“’Scrapeing the world for money’: Nicholas Owen’s Manuscript Journal, 1746-1757″

OI Colloquium with Kerry Sinanan

Nicholas Owen’s Journal of a Slave-Dealer was edited by Eveline Martin in 1930. In this talk Sinanan will discuss the manuscript journal itself which has remained unexamined since its publication. Forged in the West African space of slave trading by an impoverished, white, Anglo-Irishman with pretensions to gentility, Owen’s description of his life in Sherbro and Sierra Leone in the 1750s is a startling example of quotidian white fragility/supremacy. Owen sees himself as a victim of economic forces and casts his experience as a form of involuntary exile among an inferior people, while profiting off their enslavement. The erasure of the people he buys and sells, and his use of a journal to write his selfhood as trades in flesh, makes Owen’s text one in which we can read what Hortense Spillers describes as part of the matrix of captivity: the “captive body reduces to a thing becoming being for the captor”. This absenting of enslaved people and the stereotypical descriptions of local customs, enables Owen’s forging of textual “mastery” even as he complains of his lot. This chapter is part of my book, Myths of Mastery, which examines closely the writings of a range of enslavers, including John Newton and John Stedman. Sinanan show how the liberal, humanistic, Enlightenment discourses of the enslaver enable the violent subjugation and commodification of others, giving lie to his myths of mastery.

Kerry Sinanan specializes in the literature of the Black Atlantic and on archives of slavery in the British Caribbean. Her most recent article ‘The “Slave” as Cultural Artifact: The Case of Mary Prince’ appears in Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, and a recent chapter ‘Lost mothers in the Caribbean plantation and black maternal and infant mortality, now’ appears in Caribbean Literature in Transition, Volume 1. She has recently completed her monograph Myths of Mastery: Traders, Planters and Colonial Agents, 1750-1833, now under consideration by the University of North Carolina Press. Articles relating to this research came out in 2020 in Age of Revolutions, and in Romantic Circles. She has received research fellowships from the Beinecke Library, the James Ford Bell Library and the Yale Center for British Art. Most recently she was awarded a Rakow Research grant by the Corning Museum to continue her work on the visual cultures of glass in the Black Atlantic world. She is Vice President of the Early Caribbean Society.

ABOUT OI COLLOQUIA

The OI’s Colloquium Series is an ongoing seminar for scholars to present their work in progress for graduate students and colleagues.  Advanced registration is required. All participants read the pre-circulated  paper and prepare to engage in generous and generative feedback.

When we meet in person we are limited by the size of the OI’s conference room; online we limit registration to 40 (a typical size for the colloquium). No recordings are made of the discussions and no tweeting or posting on other social media platforms during the event is permitted in order to encourage this intellectual community of trusted exchange.

COPIES OF THE COLLOQUIUM PAPER ARE AVAILABLE ONE WEEK IN ADVANCE.

Contact Beverly Smith for your copy.

Exploring the Essays in the Georgian Papers

The Georgian Papers Programme (GPP) will run two public workshops in April and May 2021. The workshops will highlight the work of two researchers who joined the programme as part of the White Rose College of Arts and Humanities REP Partner Organisation scheme. Holly Day (University of York, 2021) and Jenny Buckley (University of York, 2019) each conducted critical research for the GPP, illuminating aspects of the Georgian Papers collections that are of value and interest for researchers and the public alike.  Join us as Dr. Jenny Buckley and PhD student Holly Day share their research on two exciting aspects of the Georgian Papers: inventories and essays.

Jenny Buckley created an exhibit based on her research into the Georgian essays, The Essays of George III, an important part of the Georgian Papers.

“Spanning topics such as history, geography, mathematics, music, moral philosophy, the constitution, and revenue and taxation, the ‘Essays’ offer multiple avenues through which we can re-evaluate our perceptions of George III, both as a man and as a monarch. By working through these categories, we can begin to understand the nature of these ‘private papers’ as a distinct collection within the context of the Georgian Papers. It is possible to draw thematic connections between the papers and, once these have been identified, interesting correlations emerge between George III’s writings and those of other members of the Royal Household.”

