Starr Center's New Patrick Henry Fellows to Focus on American Slavery, Life of Edward Kennedy

In residence this fall, Holly Brewer will share

her research in talk, September 13, at 5:30 p.m.

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Two stars in the world of American history, Holly Brewer and Neal Gabler, are coming to Chestertown as this year’s Patrick Henry Writing Fellows at the C. V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College.

Brewer will be in full-time residence at the Starr Center throughout the fall semester, working on a book that promises to dramatically reshape our understanding of how slavery took root in America. A prize-winning author and the Burke Chair of American History at the University of Maryland, she has done remarkable research challenging the traditional idea that slavery began here as a product of economic necessity. Echoing Thomas Jefferson’s famous accusation in his draft of the Declaration of Independence – which most previous scholars have dismissed – Brewer argues that to some degree slavery was imposed on the colonists from above by the British Crown.

On Sept. 13, she will deliver a public lecture on her findings: “Inheritable Blood: Slavery, Monarchy, and Power in Colonial America.”  Co-sponsored by the Rose O’Neill Literary House, the lecture will begin at 5:30 p.m. in Hynson Lounge at Hodson Commons, followed by a book signing.

Brewer’s book-in-progress, Inheritable Blood: Slavery and Sovereignty in Early Virginia and the British Atlantic, will also trace forgotten debates that deeply influenced the development of slavery in the colonies. She argues that conflicts between the tradition of inherited power and the Enlightenment ideal of equal rights shaped the institution and resonate in our public discourse today.

“I am so looking forward to the luxury of uninterrupted time to work on Inheritable Blood as a Fellow at the Starr Center,” Brewer says. “This project is incredibly important to me. I have been thinking about it for a very long time.”

Neal Gabler will be in residence during the spring semester, working on Against the Wind: Edward Kennedy and the Tortuous Course of American Liberalism, the first major biography of the late senator, which will be published by the Crown/Harmony division of Random House. An acclaimed biographer, Gabler is a prolific bestselling author who is currently visiting assistant professor in the MFA program at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

The fellowship provides its recipients with both a home at the circa-1735 Patrick Henry House on Queen Street in Chestertown and an office at the Starr Center, in the nearby circa-1746 Custom House. The Henry Fellows often teach classes and mentor students during their time at Washington College.

“It’s very exciting for us to have both a star in the field of colonial history and a first-rank public intellectual joining us,” said Adam Goodheart, Hodson Trust-Griswold Director of the Starr Center. “Their projects are very different and exemplify the breadth of what we do at the Starr Center.”

A longtime professor of history at North Carolina State University who recently moved to the University of Maryland, Brewer is the author of By Birth or Consent: Children, Law, and the Anglo-American Revolution in Authority, published in 2005 by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press. By Birth or Consent explores the changing legal status of children in Revolutionary-era England and British North America. The book won the 2006 J. Willard Hurst Prize from the Law and Society Association, the 2006 Cromwell Book Prize from the American Society for Legal History and the 2008 Biennial Book Prize of the Order of the Coif from the American Association of Law Schools. Brewer also won three prizes for her 1997 article “Entailing Aristocracy in Colonial Virginia.”

Brewer is also working on a book about the transformation of the common law of domestic relations in the early modern period in England and America, to be published by Cambridge University Press.

           

She is co-editor of the American Society for Legal History's book series and serves on its Board of Directors. She has served on the conference committees of several major organizations, including the Organization of American Historians, the American Society for Legal History and the Omohundro Institute's 400th anniversary of Jamestown conference. She also sits on the Council for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Humanities Center, among others. In 2010, she took time off from her research to lead a successful battle to save and enhance the history curriculum in North Carolina’s public schools, and served as state coordinator for the National Council for History Education.

           

The Patrick Henry Writing Fellowship’s funding is permanently endowed as part of a $2.5 million challenge grant package that the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded through its nationwide “We the People” initiative for strengthening the teaching, study and understanding of American history and culture.

Launched by the Starr Center in 2008, the Patrick Henry Fellowship aims to encourage reflection on the links between American history and contemporary culture, and to foster the literary art of historical writing. It is co-sponsored by the Rose O’Neill Literary House, Washington College's center for literature and the literary arts.

Washington College acquired the Patrick Henry Fellows’ Residence in January 2007 through a generous gift from the Barksdale-Dabney-Patrick Henry Family Foundation, which was established by the Nuttle family of Talbot County, direct descendants of the patriot Patrick Henry. Further support for the fellowship has been provided by the Starr Foundation, the Hodson Trust and other donors.

