Guest Post: In Memoriam: Michal Jan Rozbicki

November 27, 2019 By The Junto Moderator in In Memoriam Tags: American Revolution, cultural history, history of ideas, In Memoriam, intellectual history, liberty, Michal Jan Rozbicki Leave a comment

In today’s guest post, Cho-Chien Feng, a PhD candidate at Saint Louis University, remembers his late advisor, Michal Jan Rozbicki, and his last book, Culture and Liberty in the Age of the American Revolution (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011). Before Rozbicki began his twenty-seven tenure at Saint Louis University in 1992, he served as Director of the American Studies Center at Warsaw University. His first book on early America, The Complete Colonial Gentleman: Cultural Legitimacy in Plantation America, was published in 1998. He passed away on July 31, 2019.

Professor Michal Jan Rozbicki passed away on July 31, 2019 after retiring from teaching this June. As a student of his, I would like to take this opportunity to revisit his contributions to the early American history and hopefully stimulate some further reflections or conversations. In the summer of 2011, when I went to New York to conduct research for my master’s thesis, I found his book, Culture and Liberty in the Age of the American Revolution, in a bookstore. After reading few pages, I was so attracted by his ideas and viewpoints that I knew I wanted to contact this author and see if I could be his student. That was what I did, and that was how I came to Saint Louis. Continue reading →

Review: Sharon Block, Colonial Complexions

June 20, 2018 By Vanessa Holden in Book Review, Recent Scholarship Tags: colonial newspapers, colonial slavery, Complexion, cultural history, History of Race, history of science, history of the body, indentured servitude, Resistance, runaway, Sharon Block, Slavery 1 Comment

Sharon Block, Colonial Complexions: Race and Bodies in Eighteenth-Century America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018).

Colonial Complextions Cover

At the opening of Colonial Complexions: Race and Bodies in Eighteenth-Century America, Sharon Block poses two provocative questions: “What were the meanings of black, white, and red in the colonial eighteenth century; and how did Anglo-American colonists describe people’s appearance?” (1) To answer these queries Block presents a cultural history race in Britain’s 18th century American colonies. She makes a careful study of the descriptors advertisers and editors used in missing colonial persons adds for runaway African descent and their European and Native American servants. Continue reading →

Review: Coll Thrush, Indigenous London

September 16, 2017 By Sara Georgini in Book Review, Recent Scholarship, Review / Q&A, Special Features Tags: Atlantic History, Atlantic World, Britain, British Empire, cultural history, Dickens, Indigenous, Iroquois, London, Native Americans, Pocahontas, Print Culture, urban history 2 Comments

Review: Coll Thrush, <i>Indigenous London</i>

**Coll Thrush, Indigenous London: Native Travelers at the Heart of Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016).**

Wander through the Museum of London’s rich galleries, glowing with relics and rites of Roman Londinium, and you’ll spot scraps of the city’s wall half-strewn along the route. Burned in bits or eaten by age, the red-and-white brick arches splay out like the broken teeth of empire, grinding a crooked grin in today’s cityscape. Amid the tidy exhibits and visitors’ whirl, it’s a graphic reminder of what London was and how it has weathered so many centuries’ toll. But, as Coll Thrush’s Indigenous London asks us, “The audience of a museum is always / another sort of collection…Indigenous objects, Indigenous eyes—/ Who sees and what is being seen?” (p. 135). For the scholar rescuing clues from the built environment, the wall raises a complex set of research queries: Who passed through the city limits, and why? How did diverse travelers experience urban life at a sensory level? What did it mean for indigenous visitors to sample London? And how can we expand the historical canon of voices who tell that story in the early modern era? Continue reading →

Review: Adam Jortner, Blood From the Sky

July 27, 2017 By Benjamin Park in Book Review Tags: Adam Jortner, book review, cultural history, Early Republic, miracles, Political history, religious history 2 Comments

**Adam Jortner, Blood from the Sky: Miracles and Politics in the Early American Republic (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2017).**

Jortner The role of religion in the early republic has received a fair amount of attention in the recent decades. And though there are competing narratives concerning how ministers and denominations took advantage of the post-revolutionary era—the “Hatchites” arguing that they embraced the democratization and empowered the common man, while the “Butlerites” and “Porterfieldites” emphasizing how leaders capitalized on the fear of a chaotic society—there has been a general point of agreement: religion and politics now took place within a secularized sphere. Expectations of democratic governance led religionists to frame their arguments in a way to match the new republican age. Politics drove religious belief and practice, and not the other way around. Continue reading →

IOTAR50: Paper Politics

June 13, 2017 By Sara Georgini in Historiography, IOTAR at 50, Roundtables, Special Features Tags: 18th Century, 19th Century, Adams, American Historical Association, American Revolution, Archives, Atlantic History, Atlantic World, Benjamin Franklin, cultural history, French Revolution, Harvard, humanities, Jefferson, library, museums, National Archives and Records Administration, pamphlets, Print Culture, Public History, scholarly editing 1 Comment

French Pamphlets, Newberry Library

All praise to the humble pamphlet, upon which *may* rest the ideological origins of the American Revolution. Frequently buried by history as loose “Bundells of Pamphlets in quarto,” it’s a genre that almost shouldn’t be. Printed on flimsy paper and easily battered by salt spray or avid readers, the popular pamphlet became a clutch genre for British and American revolutionaries to send ideas around the Atlantic World. These publications, along with newsbooks, hardened into the “paper bullets,” that, according to scholar Joad Raymond, flew on and off the page in early modern England’s press.