–Jenny Buckley

In our first workshop (April 20, 2021), Holly Day presents her exploration of the Georgian inventories. If you ever encountered an estate sale, or if you ever wondered how on earth the Georgian monarchs kept track of their incredible collections of art, plate, furnishings and more, then this workshop will help discover the value of Georgian inventories. You can visit that collection here. Inventories are a key part of the Georgian Papers. They are a fascinating and extraordinarily diverse set of materials that introduce us to the material world of the Georgian court, as well as to the royal household and other staff who were generating the inventories. See Exploring the Inventories in the Georgian Papers: A virtual exhibition by Holly Day.

Free the Ghost of Blithfield Hall!

Join us for a virtual escape room with transcription experts Julie Fisher, Sara Powell, and Heather Wolfe. Using manuscripts from the Blithfield Hall collection, teams will compete to solve clues that bring the story of one of Blithfield’s past residents into sharper focus.

ADVANCE REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED. Contact Martha Howard for more information.

Julie A. Fisher holds a PhD from the University of Delaware and specializes in Early American and Native American history. She has been developing digital humanities projects over the past four years including serving as the Members Bibliography and Biography Postdoctoral Fellow at the APS and as a consulting editor with the Native Northeast Portal (formerly the Yale Indian Papers Project) at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center. Before that she was the primary investigator for a National Park Service grant at the Roger Williams National Memorial in Providence, Rhode Island. She first began transcribing and learning paleography skills for her first book, Ninigret, Sachem of the Niantics and Narragansetts: Diplomacy, War, and the Balance of Power in Seventeenth-Century New England and Indian Country. She is currently working on her latest project which examines language acquisition in seventeenth century southern New England.

Sara Powell is the assistant curator of Early Books and Manuscripts at Houghton Library at Harvard University, where she supports the development and use of the library’s pre-1800 collections, with an emphasis on medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. Sara earned an MS in Library & Information Science from Simmons University and an MA in Medieval Studies from the University of York. She has previously held research librarian positions at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library and at Swarthmore College Libraries.

Heather Wolfe is Curator of Manuscripts at the Folger Shakespeare Library. She received an MLIS from UCLA and a PhD from the University of Cambridge. She is currently principal investigator of Early Modern Manuscripts Online (emmo.folger.edu), co-principal investigator of Shakespeare’s World (shakespearesworld.org), curator of Shakespeare Documented (shakespearedocumented.org) and is co-director of the multi-year, $1.5 million research project Before ‘Farm to Table’: Early Modern Foodways and Cultures, a Mellon initiative in collaborative research at the Folger Institute of the Folger Shakespeare Library. Her first book, Elizabeth Cary, Lady Falkland: Life and Letters (2000) received the Josephine Roberts Scholarly Edition Award from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women. She has written widely on the intersections between manuscript and print culture in early modern England, and also edited The Trevelyon Miscellany of 1608 (2007), The Literary Career and Legacy of Elizabeth Cary (2007), and, with Alan Stewart, Letterwriting in Renaissance England (2004). Her most recent research explores the social circulation of writing paper and blank books. Her essay “The Material Culture of Record-Keeping in Early Modern England,” co-written with Peter Stallybrass, received the 2019 Archival History Article Award from the Society of American Archivists.

Seals, Folds, and Holes: Diplomatic Transcription and the Material Text

Building on the public program, “Making History through Handwriting”, this specialized workshop will focus on diplomatic transcription of archival documents for researchers. Learn how the transcription decisions of today can impact your research for years to come. We will explore how attention to the material text as an object will allow you to unlock clues about a document’s creation, use, and transmission

This workshop has been developed especially for graduate students.

