The ITPS (Institute for Thomas Paine Studies)

It was wonderful to talk Tom Paine and climate change last night—thank you @theitps.bsky.social and @noraslonimsky.bsky.social !

A woman stands behind a podium on a stage in front a projector screen and a eisle

The brilliant @joycechaplin.bsky.social delivering the second annual Lapidus Lecture in Paine Studies!

Terrific "Taking Stock and Setting Agendas" meeting this past weekend @theitps.bsky.social centered on early American studies and digital history. Thanks to @noraslonimsky.bsky.social, @ben-wright.bsky.social, & Mark Boonshoft for the chance to present "Hard of Hearing: Podcasting Early America."

A poster in a flower pot, set against a green background with a body of water in the distance

Thank you to our friends at RW250 for including the ITPS in the planning at the beautiful Wainright House for exciting upcoming #Rev250 events next autumn! Keep a look out for “Revolution on the Sound” in October 2026.

Engraved, printed and sold by Paul Revere Jr. - The Boston Massacre, or, The Bloody Massacre perpetrated in King Street, Boston on March 5, 1770 by a party of the 29th Regiment - The Metropolitan Muse... <strong>Inscription:</strong> in plate above image: "THE BLOODY MASSACRE perpetrated in King-Street BOSTON on March 5th 1770 by a party of the 29th Reg-t."<br/>in plate, within image, lower right: "En...

Teaching about the military occupation of Boston in 1768 and the subsequent Boston Massacre of 1770 for the umpteenth time next week...but this time around it hits a little different. www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti...

LIBRARIES WORK BECAUSE WE DO. Silhouettes of library workers inside the text. ALA-APA logo.

Happy Labor Day! Today, we're honoring the library workers across the country whose dedication and expertise keep our libraries and our communities strong. Libraries work because library workers do!

ALA offices are closed in observance.

In honor of Labor Day, we decided to rest instead of making this post.

Labor Day | noun | a day set aside for special recognition of working people

National Woman's Party activists watch Alice Paul sew a star onto the NWP Ratification Flag. 1920. Photo by the National Photo Company. National Women's Party Records, Library of Congress.

On this day in 1920, the 19th Amendment was certified, giving women the Constitutional right to vote. After Congress sent the Amendment to the states 15 months earlier, the National Woman’s Party would sew a new star on this flag whenever a new state ratified it. 🧵

Women’s Equality Day: Celebrate the Victories. Confront the Backlash. Women’s Equality Day: Celebrate the Victories for Women and the Right to Vote. Confront the Backlash—like to the Equal Rights Amendment.

Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2025, marks 104 years since the 19th Amendment was certified, recognizing women’s constitutional right to vote.

“The Joy of My Life”: Seeing-Eye Dogs, Disabled Veterans/Civilians and WWI On December 13, 1933, Captain A. J. C. Sington, then Chairman of the British Guide Dogs for the Blind, read a letter from an unnamed veteran of the Great War to the Northern Counties Association fo…

Its #InternationalDogDay, and I usually share some #DisHist posts, and this is one of the earliest pieces I wrote about the First World War and dogs, for @nursingclio.bsky.social.

They're all good dogs.

nursingclio.org/2018/11/15/t...

Beyond the pages: John Carter Brown Library exhibition celebrates the making of rare books “Elemental: Crafting Books from Nature” is an ode to the physical book, exploring thousands of years of practical knowledge and natural resources that led to the production of books.

Interested in learning more about our current exhibition, Elemental: Crafting Books from Nature?

Check out this article:
www.brown.edu/news/2025-06...

Elemental is on view until Dec. 15, M-Th, 10 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. and 2 p.m. to 4:45 p.m., and F 10 a.m. to 12:45 p.m.

Photo credit: Rythum Vinoben.

A beige and black flyer held in front of a red and gold leaf print carpet with a table behind it with a blue and white table cloth

At last week’s @shearites.bsky.social conference, the new #ITPS series made an appearance at the @uvapress.bsky.social table!