Founded in 1782 under the patronage of George Washington, Washington College is a private, independent college of liberal arts and sciences located in colonial Chestertown on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Based in the Custom House along the colonial waterfront, the College’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience fosters the art of written history and explores our nation’s past—particularly the legacy of its Founding era—in innovative ways, through educational programs, scholarship and public outreach. For more information on the Center and the Patrick Henry Writing Fellowship, visit http://starrcenter.washcoll.edu.

Writer Peter Manseau Presents “Twenty Gods or None” September 27 at Washington College

CHESTERTOWN, MD— From the Republican presidential primary race to debates over same-sex marriage, questions about the role of religion in public life are once again front and center in American politics. On Tuesday, September 27, author Peter Manseau, newly arrived in Chestertown for a year’s residence as Washington College’s 2011-2012 Patrick Henry Writing Fellow, will delve into the deep and controversial history of religious diversity in America. The event, hosted by the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, will be held at 5 p.m. in Litrenta Lecture Hall.

When Thomas Jefferson declared that it did him no injury if his neighbor believed there were "twenty gods or no god," he was not merely advocating tolerance of difference. He was making the case that difference of opinion in matters of religion was good for the country. Manseau has taken Jefferson’s declaration as the launching point for his fellowship project, a major new narrative history of the United States told through the prism of the diverse religious traditions that have shaped the nation.

In his September 27 talk, Manseau will share stories of the “secret Jews” who sailed with Columbus and the deeply religious Taino Indians who swam out to meet them, the devout Muslims who arrived on America’s shores in chains, the Hindu scriptures that inspired transcendentalists such as Emerson and Thoreau, and the Buddhism that Chinese railroad workers brought to the American West in the 19th century.

Peter Manseau is a historian, novelist, journalist and memoirist whose writings on religion and society span a remarkable range of genres. His books include the widely acclaimed memoir Vows: The Story of a Priest, a Nun, and Their Son (Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 2005) and the travelogue Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World's Holy Dead (Henry Holt, 2009), which the St. Petersburg Times called an “eloquently crafted tribute to the ways in which life and death connect.” His essays and articles have appeared in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Vanity Fair, and many other publications.

Manseau’s novel, Songs for the Butcher's Daughter (Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 2005), was internationally acclaimed as a “picaresque novel with an epic sweep” and was translated into Dutch, German, Hebrew, Italian, French and Spanish. The story of a fictional Yiddish poet in turn-of-the-century Russia, it won the 2008 National Jewish Book Award and the American Library Association's Sophie Brody Medal for Outstanding Achievement in Jewish Literature.

The Patrick Henry Writing Fellowship, provided by the Starr Center, offers a yearlong residency to authors doing innovative work on America's founding era and its legacy. Manseau will use his time at Washington College to complete his forthcoming book, Twenty Gods or None: The Making of a Nation from the Margins of Faith, which is under contract to be published by Little, Brown and Company in 2013. During the spring semester he will teach a course entitled “American Religious Diversity: Idea, Law, and History,” in the Departments of Political Science and Philosophy and Religion.

Manseau’s September 27 talk, “Twenty Gods or None: The Making of a Nation from the Margins of Faith,” offers an opportunity to hear from one of the most intellectually adventurous young scholars writing today. A book signing will follow; admission is free and open to the public. Manseau’s talk is co-sponsored by the Rose O’Neill Literary House.

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Founded in 1782 under the patronage of George Washington, Washington College is a private, independent college of liberal arts and sciences located in colonial Chestertown on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The College’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience is dedicated to fostering innovative approaches to the American past and present. Through educational programs, scholarship and public outreach, and a special focus on written history, the Starr Center seeks to bridge the divide between the academic world and the public at large. For more information on the Center and its fellowships, visit http://starrcenter.washcoll.edu.

Award-Winning Writer Peter Manseau Is New Patrick Henry Fellow at Washington College

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Peter Manseau, a historian, novelist, journalist and memoirist whose writing spans a remarkable range of genres, has been awarded the 2011-12 Patrick Henry Writing Fellowship at Washington College. He will spend the academic year finishing a major new narrative history of the United States, told through the prism of the diverse religious traditions that have shaped the nation.

