“City of Brotherly Love” at the FringeArts Festival

The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia will play a small role in this year’s FringeArts Festival with publication of our “City of Brotherly Love” theme essay, by Chris Satullo, in a commemorative booklet for the production 100% Philadelphia. As described by FringeArts:

Join us at the 2014 Fringe Festival for an unforgettable experience that’s part-theater, part-data analysis — and 100 percent Philadelphia. Developed in collaboration with FringeArts, German artist collective Rimini Protokoll’s 100% Philadelphia will bring 100 carefully selected Philadelphia citizens (non-actors) onstage to represent the city’s population of 1.5 million and our unique demographic imprint: More than 40 cast members will be African-American, half will be women, approximately 20 will be children — and that’s just the beginning. At times funny, uplifting and strikingly dramatic, 100% Philadelphia is always enlightening, a mirror of ourselves that will forever change the way we see our friends, neighbors, and strangers on the street.

For more information about the production and to buy tickets, visit the event website at Fringe Arts.

A New Milestone: 350 Topics Online

We are pleased to share the news that The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia has reached a new milestone: 350 topics online. Thanks to the many people who are making this project possible: authors, editors, reviewers, fact-checkers and page-builders, and the archival partners who provide illustrations. Our current phase of expansion is made possible by generous grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mayor’s Fund for Philadelphia, and Poor Richard’s Charitable Trust.

Topic #350 is Surveying (Colonial), by Michael Pospishil.  Stay tuned for more this summer!

A New Resource for Teachers

National History Day Philadelphia logoIn partnership with the National Archives at Philadelphia, we’re pleased to announce a new guide for teachers and students, “Comparing Primary and Secondary Sources,” which is newly published on the website for National History Day Philadelphia. Created to help students with their research for National History Day projects, the guide was prepared by Melissa Callahan, an experienced social studies teacher who is the education outreach coordinator for The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia and a graduate student in history at Rutgers-Camden. This work was supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities (MARCH), which produces The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia.

An Invitation: Support Scholarship,
Build Community, Create a Legacy

Wednesday, March 21 is Giving Day. Join a community of scholars, students, and history lovers, and make a gift to support The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia.

We need your help! The Encyclopedia is a digital resource produced by the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities (MARCH) at Rutgers-Camden. It offers the most comprehensive, authoritative reference source ever created for the Philadelphia region, and with your help it will continue to grow.

Your donation of any amount will be used to employ the students who help to make The Encyclopedia possible! The first $200 donated on March 21 will be matched by a generous supporter. Act early, and help us continue to move the project toward completion.

●     $15 employs one student for one hour of research assistance or digital publishing.

●     $30 pays for fact-checking one new essay.

●     $90 pays for building one new topic page.

●     $150 employs one student for one ten-hour work week.

●     $2,100 employs one student for one semester. 

Donate on March 21 and help us to continue producing original scholarship and supporting the history practitioners of the future. Thank you!

How to Give:

●     Visit GivingDay.rutgers.edu on March 21 to make a tax-deductible donation.

When you donate, select Research, Institutes & Cultural Programs and then MARCH (Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities) from the drop-down menu.

●     Or, call 732-839-GIVE (4483) and direct your gift to MARCH (Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities) today!

Spread the word on social media with #RUGivingDay and @MARCHRuCamden

An Invitation: Support Scholarship,
Build Community, Create a Legacy

Thank you, everyone who supported our successful one-day fund-raiser on Rutgers Giving Day.  Your support will enable us to continue to employ students as fact-checkers and digital publishing assistants, so that The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia can continue to grow.

If you missed the opportunity or wish to encourage others to give, please link here to add your support: Make a gift today.

●     $15 employs one student for one hour of research assistance or digital publishing.

●     $30 pays for fact-checking one new essay.

●     $90 pays for building one new topic page.

●     $150 employs one student for one ten-hour work week.

●     $2,100 employs one student for one semester.

Additional anticipated needs include a temporary expansion of professional staff during 2020 (estimated $10,000 to $15,000) and website repair and redesign (estimated $50,000 to $100,000).

Thank you for helping us continue producing original scholarship and supporting the history practitioners of the future.

