Freedom Seekers will show how all kinds of men, women, and children who escaped were important actors in the challenge not just to their own enslavement but to slavery more broadly.

Biloquism reminds us that the questions of agency posed by generative AI are also always questions of imitation and authenticity.

Happy New Year!

So, what is the right decision for Commonplace when it comes to choosing a social media strategy?

Article reviews are ongoing.

Before we move forward, it is a good time to look back on the history of Commonplace and its place in digital humanities over the last two decades.

The set of 552 images is impossible to describe as a single body of work, but the illustrations cohere.

Podcasts serve as a gateway to other media about history, serving as a tool for historians to engage with people who have an interest in the stories they tell.

We are excited to share some Commonplace news! New update! As of May 26, 2021, we are not accepting any more applications for the editorial position or the editorial board. Thank you so much.

In the crested buttes and slot canyons of the Internet that comprise the academic blogosphere, pseudonymity has been controversial.

Insights by four early-career scholars who work at the intersection of early American studies and the digital humanities.

Next to Stephen Foster, William Henry Fry was arguably the most important American composer working before the Civil War.

More than a historical resource, “The Lost Museum” invites us, then, to ponder the narratives with which we stage authenticity, the material objects and practices with which every generation reimagines the kinship of truth and fiction.

These documents cover the full range of the American past, from pre-Columbian societies to the present, and represent a wide variety of voices and experiences. Links to more than 600 images, dozens of audio files of speeches, over 150 landmark Supreme Court cases, newspaper articles from the New York Times archives, maps, and a database of annotated links to other collections on the Web are also included.

That is not to say that the Web offers no substantive food history sites. Hidden between the layers of fat on the Web are some juicy morsels that serious researchers will find worthwhile.

The Common-place Web Library reviews and lists online resources and Websites likely to be of interest to our viewers. Each […]

As with the Indian treaties portal, the intended audience for this site is not altogether clear. Perhaps the goal is simply to create a platform for further investigation by anyone who wants to learn more about the Omahas.

click for full list of links The Common-place Web Library reviews and lists online resources and Websites likely to be […]

One particularly intriguing new feature is the “signature quilt” search function, which features name and location data for about fifty quilts with multiple signatures.

One impressive and very useful feature of the site lies in its function as a central clearinghouse for information about the state. In an effort to be comprehensive, the site’s creators are engaged in “assisting institutions across the state in digitizing their records and placing them online for easy access.”

Gone are the days of poring over microfilm for weeks to find data relevant to particular research interests. With this sleek Website, a few pointed searches can unveil hundreds of pertinent published documents for scholars interested in various topics related to early American history.

The layout of the home page is clear and easy to navigate, featuring twelve boxes containing links to mini-exhibits on important aspects of Twain’s professional and personal identities. Six of the boxes pertain to Twain’s most famous publications, including Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer.

The Common-place Web Library reviews and lists online resources and Websites likely to be of interest to our viewers. Each […]

The Website provides a taste of the abundant repository of sources available at the various Bethlehem archives.

The Common-place Web Library reviews and lists online resources and Websites likely to be of interest to our viewers. Each quarterly issue will feature one or more brief site reviews. The library itself will be an ongoing enterprise with regular new additions and amendments. So we encourage you to check it frequently. At the moment, the library is small, but with your help we expect it to grow rapidly. If you have suggestions for the Web Library, or for site reviews, please forward them to the Administrative Editor.

… when you visit Digital Paxton—which you can do from your desktop or your smartphone—you’ll automatically enter the introductory path.

A critical awareness of the process of working, and sometimes failing, to conceptualize history and its possible futures, says Klein, is what the humanities can offer data visualization.

These projects represent different approaches to the larger project of decolonizing archives, ranging from digital repatriation to deeper reflections on the colonial nature of the archive itself.

As a profession, we are experiencing a generational shift, and much of the data created several decades ago has already been lost.

As a literary scholar, I think we need to reevaluate . . . enthusiasm about Piketty’s use of literature as data.

Assassin’s Creed 3 presents players with a large number of both historic and fictional non-player characters, but unfortunately the majority of these come across as little more than plot elements.

When did the United States become a global force? A digital history project creates a space for answering this question.

History on Trial is the product of collaborations among graduate students, Lehigh faculty, librarians, technical staff, students, high school teachers, and early Americanists nationally.

Working with publishers, libraries, and archives, digital humanities projects can work to liberate African American history.

This project narrates the Colored Conventions Project’s work to transcribe, catalogue, and visualize the minutes of the nineteenth-century Colored Conventions.

The Common-place Web Library reviews and lists online resources and Websites likely to be of interest to our viewers. Each […]

The View from Mount Vernon

It has been several decades since large numbers of Americans used the U.S. mail for the majority of their long-distance communications or for casual daily contact with nearby friends and family.

ed books are not only a marvelous technology in their own right but are rich with lifelong associations… [But textbooks] are rarely regarded as anything other than databases.

Presented as part of the special issue “Early Cities of the Americas.”

