[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][bsf-info-box icon=”Defaults-home” icon_size=”32″ icon_color=”#1e73be” title=”In 2017 I visited Monticello, Virginia, the home of Thomas Jefferson, as one of 14 teachers attending the Monticello Teacher Institute’s ‘Barringer Research Fellowship for Teachers of American History’, writes Bill O’Brien-Blake. Monticello was a thorough and exceptionally well-supported training environments for teachers and it helped me develop my understanding of historical events and the management of primary sources and the teaching of secondary interpretations and shifts in historiography.” pos=”square_box” box_border_style=”double” box_border_color=”#5d90bf”][/bsf-info-box][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]

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Monticello, Virginia, was the home of Thomas Jefferson, the man that all American students learn was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, the third President, and responsible for doubling America’s size with the 1803 Louisiana Purchase (into which he then sent Lewis and Clarke). Monticello was not only where he rested when not in Philadelphia, Washington or Paris, but also an artwork of his own architectural design, and the only house in America to be designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site (along with the Jefferson-designed and equally beautiful University of Virginia in nearby Charlottesville).[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]I was visiting the site as one of 14 teachers attending the Monticello Teacher Institute’s ‘Barringer Research Fellowship for Teachers of American History’, an “immersive professional development opportunity” where, through a week of tours, activities and library visits, teachers have the “opportunity to research and study at Monticello and the Jefferson Library in Charlottesville, Virginia”. When the programme ended, the attendees were expected “to bring conversations about Jefferson’s ideas and Monticello into their classrooms, schools, and communities”, and create teaching materials that make use of the resources at Monticello for a store of lesson plans and supporting materials on the Monticello website known as their ‘digital classroom’. Courtesy of the British Association of American Studies, I was the one British attendee, and was soon pleased to be labelled ‘the redcoat’ by a wonderful Texan.

Each teacher in attendance was given the means and the time to develop lesson plans and teaching resources on their own topic of interest, before presenting to all other attendees on what they had created at the end of the programme. The American teachers focused on many areas: the changing historiography surrounding Jefferson; Monticello and the plantation economy of the American South; the Hemings family and Sally Hemings, who historians now largely agree fathered six of Jefferson’s children; and Jefferson as an inter-cultural communicator. Coming at it from having taught much US politics at A level, my own focus of study was Jefferson’s relationship with the judiciary. The ability of the Supreme Court to take upon itself the right to determine whether legislation was in line with the Constitution was established in the 1803 Marbury versus Madison decision, while Jefferson was President, building on implied aspects of the Constitution and Alexander Hamilton’s ‘Federalist No. 78’. A core statement from that decision – “It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is” – is carved into the marble wall of the Supreme Court building in Washington DC. Jefferson wholly disagreed, leaving him at odds with how judicial review functioned in America from then until the present day. His own views on how states and the people could resolve questions of constitutionality laid foundations for the secession crisis of the 1830s and the constitutional arguments that would lead the republic to civil war in the 1860s. The capacity to explore his views through the study of primary material in the surrounding of the home where he had written much of it was truly exceptional.

Monticello is a thorough and exceptionally well-supported training environments for teachers. It has incredibly dedicated staff who know how to support history teachers in developing their own understanding of historical events and the management of primary sources and the teaching of secondary interpretations and shifts in historiography. The staff at Monticello have ensured that it is not merely a temple to American exceptionalism, and Jefferson is not subjected to hagiography in his own home – as one tour guide noted, “we’re not here to turn him into marble”. But at the same time, Jefferson’s impact is not lost – his works and words are celebrated as they are contextualised, the impact of the Declaration explained alongside accounts of the daily exploitation of the enslaved of the plantation. Monticello, although existing to champion the study of Thomas Jefferson, knows well his immense contradictions, and, like Christopher Hitchens, believe it would be “lazy or obvious to [merely] say that he contained contradictions or paradoxes. This is true of everybody, and of everything.”