Art Museum Joins Civic Advisory Board

We are pleased to welcome the Philadelphia Museum of Art to the Encyclopedia’s Civic Advisory Board.  Staff members from the Museum’s Center for American Art participated in the Civic Partnership and Planning Workshop that launched the project, and we look forward to working with them next year on a public program to explore Philadelphia’s reputation as “Athens of America.” 

Bibliographic Survey Expanded

Looking for the latest word on Philadelphia?  We are pleased to offer a newly expanded bibliographic survey of scholarship, public history work, and public policy studies about Philadelphia published since 1982.  The survey is approximately one-third larger than the previous survey, with a significant expansion in entries related to public policy as well as updated coverage of scholarship published during 2009 and early 2010.  Our thanks to bibliographer Hillary S. Kativa for her work on the survey and to the University of Pennsylvania Press for making this project possible.

Call for Authors, Editors, and Advisers:
Winter-Spring 2018

With nearly 600 topics already online, The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia is seeking authors to help complete priority subject categories. To view available assignments, link here for the list of topics.

To join more than 400 leading and emerging scholars who have already contributed to this peer-reviewed, digital-first project, let us know your choice of topics and choice of deadline from January through May 2018. Prospective authors must have expertise in their chosen subjects demonstrated by previous publications and/or advanced training in historical research. The scope of the project includes the city of Philadelphia and the surrounding region of southeastern Pennsylvania, South Jersey, and northern Delaware. 

To express interest, please send an email describing your qualifications and specifying topics of interest to the project editorial assistant, Mikaela Maria, mikaelamaria3@gmail.com. No attachments, please. Graduate students, please include the name and email address of an academic reference.

Call for Associate Editors and Advisers

We also invite expressions of interest from scholars or experienced editors interested in becoming associate editors for our next phase of expansion or supporting the project in other ways. These voluntary professional service roles might include any of the following:

  • Reviewing subject categories, recruiting authors to fill gaps, and editing submissions.
  • Preparing proposals for thematic books incorporating existing content.
  • Reviewing submissions.
  • Developing public events with community partners.
  • Fund-raising.
  • Improving the project’s WordPress website (programming knowledge required).

To express interest in becoming an editor or adviser, write to editor-in-chief Charlene Mires, cmires@camden.rutgers.edu.

♦♦♦♦

Guidelines for writers and editors:
https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/about/guidelines-for-writers/

Roster of authors:
https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/category/authors/

Editors and staff:
https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/about/editors/

Call for Authors, Summer 2021

We are approaching an exciting juncture for The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia project as we make plans to publish books derived from this digital platform. Scholars and other topic experts, you can help! Please review our list of most-needed topics so that we may fill gaps in our coverage. Your peer-reviewed essay will add to recognition of your expertise in your chosen field.

We seek to make assignments with firm deadlines of late summer or early fall, and modest compensation is available.

Call for Authors: 2016-17

The editors of The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia seek to make 50 additional assignments to complete our current phase of expansion. Now is the time to add your expertise to a resource used daily by teachers and students, journalists, scholars, and general readers.

To view the list of available assignments, link here:

Call for authors

To join more than 350 leading and emerging scholars who have already contributed to this peer-reviewed, digital-first project, let us know your choice of topics. Authors will have the opportunity to select feasible deadlines between January and March 2017 and will have the option of volunteering or receiving modest stipends. Prospective authors must have expertise in their chosen subjects demonstrated by previous publications and/or advanced training in historical research. To express interest, please send an email describing your qualifications and specifying topics of interest to the editor-in-chief, Charlene Mires, cmires@camden.rutgers.edu. No attachments, please. Graduate students, please include the name and email address of an academic reference.

The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia’s expansion is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mayor’s Fund for Philadelphia, and Poor Richard’s Charitable Trust. The scope of the project includes the city of Philadelphia and the surrounding region of southeastern Pennsylvania, South Jersey, and northern Delaware. 

Guidelines for writers:
https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/about/guidelines-for-writers/

Roster of authors:
https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/category/authors/

Editors and staff:
https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/about/editors/

Call for Authors: 2019-20

During 2019-20, our goal is to complete the remaining priority topics for the The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, which is nearly 600 topics strong and growing. Writing for The Encyclopedia adds to an unparalleled public information source for the region and establishes authors as the go-to authorities on their subjects. This year’s assignments will help to complete important subject categories.

To view available assignments, link here for the list of topics.

