Teaching in Crisis with Absalom Jones and Richard Allen
Making the Nation
Alive with the Sound of Music
Insurance in Colonial America
Public Health and Public Good
“The limb in my Fathers arms:” The Environmental and Material Creation of a Treaty Elm Relic
Market Manipulation, the 1780s Way: What a Letter to a Flour Dealer Tells Us About the Early Modern Political Economy
The City as Lived
“To what complexion are we come at last?”
“A Natural Representation of Market-Street, in Philadelphia”: An Attribution, a Story, and Some Thoughts on Future Study
What the Artist Saw and What the Editors Ignored: Charles Willson Peale’s Wartime Journal and the Perils of Historical Editing
French Revolutionary Song for Federal Philadelphia
Race in the Park
The Emilie Davis Diaries Project
Birth of the (Corporate) Republic
Before the Apple Ripened
Doing More with Digitization
American Midrash
Walking Moraley’s Streets: Philadelphia
Shouldering Independence
Creative Writing
Reviews
ABOUT
Welcome to Commonplace, a destination for exploring and exchanging ideas about early American history and culture. A bit less formal than a scholarly journal, a bit more scholarly than a popular magazine, Commonplace speaks—and listens—to scholars, museum curators, teachers, hobbyists, and just about anyone interested in American history before 1900. It is for all sorts of people to read about all sorts of things relating to early American life—from architecture to literature, from politics to parlor manners. It’s a place to find insightful analysis of early American history as it is discussed in scholarly literature, as it manifests on the evening news, as it is curated in museums, big and small; as it is performed in documentary and dramatic films and as it shows up in everyday life.
In addition to critical evaluations of books and websites (Reviews) and poetic research and fiction (Creative Writing), our articles explore material and visual culture (Objects); pedagogy, the writing of literary scholarship, and the historian’s craft (Teach); and diverse aspects of America’s past and its many peoples (Learn). For more great content, check out our other projects, (Just Teach One) and (Just Teach One African American Print).
How to cite Commonplace articles:
Author, “Title of Article,” Commonplace: the journal of early American life, date accessed, URL.
Sophie White, “Trading Looks Race, Religion and Dress in French America,” Commonplace: the journal of early American life, accessed September 30, 2019, https://commonplace.online/article/trading-looks-race-religion-dress-french-america/
Joshua R. Greenberg, editor
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If you are looking for a specific Commonplace article from the back catalog and do not see it, or if have any other questions, please contact us directly. Please follow us on Twitter @Commonplacejrnl or Facebook @commonplacejournal and thank you for your support.