In summary, Monticello presents itself as the home of the key enlightenment figure Thomas Jefferson, a renaissance man and author of the possibly the finest statement of human liberty put in writing. Yet it also presents itself as a plantation, one among what were many in Virginia and the South, which sustained the high living standard of a white master and his family through the exploitation of enslaved peoples, with a master who physically and sexually exploited his slaves and yet was arrogant enough to think himself enlightened and fair in his treatment. In taking on this role, Monticello is also home to the ‘Getting Word’ oral history project, seeking a greater understanding of the lives of the enslaved at the plantation from the recollections of their descendants. To further make the many facets of Monticello known to its visitors, at one major point in our tour we were stopped and reminded that when Jefferson died, he was in severe debt (Monticello rarely made him money). Unlike Washington, there was no commitment to free the many enslaved people of Monticello, except for five members of the Hemings family. Instead, to cover his debts, his property was sold off. One hundred and thirty enslaved people were auctioned at the house in 1826, most likely on the steps under the portico that faces the garden. This is the façade that has appeared on the reverse of the nickel since 1938; Jefferson’s profile, and the word ‘Liberty’, appear on the obverse. The Monticello Institute can provide for a thorough understanding of not only the ideals of American liberty, but the experience of American slavery, and how slavery, the original sin of the American Republic, must be fully comprehended alongside early America’s virtuous and lofty rhetoric.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][bsf-info-box icon=”Defaults-book” icon_size=”32″ icon_color=”#1e73be” title=”Thanks to the generous grant provided by the Malcolm Bradbury prize, I spent November 2016 carrying out invaluable research in New York and the Center for Place, Culture and Politics, writes Samuel J Cooper. During my time in New York I also spent a great deal of time at Poets House where I was able to access small press publications and rare chapbooks that provided me with a detailed insight into the poetic influences on the two poets at the heart of my thesis (Jeff Derksen and Juliana Spahr).” pos=”square_box” box_border_style=”double” box_border_color=”#1e73be”][/bsf-info-box][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]I was awarded the Malcolm Bradbury prize in 2016 and thanks to the generous grant provided by BAAS, I spent November 2016 carrying out invaluable research in New York.

My project is a cross-border study of Canadian and U.S. writing that identifies linguistic and formal innovation as the primary site of contestation of the emergence of neoliberal discourses. Through my close-reading methodology, I analyse the use of polysemy and narrative fragmentation in contemporary North American writing and argue that these techniques shift the creation of meaning, and the structuring of narratives, to the reader in order to deconstruct the language, logic, and spatiality of neoliberalism. I argue that neoliberal ideology naturalises the imagined seamless space of the globalised world which is[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]pivotal to veiling the uneven development that undermines the entire neoliberal narrative. My thesis therefore focuses on the way literature—as a nexus of social, political, cultural and economic contexts—responds to this metanarrative. My thesis focuses on the parallels between socially contextual meaning-making and the production of space under contemporary capitalism, with theoretical underpinnings rooted in the work of Henri Lefebvre and elaborated on by Neil Smith and David Harvey.

During my trip to New York I had access to the Center for Place, Culture and Politics at City University New York where Neil Smith, David Harvey and Jeff Derksen—all three cornerstones of my thesis—worked together in the early 2000s. I was also able to make use of the extensive chapbook and journal collections at Poets House, as well as study spaces and collections at the New York Public Library.

The Center for Place, Culture and Politics at City University New York Graduate Center has a lively schedule of events that pertain to my research interests around theorising neoliberalism. Not only did attending these events get me thinking about the subject in new and cross-disciplinary ways, but they gave me the opportunity to meet and converse with a diverse range of individuals inside and outside of the academy. The conversations I had during my time in New York broadened the theoretical underpinnings of my thesis. They also, perhaps most valuably, helped me to work through issues I was contemplating around praxis, which made me more confident in, and passionate about, my thesis. While this latter subject is not strictly research, I believe these kinds of confidence-building moments and interactions are vital to a PhD process which can too often quietly instil self-doubt and alienation.

During my time in New York I spent a great deal of time at Poets House—a fantastic poetry library and study space. I had originally planned to visit Poets House only a few times, but it quickly became the mainstay of my research trip. Their vast collection of poetry, journals and chapbooks allowed me to trace the evolution of Language Poetry. Access to small press publications and rare chapbooks provided me with a detailed insight into the development of the theories and practices of these poets that, in turn, influence the two poets at the heart of my thesis (Jeff Derksen and Juliana Spahr). This critical context now forms the opening of my thesis’ first chapter.

Poets House ended up giving me an unexpectedly stimulating study space—I was quite literally immersed in poetry! The focus of this research trip was to hone my theoretical framework for analysing a poetics of combined and uneven development in post-1990 novels and poetry, and this framework had grown out of a love for poetry. To be surrounded by all the contemporary poetic material I could ask for facilitated not only the fine-tuning of theory, but also a very productive writing regime which culminated in a completed chapter and an article now ready for submission.