To join more than 350 leading and emerging scholars who have already contributed to this peer-reviewed, digital-first project, let us know your choice of topics and choice of deadline from summer through early fall. Prospective authors must have expertise in their chosen subjects demonstrated by previous publications and/or advanced training in historical research. The scope of the project includes the city of Philadelphia and the surrounding region of southeastern Pennsylvania, South Jersey, and northern Delaware. 

To express interest, please send an email describing your qualifications and specifying topics of interest to co-editor Howard Gillette, email hfg@scarletmail.rutgers.edu. No attachments, please. Graduate students, please include the name and email address of an academic reference.

♦♦♦♦

Guidelines for writers and editors:
https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/about/guidelines-for-writers/

Roster of authors:
https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/category/authors/

Editors and staff:
https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/about/editors/

Call for Authors: Summer-Fall 2017

As The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia surpasses 500 topics online, the editors seek to make additional assignments to help complete important content areas. To view the list of available assignments, link here:

Call for authors

To join more than 325 leading and emerging scholars who have already contributed to this peer-reviewed, digital-first project, let us know your choice of topics and choice of deadline from the end of August through December 2017. Prospective authors must have expertise in their chosen subjects demonstrated by previous publications and/or advanced training in historical research. The scope of the project includes the city of Philadelphia and the surrounding region of southeastern Pennsylvania, South Jersey, and northern Delaware. 

To express interest, please send an email describing your qualifications and specifying topics of interest to the editor-in-chief, Charlene Mires, cmires@camden.rutgers.edu. No attachments, please. Graduate students, please include the name and email address of an academic reference.

Guidelines for writers:
https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/about/guidelines-for-writers/

Roster of authors:
https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/category/authors/

Editors and staff:
https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/about/editors/

Call for Contributors: Summer 2014

The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia seeks authors for its next phase of expansion. A wide range of topics is available, including subtopics related to communications, transportation, business and industry, the built environment, civil rights, literary works, holiday traditions, and key events in the region’s history. The scope of the project includes the city of Philadelphia and the surrounding region of southeastern Pennsylvania, South Jersey, and northern Delaware.

Prospective authors must have expertise in their chosen subjects demonstrated by previous publications and/or advanced training in historical research. Authors will have the option of volunteering or receiving modest stipends, and all submissions will be peer-reviewed. Deadlines will be set in consultation with authors; it is expected that most will range from end of summer to the end of 2014. To express interest, please send an email describing your qualifications and specifying topics of interest to the editor-in-chief, Charlene Mires, cmires@camden.rutgers.edu. No attachments, please. Graduate students, please include the name and email address of an academic reference.

Guidelines for writers are available online:

https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/about/guidelines-for-writers/


(Readers on the Encyclopedia blog, click here to see the list of topics.)

  Continue reading “Call for Contributors: Summer 2014”

Calling All Teachers: Your Chance to Explore the “Workshop of the World”

Please help us spread the word about this opportunity:  On Wednesday, November 9, starting at 3:30 p.m., the Historical Society of Pennsylvania will host an Act 48 Professional Development workshop, “Workshop of the World.”  Building upon the newest essay in The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, this workshop is free and offers 3 hours of Act 48 credits.  Learn more about Philadelphia’s industries and the people who worked in them, and consider new ways to introduce the topics to students. The program will include an opportunity to get up close with rarely exhibited artifacts and documents and to discuss with peers creative and relevant means of including industrialization in your curriculum. Co-sponsored with The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia in partnership with the Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater Kent, National Constitution Center, National Archives at Philadelphia, and Independence National Historical Park.  Advance registration is required – go to http://www.hsp.org/node/2311 .

Document Links for Teachers and Students

National History Day Philadelphia logoClose readers may have noticed an addition to some of our essay pages: a special section of links for teachers and students preparing for next spring’s National History Day competition.  We hope you all enjoy exploring these historical documents curated by our educational outreach coordinator, Melissa Callahan, through a partnership with the National Archives at Philadelphia and National History Day Philly.  The growing collection of topics related to this year’s National History Day theme, “Taking a Stand,” is available on this new category page: National History Day Topics.

