Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society
The Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society publishes
articles,
bibliographies, and tools for scholarship within the general area of
American history and culture through 1876. Since the establishment of the
interdisciplinary Program of the History of the Book in American Culture
at the Society, the Proceedings has become an indispensable journal
for
the publication of distinguished new work in this burgeoning field.
The
editor of the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society
welcomes
contributions of articles to be considered for
publication.
Subscriptions cost $45.00 per year.
Many of the articles from
the Proceedings are available as handsomely issued offprints.
Current and Recent Issues
Volume 117, Part 1 (2007)
Contains the Proceedings of the Semiannual Meeting in April 2007, the
Report of the Council, obituaries of recently deceased members, and the following
articles:
-
"Righteous Empire Revisited," by Martin E. Marty.
Pages 37-60.
Martin E. Marty presented the third annual Robert C. Baron Lecture, a
reflection on a seminal scholarly work by a member of the American
Antiquarian Society. Marty reflects on the circumstances that led, some
forty years ago, to a study of .the Protestant Experience in America..
Since that time and his choice of the term "Righteous Empire," the
"Experience" has become less visible and vital, as it necessarily shared
more of its status and influence with its companions inside pluralist
America. Imperial aspirations today emerge from only one wing of
Protestantism, which usually chooses to identify itself in
semi-isolation from its old kin under the name "Evangelical" or Southern
Baptist
Available as offprint number 1027
-
"'May We Put Forth Our Leaves': Rhetoric in the School Journal
of Mary Ware Allen, Student of Margaret Fuller, 1837-1838," by Granville
Ganter and Hani Sarji, Pages 61-142.
A student diary that describes classes with Margaret Fuller at
Providence's Greene Street School provides a glimpse of her influence on
the education of women. In her teaching Fuller brought women writers and
thinkers to the attention of her students and promoted the development
their own writing skills through the keeping of journals. This diary is
a source for studying Fuller's own emerging ideas.
Available as offprint number 1028
-
"Strangers in the House of God: Cotton Mather, Onesimus,
and an
Experiment in Christian Slaveholding," by Kathryn S. Koo. Pages 143-76
Cotton Mather's practical experiment in Christianized slaveholding
represents a significant case study for the examination of the paradox
of slavery as a form of "kinship" in New England. When Mather received
the African whom he named Onesimus, at the beginning of the eighteenth
century, slavery was already well established in New England. Mather had
become something of a public advocate on behalf of all slaves. However,
Mather's efforts to teach Onesimus to read succeeded, his efforts to
convert him to Christianity failed, resulting in the dismissal of
Onesimus from the clergyman's household.
Available as offprint number 1029
-
"Selling Captain Riley, 1816-1859: How Did His 'Narrative'
Become So Well Known?" by Donald J. Ratcliffe. Pages 177-210
James Riley's extraordinary tale of shipwreck, enslavement, and
liberation captivated many American readers in the nineteenth century.
Asking how Riley and his tale became so well known in the United
States — the Narrative may have been a looming bestseller
in
the
middle
months of 1817, but popular interest quickly waned — this essay
examines
claims of sales and readership, finding that these are not the source of
its cultural significance. Popular awareness of Riley and his account of
African geography and portrayal of Islamic and Jewish life was fueled by
extensive press coverage and eventual anthologizing in children's
literature.
Available as offprint number 1030
-
"Nathaniel Coverly and Son, Printers, 1767-1825" by Kate Van
Winkle Keller. Pages 211-52.
This essay — an introduction to a checklist of the imprints of
Nathaniel Coverly, Sr., and Nathaniel Coverly, Jr. — confirms that
these printers
were unable to establish themselves or their businesses in a single
location. But a close examination of the documentary evidence
demonstrates their contributions to the reading material of adults and
children in New England for more than fifty years, from The History
of the Holy Jesus (1770) and the broadsides of 1775 and 1776 to
patriotic songs praising the naval exploits of Boston's own U.S.S.
Constitution in
the War of 1812 and the popular contemporary narrative of The Female
Marine.