Thanks to proximity, I was able to take a weekend trip across the border to Windsor, Ontario to visit two professors that had taught me in my 2008 year abroad and sowed the seeds for my eventual pursuit of doctoral study. Though partly an indulgent catch-up, my visit to Dr Louis Cabri and Dr Nicole Markotic ended up doubling my reading list. Their combined expertise in contemporary poetry is tough to match, and I had plenty of useful conversations about the direction of my thesis and future career. I also came away from this visit with a limited issue chapbook by Robert Kroetsch that worked perfectly alongside Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon in my PhD’s second chapter.

I was greatly supported by the staff at Poets House, as well as heartened and encouraged by all of my interactions with fellow scholars at City University New York and the University of Windsor, Ontario. I completed all of the research objectives I had set myself, but I could not have anticipated how much this trip would reignite my passion for my thesis. I cannot stress how important this was for me, and I would like to thank BAAS for this opportunity—without their assistance it would not have been at all possible.

Samuel J Cooper is a PhD student at the University of Nottingham.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][bsf-info-box icon=”Defaults-road” icon_size=”32″ icon_color=”#1e73be” title=”In June 2017 I was able to visit both Nashville and Los Angeles thanks to the BAAS Marcus Cunliffe Award, writes Janet Aspley. During this trip I was able to develop my ideas on country music clothing and authenticity by accessing an unpublished biography of tailor to the stars, Nudie Cohn.” pos=”square_box” box_border_style=”double” box_border_color=”#93a9bf”][/bsf-info-box][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]

In June 2017 I visited the USA as a result of my Marcus Cunliffe Award. My trip was divided between attendance at the International Country Music Conference at Belmont University, Nashville and the archive of Nudie’s Rodeo tailors at the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles. Nudie Cohn was the major designer in my field of doctoral research; my PhD project is titled “Hillbilly Deluxe: Male Performance Wear and Authenticity in Country Music 1947 – 94”.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]At the conference, I gave a paper called ‘Clothed in Sin: Gram Parsons, his Gilded Palace of Sin Nudie Suit and the Conundrum of Authenticity’. This was the first time I had spoken on my subject to an audience of country music specialists and I was delighted by the reception that my paper received. I thoroughly enjoyed hearing the papers that other scholars presented on a wide range of topics, from the earliest days of commercial country music in the 1920s, through the post-war boom and the rockabilly of the 1950s, and to present day phenomenon of ‘hick hop’. Gender was a recurring theme, as were constructs of authenticity in country music; these are both themes of my own research, so I was fascinated to hear how they were reflected in the work of others. The conference was welcoming and relaxed. Participants were invited to bring their instruments and ‘pick’, so breaks were often accompanied by impromptu acoustic groups of musicians; it ended with a singalong of the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans classic Happy Trails.

My own trail then led happily to The Autry Museum of The American West in Burbank, CA. The Archive has recently moved and I was the first researcher to use the comfortable new reading room. During my five days in the library, I researched a range of customer file, billing ledgers and press cuttings and was able to read an unpublished biography of Nudie Cohn that is held there informally, having sought permission from the author to do so. It contained fascinating insights into Nudie’s journey from his birthplace, Kiev, as a refugee from Jewish persecution, as well into his life as a rhinestone tailor. At the weekend, I was able to visit the Grammy Museum, which fortuitously had an exhibition of memorabilia owned by the country singer, songwriter and guitar/mandolin virtuoso Marty Stuart, whom I interviewed for my project recently. The display included some exceptional suits made by Nathan Turk for the Maddox Family, known in their day as “The Most Colorful Hillbilly Band in America”.

On my return to Nashville, I was able to view garments in the archive of The Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum made for Hank Thompson, whose file in the Nudie’s archive I had found very rich. While at the ‘Hall’, I visited see a shirt that I made for the singer-songwriter Jim Lauderdale, under my label Dandy & Rose, on display in their ‘Featured Western Wear Designer’ exhibit. Of course I posed in front of it for a photograph! I also saw Lauderdale play with a smokin’ country band at The American Legion Post 82’s ‘Honky Tonk Tuesdays’ evening. Not only did the support band turn out to be led by Casey James Prestwood, whom I had been trying to contact to request an interview about a particular suit he has had made by the ‘Rhinestone Rembrandt’ Manuel, but he was also wearing the suit – and Manuel himself was present, and dancing. I approached Prestwood personally and he declared himself delighted to be involved in my project. I also fulfilled a long-held ambition by dancing the two-step for the first time; not necessary for my research, perhaps, but great fun nonetheless.

