Roundtable: Telling the Story of the Declaration

June 2, 2017 By Sara Georgini in Founding Fiction, Roundtables, Special Features Tags: 18th Century, Adams, African-American history, American Revolution, Archives, Benjamin Franklin, Children's literature, Declaration of Independence, George III, Hancock, John Adams, literature, manuscripts, Mary Katherine Goddard, National Archives, National Archives and Records Administration, Print Culture, Thomas Jefferson, Warren 1 Comment

Today’s Founding Fiction post is by Emily Sneff, Research Manager of the Declaration Resources Project at Harvard University. The mission of the Declaration Resources Project is to create innovative and informative resources about the Declaration of Independence. To learn more, follow @declarationres.

How do we get kids to read and comprehend the Declaration of Independence? Great authors and illustrators can transform the characters, events, and text of the Declaration (which, as you may expect, registers at about a 12th grade reading level) into true stories that are both entertaining and educational for younger readers. On the Declaration Resources Project’s blog, Course of Human Events, we recently interviewed authors Barbara Kerley (Those Rebels, John & Tom), Steve Sheinkin (King George: What Was His Problem? The Whole Hilarious Story of the American Revolution), and Gretchen Woelfle (Answering the Cry for Freedom: Stories of African Americans and the American Revolution). Their books, and a few other favorites, form an exciting non-fiction reading list for children and young adults. Continue reading →

Roundtable: Making Teen Girls into Women’s Historians

June 1, 2017 By Sara Georgini in Founding Fiction, Roundtables, Special Features Tags: Abigail Adams, Adams, African-American history, American Revolution, American Revolutionary War, Ann Rinaldi, Boston Massacre, Children's literature, Civil War, fiction, Founding Fiction, Hemings, John Adams, John Brown, literature, Native American history, Patrick Henry, Paul Revere, Peggy Shippen, Phillis Wheatley, Publishing, Salem, Salem Witch Trials, Tecumseh, Thomas Jefferson, Virginia, women, women's history, Young adult literature 11 Comments

Welcome to Founding Fiction, The Junto’s first roundtable exploring how children’s literature and young adult fiction depicts early American history. Between posts, we’ll compile a shelf of favorites to (re)read. Tweet us at #FoundingFiction or comment with your recommendations for Very Early Americanists. Happy summer, let’s dive in!

Today’s post is by Laura Ansley, Ph.D. candidate in history at the College of William & Mary, and managing editor of the Nursing Clio blog. Her dissertation is titled, “Life Problems: Sex Education in the United States, 1890-1930.” Follow her @lmansley.

Phillis Wheatley and Abigail Adams and Peggy Shippen and Harriet Hemings: all early American women whom I learned about from Ann Rinaldi’s young adult fiction. I have been fascinated by history for as long as I can remember, but Rinaldi was one of many authors who helped me to better understand what the best kind of historical study is. While school classes covering the Civil War may have talked about generals and battles, Rinaldi introduced me to characters like Osceola, stepdaughter of Wilmer McLean, who moved his family away from Manassas when the war came to the quieter Appomattox Courthouse—meaning the war started and ended on their doorstep. With her focus on teenage heroines, Rinaldi showed that history wasn’t only about important men. Young women experienced these historical events too, and their stories were also worth telling.
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The Sacred and the Secular in Early National Virginia

June 2, 2016 By Roy Rogers in Commentary, Opinion, Recent Scholarship Tags: American Revolution, Eighteenth Century, historiography, religion, religious freedom, Thomas Jefferson, Virginia, Virginia's Statute for Religious Freedom 6 Comments

Is revolutionary Virginia the birthplace of American secularism?

My attention was returned to this critical question by a recent twitter exchange between Annette Gordon-Reed and Sam Haselby (and others) along side a recent piece by Haselby in Aeon.[1] The scuffle between Gordon-Reed and Haselby focuses on the time-is-a-flat-circle question of Thomas Jefferson’s religious beliefs. Was he a secularist? Some variant of Christian? A Unitarian? An atheist? Haselby’s Aeon piece takes a different tack, arguing that the American founding represented a “rogue wave of rationality in a centuries-long sea of Protestant evangelising, sectarianism and God-talk.” Haselby marks out the Founders—particularly Jefferson and James Madison—as “visionary secularists” who created a secular republic, which was eventually co-opt by decidedly non-secular political and cultural forces. He singles out late eighteenth-century Virginia as the primary canvas upon which the great artists of American secularism worked.[2] Continue reading →

Alternative Fractions

December 9, 2015 By Joseph M. Adelman in Methodology Tags: counterfactual history, Election of 1800, elections, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson 8 Comments

AdamsJefferson Earlier this week historian Rebecca Onion published an essay in Aeon arguing that historians should take more seriously the concept of counterfactuals. Though often derided by professional historians, Onion argues quite effectively that such an approach to the past can force us to reconsider our assumptions about what actually did happen and ask new and perhaps even more creative questions about the past.

