H. Daniel Peck

Thomas Cole.  Detail from View on the Catskill--Early Autumn, 1836–37. Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

May 15, 2019 (SEASON FINALE).

H. Daniel Peck, Professor Emeritus of English at Vassar College, discusses his monograph and exhibition,  on view at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site in Catskill May 4 - November 3, 2019 entitled: Thomas Cole's Refrain: The Paintings of Catskill Creek.

Thomas Cole's Refrain shows how Cole's Catskill Creek paintings, while reflecting concepts such as the stages of life, opened a more capacious vision of experience than his narrative-driven series, such as The Voyage of Life. Relying on rich visual evidence provided by paintings, topographic maps, and contemporary photographs, Peck argues that human experience is conveyed through Cole's embedding into a stable, recurring landscape key motifs that tell stories of their own. The motifs include enigmatic human figures, mysterious architectural forms, and particular trees and plants. Peck finds significant continuities—personal and conceptual—running throughout the Catskill Creek paintings, continuities that cast new light on familiar works and bring significance to ones never before seen by many viewers.

Thomas Cole Historic Site in Catskill, NY.

Explore Thomas Cole website.

James Merrell

Violet Oakley. "Quaker Legend of the Latch String" Mural for the Pennsylvania State House, 1919.

May 16, 2018.

Season Finale:  James Merrell, Professor of History at Vassar College on the Lucy Maynard Salmon Chair, talks about historical vocabulary and his article "Second Thoughts on Colonial Historians and American Indians" (William and Mary Quarterly July 2012), as well as his two monographs The Indians' New World: Catawbas and Their Neighbors from European Contact through the Era of Removal  (North Carolina, 1989) and Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier(Norton, 1999), both winners of the Bancroft Prize.

"This stunning history of the Catawbas―and their black and white neighbors―sets a new standard for the field. Merrell's book bristles with new insights and skilled decoding of difficult evidence. After reading this book, all those involved in teaching early American history should want to alter their perspective." ―Gary B. Nash, University of California, Los Angeles

"The Indians' New World is closely argued from an astonishing amount of evidence, and it is lucidly written.... It emphasizes the ingenuity and strength of will by which the Catawbas coped with disaster and preserved their identity as a people. Only a genuine scholar and fascinating writer could have paid tribute as James Merrell has done." ―Francis Jennings, Director Emeritus, D'Arey McNickle Center for the History of the American Indian, The Newberry Library

"James Merrell's Into the woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier is an account of the "go-betweens," the Europeans and Indians who moved between cultures on the Pennsylvania frontier in efforts to maintain the peace. It is also a reflection on the meanings of wilderness to the colonists and natives of the New World. From the Quaker colony's founding in the 1680s into the 1750s, Merrell shows us how the go-betweens survived in the woods, dealing with problems of food, travel, lodging, and safety, and how they sought to bridge the vast cultural gaps between the Europeans and the Indians. The futility of these efforts became clear in the sickening plummet into war after 1750. "A stunningly original and exceedingly well-written account of diplomacy on the edge of the Pennsylvania wilderness."--

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Jerome McGann

April 8, 2015.

Jerome McGann, University Professor and John Stewart Bryan Professor of English at the University of Virginia, discusses his new book, A New Republic of Letters: Memory and Scholarship in the Age of Digital Reproduction (Harvard, 2014).

"A manifesto for the humanities in the digital age, A New Republic of Letters argues that the history of texts, together with the methods by which they are preserved and made available for interpretation, are the overriding subjects of humanist study in the twenty-first century. Theory and philosophy, which have grounded the humanities for decades, no longer suffice as an intellectual framework. Jerome McGann proposes we look instead to philology—a discipline which has been out of fashion for many decades but which models the concerns of digital humanities with surprising fidelity."

43:44 minutes.

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Michael V. Pisani

October 2, 2007

Michael Pisani, music historian and professor of music at Vassar College, talks about his book Imagining Native America in Music, published by Yale University Press.


60:27 min.

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