spatial humanist. public historian. truthseeker.
Calvin Schermerhorn’s The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism “details the interstate United States slave trade at the level of the firm.”[1] Schermerhorn investigates slave traders who were business insiders as well as merchants using financial processes that characterized raw ambition. The monetary flows influencing the roots of American capitalism through these … Continue reading Notes on Schermerhorn’s “Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism”
When Edward Said informed the academy that “ideas, cultures, and histories cannot be seriously understood or studied without their force, or more precisely their configurations of power” he advanced an important point of consideration in understanding the historical context of marginality of any given age. Scholarly study devoted to examining the lives of marginalized people … Continue reading Notes on Rival Geographies, 19th Century Womanhood, and Agency
It was the osnaburg nightshirt that failed to keep Moses Grandy’s enslaved brother warm when he died of exposure while trying to find a yoke of steers that had wandered into woods of the Great Dismal Swamp during the winter of 1795. That coarse, yet thin fabric had not been enough to keep the enslaved … Continue reading Osnaburg Fabric: Garment for the Enslaved
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This video is from an invited lecture I gave at the Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Kansas in February 2017. Special thanks to my friend and colleagues Brian Rosenblum and Phil Stinson. (click Lecture) Lecture
click-> gendered comparisons
