At the For 2026: Revolutionary Legacies conference in October 2022, four scholars gathered to discuss the long-term impact of Benjamin Quarles’s scholarship: Adam X. McNeil (Rutgers University), Rebecca Brannon (James Madison University), Derrick Spires (Cornell University), and Michael Dickinson (Virginia Commonwealth University). They shared stories about their first encounters with The Negro in the American… Read More »
In this installment of interviews with OI Book authors about the Semiquincentennial, Hannah Farber discusses marine insurance—a topic that seems below the surface but that nonetheless had a significant impact on the Revolution and American independence. Her 2021 book, Underwriters of the United States: How Insurance Shaped the American Founding, navigates a cast of financial… Read More »
With this post, Uncommon Sense inaugurates a planned series of conversations with OI book authors about how their work relates to the American Revolution. It is one of the ways in which the OI is contributing to the Semiquincentennial, the commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026. In its eight… Read More »
by Catherine E. Kelly This week, we will launch the first of three online OI Author Conversations scheduled for the current academic year. Featuring scholars whose books are forthcoming or recently published, this series will open up the research, writing, and thinking that go into making a polished product. Unlike even the best book talks,… Read More »
We asked OI author Allison Bigelow (Mining Language: Racial Thinking, Indigenous Knowledge, and Colonial Metallurgy in the Early Modern Iberian World) if she wanted to write a post about her new book. Rather than talk about what prompted her interest in the book’s topic, or her writing process, or publication experience, she decided to focus… Read More »
By Lindsay Chervinsky In the preface to You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington, Alexis Coe emphasizes that she is the first woman in many decades to write a cradle-to-grave biography. A modern take on the Washington biography genre is certainly welcome—if there are thousands of books on Washington, the vast majority… Read More »
Today’s post is by Andrew Newman, author of Allegories of Encounter: Colonial Literacy and Indian Captivities, published in January 2019 by the Omohundro Institute with our partners at the University of North Carolina Press. It is available in paperback. by Andrew Newman The image on the right is a copper engraving from a 1725 Amsterdam edition of… Read More »