O March number contains three essays with, for the Quarterly, an unusual chronological breadth; but it is one that the editors are pleased to present. They serve to remind readers and potential authors of the editors’ desire not to be associated with a particular time period but to cover the entire span of the history and literary culture of New England. The three essays chosen for this issue, Sean Wilentz’s study of nineteenth-century northern abolitionists, Tatiana Cruz’s of twentieth-century African American and Latinx parent activism in the Boston public schools, and Theodore Vozar’s of the use of a Greek textbook in Harvard’s seventeenth-century philology curriculum illustrates the chronological diversity the editors hope to see in future submissions. One result of the editors’ desire to encourage essays on different topics with a broader chronology was our co-sponsorship with the Massachusetts Historical Society of the American Political Culture Symposium held last September. From that symposium, we have included Princeton professor Sean Wilentz’s keynote address, “The Radicalism of Northern Abolitionism.” Wilentz stresses the role of the critical, but seemingly small advances put forth by early advocates of the movement. By calling attention to the gradual but incremental challenges to the structures of northern slavery, he illustrates how radical early abolition initiated the rise of free Black communities and contributed to the expansion of protests against enslavement generally. Not part of the symposium but similar in approach, Tatiana M. F. Cruz’s examination of African American and Latinx parent activism describes events that preceded Boston’s busing crisis of the 1970s. Cruz describes efforts of Black and
{"title":"Editorial","authors":"Jonathan M Chu","doi":"10.1162/tneq_e_00970","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/tneq_e_00970","url":null,"abstract":"O March number contains three essays with, for the Quarterly, an unusual chronological breadth; but it is one that the editors are pleased to present. They serve to remind readers and potential authors of the editors’ desire not to be associated with a particular time period but to cover the entire span of the history and literary culture of New England. The three essays chosen for this issue, Sean Wilentz’s study of nineteenth-century northern abolitionists, Tatiana Cruz’s of twentieth-century African American and Latinx parent activism in the Boston public schools, and Theodore Vozar’s of the use of a Greek textbook in Harvard’s seventeenth-century philology curriculum illustrates the chronological diversity the editors hope to see in future submissions. One result of the editors’ desire to encourage essays on different topics with a broader chronology was our co-sponsorship with the Massachusetts Historical Society of the American Political Culture Symposium held last September. From that symposium, we have included Princeton professor Sean Wilentz’s keynote address, “The Radicalism of Northern Abolitionism.” Wilentz stresses the role of the critical, but seemingly small advances put forth by early advocates of the movement. By calling attention to the gradual but incremental challenges to the structures of northern slavery, he illustrates how radical early abolition initiated the rise of free Black communities and contributed to the expansion of protests against enslavement generally. Not part of the symposium but similar in approach, Tatiana M. F. Cruz’s examination of African American and Latinx parent activism describes events that preceded Boston’s busing crisis of the 1970s. Cruz describes efforts of Black and","PeriodicalId":44619,"journal":{"name":"NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY-A HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW ENGLAND LIFE AND LETTERS","volume":"96 1","pages":"3-7"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49497252","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Useful Objects: Museums, Science, & Literature in Nineteenth-Century America","authors":"C. Hopkins","doi":"10.1162/tneq_r_00978","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/tneq_r_00978","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44619,"journal":{"name":"NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY-A HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW ENGLAND LIFE AND LETTERS","volume":"96 1","pages":"84-87"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43235436","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This essay examines the parallel African American and Latinx educational movements in the decades prior to mandated school desegregation or the “busing crisis” of 1974. It focuses on working-class mother-activists who employed various organizing strategies in the pursuit of educational justice in the Jim Crow North.
{"title":"“We're all in this fight together”: African American and Latinx Parent-Activists in Boston Schools","authors":"Tatiana M. F. Cruz","doi":"10.1162/tneq_a_00972","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/tneq_a_00972","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This essay examines the parallel African American and Latinx educational movements in the decades prior to mandated school desegregation or the “busing crisis” of 1974. It focuses on working-class mother-activists who employed various organizing strategies in the pursuit of educational justice in the Jim Crow North.","PeriodicalId":44619,"journal":{"name":"NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY-A HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW ENGLAND LIFE AND LETTERS","volume":"96 1","pages":"27-63"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47762857","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract The abolition of slavery in the northern states, generally viewed as a grudging and conservative series of reforms, had a radical core. By negating the chattel principle at its weakest link, abolitionists destroyed the main proslavery contentions and paved the way for the first abolition laws like them in history.
