Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society
Volumes 108-111
Volume 111, Part 1 (2001)
Contains the Proceedings of the Semiannual Meeting in April 2001, the
Report of the Council, obituaries of recently deceased
members, and the following articles:
-
Portraits in the Collection of the American Antiquarian
Society by Lauren B. Hewes.
Edited by Caroline F. Sloat and Katherine St. Germaine;
foreword by Ellen S. Dunlap;
notes and acknowledgements, Georgia B. Barnhill and Caroline Sloat;
"Portraits as Documents: Historical and Humanistic Reflections" by Linda
J. Docherty; "The Most Distinguished Ancient Worthies of Our Country" by
Lauren B. Hewes.
Available as a separately
published book
Volume 111, Part 2 (2001)
Contains the Proceedings of the Annual Meeting in October 2001, the
Report of the Council, Report of the Treasurer, obituaries of recently
deceased
members, index to the volume, and the following articles:
- "George Bancroft: Master Historian" by George Athan Billias.
Pages
507-28.
Bancroft's ten-volume History of the United States from the Discovery
of
the Continent contains an inherent contradiction. This essay explores
Bancroft's attempts to reconcile two contradictory points of view--the
universality of human nature and his belief that nations developed their
own distinctive values or ethos. Bancroft seemed to want it both
ways: Americans shared a common human nature with all others, and yet they
became something quite different historically. How could this be?
Available as offprint number 997
- "Prophets, Publics, and Publication: The Case of
John
Brown" by Richard H. Brodhead. Pages 529-51
Few people in all of American history have been so profoundly identified
with the prophetic as John Brown. Prophetism has led a vigorous life in
this country in religion and politics from the earliest days and shows no
signs of waning now. American prophetism has also found a major outlet for
its energies in artistic creation, particularly in literature. At the
intersections of prophetism and print, this communications medium and this
form of selfhood come into collision: if in one modality prophetism is
hostile to print, in another it is in love with it, and seems to wish
nothing so much as to seize this medium and make it its own.
Available as offprint number 998
Volume 110, Part 1 (2000)
Contains the Proceedings of the Semiannual Meeting in April 2000, the
Report of the Council, obituaries of recently deceased
members, and the following articles:
- "To be 'Read by the Whole People': Press, Party, and Public Sphere in
the
United States, 1789-1840" by John Brooke. Pages 44-118.
Was the press in the early and antebellum republics adequate to the
task
of imparting sufficient political information to the American
people? Identifying broad patterns, the essay proposes a general crisis in
political communications in the 1830s. The configuration of party, press,
public sphere, and popular audience changed in very different ways and at
such different rates in the various regions making up the antebellum
United States that one has to ask whether the nation was comprised of
fundamentally different political systems.
Available as offprint number 991
- "The Meanings of Blindness in Nineteenth-Century America" by Ernest
Freeberg. Pages 119-152.
The blind men and women who entered special schools were not simply
passive recipients of a new charity. They actively shaped these
institutions, sometimes in ways unanticipated by their sighted
benefactors, and carved out a cultural space for themselves by publishing
their life stories. Through these personal narratives, the blind began for
the first time to define the meaning of blindness for themselves.
Available as offprint number 992
-
"Separated at Birth: Text and Context of the Declaration of
Independence" by Thomas Starr. Pages 153-199.
This essay analyzes the evolution of the iconic text of the Declaration of
Independence. The printed document issued by the Continental Congress that
was circulated to the colonies for reading was soon recast as a
manuscript, divorcing the text from its context in print
culture. Calligraphic form has portrayed the content of the Declaration so
convincingly that it has taken on a life of its own, but in visual rather
than verbal terms, and the implications of this form of representation are
explored here.
Available as offprint number 993
Volume 110, Part 2 (2000)
Contains the Proceedings of the Annual Meeting in October 2000, the
Report of the Council, Report of the Treasurer, obituaries of recently
deceased
members, index to the volume, and the following articles:
- "The Enduring Fascination with Salem Witchcraft."
Opening Remarks by John B. Hench;
"Mysteries, Memories and Metaphors: The Salem Witchcraft Trials in the
American Imagination" by Gretchen A. Adams;
"Archival, Testimony: Poetry And The Salem Witch Trials" by Nicole Cooley;
Comment by
Jill Lepore;
"Dutch New York and the Salem Witch Trials: Some New Evidence" by Evan
Haefeli; "Coming to Terms with the Salem Witch Trials" by John M. Murrin.
Pages 253-348.
Available as offprint number 994
- "Epochal Change: Print Culture and Economics" by Richard
Ohmann. Pages 349-376.
The book publishing industry changed dramatically from the 1960s on. A
series of mergers and takeovers eventually made trade books for the most
part a product of media conglomerates. This transformation accompanied a
broader one: the larger, stable, "Fordist" corporations that had dominated
the American economy since 1900 gave way after 1970 to agile companies,
most of them multinational, that exhibit much greater flexibility in
product design, labor strategies, and marketing. Trade book publishing
neatly instances the shift from one epoch to another in the history of
capitalism.
Available as offprint number 995
- "Forefathers' Day Orations, 1769 1865: An Introduction and
Checklist" by Udo J. Hebel. Pages 377-416.
