By David Levering Lewis (Trustee; NHC Fellow, 1983–84) David Levering Lewis is the Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of History at Rutgers University and was recently awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919 received the Bancroft, Parkman, and Pulitzer Prizes, and was a finalist for the National Book Award and … Continued
Edited by Charles Stewart (NHC Fellow, 1996–97) Social scientists have used the term "Creolization" to evoke cultural fusion and the emergence of new cultures across the globe. However, the term has been under-theorized and tends to be used as a simple synonym for "mixture" or "hybridity." In this volume, by contrast, renowned scholars give the … Continued
By Fernando de Alva IxtlilxóchitlEdited and translated by Peter B. Villella (NHC Fellow, 2018–19), Amber Brian, Bradley Benton, and Pablo García Loaeza A descendant of both Spanish settlers and Nahua (Aztec) rulers, Don Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl (ca. 1578–1650) was an avid collector of indigenous pictorial and alphabetic texts and a prodigious chronicler of the … Continued
By Gail Minault (NHC Fellow, 1987–88) Giere is utterly persuasive in arguing that to criticize the Enlightenment ideal is not to criticize science itself, and that to defend science one need not defend the Enlightenment ideal. Science without Laws thus stakes out a middle ground in these debates by showing us how science can be … Continued
By Madeleine Dobie (NHC Fellow, 2005–06) In Trading Places, Madeleine Dobie explores the place of the colonial world in the culture of the French Enlightenment. She shows that until a turning point in the late 1760s questions of colonization and slavery occupied a very marginal position in literature, philosophy, and material and visual culture. In an … Continued
The removal of American Indian tribes from lands east of the Mississippi River to what is now the state of Oklahoma is one of the tragic episodes in American history. Early treaties signed by American agents and representatives of Indian tribes guaranteed peace and the integrity of Indian territories, primarily to assure that the lucrative … Continued
For tens of millions of years the dominant pattern of biological evolution on this planet has been one of geographical divergence dictated by the simple fact of the separateness of the continents. However, in the last few thousand years there has been a countervailing force. Homo sapiens have gone everywhere, taking with us, intentionally, our … Continued
Some European attempts to colonize the New World failed not only because of physical hardships and deprivation but also because of cultural misunderstandings on the part of both the colonizers and the native inhabitants.
John White’s depictions of Virginia brought a striking naturalism to the visual representation of America even as they were shaped by European cultural habits and preconceptions.
Early European colonies in the New World succeeded only if local Indians allowed them to and if they were lucky. When European settlers arrived in the New World, they often placed their colonies among people who had established complex webs of political relationships that included both alliances and rivalries. If Indians tolerated settlements they could … Continued