Julie A. Fisher holds a PhD from the University of Delaware and specializes in Early American and Native American history. She has been developing digital humanities projects over the past four years including serving as the Members Bibliography and Biography Postdoctoral Fellow at the American Philosophical Society (APS) and as a consulting editor with the Native Northeast Portal (formerly the Yale Indian Papers Project) at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center. Before that she was the primary investigator for a National Park Service grant at the Roger Williams National Memorial in Providence, Rhode Island. She first began transcribing and learning paleography skills for her first book, Ninigret, Sachem of the Niantics and Narragansetts: Diplomacy, War, and the Balance of Power in Seventeenth-Century New England and Indian Country. She is currently working on her latest project which examines language acquisition in seventeenth century southern New England.

Sara Powell is the assistant curator of Early Books and Manuscripts at Houghton Library at Harvard University, where she supports the development and use of the library’s pre-1800 collections, with an emphasis on medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. Sara earned an MS in Library & Information Science from Simmons University and an MA in Medieval Studies from the University of York. She has previously held research librarian positions at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library and at Swarthmore College Libraries.

Making History through Handwriting: An Introduction to Manuscript Transcription

Are you interested in archival transcription and the mysteries it can unlock? Join us on January 13th as Julie Fisher and Sara Powell discuss transcription, its importance today, and tips you can use when transcribing manuscripts. Learn about transcription projects taking place across the United States and how to join them.

About our speakers

Julie A. Fisher holds a PhD from the University of Delaware and specializes in Early American and Native American history. She has been developing digital humanities projects over the past four years including serving as the Members Bibliography and Biography Postdoctoral Fellow at the American Philosophical Society (APS) and as a consulting editor with the Native Northeast Portal (formerly the Yale Indian Papers Project) at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center. Before that she was the primary investigator for a National Park Service grant at the Roger Williams National Memorial in Providence, Rhode Island. She first began transcribing and learning paleography skills for her first book, Ninigret, Sachem of the Niantics and Narragansetts: Diplomacy, War, and the Balance of Power in Seventeenth-Century New England and Indian Country. She is currently working on her latest project which examines language acquisition in seventeenth century southern New England.

Sara Powell is the assistant curator of Early Books and Manuscripts at Houghton Library at Harvard University, where she supports the development and use of the library’s pre-1800 collections, with an emphasis on medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. Sara earned an MS in Library & Information Science from Simmons University and an MA in Medieval Studies from the University of York. She has previously held research librarian positions at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library and at Swarthmore College Libraries.

 

Telling Unconventional Life Stories in Vast Early America

Biography remains one of the most durable, popular forms of history.  But telling life stories, especially when the individuals in question were not among the elite—when the records of their lives were scattered, ill-preserved, or non-existent—presents archival, evidentiary, linguistic, and narrative challenges for early Americanists.

Please join Carolyn Eastman and Sophie White for a discussion of the challenges and opportunities that arise when “Telling Unconventional Life Stories in Vast Early America.” Sophie White’s prize-winning Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana (2019) brings to light a remarkable cast of enslaved individuals who fought to tell their stories in the courts of eighteenth-century French Louisiana.  Carolyn Eastman’s forthcoming book, The Strange Genius of Mr. O: The World of the United States’ First Forgotten Celebrity, uses the life of the remarkably eccentric Scottish orator James Ogilvie as a lens for exploring politics and culture in the founding decades of the U.S. Republic.

Carolyn Eastman is associate professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University and the author of the prizewinning A Nation of Speechifiers: Making an American Public after the Revolution. Her forthcoming book, The Strange Genius of Mr. O: The World of the United States’ First Forgotten Celebrity, will be published by the Omohundro Institute and University of North Carolina Press in March 2021.

 

Sophie White is professor of American studies at the University of Notre Dame. In addition to Voices of the Enslaved, which has won the AHA’s James A. Rawley Prize and four other book prizes, and is a finalist for the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, she is the author of Wild Frenchmen and Frenchified Indians: Material Culture and Race in Colonial Louisiana (2012), and co-editor of Hearing Enslaved Voices: African and Indian Slave Testimony in British and French America, 1700–1848 (2020).