Tag Archives: colonial
The menace of golf in 1659 New Netherland
In 1659, residents of Fort Orange and Beverwijck lodged a series of formal complaints “against the practice of playing golf along the streets.” Hackers and duffers no doubt posed the biggest menace, but even the most skilled of golfers could … Continue reading
The Jamestown Colony, Donald Trump, and the Problem of Patriarchal Leadership
*Edward Maria Wingfield’s 1607-08 presidency of the Jamestown Colony might lend insight to PEOTUS Donald Trump’s refusal to divest from his business holdings Last semester’s Colonial America class inevitably spent some time thinking about the Jamestown Colony, especially the struggles … Continue reading
Positive reinforcement
Just the other day, FedEx dropped off a lovely envelope from Early American Studies, and inside were copies to EAS 13.3, where my first full-length article appears. I last wrote about this project when submitting the piece–I held off updates when … Continue reading
Catching up: a big post on summer reading
So I’ve been not updating this lately because I’ve been doing other writing, and I know nobody is likely going to read this massive post, but oh well, I want to do some catch-up with bits I’ve written here and … Continue reading
Reading about home
I suppose I live in Virginia now, huh? That’s not entirely why these are my two most recent reads, but it maybe had at least a small influence. At any rate, it was fun to see Fredericksburg, Stafford County, the … Continue reading
Early summer (academic) reading
My brain may have been majorly dysfunctional for a week or so after the semester ended, but I find reading a good way to ramp my activity back up again. I’ve tackled THE STACK. Actually, Newman wasn’t on the stack because … Continue reading
Wildly unrealistic summer reading plans
Yeah that’s right. It’s just not going to happen. And frankly, I made myself stop pulling books I’ve not yet read from the shelf and adding them to the stack, but there are more I’d like to be there, and … Continue reading
“William Penn was not a terrorist.”
So the title of this post comes from a half-joking suggestion about an alternative title for “From Conquest to Identity: New Jersey and the Middle Colonies in the Seventeenth Century,” the McNeil Center’s recent conference held in Trenton, NJ. Imagine my surprise … Continue reading
Unwieldy bodies of work
It’s a semi-interesting odyssey, and pretty typical of my usual process, in which I write way too much to make a point, and wind up hacking and chopping and eventually trimming it all down to something more manageable. (Though often … Continue reading
Diplomatic metaphors in Pennsylvania
Back in September, I gave a paper at the American Society for Ethnohistory’s annual meeting, in New Orleans. That marked my return to the conference circuit after a protracted (and frankly, probably irresponsible) absence, and I was more than a … Continue reading