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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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Historians Attend Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton: An American Musical

August 7, 2015 By Christopher F. Minty in Commentary, Opinion, Public History Tags: Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton, Angelica Schuyler, Anthony Ramos, Bill of Rights, Christopher Jackson, Daveed Diggs, Eliza Hamilton, Eliza Schuyler, Founding Fathers, George Washington, Great White Way, Groffsauce, Hamilton: An American Musical, Hercules Mulligan, History, How do you get tickets for Hamilton?, How to get tickets for Hamilton, James Madison, Jasmine Cephas Jones, John Laurens, Jonathan Groff, King George III, Leslie Odom Jr., Lin-Manuel Miranda, Maria Reynolds, Marquis de Lafayette, Musicals, New York Times, Okieriete Onaodowan, Peggy Schuyler, Philip Hamilton, Phillipa Soo, Renee Elise Goldsberry, Richard Rodgers Theater, Showbiz, The Public Theater, Thomas Jefferson 13 Comments

This post was written by Christopher Minty and Nora Slonimsky, who, many moons ago, woke up early on a Sunday morning to purchase tickets to the opening-night preview performance of Hamilton: An American Musical, which took place on July 13, 2015, at the Richard Rodgers Theater in New York City. This post was originally posted on July 19, 2015. It was removed as a courtesy to the show’s creative and promotional teams. It has been reposted with significant alterations and additions.

hamilton_FB Hip-hop is on Broadway, not just in a popular YouTube video. On Monday, July 13, 2015, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hit off-Broadway musical, HAMILTON, made its debut on the big stage. On August 6, 2015, rebranded as Hamilton: An American Musical, a much-applauded, diverse cast returned to perform in the official opening of a much larger, hopefully long-running production at the Richard Rodgers Theater.

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The Week in Early American History

April 26, 2015 By Casey Schmitt in The Week in Early American History Tags: American Revolution, Andrew Burstein, Benjamin Franklin, C.A. Bayly, digitized databases, Elizabeth A. Fenn, Harvard Libraries, James Boswell, Kenneth E. Carpenter, Pulitzer Prize, Rebecca Onion, Roger Williams, Slate, The Vault, Thomas Jefferson 1 Comment

TWEAH

Welcome to another The Week in Early American History! Take a break from the end-of-semester crunch to check out the unprecedented unification of the four surviving Magna Carta manuscripts or to a look at the tree root that ate Roger Williams. On to the links! Continue reading →

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 →

Guest Post: Bastard out of Nevis: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Hamilton”

February 25, 2015 By The Junto Moderator in Commentary, Film, Guest Posts Tags: Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton, drama, Founders, Guest Posts, Hamilton: An American Musical, James Madison, John Adams, Lin-Manuel Miranda, race, theatre, Thomas Jefferson 4 Comments

We are pleased to feature a guest post from Benjamin Carp (@bencarp), the Daniel M. Lyons Professor of American History at Brooklyn College, CUNY. Carp is the author of both Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America and Rebels Rising: Cities and the American Revolution.

“I want the historians to respect this.” –Lin-Manuel Miranda, according to Ron Chernow

Alexander Hamilton, by John Trumbull (after painting by Giuseppe Ceracchi, 1801); National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; Gift of Henry Cabot Lodge

In the lobby of the Public Theater, two statues flanked the doorway—the likenesses of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr stretched out their arms and aimed their dueling pistols at one another, and it was hard not to feel as if I was standing in the middle. Lin-Manuel Miranda, the son of Puerto Rican immigrants, wrote the musical Hamilton and stars in the title role. He portrays the first Secretary of the Treasury as a “bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman” and an immigrant striver made good; throughout his career, Hamilton is arrogant about his talents but perpetually insecure about his place. As told by Miranda, Hamilton is both self-made and self-unmade, wry and seductive and yet constantly raging against anyone who might hold him back. Continue reading →