@kawulf
Historian of #VastEarlyAmerica, gender, family & politics | Director & Librarian @ JCBLibrary | History Prof @ Brown U #LineageTheBook OUP July, 2025 | On some other platforms and also @ karinwulf.com | Opinions here just mine.
"Galileo prayed each time he sat down with The Almagest." I like this idea that, when assessing the universe & the centuries of human endeavors to understand it, we are in the presence of something that is itself miraculous.
For the "everything is online" crowd in the back:
Important to consider that "everything" cultural heritage related that is accessible online represents only 1% (one percent) of archives, libraries, and museum collections worldwide.
I love everything about this! The conviction that a major figure was not struck by a bolt of lightning but worked to understand the system he would ultimately critique and help dismantle. The scholarly sleuthing rare books — all of it. 😎🤓
www.science.org/content/arti...
Apply to join my team by 3/16!
Be the Library of Virginia's born-digital collections coordinator, leading planning and management of electronic gov/manuscript records. We're looking for a techie archivist type who can help improve access to our born-digital wonders.
$78k-$88k in Richmond VA.
This is the best thing ever!!! 😁🤓❤️
I recall 1976, dimly, as “Here we are/aren’t we great to be this old?!/look at all this red, white, and blue.”
It would be better this time, 2026, to study, teach, and debate 1776 and U.S. history since—what have “we” been to what are we now. Use this anniversary as an opportunity to become smarter.
Yessssss! Messaging!
Made them! Happy to send the image or some stickers to you!
pile of circle stickers that say "Everything is better with footnotes." With a footnote callout to me.
Reordered these. Bc the world.
Always interested in E Van Lew! There’s a fascinating #HATM ( well I thought so) Omohundro link that’s also a good lesson for women’s history month! oieahc.wm.edu/publications...
Silhouette of a woman with an enormous updo hairdo, long 18th century gown, and an absurd hat perched atop.
How can you be talking about HISTORY with everything that's going on. 18th century history? Women's history? Waves hands.
Friends, it is precisely because of everything that's going on that we need to talk about history much, much more.
Fashionable regency era as imagined on tv, Eloise Bridgerton sitting in a drawing room with a quizzical look. Caption: "you read Mary Wollstonecraft?"
The best moment in Bridgeton season 4.
I look forward to checking this out. Absolutely more people should read more about more women.
But even more so, we should be asking WHY these stories-- far from unknown -- are still considered "hidden." Less discourse about uncovering please and more about who and why the hiding happens.
Yes exactly. And what it doesn't do-- just writing notes for a panel this morning where this is a feature of my comments!-- is ask us WHY we think or HOW we think these things are "hidden." The "uncovered" discourse leaves the power of how we make "history" conveniently to the side.
I hope the footnotes are awesome/ fulsome! Full of the scholars and writers who have been researching, writing, lifting these early American women's histories for a long time.
Because it is true that despite that work, too few people know enough history --and how "history" comes to us as it does.
Mercy Otis Warren.
I despair.
A good accessible primer for the politics of fashion in the revolution is (now Professor) Kate Haulman's "Short History of the High Roll."
That image ⬇️ is from the sketchbook of John Andre, the most famous British officer executed in the revolution.
commonplace.online/article/a-sh...
Today marks the first day of Women's History Month; yesterday was the last day of Black History Month.
Every day is for women's history and Black history and Black women's history.
Because these are not histories that are separate from histories of war and economy.
Two engraved images of 18th century women with wild elaborate hairstyles -- both with military encampments within. A cannon poking out of one, firing. A satire on the British losses early in the revolutionary war.
It's not Bridgerton. Yes, American women wore wild high hair, too. Yes, it absolutely also had to do with status, consumption -- and politics.
Debating hair was debating power-- and always to sneer at women, whose hold on power was always conditional.
Image ⬇️ fr @jcblibrary.bsky.social
What's happening out there is always predicated on an idea about the past, what actions are justified, whose paths are smoothed, and why.
Oh, that's Lucy (Mrs. Henry) Knox, wife of one of George Washington's top generals. Just in the hallway @ Mass Historical.
Silhouette of a woman with an enormous updo hairdo, long 18th century gown, and an absurd hat perched atop.
How can you be talking about HISTORY with everything that's going on. 18th century history? Women's history? Waves hands.
Friends, it is precisely because of everything that's going on that we need to talk about history much, much more.
"I thank you most sincerely for your polite notice of me, in the elegant Lines you enclosed; and however undeserving I may be of such encomium and panegyrick, the style and manner exhibit a striking proof of your great poetical Talents."
- George Washington to Phillis Wheatley, 28 February 1776
A chalkboard sign “my fellow Americans we are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once too. Barack Obama soup Italian wedding.”
If you go through the best Amtrak station (not for building aesthetics) on a weekday you get this too.
Though I usually get the excellent grilled cheese rather than soup of the day.
Image of an 18th century city scene, with info about "Liberty for All? Women in the Age of the Revolutions" and info also about the opening plenary with Jennifer Morgan and Karin Wulf.
Amidst all, will be glad to be in conversation with my brilliant friend Jennifer Morgan tomorrow and in company with a stunning group of historians @nyhistory.bsky.social for the Max conference on women's history-- a subject we need much, much more of. www.nyhistory.org/programs/lib...
"I think that it needs to be known that the youth cares about this," said Maya,who walked out of her AP U.S. History class. "We don't think that any of this is okay, and we do not give our consent to have this kind of government.:
Sometimes walking out of your history class is the best way to demonstrate that you learned something in your history class.
wapo.st/4aF0iqG
It was a real privilege to do a deep dive into the history of Indigenous slavery, through a new digital archive called @natboundunbound.bsky.social. It felt like a really important topic to me, and a really important project. Thank you for reading and sharing!
Looks and sounds amazing. Perfect Friday night fare.
I have no idea what today's misdirected fury is about. Just noting that while we are all human thus imperfect there are so few among us who read, think, and write with integrity.
This is a @jamellebouie.net appreciation post.
Or why pace WSJ, more Americans are expatriating. Would be sad if it wasn't so enraging.
1/ @marthasjones.bsky.social and @katemasur.bsky.social have drafted a seminal brief: (a) that centers Black American beliefs on birthright citizenship and (b) uses a set of primary sources, such as speeches and Colored Conventions, fought for (and won) broad birthright citizenship for everyone.