I would like to thank BAAS for giving me the opportunity to make this trip. I am sure that the contacts I made at ICMC will enrich my future work; the results of my archival research will enhance my PhD thesis considerably.

Janet Aspley is a PhD student at the University of Brighton.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”22639″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center” onclick=”img_link_large”][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Study Resources for the Plays of Tennessee Williams

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10 minute video talk on Southern Gothic in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and A Streetcar Named Desire (Royal Holloway, University of London)

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Resources for A Level Teachers and Students

Below you will find resources for American topics in History, Politics and Literature. For History and Politics they are arranged by exam board and paper; for English, they are arranged under author. BAAS is always keen to support the teaching of American History, Politics, Literature and Culture at secondary schools. It is free for teachers to join BAAS as Schools Members. Click here for more information. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

History

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Politics

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English

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Study Resources for John Steinbeck

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Study resources for The Grapes of Wrath and Lecture on Steinbeck and the American Dream (Royal Holloway, University of London)

Resources for Studying F Scott Fitzgerald 

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Study Resources and Online Lecture on The Great Gatsby (Royal Holloway, University of London)

[vc_row margin_bottom=”15″][vc_column][dt_banner image_id=”19021″ bg_color=”rgba(0,0,0,0.12)” min_height=”270″][/dt_banner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row margin_bottom=”9″][vc_column width=”1/2″][dt_quote]The BAAS Public Engagement and Impact Award (awarded February 2017) allowed me to organise an extensive public event programme for the Journey to Justice exhibition at the National Justice Museum, writes Hannah-Rose Murray.[/dt_quote][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]The BAAS Public Engagement and Impact Award allowed me to organise an extensive public event programme for the Journey to Justice exhibition at the National Justice Museum. It represented an alliance between PhD students at the University of Nottingham, Backlit Gallery (a registered charity in Nottingham) and the travelling exhibition Journey to Justice (J2J). The exhibition highlights the history of US Civil Rights Activism alongside each hosting city’s own history of social justice campaigning.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]As the exhibition travels, it links with local communities and in Nottingham this connection was enhanced by our relationship with Backlit Gallery. Our piece of the exhibition highlighted the connection between Samuel Morley, a Nottingham philanthropist and social reformer, and Josiah Henson, a formerly enslaved African American individual who travelled to Britain several times during the nineteenth century and stayed with Morley on both occasions. I am researching Josiah Henson’s visits to the UK as part of my PhD, which focuses on black abolitionists in Britain: this history is scarcely known and the events we organised were an excellent vehicle to advance public engagement with a unique part of American history that has relevance to the UK. Our partners – J2J and Backlit – had already done extensive work on Morley and social activism in general. For example, see the creation of a digital resource: http://www.morleythreads.com/human-rights/enter. We wanted to bring this history to life and tell the story of this Nottingham connection. The exhibition housed original books by Henson, a newspaper print describing his impact on Britain, and rare items belonging to Samuel Morley. This local story as part of J2J was the only section of the entire exhibition to feature original artefacts.

Penny Lectures

From the end of April 2017 to the beginning of June 2017, I organized five ‘Penny Lectures’ in three venues across the city of Nottingham (Nottingham Contemporary, National Justice Museum, and the New Art Exchange). During the nineteenth century, Samuel Morley introduced a series of penny lectures in London, designed to increase the education of the working classes who would pay just a ‘penny’ to witness lectures on science, geography, history and art (to name a few). Inspired by Morley, I wanted to recreate the penny lectures but this time focusing on subjects both men were passionate about, including slavery, community activism and social justice:

“Morley’s Legacy”: Wednesday 26 April 2017, 5:30pm, National Justice Museum – Matt Chesney from BACKLIT Art Gallery gave a short talk on Morley’s legacy in Nottingham, the history of BACKLIT as an institution (housed in a building once owned by Morley) and showed a unique piece of artwork he designed for the exhibition.

