American Studies Seminar Fall 2024 Living in New England in the Age of Revolutions Instructor: Dr. Joseph M. Adelman, Framingham State University Popular accounts of the American Revolution often emphasize the contributions of New England. When they invoke the region, they frequently mean Massachusetts, more specifically Boston, and often a set of fifteen to twenty men in
Last week’s leak of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s draft ruling overturning Roe v. Wade has upended American politics. Pro-choice protesters are rallying in towns and cities across the country while anti-abortion activists cheer the imminent consummation of their decades-long crusade. For American women really, for all of us the experience of living in this country is about to radically change.
The latest trend in book cover design. A DIY “open source ereader.” A new subscription service for under-appreciated books. “The digital death of the collector.” Turning waste into graphene. Celebrating masks. Biohacking DNA to take over gene sequencing computers. How much would Bach make on Spotify? AI helps Beethoven finish his Tenth Symphony. A gallery of “Strava art.” An ill-advised vending machine for china. All that and more in WhatTheyThink’s weekly fat bear miscellany.
How not to learn about the American past
In the mid-1940s, Edmund S. Morgan, a mild-mannered young
historian, was teaching at Brown and making a name in the quiet field of early
American studies. Having published a slim, well-received collection of essays
on the New England Puritans, he might have seemed the very model of the
unassuming scholar at the outset of a modest career, satisfied to refine the
work of great forebears in a narrow field. That wasn’t Edmund Morgan. The
Second World War was over. The United States was developing an energetic
vision, which would come to fruition in 1960 with the election of John F.