From Indianapolis to Philadelphia

Photograph of students with speaker on video screen
Students from University High School of Indiana learned about Philadelphia and the Atlantic World through a video chat with Editor-in-Chief Charlene Mires. (Photograph by Christopher Hindsley)

Could there be a better city than Philadelphia for exploring “how a community or city modernizes yet maintains its roots from the past?” This question is at the heart of a January Term experience for students from University High School of Indiana, who have been reading selections from The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia to prepare for their January 17-20, 2023, visit to the City of Brotherly Love. The Encyclopedia’s editor-in-chief, Charlene Mires, spoke with the students by video prior to their trip.

Follow along with some of the students’ destinations with these essays:

Welcome to our young friends and their teachers from metro Indianapolis!

From Our Authors: New Book Examines the Story of Intentional Integration in West Mount Airy

Perkiss-bookJust published by Cornell University Press is Making Good Neighbors: Civil Rights, Liberalism, and Integration in Postwar Philadelphia, by Abigail Perkiss.  In addition to teaching history at Kean University, Perkiss lives in West Mount Airy and is the author of our essay on Northwest Philadelphia.

Here is the publisher’s description of the book:

In the 1950s and 1960s, as the white residents, real estate agents, and municipal officials of many American cities fought to keep African Americans out of traditionally white neighborhoods, Philadelphia’s West Mount Airy became one of the first neighborhoods in the nation where residents came together around a community-wide mission toward intentional integration. As West Mount Airy experienced transition, homeowners fought economic and legal policies that encouraged white flight and threatened the quality of local schools, seeking to find an alternative to racial separation without knowing what they would create in its place. In Making Good Neighbors, Abigail Perkiss tells the remarkable story of West Mount Airy, drawing on archival research and her oral history interviews with residents to trace their efforts, which began in the years following World War II and continued through the turn of the century.

The organizing principles of neighborhood groups like the West Mount Airy Neighbors Association (WMAN) were fundamentally liberal and emphasized democracy, equality, and justice; the social, cultural, and economic values of these groups were also decidedly grounded in middle-class ideals and white-collar professionalism. As Perkiss shows, this liberal, middle-class framework would ultimately become contested by more militant black activists and within WMAN itself, as community leaders worked to adapt and respond to the changing racial landscape of the 1960s and 1970s. The West Mount Airy case stands apart from other experiments in integration because of the intentional,organized, and long-term commitment on the part of WMAN to biracial integration and, in time, multiracial and multiethnic diversity. The efforts of residents in the 1950s and 1960s helped to define the neighborhood as it exists today.

From Our Authors: New Book on Slavery and Abolition in New Jersey

NJSlaveryBookJames Gigantino, the author of our essay about Slavery and the Slave Trade, has published his new research about slavery and abolition in New Jersey in a book from the University of Pennsylvania Press, The Ragged Road to Abolition: Slavery and Freedom in New Jersey, 1775-1865.

Congratulations, Jim!

Here is the publisher’s description of the book:

Contrary to popular perception, slavery persisted in the North well into the nineteenth century. This was especially the case in New Jersey, the last northern state to pass an abolition statute, in 1804. Because of the nature of the law, which freed children born to enslaved mothers only after they had served their mother’s master for more than two decades, slavery continued in New Jersey through the Civil War. Passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 finally destroyed its last vestiges.

The Ragged Road to Abolition chronicles the experiences of slaves and free blacks, as well as abolitionists and slaveholders, during slavery’s slow northern death. Abolition in New Jersey during the American Revolution was a contested battle, in which constant economic devastation and fears of freed blacks overrunning the state government limited their ability to gain freedom. New Jersey’s gradual abolition law kept at least a quarter of the state’s black population in some degree of bondage until the 1830s. The sustained presence of slavery limited African American community formation and forced Jersey blacks to structure their households around multiple gradations of freedom while allowing New Jersey slaveholders to participate in the interstate slave trade until the 1850s. Slavery’s persistence dulled white understanding of the meaning of black freedom and helped whites to associate “black” with “slave,” enabling the further marginalization of New Jersey’s growing free black population.

By demonstrating how deeply slavery influenced the political, economic, and social life of blacks and whites in New Jersey, this illuminating study shatters the perceived easy dichotomies between North and South or free states and slave states at the onset of the Civil War.

From Our Editors: New Book Explores Delaware Valley Before William Penn

Just published by the University of Pennsylvania Press is Lenape Country: Delaware Valley Society Before William Penn, by Jean R. Soderlund, who also is an associate editor of The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia.  We hope you will join us in celebrating this important new book on October 22 at the Philadelphia History Museum.  Make sure to register in advance for a conversation with the author and an opportunity to view A Lost World, part of the Philadelphia: The Great Experiment documentary film series.