“Complete atlases were scanned, as were covers for pocket maps, puzzles, and their cases. Folding globes were shown compressed and then opened, and maps were shown enclosed within books.”

The questions and subjects that bring professional historians together at academic conferences deserve to be discussed in wider circles.

The Common-place Web Library reviews and lists online resources and Websites likely to be of interest to our viewers. Each […]

The Common-place Web Library reviews and lists online resources and Websites likely to be of interest to our viewers. Each […]

Digital History and Civil War Commemoration I saw Emilie Davis’s diaries years ago—three leather-bound volumes, small enough to fit comfortably […]

The Common-place Web Library reviews and lists online resources and Websites likely to be of interest to our viewers. Each […]

The Common-place Web Library reviews and lists online resources and Websites likely to be of interest to our viewers. Each […]

… here are thirteen emerging early American scholars introducing a pre-1800 text available online to the public for free.

In the near future, it may be possible to write an early American history that considers the role of gut microbiota, which, as scientists are documenting, play a critical role in everything from obesity to disease progression.

“In part, the recurring taste for folk music has to be explained by a recurring desire in American culture: the desire to strip away the awful effects of consumer culture and return to a simpler, harder, more authentic time.”

Beginning in July 2002, the Readex Corporation, in cooperation with the American Antiquarian Society, began releasing the first installments of “Evans Digital,” […]

Our new design is a result of a year-long process of community outreach and research, design thinking, web development, and editorial decision making, and we hope you will be pleased with the results.

I knew what I was doing was risky, and I knew that sooner or later I would make a mistake of one kind or another.

Unlike traditional classification systems where texts are fit into preexisting schema (such as Library of Congress subject headings), topic modeling determines the comprehensive list of subjects through its analysis of the word occurrences throughout a corpus of texts.

Social Media Highlights Click here for an eventifier page that has compiled all 700+ tweets and 20+ photos from the […]

The Common-place Web Library reviews and lists online resources and Websites likely to be of interest to our viewers. Each […]

The Common-place Web Library reviews and lists online resources and Websites likely to be of interest to our viewers. Each […]

The Common-place Web Library reviews and lists online resources and Websites likely to be of interest to our viewers. Each […]

The Common-place Web Library reviews and lists online resources and Websites likely to be of interest to our viewers. Each […]

The Common-place Web Library reviews and lists online resources and Websites likely to be of interest to our viewers. Each […]

Modern Franklin Gets the Boot [UPDATED] Outbreaks of popular resistance against expert medical advice are a long Anglo-American tradition, and […]

The Common-place Web Library reviews and lists online resources and Websites likely to be of interest to our viewers. Each quarterly issue will feature one or more brief site reviews. The library itself will be an ongoing enterprise with regular new additions and amendments. So we encourage you to check it frequently. At the moment, the library is small, but with your help we expect it to grow rapidly. If you have suggestions for the Web Library, or for site reviews, please forward them to the Administrative Editor.

“People expect to find in American Memory every kind of historical documentation possible on every aspect of American history, and they communicate their surprise at discovering otherwise.”

“Boni did not seek to replace titles, but to induce librarians to supplement their collections with cabinets full of some of the world’s greatest and rarest works—and, of course, the patented machines necessary to read them.”

“People expect to find in American Memory every kind of historical documentation possible on every aspect of American history, and they communicate their surprise at discovering otherwise.”

“People expect to find in American Memory every kind of historical documentation possible on every aspect of American history, and they communicate their surprise at discovering otherwise.”

During the early twentieth century, Charles McLean Andrews (1863-1943), the most influential early American historian of his time, spent several […]

When I was asked to design Common-place back in 1999, the editors requested that it “look like a broadsheet.” Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century […]

Look at you: sitting there at your computer checking the weather reports, studying Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode guides, and reading […]

Why was this parent so frustrated when the site is full of primary sources? Because those sources too often had no context.

Commonplace Style Sheet

    Databases Early American Secular Music and Its European Sources, 1589-1839: An Index http://www.colonialdancing.org/Easmes/Index.htm The Hymn Tune Index. All hymns […]

This issue marks our last as the editors of Common-place. We founded the magazine five years ago in an effort to […]

The 1824 Presidential Election  is one of the most well remembered, primarily because it is the only election ever forced into the House of Representatives because no candidate succeeded in getting a majority of electoral votes (different from the 1800 Presidential Election in which two candidates got a majority, thus forcing the passing of the 12th Amendment).

As our capacity to incorporate sound, video, and other media into our site grows, so grows our ability to present the American past, and representations of the American past, in ever-more innovative ways.

“Too many historians of recent generations, according to Marwick, have been obsessed with theory and with abstractions such as discourse analysis.”

Things have not been as active as they might have been around here because we are busy are completing what […]

“As the Internet continues to enable and encourage possibilities for professional-nonprofessional collaboration, the historian and genealogist may find that the gulf between them has been bridged–almost in spite of themselves.”

Common-place is a common place for exploring and exchanging ideas about early American history and culture. A bit friendlier than […]

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As Common-place transitions to its new look on our new Website, the Web Library is adding a feature.