The fellowship, provided by the College's C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, offers a yearlong residency to authors doing innovative work on America's founding era and its legacy. Manseau’s fellowship book, Twenty Gods or None: The Making of a Nation from the Margins of Faith, will be published by Little, Brown and Company in 2013.

Manseau’s sweeping portrayal of American religious diversity focuses on “minority religions,” ranging from the “secret Jews” who sailed with Columbus, to Muslim traditions among African Americans, to the Buddhism that Chinese railroad workers brought to the American West in the 19th century. Situating these faiths at the center, rather than the margins of American history, Manseau argues that minority faiths had (and still have) a disproportionate influence on debates over religious freedom and the role of faith in American public life.

As part of the fellowship, Manseau will live in a restored 1735 house in the heart of Chestertown’s colonial historic district and will teach a course at Washington College in the spring. He will give a public talk about his work on Tuesday, Sept. 27, at 5 p.m. in the College’s Litrenta Lecture Hall, Toll Science Center.

“As both a historian and a novelist, I am excited to join a community that regards the writing of history at once as a literary pursuit and a key to understanding the present through the past,” Manseau says. “In keeping with the Starr Center’s mission, the book will show how the early history of the nation continues to shape the story we are all a part of today.”

Twenty Gods or None takes its title from one of Thomas Jefferson’s most robust defenses of religious liberty. The book will be the first history of the United States to explain the formation of American culture as a product of radical religious diversity, rooted in the founders’ commitment to protecting the free exercise of religion without favoring any individual faith or sect.

“Peter Manseau’s impressively diverse and prolific career sets him apart,” says Adam Goodheart, the Starr Center’s Hodson Trust-Griswold Director. “He’s a young scholar whose versatile mind and free-ranging curiosity, whose dedication to both intellectual inquiry and literary craft, put him in the proud tradition of such writers as Henry Adams and Alfred Kazin.”

A 1996 graduate of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Manseau has published three books of his own, co-authored a fourth, and co-edited a fifth. His works focus on the history of religion and include the reliquary travelogue Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World's Holy Dead (Henry Holt, 2009), which the St. Petersburg Times called an “eloquently crafted tribute to the ways in which life and death connect.”

Manseau’s widely-acclaimed memoir Vows: The Story of a Priest, a Nun, and Their Son (Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 2005) resonated with readers both inside and outside of the Catholic church and won him that most coveted of book-related interviews, a spot on Fresh Air with Terry Gross. A founding editor of the online magazine Killing the Buddha, Manseau is also the co-author (with Jeff Sharlet) of a companion book, Killing the Buddha: A Heretic’s Bible (Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 2004), which was named one of the best religion books of the year by Publisher’s Weekly.

His first novel, Songs for the Butcher's Daughter (Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 2005), was internationally acclaimed as a “picaresque novel with an epic sweep” and was translated into Dutch, German, Hebrew, Italian, French and Spanish. The story of a fictional Yiddish poet in turn-of-the-century Russia, the book won the 2008 National Jewish Book Award and the American Library Association's Sophie Brody Medal for Outstanding Achievement in Jewish Literature, among other honors.

Manseau is completing a Ph.D. in Religion at Georgetown University, where his dissertation examines American Yiddish literature from the early 1900s. His essays and articles have appeared in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Vanity Fair, and many other publications.

The Patrick Henry Writing Fellowship’s funding is permanently endowed as part of a $2.5 million challenge grant package that the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded through its nationwide “We the People” initiative for strengthening the teaching, study and understanding of American history and culture.

Launched by the Starr Center in 2008, the Patrick Henry Fellowship aims to encourage reflection on the links between American history and contemporary culture, and to foster the literary art of historical writing. It is co-sponsored by the Rose O’Neill Literary House, Washington College's center for literature and the literary arts. The Henry Fellowship complements the George Washington Book Prize, which is also administered by the Starr Center and awarded annually to an author whose work advances public understanding of the Revolution and its legacy.

Washington College acquired the Patrick Henry Fellows’ Residence in January 2007 through a generous gift from the Barksdale-Dabney-Patrick Henry Family Foundation, which was established by the Nuttle family of Talbot County, direct descendants of the patriot Patrick Henry.

Founded in 1782 under the patronage of George Washington, Washington College is a private, independent college of liberal arts and sciences located in colonial Chestertown on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Based in the Custom House along the colonial waterfront, the College’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience fosters the art of written history and explores our nation’s past—particularly the legacy of its Founding era—in innovative ways, through educational programs, scholarship and public outreach. For more information on the Center and the Patrick Henry Writing Fellowship, visit http://starrcenter.washcoll.edu.

