EAS Miscellany sat down recently to chat with John Ryan Fischer, author of “‘The Mississippi Was Our River’: Sauk and Meskwaki Geopolitical Strategies on the Nineteenth-Century Prairie,” our featured article from our Fall 2025 issue. What drew you to focus on the experiences of the Sauk and Meskwaki Nations as they worked to preserve their sovereignty and way of life? My first book was on … Continue reading Interview with John Ryan Fischer
EAS Miscellany encourages educators to integrate articles from our journal into the classroom. As a part of our series “Teaching EAS,” we invite you to use this lesson plan as a model for designing your curriculum and teaching Early American Studies articles. If you would like to create other lesson plans using EAS articles, please download our template here and share your plan with us. Teaching EAS: “In … Continue reading Teaching EAS: Teaching Outside with Black Hawk – Lloyd Alimboyao Sy
Douglas Winiarski’s article, “Revisioning the Shawnee Prophet: Revitalization Movements, Religious Studies, and the Ontological Turn” EAS 22, No. 2 (Spring 2024), is the winner of the 2024 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 … Continue reading Interview with Douglas Winiarski, 2024 Murrin Prize Winner
EAS Miscellany sat down recently with Fall 2024 author Viviana Díaz Balsera to talk about her article, “Light of Egypt Shining from Within: Fr. Gregorio de Movilla and the Tercero Cathecismo for the Timucua (1625).” For a limited time, it’s freely available on Project MUSE. Why did you choose to research your topic? What interested you about the topic? Good luck and a number of … Continue reading Interview with Viviana Díaz Balsera, Author of the Fall 2024 Free Access EAS Article
While reading Bradley’s and Michael’s pieces, I began to realize that as historians of early America we are driven to examine the lives and experiences of our subjects on their own terms while navigating the silences and erasures of the colonial archive. By using nuanced methodologies, we are able to remove the lens of western discourse to shed new light on Native American and African … Continue reading The Language of Symbols and the Unspoken – Sherri V. Cummings
What can we ever truly know about early American lives when their stories are entangled with, in Sherri Cummings’s words, an “apathetic, biased archive”? Researching the “quotidian lives” of African women and girls in the early Atlantic world, Sherri asks challenging questions about lived experience that go beyond the colonial archive’s ability to answer. Both Sherri and Michael Monescalchi also reflect on the necessity of … Continue reading Letters Lost and Found: Silences in the Early American Archive – Bradley Dubos
In the prologue to Facing East from Indian Country, Dan Richter claims that it is nearly impossible for scholars who are interested in recovering disenfranchised persons’ perspectives “to see the world through [the] eyes” of those we study.1 Rather than despair over the archive’s limitations, however, he offers a solution to this problem, arguing that we must try to look over our subjects’ shoulders to “reconstruct … Continue reading “Looking Over Bet’s Shoulders: The Archive and the Albany Arson Plot” – Michael Monescalchi
On December 6, 1811, New York City’s mayor, DeWitt Clinton, stood before the New-York Historical Society (N-YHS) and voiced a prediction: “Before the passing away of the present generation, not a single Iroquois will be seen in this state.” I stumbled on Clinton’s speech while assisting with content research for a history exhibition at N-YHS. The exhibit, Acts of Faith: Religion and the American West, … Continue reading Beyond Myth-busting – Bradley Dubos
Zachary M. Bennett’s article, “‘Canoes of Great Swiftness’: Rivercraft and War in the Northeast” EAS 21, No. 2 (Spring 2023), won the 2023 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 … Continue reading Interview with Zachary M. Bennett, 2023 Murrin Prize Winner
Gustave Lester’s article, “Land, Fur, and Copper: The Union of Settler Colonialism and Industrial Capitalism in the Great Lakes Region, 1815–1842,” EAS 21, No. 1 (Winter 2023), received an honorable mention for the 2023 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 … Continue reading “Native Copper”: Exhibiting Anishinaabe Wealth at the U.S. National Museum – Gustave Lester, 2023 Murrin Prize Honorable Mention