“African American Activism in Nottingham”: Tuesday 2^nd May 2017, 6:30pm, Hannah-Rose Murray, Nottingham Contemporary – I gave a short talk on the history of Black American activism in Nottingham, focusing on the lives of Josiah Henson, Moses Roper, Frederick Douglass and William and Ellen Craft, all of whom travelled to Nottingham to lecture against slavery. It was the first time I have spoken for so long on my PhD (my presentation was an hour, followed by half an hour of questions), so it was an opportunity for me to improve my public speaking skills and to explain my PhD to a public audience.

“The Slave Trade Legacies Project”: Thursday 18^th May 2017, 6:30pm, New Art Exchange – Lisa Robinson (Bright Ideas) discussed her work as a community activist in particular focusing on the Slave Trade Legacies Project, which forced the UNESCO World Heritage Site Derwent Valley Mills to acknowledge their links to the slave trade. This exciting and ground-breaking project hopes to convince other British heritage sites to follow suit, including Newstead Abbey (Nottinghamshire).

“The Freedom Blueprint”: Monday 29^TH May 2017, 6:30pm, National Museum of Justice – Professor Zoe Trodd discussed the ground-breaking work she is currently working on at the University of Nottingham, the Beacon of Excellence that focuses on ending contemporary slavery by 2030. Trodd’s excellent presentation focused on numerous aspects of the Beacon from the geo-spatial satellites to visual culture, and a lively discussion ensued in the Q&A section.

“Black History Heritage”: Thursday 8^th June 2017, 6:30pm, New Art Exchange: Community activist, performance poet and Masters graduate Panya Banjoko discussed the inception and reception of her organisation, Nottingham Black Archives in the local Nottinghamshire community. She focused on numerous projects conducted by NBA including the collection of oral testimonies from black veterans of World War Two, as well as some of the most exciting artefacts donated by the community.

All of the lectures were well attended (apart from the one on the 8^th June, which was unfortunately organised before the election!) The feedback was very positive and many of those who came to the lectures visited the Journey to Justice exhibition but also attended the performance on the 7^th July. It was great to see so many people from the city interested in Nottingham’s social justice heritage.

“The Iron in My Soul”: A Performance

The performance was held at BACKLIT Art Gallery (a building once owned by Morley) on Friday 7^th July 2017, 7-9pm (Eventbrite link – www.theironinmysoul.eventbrite.co.uk) Matt Chesney (BACKLIT Art Gallery) and myself wrote the script, and we hired two actors, Jim Findley and Melvyn Rawlinson, to play Josiah Henson and Samuel Morley respectively. The performance was heavily promoted through the University of Nottingham, Midlands3Cities, the National Justice Museum and Journey to Justice, and I arranged for a short publicity segment on BBC Radio Nottingham on 3 July 2017, who were greatly interested in the project.

In a small space that could just about hold 45 people, it was a full house on the 7^th and both actors received resounding applause several times for their portrayal of Morley and Henson. Several of the audience members were even reduced to tears by Findley’s portrayal of Henson’s memories of slavery. Myself, Matt, Jim and Melvyn took part in a Q&A afterward, and we had some insightful and excellent questions from the audience on Matt’s role in uncovering Morley’s legacy, my PhD and Henson’s activism in Britain, and how much research the actors undertook. The feedback was incredibly positive, and all were in agreement that the play should be performed again, and funding permitting, performed outside of Nottingham. Attached to this email are some promotional pictures and the performance poster.

The performance was also filmed in its entirety, and will be uploaded to the Antislavery Usable Past website (http://www.usablepast.ac.uk) We thought carefully about how to ‘preserve’ this unique performance, or create an ‘afterlife’ for it, and decided that filming the actors in rehearsal and on the night itself would do this adequately. By creating a trailer from edited scenes and placing the performance on the internet, we can distribute it via social media and encourage our partners and colleagues – and others too – who might be interested. The Antislavery Usable Past project seeks to uncover usable lessons from the past to use today in the fight for social justice and the end of contemporary slavery. Because of the generosity of BAAS (without which the performance could not have taken place) we can share the video worldwide, teach others about the legacy of Morley and Henson and search for lessons in their speeches that we can use today.