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Musician, Cultural Historian Ned Sublette Returns to the Egg for a Reading and Concert April 26

CHESTERTOWN, MD— When Ned Sublette spoke to a packed house last September in “The Egg” performance space at Washington College, he promised to return in the spring to share more of the music and writing for which he’s known.

Now, after a year’s residence in Chestertown as the College’s 2010-11 Patrick Henry Writing Fellow, he’s making good on his word. Sublette will present Kiss You Down South Part 2: Return to the Egg on Tuesday, April 26 at 7:30 p.m.

The performance will take place in two parts: first, a brief reading from Sublette’s most recent book, The Year Before the Flood, a memoir of New Orleans, and then a concert of songs from his forthcoming album, Kiss You Down South. He will sign books during an intermission.

Sublette is an internationally renowned musician. Trained in classical Spanish guitar, he is known for merging the music of Cuba with that of the American west to create “cowboy rumba” and for championing Cuban music in the United States. Sublette’s albums include Cowboy Rumba and, together with artist Lawrence Wiener, Monsters from the Deep and Ships at Sea, Sailors and Shoes. His song “Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly” was recorded by Willie Nelson (25 years after Sublette wrote it) and released to coincide with the movie premiere of Brokeback Mountain in 2006.

Sublette has been a producer for Public Radio International’s Afropop Worldwide, where he co-founded its scholarly Hip Deep series, was co-founder of the record label Qbadisc, which distributes Cuban music in the United States, and headlined on New Year’s Eve at the now-vanished CBGB club in New York City.

A native of Lubbock who grew up in Texas and New Mexico and has spent most of his working life in New York City, Sublette brings a special perspective to his work as a cultural historian. In addition to The Year Before the Flood: A Story of New Orleans (Lawrence Hill Books, 2009), Sublette has authored two other highly praised books: The World that Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square (Lawrence Hill, 2008), and Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo (Chicago Review Press, 2004). All three will be available at an intermission book signing.

During his residency in Chestertown, Sublette has been working on a new book. Centered on the Chesapeake region, The American Slave Coast explores the importance of the slave trade in the making of the American economy. As Patrick Henry Fellow, Sublette is living with his wife, the writer Constance Ash, in a restored 1735 house in the heart of Chestertown's colonial historic district, and is co-teaching a course at Washington College with music professor Kenneth Schweitzer.

The Patrick Henry Writing Fellowship, provided by Washington College’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience and supported by the Rose O’Neill Literary House (the College’s center for literature and creative writing), offers a yearlong residency to authors doing innovative work on America’s founding era and its legacy. It is permanently endowed as part of a $2.5 million challenge grant package that the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded through its nationwide “We the People” initiative.

Founded in 1782 under the patronage of George Washington, Washington College is a private, independent college of liberal arts and sciences located in colonial Chestertown on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The College’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience is dedicated to fostering innovative approaches to the American past and present. Through educational programs, scholarship and public outreach, and a special focus on written history, the Starr Center seeks to bridge the divide between the academic world and the public at large. For more information on the Center, visit http://starrcenter.washcoll.edu.

Award-Winning Historian Henry Wiencek Named Washington College's First Patrick Henry Fellow

Chestertown, MD — He is a renowned author, a prodigious researcher, and a compelling speaker, whose work has been praised by literary critics and academic historians alike. And now Henry Wiencek, whose honors include the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History, has been named the first Patrick Henry Fellow at Washington College, launching a new program that will provide annual writing fellowships to nationally prominent historians.

The highly competitive new fellowship, which is provided by the College's C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, offers a yearlong residency to authors doing innovative work on America's founding era and its legacy. The fellowship's funding will be permanently endowed as part of a $2.5 million challenge grant package that the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded last year through its nationwide "We the People" initiative, dedicated to strengthening the teaching, study, and understanding of American history and culture. As part of the fellowship award, Wiencek and future recipients will live in a newly restored 1735 house in the heart of Chestertown's colonial historic district.

Wiencek, who will teach a class at the College and be involved in many of its programs, will have an office at the Starr Center, just down the street from the Patrick Henry Fellows' Residence in Chestertown's 18th-century Custom House. He will use the fellowship year to complete a forthcoming book about Thomas Jefferson and his slaves.