Offprint will combine this essay with checklists appearing in part 2
under a single title to be distributed by Oak Knoll Books for AAS as
Printers of Ballads, Books, and Newspapers: Biographical Notes and
Checklists for Nathaniel Coverly, Sr., Nathaniel Coverly Jr., and Joseph
White.
Volume 116, Part 1 (2006)
Contains the Proceedings of the Semiannual Meeting in April 2006, the
Report
of the Council, obituaries of recently deceased members, and the following
articles:
- "Troubled in Mind: The Education of a Historian," by Leon Litwack.
Pages 37-58.
Leon Litwack presented the second annual Robert C. Baron Lecture, a
reflection on a seminal scholarly work by a member of the American
Antiquarian Society. Rather than review the historiography of black
emancipation since the publication of Been in the Storm So Long
(1979), Litwack described how he came to write it, how and why he committed
himself to the writing and teaching of African American history, and the
influences that shaped that commitment more than half a century ago.
Available
as offprint number 1023
- "Jesuits, Huguenots, and the Apocalypse: The Origins of America's
First French Book," by Evan Haefeli and Owen Stanwood. Pages 59-120.
The first French book in North America was printed in Boston in May 1690.
The tract Echantillon de la Doctrine que les Jésuites enségnent aus
Sauvages du Nouveau Monde ["A Sample of the Doctrine that the Jesuits
teach to the Savages of the New World"], was composed by the Huguenot
minister Ezechiel Carré. A preface by Cotton Mather endorses the work, an
exposé of the techniques used by Jesuits in New France to convert Native
Americans to Christianity.
Available
as offprint number 1024
- "The Transatlantic Travels of James Thomson's 'The Seasons' and
its Baggage of Material Culture, 1730-1870," by Louise Stevenson. Pages
121-65
The Seasons, a 5,541-line epic poem by James Thomson (1700-1748) of
Scotland, first published in 1730, became a transatlantic publishing
phenomenon despite its modest literary quality. The author discusses the
widespread popularity of the verbal and visual texts of The Seasons
and
investigates the Whig or republican ideas that accompanied this poem to
America and how the ideas that it promoted were widely spread and
consolidated. Evidence is drawn from decorative arts, paintings and
prints, political theory and philosophy, novels and poetry, newspaper
advertisements, and schoolgirl embroidery.
Available
as offprint number 1025
Volume 116, Part 2 (2007)
Contains the Proceedings of the Semiannual Meeting in October 2006, the
Report
of the Council, obituaries of recently deceased members, and the papers
presented at the 2006 conference of the Program in the History of the
Book in America
"LIBERTY/ÉGALITÉ/INDEPENDENCIA: Print Culture, Enlightenment,
and Revolution in the Americas, 1776-1826." Pages 227-430
- Introduction by Caroline Fuller Sloat, pp. 227-32
- "'We declare you independent whether you wish it or not':
The Print Culture of Early Filibusterism" by David Shields. Pages
233-60
This paper, the 2006 James Russell Wiggins Lecture in the History of the
Book in American Culture, poses the questions of the history of the book
to the history of filibusterism. How did these soldiers of fortune and
partisans of liberty, who exported revolution from the newly United
States to the American territories of Spain, France, England, and the
Native Nations communicate with their adversaries and partisans both
publicly and in secret? The author shows how the texts associated with
the founding of the United States were the model for manuscript writing,
the press, and verbal rumor. He discovers that the operative binary for
these adventurers. appropriation of communication forms was not
public-private, but public-secret.
- "Fear as a Political Construct: Imagining the Revolution
and the Nation in Peruvian Newspapers, 1791-1824" by Mariselle Meléndez.
Pages 261-76
This paper traces how five Peruvian newspapers established between 1791
and 1823 were used by colonial authorities and Creole intellectuals to
promote its own revolution against the backdrop of France and the United
States. Peruvian intellectuals developed their own imaginative
understanding of revolution and freedom from Spain that was finally
achieved early in 1826.
- "Written Constitutions and Unenumerated Rights" by Eric
Slauter. Pages 277-98
This essay suggests some cultural strategies for thinking about the
revolutionary relation of written constitutions and unenumerated rights.