Even as the genre evolved into weekly newspapers, he writes, “readers recognized the rules of the form.” Pamphlet culture, a dynamic arena for anonymous critics to take an eloquent swipe at matters of church and state, quickly blossomed abroad. Unbound and unfettered, pamphlets seeded colonists with a new political consciousness. Whether 10 pages or 50, these slim booklets amplified republican politics and revolutionary prose. Pamphlets, as Robert G. Parkinson observes, became the “lifeblood” of the American Revolution. “They instructed the colonial public that political and personal liberty were in jeopardy because British imperial reformers sought to strip them of their natural rights, especially the right to consent to a government that could hear and understand them,” he writes. Today, let’s look at that instructional aspect of pamphlet culture, and how Bernard Bailyn’s interpretation of revolutionary tracts has reshaped what we do in public history. Continue reading →

Autumn Reads

September 6, 2016 By Sara Georgini in Lists, Recent Scholarship Tags: 18th Century, 19th Century, American Revolution, Archives, Atlantic History, Atlantic World, capitalism, Civil War, Constitution, cultural history, Early Republic, Gender, historiography, Native Americans, New England, Print Culture, Publishing, race, religion, Slavery 4 Comments

Winslow Homer, “The Country School,” 1871

Looks like #VastEarlyAmerica just got even vaster—and that’s a good thing. Here’s our fall preview of new titles. Please share your books/finds in the comments! 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 →

Autumn Reads

August 19, 2015 By Sara Georgini in Lists, Recent Scholarship Tags: 19th Century, Adams, Africa, American Indians, American Revolution, Amistad, Antebellum South, Archives, Atlantic World, braddock, Caribbean, Charleston, Civil War, Confederacy, cultural history, Democracy, Diplomacy, diplomatic history, Early Republic, Founders, French Atlantic, Gender, George Washington, historiography, History of Medicine, Jefferson, John Adams, legal history, London, Methodology, museums, Nat Turner, Native Americans, New England, New York, Pirates, Politics, Print Culture, prisoners, Publishing, Quaker, Quakers, religion, religious history, renaissance, Romanticism, Slavery, southern history, Spanish Empire, theatre, Thomas Jefferson, university press, Virginia, visual culture, War of 1812, Washington Leave a comment

“Valley of the Catawissa in Autumn,” Thomas Moran (ca. 1862)

Fall brings new early American titles to explore. Enjoy our Spring Reads 2015 list, too, and share your finds below!

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Recap: “So Sudden an Alteration” Conference (9-11 April 2015)

April 24, 2015 By Jessica Parr in Conferences Tags: 18th Century, 19th Century, academia, American Revolution, Archives, Atlantic History, capitalism, Conference, conferences, Constitution, cultural history, Digital History, Early Republic, Gordon Wood, legal history, Massachusetts Historical Society, Political history, Print Culture, social history, visual culture, Woody Holton 1 Comment

Two weeks ago, 175 historians descended upon the Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS) in Boston for a three-day conference that considered the political, social, economic, and global parameters of the American Revolution. The conference consisted of eight panels (with pre-circulated papers), two keynotes, and some special presentations on digital projects. The conference proceedings were live-tweeted under #RevReborn2, and fellow Juntoist Joseph Adelman provided some live coverage on the blog. The Junto has also had some post-conference commentaries, including “You Say You Want a Revolution” by Joseph Adelman and “The Suddenness of the Alteration: Some Afterthoughts on #RevReborn2” by Michael Hattem.

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Spring Reads

April 9, 2015 By Sara Georgini in Lists, Recent Scholarship Tags: 19th Century, Abraham Lincoln, Adams, American Revolution, Amistad, Anglo-Dutch, Antebellum South, Archives, Atlantic World, Civil War, Confederacy, cultural history, Early Republic, Founders, French Atlantic, Gender, George Washington, historiography, John Adams, Methodology, museums, Native Americans, New England, New York, photog, Politics, Print Culture, Publishing, Quakers, religion, Romanticism, Slavery, southern history, Spanish Empire, St.Louis, Thomas Jefferson, university press, Virginia, visual culture 5 Comments

Spring_panel_from_the_Four_Seasons_leaded-glass_window_by_Louis_Comfort_Tiffany Here’s our seasonal roundup of new and forthcoming titles. Share your finds below! Continue reading →