Frontiers and Borderlands:
Blogging Across Disciplinary Boundaries
February 4, 2017
I’ve read lots of newspaper and other popular discussions of wampum, and most get something fundamentally wrong. But here’s a piece that appeared in silive.com (Staten Island Advance) that gets it right in most of its particulars. Kudos to Clay Wollney for doing [...]
February 2, 2017
Just published in Early American Studies (15:1): my article, "'This is that which ... they call Wampum': Europeans Coming to Terms with Native Shell Beads." Several years ago I received an NEH summer grant to work on this project. It's [...]
February 1, 2017
See this presentation (Feb 15, 2:30-4:00) and this one (same day, 6:00) in Toronto for another example of wampum's continuing importance to Native communities, in this case among the Ojibway people. Using replica wampum belts in this special presentation, [Brian [...]
January 23, 2017
My wampum research and interest in crossing cultural borders has led to my involvement in a conference being held in Grenoble, France, 29-31 March 2017. More information on the conference can be found here. The conference theme is conceived along [...]
September 22, 2016
Next week I have the privilege of kicking off this year's America in Class webinars sponsored by the National Humanities Center. America in Class is one of the many ways that the NHC promotes the humanities, and they regularly tap [...]
July 1, 2016
A four-day paddling event, Two Row on the Grand, "is designed to raise awareness about the Two Row Wampum Treaty and community relationships along the Grand [River]." Another example of the importance of wampum to First Nations and Native Americans. [...]
May 27, 2016
Nine months ago I began a fellowship at the National Humanities Center, and today is the last day. It's been a remarkable experience--the NHC is an independent institution that promotes the humanities primarily through fostering advanced disciplinary research. It [...]
April 12, 2016
Darren Bonaparte has just published a piece on the so-called Remembrance Belt. It is so-called not because the belt is discredited in any way, but because lots of names are attributed to it. Nevertheless, it is clearly an important belt [...]
March 17, 2016
My hunt for wampum has led me to museums, archives, and libraries. Sometimes I discover things I wasn't looking for. Several years ago I was tracking down prints at the New York Public Library, focusing on the Albany Congress of [...]
March 12, 2016
Well, I didn't really find wampum in North Carolina. I did, however, stumble across the home of John Lawson who offered a curious description of wampum in 1709. I didn't go out looking for John Lawson. My wife and [...]