Observing that between the traditional provinces of legal and
intellectual history remains a largely unexplored cultural history of
rights this essay urges taking stock of the range of claims about
natural rights to move beyond the question of their enumeration through
public debates. Attention to the market for political writing in the
period and to the empirical realities of printing can help to assess
period claims for the significance of written constitutions.
- "Print Culture and the Haitian Revolution: The Written and
the Spoken Word" by David Geggus. Pages 299-316
Haiti's revolution, a slave uprising that embodied the ideals of
liberty, equality, and independence, seems removed from the print
culture of the Enlightenment and from the liberal democratic ideology
that it helped to develop. This paper examines a substantial print
archive that has attracted remarkably few historians, including Saint
Domingue's weekly newspapers from 1764 onward, the refugee press of
Philadelphia, and histories of the revolution published in the United
States and France.
- "The Abbé Gregoire and the Atlantic Republic of Letters,s," by
Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall. Pages 317-26
The Abbé Grégoire was a French intellectual, who maintained
relationships with American and Haitian, and South American republicans.
These included Joel Barlow, Thomas Jefferson, Baltimore Archbishop John
Carroll, and leaders of revolutions in Mexico, Haiti and other colonies
in the region. He sought the emergence of a more moderate, and
religiously and racially plural, republicanism, which could blossom in
the New World and then be re-imported to Europe.
- "Writing Back to Empire: Juan Pablo Viscardo y Guzmán's
Letter to the Spanish Americans," by Karen Stolley. Pages 337-52
The writings of the Peruvian Jesuit Viscardo (1748-98) exemplify how key
texts of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century were written,
revised, translated, and disseminated in a complex context of
cross-cultural interpretation and influence. During his life time
Viscardo made repeated efforts to convince sympathizers to intervene on
behalf of Spanish American independence. After his death, his letter,
translated into Spanish and English, continued the quest to mobilize
intervention in South America. This essay interprets Viscardo's letter.
- "Caribbean Revolution and Print Publics: Leonora Sansay and the
Secret History of the Haitian Revolution," by Elizabeth Maddock Dillon.
Pages 353-74
If the Haitian Revolution remained shrouded by its lack of public
knowledge, it was not because published accounts to provide a context
for understanding its status in the Age of Revolutions were lacking. The
novel by Leonora Sansay, titled Secret History, or the Horrors of St.
Domingo (1808), provides a venue for discussion of the theoretical
questions raised by considering works of literature in relation to the
politics of liberty and revolution in Atlantic print culture.
- "Llorente's Readers in the Americas," by Nancy Vogeley. Pages.
375-94
Because independence-minded Mexican leaders remained in their country
after independence, books from Paris and the United States influenced
their thinking about nation-building between 1821 and 1824. Llorente,
aware of Spanish America's Catholic history and Mexican clerical
leadership in the revolt, believed that Mexico needed to mark out
religion's role in the new state structure. This political realist and
historian discovered that decolonization and state planning in the
Americas were natural outlets for his work.
- "Daniel Webster and the Invention of Modern Liberty in the
Atlantic World," by Sandra M. Gustafson. Pages 395-412
Webster's commemorative speeches triangulate between region, nation, and
the revolutionary Atlantic world, with the nation as the central object
of definition. Prior to 1830 proponents of the United States
Constitution were on the offensive internationally, offering it as a
model for republics throughout the Atlantic world. After 1830 those
same proponents were more often on the defensive responding to a shift
brought about by the dialectical emergence of Garrisonian abolitionism
and intensifying Southern secessionism.
- "Closing the Last Chapter of the Atlantic Revolution: The
1837-1838 Rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada," by Michel Ducharme.
Pages 413-30
The Canada Act was intended to stop the dissemination of republican
principles through the creation of Upper Canada (now Ontario) and Lower
Canada (now Quebec). By 1828, reformers rediscovering republican
discourse questioned the legitimacy and the organization of the
political structure.a process that corresponded to the criteria of the
Atlantic Revolution. The unrest, culminating in the 1837-38 rebellions
in both colonies, must be considered as the last chapter of the Atlantic
Revolution, one that did not end happily for Canadian republicans.
Available as offprint number 1026.
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