So the London reprints of Common Sense from 1776 CENSORED extra mean and snarky comments about the king but the Edinburgh reprints did NOT —- i repeat: the SCOTTISH reprints KEPT all the very mean and snarky comments about the king, the ROYAL BRUTE OF BRITAIN. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🥇

Great talk!

Congratulations Meg! Check out Meg’s article in the Journal of the Early Republic.

muse.jhu.edu/pub/12/artic...

Open spiral with Sunday morning sessions listed for the society for historians of the early American republic.

So excited to have most of my responsibilities discharged and be able to relish sessions this morning at #SHEAR2025!

@profmsinha.bsky.social

A projector screen in front of a wooden wall on a state with a woman with dark hair in a black shirt standing behind a podium

Paine and “Common Sense” make an appearance in @shearites.bsky.social President Manisha Sinha’s address⬇️

This event is going to be so cool! And the idea, cooked up with @noraslonimsky.bsky.social, is to do this format again in 2026. We're excited about it! And super grateful to this awesome line-up of scholars.

New Manuscripts Finding Aids, June 2025 - UM Clements Library

Great batch of new manuscript collection finding aids at the Clements Library! Wonderful opportunities for research.

clements.umich.edu/mss-finding-...

The opening page of the essay. Here is the first paragraph: -HISTORIANS always note the great impact of Thomas Paine's of the most brilliant pamphlets ever written in the English lan-guage." Yet, despite the frequency of these claims, scholars rarely bring them together as mutually informing insights or controlling premises.! On the one side, the twin appeals of the pamphlet-the historical assertion of immediate impact and the literary assessment of timeless merit-make it an extraordinary source for gauging how Americans think about themselves and their country, then and now. On the other side, the same unique combination of instant effect and lasting influence welcomes rhetorical analy-sis, turning Common Sense into a seminal text for thinking about "the art of persuasion" in American life. One can go further. Precisely how the pamphlet persuades its readers is an object lesson in the workings of modern democratic culture, and the way Americans have absorbed it into collective or national memory remains an untold story in ideological formations.

Still unsurpassed as the best close reading of a non-literary text in my field.

Robert A. Ferguson, “The Commonalities of COMMON SENSE.” William and Mary Quarterly (2000)

Submissions are open for the 2026 Eccles Institute & Hay Festival Global Writer’s Award!

The prize grants £20,000 annually to two writers for a yet-to-be-published book relating to the Americas, as well as a unique research residency at the Library.

Find out more & apply: bit.ly/BL-WritersAw...

The Historical Legacy of Juneteenth Juneteenth is an often overlooked event in our nation’s history. On June 19, 1865, Union troops freed enslaved African Americans in Galveston Bay and across Texas some two and a half years after Presi...

Happy Juneteenth! nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stor...

OAH has partnered with @volckeralliance.bsky.social to capture oral histories! Read about the project here: ow.ly/ww9h50Wbmsb

Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins’s Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany - Village Preservation Please join us for an author talk with Rebecca Brenner Graham in conversation with Natalia Mehlman Petrzela. Former Greenwich Village resident Frances Perkins was the first woman to serve in a preside...

NYC tonight @nataliapetrzela.bsky.social www.villagepreservation.org/event/dear-m...

This is cool. I always explain to students that broadsides were kind of like an early modern blog post!

Thank you! That’s definitely the idea.

New Book Series Brings the Spirit of Paine’s “Common Sense” and the Founding Era into the 21st Century <p>The University of Virginia Press is pleased to announce “From Pamphlets to Podcasts: An Institute for Thomas Paine Studies Series,” a new series th

Big news from the #ITPS! We are thrilled to share a new series with @uvapress.bsky.social! Here are more details about "From Pamphlets to Podcasts" and if you're working on relevant themes (this is an intentionally 'big tent' series), consider sending them our way upress.virginia.edu/news/new-boo...

I Have Avenged America A moving and humane portrait of the abolitionist revolutionary Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who led Haiti’s fight for independence from French colonial rule  ...

PUBLICATION DAY!

_I Have Avenged America: Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Haiti's Fight for Freedom_ is now available from @yalepress.bsky.social

To celebrate, I am going to post some of the most extraordinary Dessalines quotations below!
yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...