{"title":"The Radicalism of Northern Abolition","authors":"Sean Wilentz","doi":"10.1162/tneq_a_00971","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/tneq_a_00971","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The abolition of slavery in the northern states, generally viewed as a grudging and conservative series of reforms, had a radical core. By negating the chattel principle at its weakest link, abolitionists destroyed the main proslavery contentions and paved the way for the first abolition laws like them in history.","PeriodicalId":44619,"journal":{"name":"NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY-A HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW ENGLAND LIFE AND LETTERS","volume":"96 1","pages":"8-26"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48799753","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
and Rosemarie Zagarri. Bilder beautifully synthesizes this rich scholarship and models the way to write about an idea using the frame of biography. She shows what one can do with a very limited corpus of letters, an active imagination, and an ability to interrogate related sources to uncover relevant context that helps us better understand a woman and the world she inhabited. Her valuable endnotes and extremely helpful bibliographic essay will aid the reader and reward the historians who follow in her footsteps. And perhaps that is part of the point of this work. Bilder’s epigraph for the book is a quotation from Eliza Harriot herself: “The exertions of a female should . . . be considered . . . as presenting an example to be imitated and improved upon by future candidates for literary fame.” She contends that through her lectures and academies, one woman proved the existence of female capacity as equal to male capacity. But the female mind was never static and could always grow, and learn, and be improved upon. Bilder sees Eliza Harriot as part of the framing generation of the creation of the Constitution. The fluid environment of the 1780s and 1790s, with its choices and contingencies, pose central questions of who gets representation and how and who gets to participate in government. Some might argue that this story is both anachronistic and more timely and urgent than ever as women continue the struggle to be seen as full rights-bearing citizens in the American democratic experiment.
{"title":"The Sewing Girl's Tale: A Story of Crime and Consequences in Revolutionary America","authors":"R. Brown","doi":"10.1162/tneq_r_00976","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/tneq_r_00976","url":null,"abstract":"and Rosemarie Zagarri. Bilder beautifully synthesizes this rich scholarship and models the way to write about an idea using the frame of biography. She shows what one can do with a very limited corpus of letters, an active imagination, and an ability to interrogate related sources to uncover relevant context that helps us better understand a woman and the world she inhabited. Her valuable endnotes and extremely helpful bibliographic essay will aid the reader and reward the historians who follow in her footsteps. And perhaps that is part of the point of this work. Bilder’s epigraph for the book is a quotation from Eliza Harriot herself: “The exertions of a female should . . . be considered . . . as presenting an example to be imitated and improved upon by future candidates for literary fame.” She contends that through her lectures and academies, one woman proved the existence of female capacity as equal to male capacity. But the female mind was never static and could always grow, and learn, and be improved upon. Bilder sees Eliza Harriot as part of the framing generation of the creation of the Constitution. The fluid environment of the 1780s and 1790s, with its choices and contingencies, pose central questions of who gets representation and how and who gets to participate in government. Some might argue that this story is both anachronistic and more timely and urgent than ever as women continue the struggle to be seen as full rights-bearing citizens in the American democratic experiment.","PeriodicalId":44619,"journal":{"name":"NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY-A HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW ENGLAND LIFE AND LETTERS","volume":"96 1","pages":"77-80"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49181263","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This paper considers a Homeric paraphrase of the Book of Job by James Duport, Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge, as the earliest known Greek textbook in use at the newly founded Harvard College, as recorded in New England's First Fruits (1643).
{"title":"A Cambridge University Greek Textbook at Harvard College in 1642","authors":"T. Vozar","doi":"10.1162/tneq_a_00973","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/tneq_a_00973","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper considers a Homeric paraphrase of the Book of Job by James Duport, Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge, as the earliest known Greek textbook in use at the newly founded Harvard College, as recorded in New England's First Fruits (1643).","PeriodicalId":44619,"journal":{"name":"NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY-A HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW ENGLAND LIFE AND LETTERS","volume":"96 1","pages":"64-73"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44870835","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
by William J. Wilson in 1859. Gochberg sticks with the literary sources, though one could easily imagine her book “sparking” many fruitful inquiries into more concrete practices. Teachers looking to assign Useful Objects to undergraduate students will find its deliberate structure helpful. Each chapter has a clearly marked introduction and conclusion, and is subdivided into focused readings of particular texts. A standout chapter on Emerson, Whitman, and the United States Patent Office Gallery (which Whitman knew during its time as a Civil War hospital) could be assigned separately in any course in American Studies, history, or literature. Yet, at a brisk 192 pages, there is no real need to leave anything out. Near the end of Useful Objects, Gochberg explores the connection between William James’ experiences as a collections assistant to Harvard professor Louis Agassiz and the relationship between museum work and James’ Pragmatism, the idea that “theories of truth must be flexible enough to accommodate new experiences” (180). It is an apt note for discussions about modern museums. In reading Gochberg’s book, we may find that there is not much “new” about the demands to the question the underlying assumptions of museum collections—their violence, their categories, their audiences. These discussions are as old as the museums themselves. By exploring their nineteenthcentury incarnations, Gochberg provides a useful opportunity to discuss their present and future.
