—and especially serpents—have always had a powerful symbolic valence. In the American context, the ambivalent use of the reptile shows up some of the complex relationship between the colonists’ natural world and their political imagination.
The Week in Early American History
Thanks to the United States Congress, it’s been a good week for the Founders—or a bad one, depending on your point of view. Continue reading
Colonial Adventures in England: The Benjamin Franklin House
On a cold and wet May Friday in London, I decided to take refuge from the weather by stepping back into the eighteenth century. While serving as agent for the colony of Pennsylvania (and others), Benjamin Franklin lodged in a small dwelling on Craven Street, now just behind Charing Cross station and a short walk from Parliament. Though Franklin’s lodgings were originally misidentified (to the extent that a commemorative plaque was placed on the wrong house!), the original building still stands. Now the only surviving Franklin home in the world, the house is the home of the “Benjamin Franklin Historical Experience,” dedicated to telling the story of “the first American embassy.” Continue reading
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