Here is the publisher’s description of Lenape Country:

Lenape CountryIn 1631, when the Dutch tried to develop plantation agriculture in the Delaware Valley, the Lenape Indians destroyed the colony of Swanendael and killed its residents. The Natives and Dutch quickly negotiated peace, avoiding an extended war through diplomacy and trade. The Lenapes preserved their political sovereignty for the next fifty years as Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, and English colonists settled the Delaware Valley. The European outposts did not approach the size and strength of those in Virginia, New England, and New Netherland. Even after thousands of Quakers arrived in West New Jersey and Pennsylvania in the late 1670s and ’80s, the region successfully avoided war for another seventy-five years.

Lenape Country is a sweeping narrative history of the multi­ethnic society of the Delaware Valley in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. After Swanendael, the Natives, Swedes, and Finns avoided war by focusing on trade and forging strategic alliances in such events as the Dutch conquest, the Mercurius affair, the Long Swede conspiracy, and English attempts to seize land. Drawing on a wide range of sources, author Jean R. Soderlund demonstrates that the hallmarks of Delaware Valley society—commitment to personal freedom, religious liberty, peaceful resolution of conflict, and opposition to hierarchical government—began in the Delaware Valley not with Quaker ideals or the leadership of William Penn but with the Lenape Indians, whose culture played a key role in shaping Delaware Valley society. The first comprehensive account of the Lenape Indians and their encounters with European settlers before Pennsylvania’s founding, Lenape Country places Native culture at the center of this part of North America.

 

In Memoriam: Gary Nash

We are so saddened to learn the news of the passing of our good friend and colleague, Gary Nash, a consulting editor of The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia. While Gary spent his career in California at UCLA, he never lost touch with Philadelphia, the city where he was born. Among many other works of scholarship, Gary’s research opened new ways of understanding Philadelphia with Quakers and Politics: Pennsylvania 1681-1726 (published in 1968), The Urban Crucible: Social Change, Political Consciousness, and the Origins of the American Revolution (1979), Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia’s Black Community, 1720-1840 (1988), First City: Philadelphia and the Forging of Historical Memory (2002), and many other books and articles.

An engaged scholar who promoted excellence in education and public history, Gary also played a pivotal role in significant Philadelphia projects. He amplified critical needs for inclusive history, particularly by intervening in the public interpretation of the Liberty Bell and the President’s House site to assure the recognition of enslaved Africans and the complexities of freedom in early America. And in 2007, he amplified the need for a comprehensive, public, and inclusive history of Philadelphia — The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, which continues as an active project today. In addition to serving as a valued adviser and advocate, he wrote essays about the Cradle of Liberty and the Liberty Bell.

To learn more about Gary Nash’s life and career, we invite you to read the tribute published by the UCLA History Department, linked here. Moreover, we encourage you to honor his life’s work by following his example of commitment to Philadelphia history.

In the Cradle of Industry & Liberty: A History of Manufacturing in Philadelphia – New Book by Encyclopedia Contributor

Philadelphia’s manufacturing history is the subject of a new book by archivist and historian Jack McCarthy, best known to readers of The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia as the author of many of our music topics. In the Cradle of Industry & Liberty: A History of Manufacturing in Philadelphia, published for the Manufacturing Alliance of Philadelphia by HPN Books, traces local manufacturing from the colonial period to the transition to machine-based factory production methods, the development of manufacturing on a massive scale, and the dramatic downsizing in manufacturing that led to the city’s transition to a post-industrial, service-based economy. This month, McCarthy will talk about the topics of his book at a meeting of the Philadelphia Association of Tour Guides on January 11 and at the annual dinner of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Society for Industrial Archaeology on January 20.

In the News: Encyclopedia Author Featured on St. Patrick’s Day

The author of our essay about St. Patrick’s Day, Mikaela Maria, appeared on CBS3 news on March 17 to provide historical background about the holiday. Reporter David Spunt posted a portion of the interview and his additional tracking of St. Patrick’s Day in Philadelphia on the CBS3 website. (Reporters, contact us any time you need to reach our expert authors, and follow the @Backgrounders Twitter feed for additional context to the news.)

Connecting the Past with the Present, Building Community, Creating a Legacy