Winter Reads

December 3, 2014 By Sara Georgini in News, Recent Scholarship, Uncategorized Tags: 19th Century, Abraham Lincoln, American Revolution, Atlantic World, capitalism, Civil War, Constitution, cultural history, Early Republic, Gender, George Washington, Native Americans, Politics, Popular History, Print Culture, Publishing, race, religion, Slavery 8 Comments

Just in time for your holiday shopping list, here’s our preview of new titles—share your finds in the comments! Continue reading →

George Robert Twelves Hewes and the Politics of Historical Pedagogy

November 5, 2014 By Benjamin Park in Roundtables, Special Features, The Legacy of Alfred F. Young Tags: Alfred F. Young, American Revolution, Boston Tea Party, cultural history, historical memory, historiography, Roundtable, social history 1 Comment

How does an ordinary person win a place in history?

Such is the line that Alfred Young opened his classic The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999). In a way, the phrase captures much of his overall scholarship. Other contributions to this roundtable have/will cover(ed) how he did this in his influential books, essays, and edited collection. In my post, I want to focus on how he translated his approach into a work that is probably read more than any of his other books. Indeed, Shoemaker and the Tea Party is a popular book in the classroom, both undergrad and graduate, since it tells a fascinating tale with an important message. Continue reading →

Making the Adams Papers

September 26, 2014 By Sara Georgini in From the Archives, Public History Tags: American Revolution, Archives, cultural history, Digital History, documentary editing, Early Republic, Gender, John Adams, Methodology, Print Culture, scholarly editing 18 Comments

Nearly a quarter of a million manuscript pages, and almost fifty volumes to show for it: As we mark the 60^th anniversary of production at the Adams Papers editorial project, here’s an inside look at our process, from manuscript to volume. Continue reading →

Autumn Reads

August 5, 2014 By Sara Georgini in Lists Tags: 19th Century, Abraham Lincoln, American Revolution, Atlantic World, Civil War, cultural history, Early Republic, Gender, Native Americans, Politics, Popular History, Print Culture, race, religion, Slavery 7 Comments

1992.12_SL1 Here’s our fall preview of new titles—share your finds in the comments! Continue reading →

Guest Post: The Decline of Barbers? Or, the Risks and Rewards of Quantitative Analysis

July 23, 2014 By Sara Damiano in Guest Posts, Methodology Tags: capitalism, cultural history, Early Republic, Gender, men's grooming, Methodology, quantitative analysis, race 6 Comments

Today’s guest post is authored by Sean Trainor, a historian of the early American republic with an interest in the intersection of labor, popular culture, and the body. He is a PhD candidate in History and Women’s Studies and Pennsylvania State University, where his dissertation examines the history of men’s grooming in the urban United States between the turn of the nineteenth century and the American Civil War.

A few weeks ago, I finished compiling a database, long in the works, containing the names and addresses of all of the barbers in the cities of Boston, Cincinnati, and New Orleans between 1800 and 1860. Thrilling, I know, but the project has broader implications for historians interested in the intersection of quantitative and cultural history which, if you’ll bear with a brief exposition, I’ll discuss below.

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Taking Print from Print Culture & Leaving the Public Sphere Behind

May 23, 2014 By Al Zuercher Reichardt in Historiography, Opinion Tags: cultural history, Jürgen Habermas, Methodology, newspapers, Print Culture, Public Sphere 13 Comments

Or how to make a causal argument about print, media, and communication in the eighteenth century

This post began as a brief response to Tom’s recent piece on the public sphere and to the conversation it generated in the comments section. As it turns out, brevity is not my strong suit, and I’ve got a few bones to pick. So all cards on the table: I’m more than a little invested in the importance of communication; I have a hard time watching print be stripped of its mechanistic or causal role; and I don’t believe we can possibly ever argue that changes in media didn’t cause social and political change.[1] Continue reading →

Connecting the Past with the Present: A Trip to the Grocery Store

December 16, 2013 By Rachel Herrmann in Academia, Pedagogy Tags: academia, cultural history, field trips, food history, pedagogy 3 Comments

I think it’s important for historians to try to make connections with the present, not only because it more thoroughly engages students, but also because the past is not static. I haven’t always been great at explicitly drawing these parallels, but when the first day of the U.S. government shutdown coincided with my first Revolutionary America class, I sort of lost it. I thought to myself, “I have to go into class prepared to talk about how people in thirteen disparate colonies—some of whom disliked each other immensely—managed to get it together enough to rebel against Great Britain?” It’s no wonder I ended up showing a pop music video and comparing the Revolution to the bad breakup of a dysfunctional relationship.[1] I assume that a teensy bit of pandering to students’ tastes didn’t hurt, either. Continue reading →

Everyday Connections of Colonial Economies: Conference Recap

October 29, 2013 By Sara Damiano in Conferences Tags: capitalism, Cathy Matson, conferences, cultural history, economic history, Gender, PEAES, Philadelphia, The Library Company 5 Comments

In our writing and teaching, we often refer broadly to “the early American economy,” suggesting that various systems of production, consumption, and exchange formed a collective whole. But what were connections that bound together this early American economy? Fifteen presenters—and a large and engaged audience—considered this question at the Program in Early American Economy and Society’s annual conference at the Library Company of Philadelphia on October 24^th and 25^th.

The conference title, “Ligaments,” referenced the connections and linkages that gave shape to the early modern economy. As PEAES director Cathy Matson explained in her introduction, the conference assembled some of the many scholars who are currently examining “ordinary, pragmatic economic connections” and using their investigation of these seemingly mundane topics to shed light on “big ideas” and longstanding questions. Continue reading →

Guest Post: Weather Talk

October 10, 2013 By Roy Rogers in Guest Posts, Historiography Tags: climate, cultural history, environment, environmental history, guest post, weather 9 Comments

Today’s guest post comes from Cambridge Ridley Lynch, a PhD student at the Graduate Center, CUNY. She is currently working on a project that links American weather study with larger shifts in American science and politics.

Thomas Cole - The Oxbow

In their recent recap of the MCEAS’ “Traces of Early America” conference, Sara Damiano and Michael Blaakman spoke of the need to examine “processes, events, ideas, and dynamics that subsequent history has largely obscured, and that often pose significant evidentiary problems for those who wish to write about them.” Clearly, the work presented at the conference did much to flesh out adumbrations left throughout the historical record, often by focusing on close reading of specific events, personages, and texts. But what about a factor that is so ubiquitous so as to hardly be thought of at all, one that every single person in a historical moment and place experiences at the same time, and yet goes largely unremarked upon in historical texts? Naturally, I’m talking about the weather. Continue reading →

Locating the Literati: Charles Brockden Brown in Philadelphia

September 26, 2013 By Jonathan Wilson in Methodology Tags: Charles Brockden Brown, cultural history, intellectual history, literary scholarship, local history, Philadelphia, Print Culture, printers, Public Sphere, Publishing, reading, William Godwin 5 Comments

It’s hard to write about early American print culture or intellect without thinking a lot about geography. Scholars like Trish Loughran, Richard John, John Fea, John Brooke, and Mary Kelley have suggested, in all sorts of ways, that it’s often wise to understand “the” early American public as a web of fundamentally local reading and writing publics. Intellectual culture meant something different from what it means in an age of mass media. But tricky questions come up when you try to write a local history of ideas or culture. Just how local can we reasonably go? How much detail can we actually use in an intellectual map of the early United States without getting lost in coincidences and irrelevance?