After this extensive public engagement programme, we hope to ensure further impact by working closely with groups in Britain and heritage sites in America and Canada that have a connection to Josiah Henson. BACKLIT have already established contact with a site in Canada, and we want to sustain these transatlantic links to highlight Morley and Henson’s dual legacy, a story which represents the campaign for freedom and equality in Nottingham, and beyond. Furthermore, we have already established a working relationship with the Morley Union and the Morley College (London), ironically where the Journey to Justice exhibition has already been!

Hannah-Rose Murray is a PhD student in the Centre for Research in Race and Rights at the University of Nottingham.

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[vc_row margin_bottom=”15″][vc_column][dt_banner image_id=”19015″ bg_color=”rgba(0,0,0,0.12)” min_height=”270″][/dt_banner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row margin_bottom=”12″][vc_column width=”1/2″][dt_quote]The BAAS Peter Parish Award allowed me to undertake archival research in Washington D.C. and Philadelphia on the connections between the Habsburg Monarchy and the American Revolution, writes Jonathan Singerton. Without this valuable time I would not have been able to complete the final chapters of my PhD which focus on the economic, migration and constitutional links in early US-Habsburg relations.[/dt_quote][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]As someone based in the UK researching the connections between the Habsburg Monarchy and the American Revolution, finding the resources to conduct necessary primary research on both sides of the Atlantic can be challenging. However, the BAAS Peter Parish Award allowed me to undertake a month of archival research in Washington D.C. and Philadelphia in April 2016. Without this valuable time I would not have been able to complete the final chapters of my PhD which focus on the economic, migration and constitutional links between these seemingly two unconnected regions.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]My first visit was to the Library of Congress where I was able to spend a week going through several important and relevant European collections. Foremost among them was the family papers of the Mercy-D’Argenteau family, of which Count Florimond Mercy-D’Argenteau was the Habsburg Ambassador in Paris and had the most interactions with the American representatives in Europe. His family papers contained personal letters that have not been published or consulted before now. I also had adequate time to trawl through the Photostat collection at the LoC compiled by the Carnegie Foundation in the 1920s, which collated material from across Europe which relates to the American Revolution. These documents not only gave me a broad overview but helped guide my research in Europe since then.

The most valuable part of my sponsored trip were several weeks spent in Philadelphia. There, I visited two major archives; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the American Philosophical Society archives. At the HSP I went through sources relating to the first Habsburg representative in Philadelphia, Baron Frederick Eugene de Beelen-Bertholff, which have been untouched by historians. These records were extremely rich in their description of Beelen’s role, interactions, and of his family’s life in the young republic. This complimented the research I’ve already carried out in Vienna, Austria, where a large number of Beelen’s reports were sent back to the Habsburg court. At the APS, I could comb through the Franklin correspondence more thoroughly which allowed me to construct a network of over one-hundred individuals who resided in the Habsburg Monarchy and contacted Benjamin Franklin during the time of the Revolution. These interactions and more are an illuminating light into the vast early American influence not only in the Atlantic World but also in Central Europe.

It is with great thanks that I acknowledge the generosity of the BAAS for allowing me to complete this necessary research and to continue my work into early US-Habsburg relations during the Age of Revolutions. As a result, I intend to be able to submit my doctoral thesis by the end of 2017 at the University of Edinburgh.

Jonathan Singerton is a PhD candidate in History at the University of Edinburgh.