"It is an honor indeed to be the first Patrick Henry Fellow," said Wiencek, whose book is under contract to be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. "With its dynamism and imaginative leadership, the C.V. Starr Center is becoming a major force in the study of American history, and I very much look forward to being a contributor to the excellent work going on there."

Wiencek, who lives in Charlottesville, Va., is perhaps best known for An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America, which Farrar, Straus & Giroux published in 2003 to superlative reviews and which was named Best Book of that year by the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. The historian Gordon Wood, writing in the New York Times, called it "superb" and the Washington Post said, "It must be read by all who wish to understand early America."

"I can't think of a better person to be the inaugural recipient of this fellowship than Henry Wiencek," said Adam Goodheart, Hodson Trust-Griswold Director of the Starr Center. "His work exemplifies everything that we had hoped the Henry Fellowship would stand for: innovative research, brilliant writing, and a commitment to grappling with some of the biggest and most difficult subjects in American history."

Wiencek has written and/or edited more than a dozen books. The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White (St. Martin's, 1999)—the epic story of two extended Virginia families who share a surname and a legacy, though one is black and the other white—was a selection of the Book of the Month Club and the History Book Club. "Not since Mary Chesnut's Civil War has nonfiction about the South been as compelling as fiction," wrote a reviewer for Time magazine.

His work-in-progress, on Jefferson and his slaves, promises to shed new light on a subject that has received much attention, but often only through the narrow prism of the Sally Hemings controversy or the intellectual paradox of Jefferson's views on race and liberty. Wiencek has done major new archival research and drawn on archaeological discoveries to document the daily experience of slavery at Monticello. "We've seen Jefferson's relations with slaves entirely through the eyes of Sally Hemings and her family," Wiencek said. "But she was just one of 600 slaves at Monticello. Life for the Hemings family was one thing. Life for those laboring farther down the hill was quite different." Wiencek will give two public lectures on his work during the fellowship year, the first on September 8.

In this inaugural year, the Henry Fellowship drew applications from a number of nationally renowned historians. By supporting writers who are completing books on this period, the Patrick Henry Fellowship is meant to encourage reflection on the links between American history and contemporary culture, and to foster the literary art of historical writing. The fellowship is co-sponsored by the Rose O'Neill Literary House, Washington College's center for literature and the creative arts. The Henry Fellowship complements the George Washington Book Prize, which is also administered by the Starr Center and awarded annually to an author whose work advances public understanding of the Revolution and its legacy.

The restored Patrick Henry Fellows' Residence will be opened with an official ribbon-cutting ceremony on September 18, shortly after Wiencek and his wife, Donna Lucey—also a writer on history, whose books include Archie and Amélie: Love and Madness in the Gilded Age(Macmillan, 2006)—move in. The College bought the house in January 2007 with a $1.05 million gift from the Barksdale-Dabney-Patrick Henry Family Foundation, established by the Nuttle family of Talbot County, direct descendants of the patriot Patrick Henry. The gift has also allowed the house to be extensively restored and furnished, and will endow its longterm maintenance. Known as the Buck-Chambers House, it is one of the oldest buildings in Chestertown, and has historic connections with Washington College stretching back to the 1780s. An early owner, Gen. Benjamin Chambers, who had served as an officer in the Revolutionary army under George Washington, became the College's first treasurer in 1782, and later served as president of its Board of Visitors and Governors.

About the C.V. Starr Center

The C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience explores our nation's history—and particularly the legacy of its Founding era—in innovative ways. Through educational programs, scholarship, and public outreach, and especially by supporting and fostering the art of written history, the Starr Center seeks to bridge the divide between past and present, and between the academic world and the public at large. From its base in the circa-1746 Custom House along Chestertown's colonial waterfront, the Center also serves as a portal onto a world of opportunities for Washington College students. Its guiding principle is that now more than ever, a wider understanding of our shared past is fundamental to the continuing success of America's democratic experiment. For more information on the Center and on the Patrick Henry Fellowships, visit http://starrcenter.washcoll.edu.

About the The Rose O'Neill Literary House

The Rose O'Neill Literary House, hub of Washington College's writing community, is the venue for co-curricular activities that bring together students and faculty with visiting writers, scholars, editors and other literary artists. The creative writing culture here is grounded in the College's longstanding commitment to foster good writing across all disciplines, and to connect students and faculty to the wider culture of literature and the creative arts.

July 9, 2008