Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture

Uncommon Sense—the blog

Author Archive

Our History’s Next Generation

· October 14th, 2021 · No Comments

A blog post by Karin Wulf Note: This is the last blog post by Karin Wulf in her role as executive director of the Omohundro Institute. Her final day at the head of the team is today. We congratulate her and wish her the best of luck in her new role as the Director and… Read More »

Blue Sky for the Fourth of July

· July 1st, 2021 · No Comments

By Karin Wulf, Executive Director of the Omohundro Institute If there is a year for blue sky thinking—aspirational, bold, and collaborative—this is it. In five years the United States will mark the semi-quincentennial—the 250th anniversary—of its Declaration of Independence.  There will be fireworks, there will be speeches, and surely there will be hotdogs.  There will… Read More »

What’s New in This New Year

· January 13th, 2021 · No Comments

How the OI Plans to Support You in 2021, Vast Early America By Karin Wulf Welcome to 2021, a year like every other in which we know that the early American past we learn, listen, read, research, speak, teach, view, and write will be incredibly important.  And yet, like the year that’s just ended, that… Read More »

Flexibility is our future

· October 16th, 2020 · No Comments

by Karin Wulf This week I learned, via a paper my son is writing, that the molecules in rubber are polymers, meaning that they are shaped like a chain.  In a resting state those molecules bunch up in a chaotic tangle, but, when you stretch them, like when you stretch a rubber band, the chains… Read More »

Change, COVID-Accelerated.

· September 14th, 2020 · No Comments

By Karin Wulf For the last years the OI team—staff, Board, and Council, with feedback from the community—has been thinking about how to serve ever wider public and scholarly communities.  We have expanded short-term and longer-term fellowship offerings through partnerships.  We have expanded opportunities for students and early career scholars in particular to share their… Read More »

Lost and Found in COVID

· May 21st, 2020 · No Comments

by Karin Wulf My first “update” email to the OI staff about COVID-19 was on Friday, March 13th.  Over the last two months I’ve added to that email regularly in what is now an absurdly long thread, but which I keep going as a reminder of how little time has passed while so much has… Read More »

History in the Time of Coronavirus

· March 30th, 2020 · No Comments

by Karin Wulf Around the world we are experiencing an extraordinary simultaneous crisis. COVID-19, the coronavirus that has caused a pandemic, is affecting people very differently across geography and individual circumstances but we are all in its grip. Here at the OI we are now working fully remotely, our home campus at William & Mary is closed… Read More »