{"title":"Paper Trails: The US Post and the Making of the American West","authors":"J. M. Adelman","doi":"10.1162/tneq_r_00979","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/tneq_r_00979","url":null,"abstract":"by William J. Wilson in 1859. Gochberg sticks with the literary sources, though one could easily imagine her book “sparking” many fruitful inquiries into more concrete practices. Teachers looking to assign Useful Objects to undergraduate students will find its deliberate structure helpful. Each chapter has a clearly marked introduction and conclusion, and is subdivided into focused readings of particular texts. A standout chapter on Emerson, Whitman, and the United States Patent Office Gallery (which Whitman knew during its time as a Civil War hospital) could be assigned separately in any course in American Studies, history, or literature. Yet, at a brisk 192 pages, there is no real need to leave anything out. Near the end of Useful Objects, Gochberg explores the connection between William James’ experiences as a collections assistant to Harvard professor Louis Agassiz and the relationship between museum work and James’ Pragmatism, the idea that “theories of truth must be flexible enough to accommodate new experiences” (180). It is an apt note for discussions about modern museums. In reading Gochberg’s book, we may find that there is not much “new” about the demands to the question the underlying assumptions of museum collections—their violence, their categories, their audiences. These discussions are as old as the museums themselves. By exploring their nineteenthcentury incarnations, Gochberg provides a useful opportunity to discuss their present and future.","PeriodicalId":44619,"journal":{"name":"NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY-A HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW ENGLAND LIFE AND LETTERS","volume":"96 1","pages":"87-90"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43090216","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Beyond the Boundaries of Childhood: African American Children in the Antebellum North","authors":"K. Mack-Shelton","doi":"10.1162/tneq_r_00977","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/tneq_r_00977","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44619,"journal":{"name":"NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY-A HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW ENGLAND LIFE AND LETTERS","volume":"96 1","pages":"80-84"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44932819","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In our popular fascination with origin stories, it seems fitting to ask how a book came to be. What was the genesis of Female Genius? For Mary Sarah Bilder, Bancroft prize-winning author and law professor at Boston College, a single line in a George Washington diary from May 1787 nagged at her and, years later, became the basis for her path of discovery. Actually a work of historical recovery and furtherance, Bilder’s book adopts the framework of a biography of a once-prominent but long-forgotten woman to illuminate the realities of American women in the era of the formation of the Constitution. For Bilder, Eliza Harriot Barons O’Connor (1749–1811) becomes the touchstone from which she explores a transatlantic story of politics, education, and women’s rights. Not a womb to tomb narrative progression, this is the story of a well-educated British woman, baptized in Lisbon, married to an Irishman (John O’Connor), with whom she lived in both London and Dublin before emigrating to America after the American Revolution. As a way to earn a livelihood, she traveled on the subscription lecture circuit and had the distinction of lecturing before George Washington at the University of Pennsylvania in 1787. She moved frequently in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia and settled in cities where she planned to open a school or academy. It was a world very much in transition over the course of her life as North American colonies threw off British imperial rule
{"title":"Female Genius: Eliza Harriot and George Washington at the Dawn of the Constitution","authors":"M. J. King","doi":"10.1162/tneq_r_00975","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/tneq_r_00975","url":null,"abstract":"In our popular fascination with origin stories, it seems fitting to ask how a book came to be. What was the genesis of Female Genius? For Mary Sarah Bilder, Bancroft prize-winning author and law professor at Boston College, a single line in a George Washington diary from May 1787 nagged at her and, years later, became the basis for her path of discovery. Actually a work of historical recovery and furtherance, Bilder’s book adopts the framework of a biography of a once-prominent but long-forgotten woman to illuminate the realities of American women in the era of the formation of the Constitution. For Bilder, Eliza Harriot Barons O’Connor (1749–1811) becomes the touchstone from which she explores a transatlantic story of politics, education, and women’s rights. Not a womb to tomb narrative progression, this is the story of a well-educated British woman, baptized in Lisbon, married to an Irishman (John O’Connor), with whom she lived in both London and Dublin before emigrating to America after the American Revolution. As a way to earn a livelihood, she traveled on the subscription lecture circuit and had the distinction of lecturing before George Washington at the University of Pennsylvania in 1787. She moved frequently in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia and settled in cities where she planned to open a school or academy. It was a world very much in transition over the course of her life as North American colonies threw off British imperial rule","PeriodicalId":44619,"journal":{"name":"NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY-A HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW ENGLAND LIFE AND LETTERS","volume":"96 1","pages":"74-77"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46937857","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Useful Objects: Museums, Science, & Literature in Nineteenth-Century America","authors":"C. Hopkins","doi":"10.1162/tneq_r_00969","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/tneq_r_00969","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44619,"journal":{"name":"NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY-A HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW ENGLAND LIFE AND LETTERS","volume":"95 1","pages":"724-727"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44922555","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}