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[vc_row margin_bottom=”15″][vc_column][dt_banner image_id=”19004″ bg_color=”rgba(0,0,0,0.11)” min_height=”270″][/dt_banner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row margin_bottom=”2″][vc_column width=”1/2″][dt_quote]With the generous support of the British Library and BAAS I have been able to dive into the cultural and material histories of the first Caribbean newspapers edited by free men of colour prior to the abolition of slavery, writes Johanna Seibert. The unique newspaper and special collections at the British Library enabled me to trace the Atlantic entanglements of the crucial papers Weekly Register (1827-33) and Watchman and Jamaica Free Press (1829-38).[/dt_quote][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]In January 2017, I finally seized the opportunity to immerse myself in the unique newspaper and special collections at the British Library – a research trip I was only able to realize owing to the generous support of the British Library and the British Association for American Studies (BAAS). As a Ph.D. candidate at the Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies at the University of Mainz in Germany, I work on a dissertation on “Network of Taste: The Early African Caribbean Press in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World” (working title). Drawing on and expanding on the work of Roderick Cave, Andrew Lewis, and Alpen Razi, my project sets out to challenge the ways in[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]which we still tend to historicize, anthologize, and theorize early African Caribbean print culture by turning toward two of the first Caribbean newspapers edited by free men of color prior to the abolition of slavery in 1833: Henry Loving and William Hill’s Weekly Register (1827-33) and Edward Jordon and Robert Osborn’s Watchman and Jamaica Free Press (1829-38). Complicating rigid binary oppositions that divide publics into Black and white, print agents into in- and outsiders, and markets into centers and peripheries, my dissertation proposes an Atlantic, decentralized model for conceptualizing the early Black press. The Register and the Watchman were part of a network that stretched far beyond the shores of Antigua and Jamaica and that traversed both racial and national demarcations. In fact, the editors of the two early Black papers allied with Wesleyan Methodists, benevolent societies, and abolitionists from different parts of the Atlantic world, from Britain as well as from America. What bound this more than heterogeneous collective together was neither racial nor national affiliation. Similarly, the controversy over abolition seemed to split rather than to unify the group. I argue that the Atlantic network in which the Register and the Watchman participated was based first and foremost on a set of shared tastes. Here, affiliation worked through cultivating similar aesthetic and moral sentiments. More specifically, the editors of the two periodicals had a remarkable sense of prevailing literary and print cultural tastes as well as of their distinct readerships throughout the Atlantic. They knew how to effectively employ taste, as part of a larger editorial strategy, in the times of political strife and on a highly competitive print market. For Loving, Hill, Jordon, and Osborn, to circulate a set of textual and material tastes meant to establish coalitions across national and racial boundaries that were instrumental in the struggle against the repressive plantocracy and for social, racial, and economic emancipation.

In this larger critical enterprise, my research trip to the British Library concluded the first phase of archival work, serving to build up a personal archive of relevant material, to dive into the cultural and material histories of the two Black papers, and to trace the Atlantic entanglements of the Register and the Watchman. While I was able to engage with Wesleyan Methodist print at the Library Company and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia to particularize those circum-Atlantic connections, I had the chance to consult the substantial collections of early Caribbean newspapers housed at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, MA, dating from 1716 to 1876 and entailing not merely more than 100 issues of each the Register and the Watchman, but also comprising runs of contemporary competing planter papers such as the Jamaica Courant and the Kingston Chronicle. The holdings at the British Library allowed me to deepen the previously gained knowledge of the planter press and the respective planter editors operating in cities like Kingston and St. John’s, thereby tackling questions that are indispensable for developing a sense of the newspaper market at the time and are thus essential for the study of African Caribbean papers in the early decades of the nineteenth century: How did the local planter papers on Antigua and Jamaica, virtually monopolizing the newspaper market up until the 1820s, function, not just as texts, but as mediums, print objects, and newspaper businesses? And who were the editors, printers, publishers, and proprietors of those publications?

The special as well as the newspaper collections at the British Library have helped me to deal with the internal and external mechanisms of the planter press in abstract terms and with Augustus Hardin Beaumont more concretely. Beaumont, one of the most prominent antagonists of Edward Jordon and Robert Osborn, was a major public figure in Kingston in the late 1820s and early 1830s, when he held several political offices in Jamaica, such as elected common councilman of Jamaica, magistrate, and member of the House of Assembly for the parish of Westmoreland. At the same time, the former slave-owner founded the Public Advertiser in 1823 that, three years later, merged with the Courant and was re-launched as the Jamaica Courant and Public Advertiser. The British Library holds various printings that shed light on Beaumont as a public man and, more importantly, as a print entrepreneur in the nineteenth-century Atlantic world. A printing entitled The Consolidated Slave Law from 1827 had been published for Beaumont by the Courant office and shows that Beaumont, as it was common practice for newspaper owners of the time, produced a whole range of print products at his office. A newspaper alone was rarely lucrative enough to guarantee the economic survival of a printing office. In 1826, for example, Beaumont had his treatise Compensation to Slave Owners in an Appeal to the Common Sense of the People of England published by Effingham Wilson in London. Here, Beaumont argued on the basis of individual property rights and demanded compensation, being, in his view, the precondition for emancipation: “Refuse this just – this not denied , but admitted – more than admitted – proved right to compensation, then adieu to your Plans of Reform and gradual emancipation. You may make Laws, but we will break them: You may Usurp, we will never yield our rights. Execute Justice yourselves – we will shew Mercy” (23). Concluding his pamphlet, Beaumont’s fervent appeal to the British public in general and to the British government in particular documents how a prominent representative of the Jamaican planter class lobbied aggressively for the interests of the local plantocracy.

