Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture

Uncommon Sense—the blog

Archive for the ‘Ben Franklin’s World’ Category

Making the Personal Historical: Reflections on Pregnancy and Birth

· May 9th, 2019 · No Comments

This post accompanies “Motherhood in Early America,” episode 237 of Ben Franklin’s World. It was originally posted at the Junto and has been lightly revised. by Lindsay M. Keiter Human reproduction is simultaneously unchanged and radically different over time and across cultures. This paradox has preoccupied me since 2017, when I carried and gave birth… Read More »

The Double-Edged Sword of Motherhood Under American Slavery

· May 7th, 2019 · 8 Comments

This post accompanies “Motherhood in Early America,” episode 237 of Ben Franklin’s World. by Emily West Mother’s Day offers opportunities to reflect upon motherhood in relation to ethnicity and class. Racial discrimination and poverty mean that a narrow conceptualization of biological motherhood associated with domestic care and nurture is not applicable to all in the… Read More »

Podcasting History in Public

· April 3rd, 2019 · No Comments

Historians participate in a lot of conversations about public engagement. Discussions revolve around questions of what it means to engage “the public,” how we should define “the public,” whether authoring op-eds, blog posts, and Twitter threads count as a public history practice, and whether historians do enough to make their work accessible to non-specialists. These… Read More »

Ben Franklin’s World Wraps Up Three-Part Mini-Series on the Boston Massacre

· March 20th, 2019 · No Comments

March 5th marked the 249th anniversary of the Boston Massacre. Over the past three weeks, Ben Franklin’s World: A Podcast about Early American History has explored this event and its complicated history with scholars Eric Hinderaker, Patrick Griffin, and Mitch Kachun. In episode 228, “The Boston Massacre,” Eric Hinderaker, distinguished professor of History at the… Read More »

The Curious World of Benjamin Franklin: Hans Sloane, the British Museum, and an Asbestos Purse

· February 28th, 2019 · 1 Comment

Emily Sneff is a graduate student in early American history at William & Mary and a Digital Apprentice at the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. This post appeared originally on georgianpapersprogramme.com. There is an object in the British Museum that was bought from Benjamin Franklin. A small asbestos “purse.” With only these… Read More »

A Hamilton-Inspired Playlist from Ben Franklin’s World

· December 5th, 2018 · No Comments

Since its Broadway premiere in 2015, Hamilton: An American Musical has taken the world by storm. For many who have seen Hamilton, the undeniable star of the show is not the young, scrappy, and hungry title character or his tempered frenemy Burr, but the resplendent George III. The sardonic king interjects at three different points… Read More »