The first comprehensive checklist of Forefathers' Day orations documents
the cultural significance of Plymouth anniversary festivities during the
time of their hightest visibility in revolutionary, early national, and
antebellum America. It includes hitherto uncatalogued items and identifies
speeches previously not recognized as Forefathers' Day addresses. The
recovery of orations given at celebrations outside of New England may
support reconsiderations of Forefathers' Day as a site of national
American memory between the Revolution and the Civil War.
Available as offprint number 996
Volume 109, Part 1 (1999)
Contains the Proceedings of the Semiannual Meeting in April 1999, the
Report of the Council, obituaries of recently deceased
members, and the following articles:
Volume 109, Part 2 (1999)
Contains the Proceedings of the Annual Meeting in October 1999, the
Report of the Council, Report of the Treasurer, obituaries of recently
deceased
members, index to the volume, and the following articles:
Volume 108, Part 1 (1998)
Contains the Proceedings of the Semiannual Meeting in April 1998, the
Report of the Council, obituaries of recently deceased
members, and the following articles:
- "Origins and English Predecessors of the
New England Primer" by Gilliam Avery. Pages 19-47.
The early history of the New England Primer is one of the most complex of
bibliographic problems. The creator of the NEP is traditionally held to be
London bookseller Benjamin Harris, but no edition earlier than 1727 has
survived. Viewing it in context with its English contemporaries and
predecessors, it is now possible to add a little about its origins and
identify the source of the famous rhymed alphabet and also the probable
author of the dialogue between Christ, Youth, and the Devil.
Available as offprint number 978
- "Beggars and Books" by Ann Fabian. Pages 49-102.
We often think of reading and writing as aspects of the spread of
refinement through American culture. This article explores a rougher
world of writing, printing, publishing, and bookselling. A few of the
early nineteenth-century Americans whose lives were upended by war,
politics, and international intrigue turned to print to recover money and
good name. The essay investigates the tactics the poor employed to
present themselves and their stories to the skeptical audiences they hoped
would buy and read their books.
Available as offprint number 979
- "The Social Construction of Thomas Carlyle's New England Reputation,
1834-36" by Leon Jackson. Pages 165-188.
Literary historians often have recourse to dramatic metaphors in
describing the spread of Romanticism in antebellum America. This paper
looks behind the rhetoric to examine the hard facts of canonization in the
1830s. Taking Thomas Carlyle as an example, the paper argues that
Carlyle's fame was established through the intensive dissemination of a
limited number of texts in a tightly woven social
environment; high-volume sales and extensive advertising campaigns were
less important than the spread of texts, news, and rumor between friends.
Available as offprint number 964
- "Christmas in Early New England, 1620-1820:
Puritanism, Popular Culture, and the Printed Word" by Stephen
W. Nissenbaum. Pages 79-164.
This essay traces how Puritans tried to keep Christmas out of New England,
and how it managed to creep back in. The struggle over Christmas was
waged with the weapon of print culture, almanacs, hymnals, and children's
literature. These may have been the three most widely read genres of
all--the very places in which official and unofficial culture were most
closely intertwined. The reappearance of older popular traditions of
wassailing and begging in printed form suggests both a continuity with
older rituals and a transformation of these rituals by respectable, even
official culture.
Available as offprint number 963
Volume 108, Part 2 (1998)
Contains the Proceedings of the Annual Meeting in October 1998, the
Report of the Council, Report of the Treasurer, obituaries of recently
deceased
members, index to the volume, and the following articles:
- "Art in the Early English Magazine, 1731-1800: A Checklist of Articles
on Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, from the Gentleman's Magazine,
London
Magazine, and Universal Magazine" by Janice G. Schimmelman
English magazines containing information on politics, history, commerce,
and the arts were eagerly sought after and widely read in
eighteenth-century America. This checklist identifies 561 essays and
notices on art-related subjects suggesting that art had a faithful
audience among the prosperous, although not necessarily sophisticated,
members of the middle class. The English magazines must have had a
significant impact on the general awareness of the visual arts and the
role that art played in an educated society.
Available as offprint number 983
- "Capitalizing on Mother:
John S. C. Abbott and Self-Interested Motherhood" by Carolyn J. Lawes
The Reverend John S. C. Abbott's best-selling antebellum advice books,
The
Mother at Home and The Child at Home, are analyzed within the
context of
Worcester, Massachusetts, the community in which they were written, in the
early 1830s. Historians have generally viewed Abbott as a conservative
evangelical who advocated the ideal of the self-denying mother. Indeed,
Abbott's books were fundamentally pragmatic. The central theme of Abbott's
work was not maternal self-sacrifice but maternal self-interest. In an era
of high infant mortality and economic instability, good mothering
represented not only a child's best hope for salvation but a woman's best
hope for a comfortable old age. This article argues that peace of mind
and social security not self-denial were the goals of Abbott's evangelical
Mother at Home.
Available as offprint number 982
- "Reading for the Enslaved, Writing for the Free:
Reflections on Liberty and Literacy" by E. Jennifer Monaghan
Throughout the colonial period, and even in the post-Revolutionary United
States, reading was usually viewed as compatible with the institution of
slavery. Writing, on the other hand, was almost invariably perceived by
southern slaveholders as intrinsically dangerous. After about 1820,
reading
became increasingly redefined in the slaveholding south as a seditious
skill. To clarify the relationship between literacy and liberty, or
literacy and any other topic, we need to ask different questions of each
literacy skill. What is being read? Who is doing the writing? For whom is
this an advantage?
Available as offprint number 981
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