Tag: religious history

“Mistress, Housemaid, Daughter, Spy: Servants and the Management of Household
 Gossip in 17th Century New England”

OI Colloquium with Melissa Johnson

In seventeenth-century New England, female servants’ presence in intimate settings, their mobility in towns and villages, and their associations with other households made them part of a complex set of relationships through which information flowed. Servant gossip had the potential to upend hierarchies and household governance by creating opportunities for lower status women and girls to shape their communities. This chapter is part of a larger project on women’s gossip in seventeenth-century Massachusetts, which examines women’s talk in seventeenth-century Massachusetts through the lens of holy watchfulness.

Melissa Ann Johnson is a historian of women, religion, and communication in early America. Her first book project focuses on watchfulness and women’s gossip in seventeenth-century New England. She is also working on two other projects, one on domestic servitude in colonial New England and another on deception and imposters in the Atlantic world. Her research has been supported by the Massachusetts Historical Society, the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium, the Clark Memorial Library at UCLA, and the Center for the Education of Women at the University of Michigan. She received her PhD from the University of Michigan in 2019 and currently teaches history courses at community colleges in Oregon and in Washington state.

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.

Julia Gaffield, “The Schism: Haitian Independence and the National Church”

OI Colloquium with Julia Gaffield

Julia Gaffield is an associate professor of History at Georgia State University. She received her PhD from Duke University. Her research has been supported by grants and fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Professor Gaffield’s first book, Haitian Connections in the Atlantic World: Recognition after Revolution, was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2015 and won the 2016 Mary Alice and Frederick Boucher Book Prize from the French Colonial Historical Society. It was positively reviewed in fifteen academic journals, including the American Historical Review and The William and Mary Quarterly.

She is currently working on two book projects: the first, tentatively entitled, Jean-Jacques Dessalines: Freedom or Death, is a biography of the Haitian founding father (under contract with Yale University Press). The second, tentatively entitled, The Abandoned Faithful: Race and International Law in the Aftermath of the Haitian Revolution, shows how Haiti’s state-sanctioned claim to Roman Catholicism after 1804 had local and global implications that helped reshape the dominant understanding of international law (under contract with the Omohundro Institute).

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 to receive your copy.