As the spring semester winds down, Peter J. Olsen-Harbich is also finishing up his first year as the McNeil Center’s new Associate Director with the remit of Academic Affairs. It’s an exciting time for MCEAS, and we at EAS Miscellany wanted to learn more about his work at the Center and in the field of early American studies more generally. Peter graciously took the time to answer some questions posed…
Why did you choose to research your topic? What interested you about the topic? I initially read Hugh Henry Brackenridge’s political satire Modern Chivalry because I am fascinated by literature that is somewhat puzzling, written in a fragmented or meandering style, that is self-reflexive and offers narratives or opinions that need historical contextualization to be understood. I was also drawn to texts of the Early Republic that have a unique…
Why did you choose to research the making of rum in Barbados? What led you to explore the role of Indigenous people and enslaved Africans in the creation of rum? This article is part of a larger project examining the invention of rum and its emergence as a quintessentially Atlantic commodity in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Atlantic world. The project has several inspirations. One was an undergraduate thesis that I…
Why did you choose to research your topic? What interested you about the topic? I came to this research topic while teaching an upper-level undergraduate course on war and violence in early North America. In the class, we spent some time reading a series of articles on the question of whether—or to what extent—Native Americans were subjected to genocide (or a series of genocides) during the period of European and…
EAS Miscellany is featuring an interview with author Zachary Bennett, whose Spring 2023 Early American Studies article, “‘Canoes of Great Swiftness’: Rivercraft and War in the Northeast,” is freely available for the next few months on Project MUSE. Why did you choose to research canoes? What interested you about the topic? My initial interest was in river spaces. I grew up in New England, and after living in other parts…
Emma Hart: Leading the McNeil Center toward the Semiquincentennial and beyond Emma Hart has an exuberance that is infectious. In her second year as the Richard S. Dunn Director of the McNeil Center for Early American Studies (MCEAS), Hart emanates a sense of enthusiasm, readiness, and gratitude regarding her place at the helm of the Center. She is honored to carry on the work that her predecessors began and is…
Rachel Walker’s article, “Facing Race: Popular Science and Black Intellectual Thought in Antebellum America,” EAS 19, No. 3 (Summer 2021), 601-40, won the 2021 Murrin Prize. The Murrin Prize is named for John Murrin (1936-2020), Professor Emeritus of History at Princeton University, who was a scholar of early American history and an active member of the McNeil Center community. The prize is awarded annually for the best article in EAS.…
