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United States historian William Pencak presents thirteen of his essays, written beginning in 1976. Some deal with colonial and revolutionary crowds and communities in Massachusetts - the impressment riot of 1747, the popular uprisings of the 1760s and 1770s, and Shays' Rebellion. Others examine popular ideology in songs and almanacs, and the thought and behavior of George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and the loyalist Peter Oliver. Interpretive essays argue that colonial outage that their participation in the French and Indian War went unrecognized by the British led to the American Revolution; that revolutionary economic thought turned smuggling from a vice into the 'natural law' of free trade; and that focusing on the 'Civil War,' and the years 1861 to 1865, leads to a glorified conception of the national past that is better understood as shaped by 'An Era of Racial Violence' that extended from 1854 to at least 1877.
"A model reference work that can be used with profit and delight by general readers as well as by more advanced students of Twain. Highly recommended." - Library Journal The Routledge Encyclopedia of Mark Twain includes more than 700 alphabetically arranged entries that cover a full variety of topics on this major American writer's life, intellectual milieu, literary career, and achievements. Because so much of Twain's travel narratives, essays, letters, sketches, autobiography, journalism and fiction reflect his personal experience, particular attention is given to the delicate relationship between art and life, between artistic interpretations and their factual source. This comprehensive r...
Scientist, abolitionist, revolutionary: that is the Benjamin Franklin we know and celebrate. To this description, the talented young historian David Waldstreicher shows we must add runaway, slave master, and empire builder. But Runaway America does much more than revise our image of a beloved founding father. Finding slavery at the center of Franklin's life, Waldstreicher proves it was likewise central to the Revolution, America's founding, and the very notion of freedom we associate with both. Franklin was the sole Founding Father who was once owned by someone else and was among the few to derive his fortune from slavery. As an indentured servant, Franklin fled his master before his term wa...
The University of North Carolina Press and the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center at the Pennsylvania State University are pleased to Publish The Journal of the Civil War Era. William Blair, of the Pennsylvania State University, serves as founding editor. Table of Contents for this issue: Volume 1, Number 3: September 2011 Articles Jon Grinspan "Sorrowfully Amusing": The Popular Comedy of the Civil War Joan E. Cashin Trophies of War: Material Culture in the Civil War Era Anne E. Marshall The 1906 Uncle Tom's Cabin Law and the Politics of Race and Memory in Early-Twentieth-Century Kentucky Review Essay Wayne Wei-Siang Hsieh Total War and the American Civil War Reconsidered: The End of an Outdated "Master Narrative" Book Reviews Books Received Professional Notes Barbara Franco Planned Commemorations: Unexpected Consequences Notes on Contributors The Journal of the Civil War Era takes advantage of the flowering of research on the many issues raised by the sectional crisis, war, Reconstruction, and memory of the conflict, while bringing fresh understanding to the struggles that defined the period, and by extension, the course of American history in the nineteenth century.
Red sandstone, lumber, paper, cows, and college students feature prominently in Potsdam. With its selection of two hundred stunning photographs, the book records aspects of life in Potsdam from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s. Located on the Racquette River between the St. Lawrence River and the Adirondack Mountains, the town is one often that were created in 1787 to promote settlement of New York State. Education has played an important role in Potsdam since 1816, when St. Lawrence Academy opened. The success of the academy led to the establishment in 1866 of a normal school, the forerunner of Potsdam College, with its renowned Crane School of Music.
Benjamin Franklin is the model American of an America that we have created. But if we can go beyond our preconceptions of Franklin and the 1776 and 1976 image of America, we can learn something of the truth, as well as the art, of his writings. The essays in this volume evaluate Franklin as a printer, publicist, and travel writer; they probe the structure, style, and organization of his most famous literary works, and assess his place in intellectual history. Taken together, the essays provide an overview of Franklin's attitude, purpose, and significance as a man and as a writer for his own time and for ours; taken separately, they provide valuable insights into what Franklin was and wrote. The first group of essays deals with Franklin's life. The second group of essays treats Franklin as a writer. The last two essays concern Franklins reputation and influence.
This broad-ranging companion brings together respected American and European critics and a number of up-and-coming scholars to provide an overview of Twain, his background, his writings, and his place in American literary history. One of the most broad-ranging volumes to appear on Mark Twain in recent years Brings together respected Twain critics and a number of younger scholars in the field to provide an overview of this central figure in American literature Places special emphasis on the ways in which Twain's works remain both relevant and important for a twenty-first century audience A concluding essay evaluates the changing landscape of Twain criticism
"Incorrigibles and Innocents: Constructions of Childhood and Citizenship in Progressive Era Comic Strips addresses this gap in scholarship, serving as the first sustained examination of the ways childhood was depicted and theorized in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century comic strips. By drawing from and building on histories and theories of childhood, comics and Progressive Era conceptualizations of citizenship and nationhood, Lara Saguisag demonstrates that child characters in comic strips reinforced and complicated notions of who could claim membership in a modernizing, expanding nation"--
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. The electric candle and faux fur, coffee substitutes and meat analogues, Obama impersonators, prosthetics. Imitation this, false that. Humans have been replacing and improving upon the real thing for millennia – from wooden toes found on Egyptian mummies to the Luxor pyramid in Las Vegas. So why do people have such disdain for so-called “fakes”? Kati Stevens's Fake discusses the strange history of imitations, as well as our ever-changing psychological and socioeconomic relationships with them. After all, fakes aren't going anywhere; they seem to be going everywhere. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.
To many observers, folklore and book culture might appear to be opposites. Folklore, after all, involves orally circulated stories and traditions while book culture is concerned with the transmission of written texts. However, as Kevin J. Hayes points out, there are many instances where the two intersect, and exploring those intersections is the purpose of this fascinating and provocative study. Hayes shows that the acquisition of knowledge and the ownership of books have not displaced folklore but instead have given rise to new beliefs and superstitions. Some book have generated new proverbs; others have fostered their own legends. Occasionally the book has served as an important motif in folklore, and in one folk genre - the flyleaf rhyme - the book itself has become the place where folklore occurs, thus indicating a lively interaction between folk, print, and manuscript culture. Solidly researched and venturing into areas long neglected by scholars, Folklore and Book Culture is a work that will engage not only folklorists but historians and literary scholars as well.