History, Natural History & the Arts
The city of New Rochelle has a relevant place in the founding history of the United States. It was here that in 1689 a small community of French Protestant refugees would settle.
Known as Huguenots, they exercised considerable influence on America’s course towards self-determination. George Washington descended from a Huguenot refugee on his mother’s side. [Read more…] about Huguenots & New Rochelle’s Spirit of Liberty
Who are the 50 individuals most frequently represented by a public monument in the US? What percentage of those 50 are white and male? How many are women? And what are the dynamics that helped shape who is — and who is not — on that list?
Answers to those questions are among the findings of the National Monument Audit, a first-of-its-kind report issued by Monument Lab, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit art and history studio. [Read more…] about List of America’s Public Monuments Reveals One-Sided History Obsessions
Investigations of the American Revolution often include explorations of politics, ideology, trade and taxation, imperial control, and social strife. What about religion?
What role did religion play in the American Revolution?
In this episode of Ben Franklin’s World: A Podcast About Early American History Katherine Carté, author of Religion and the American Revolution: An Imperial History (Omohundro Institute & UNC Press, 2021), joins us to investigate the role of religion in the American Revolution.
The latest episode of A New York Minute In History details the “Burned Over District” and how upstate New York became a “cauldron” of emergent religions and alternative communities during the 19th century. How did the Burned Over District collide with state and national history? And what role did the Erie Canal play in establishing it?
These new religions contributed to the creation of alternative communities, such as the Ebenezers and the Oneida Community, and how this predication for communal living was revisited in New York during the 1960s. [Read more…] about New History Podcast Features ‘Burned Over District’
Death is one of the few universals in life. Everyone who is born, will die.
How do the living make peace with death?
While different cultures make peace with death in different ways, Erik Seeman, author of the award-winning book, Speaking with the Dead in Early America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), joins the Ben Franklin’s World podcast to investigate how white, American Protestants made their peace with death during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.
In the latest episode of Empire State Engagements Dr. Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada talks about her ethnographic study of Italian-American men’s Catholic devotion, Lifeblood of the Parish; Men and Catholic Devotion in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (NYU Press, 2020). She discussed her experiences over six years of work engaging the parish community; reading tattoos as devotional texts; playfulness and devotion in masculine spaces; the rich history of Italian-American Catholicism in Williamsburg; and the endurance of this parish, tradition, and community – despite decades of challenges ranging from reactionary clergymen to Robert Moses to gentrifying hipsters. [Read more…] about Parish Lifeblood: Italian-Americans In Williamsburg (Podcast)
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In 1844 America was in a state of deep unrest, grappling with xenophobia, racial, and ethnic tension on a national scale that feels singular to our time, but echoes the earliest anti-immigrant sentiments of the country.
In that year Philadelphia was set aflame by a group of Protestant ideologues — avowed nativists — who were seeking social and political power rallied by charisma and fear of the Irish immigrant menace. [Read more…] about Fires of Philadelphia: A New Book On The 1844 Nativist Riots
Episode two of “Empire State Engagements” features a conversation with Dr. Catherine O’Donnell of Arizona State University exploring her book Elizabeth Seton, American Saint (Ithaca, NY: Three Hills/Cornell University Press, 2018).
O’Donnell discussed young Elizabeth Seton’s formative years in New York City, the intellectual forces and family tragedies that informed her spiritual journey, the evolution of American Catholicism, and Mother Seton’s remarkable journey from despair to serenity and, ultimately, sainthood. [Read more…] about Catherine O’Donnell Discusses ‘Elizabeth Seton: American Saint’
The Reverend Charles Preston arrived at the port of Hong Kong on May 12th, 1854 after a voyage of 160 days from the city of New York. His final destination was the city of Canton, China – where the Presbyterian Missionary Board had established a base of operation that included a school, hospital and chapel. There he would engage in his life’s work: trying to convert the people of China to Christianity. [Read more…] about A Saratoga County Missionary To Canton, China
The Great Awakening was a wave of increased religious enthusiasm led by evangelical Protestant ministers that first swept through the American Colonies in the 1730s. It made Christianity intensely personal to the average person by fostering a deep sense of spiritual conviction and by encouraging introspection and a commitment to a new standard of personal morality.
While the Great Awakening was very effective in reviving religion, the emotion burned out quickly after the first generation and there was much “back sliding.” By the 1820s conditions were ripe for another round of revival, what became known as the Second Great Awakening. [Read more…] about Infidels and Atheists: 1820 Religious Revival in Saratoga County