The seditious, rebellious language used vis-à-vis the British metropolis is remarkable, especially once contrasted with the rhetoric of many free blacks in Jamaica at the time, including Edward Jordon and Robert Osborn. While many planter papers worked with a similar rhetoric to frame the concerns of a planter elite fearing both for their safety and their wealth – highly anti-British and openly revolutionary – the Watchman cultivated what Alpen Razi has aptly termed a form of “empire loyalism” (105), which was also strategic. The editors of the early African Caribbean paper positioned themselves repeatedly and explicitly as British subjects and as such claimed for themselves and for the class of free Blacks and free people of color the same set of civil rights to which all Britons are entitled qua constitution, independent of skin color. This form of strategic loyalism, the editors’ turning toward the larger Atlantic collides with the new localism of the planter lobbyists in the 1820s and early 1830s prior to emancipation in 1833. One of the precursors of this development was the Jamaica Journal, printed at the office of the Jamaica Courant. An advertisement from April 17, 1818 for the newly founded Jamaica Journal, edited and published by the educator, book author, and print entrepreneur John Rippingham, delineates the role of the planter editor in this enterprise, marketing Jamaica as a model colony, contrary to popular belief in Britain. In order to “enable the British nation to judge of Jamaica – not from assertion – but from a development and accumulation of indisputable facts” (Courant, April 17, 1818, 3), planter papers like the Journal blurred the boundaries between art and business and employed a range of genres, including, inter alia, anecdotes about “the chief family events of the Island” and allegedly “accurate and authentic” accounts of local plantations (Courant, April 17, 1818, 3). Clearly, the focus was a local one. The British Library has a copy of the first issue to appear in November 1818, including a preface setting the editorial agenda for what follows. Apart from the conventional request for subscriptions and the genre-typical performance of editorial humility, the preface features a brief but significant mission statement, focusing on the periodical’s “features of utility” (n. pag.). The Jamaica Journal, Rippingham suggests, is pragmatic and literary, useful and than entertaining, which the table of contents seems to substantiate. We find the “Introduction to a New Work on Fever” and “The Laws of Jamaica” next to original poetry and “Biographical Incidents.”

Certainly, the Caribbean material available at the British Library has enriched and complicated my perspective on the early Caribbean press in the 1820s and 1830s decidedly and my research time in London has accordingly advanced and shaped the overall project in significant ways. The inspiring, intellectually stimulating and challenging working and research environment at the British Library also contributed to the progress I made during and after my time at this unique archive. The British Library and the staff on the ground more specifically helped me to spend my limited research time as effectively and as efficiently as possible. Last but not least, the British Library facilitates a forum for scholars and researchers from all over world, allowing me for example to reconnect with a fellow I had met in Philadelphia to talk about the directions our projects are currently taking. I am grateful for this outstanding research experience and I would like to thank the British Library and its staff in general and the Eccles Centre in particular as well as the BAAS – thanks to both institutions not just for awarding me a postgraduate fellowship but for organizing and administering the overall process.

Works Cited

(1818, 3). “Mr. Rippingham having arranged.” [Ad]. Jamaica Courant 13 (92), April 17, 1818. 3. Caribbean Newspapers, Series 1, 1718-1876.

(1818, n. pag.). “.” [Table of Contents]. Jamaica Journal 1 (1), November 1818. n. pag. Copy of the British Library.

Beaumont, Augustus Hardin. Compensation to Slave Owners in an Appeal to the Common Sense of the People of England. London: Effingham Wilson, 1826. Copy of the British Library.

Cave, Roderick. “Early Printing and the Book Trade in the West Indies.” Library Quarterly 48.2 (1978): 163-92.

—. Printing and the Book Trade in the West Indies. London: Pindar Press, 1987.

Lewis, Andrew. “‘An Incendiary Press’: British West Indian Newspapers During the Struggle for Abolition.” Slavery & Abolition 16.3 (1995): 346-61.

Razi, Alpen. “‘Coloured Citizens of the World’: The Networks of Empire Loyalism in Emancipation-Era Jamaica and the Rise of the Transnational Black Press.” American Periodicals 23.2 (2013): 105-24.

Johanna Seibert[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]