Ben Franklin's World Liz Covart

Investigations of the American Revolution often include explorations of politics, ideology, trade and taxation, imperial control, and social strife. What about religion?

What role did religion play in the American Revolution?

Katherine Carté, an Associate Professor of History at Southern Methodist University and the author of Religion and the American Revolution: An Imperial History, joins us to investigate the role of religion in the American Revolution.

To understand early American history, we need to investigate and understand North America as an Indigenous space. A place where Native American populations prevailed for centuries before and after the arrival of Europeans and enslaved Africans.

In this episode, we explore the life, history and culture of the Blackfeet People with Rosalyn LaPier, a member of the Blackfeet Tribe of Montana and a member of the Métis, one of the three recognized Aboriginal peoples in Canada.

By the eighteenth century, the Atlantic Ocean had become a busy highway of ships crisscrossing its waters.

What do we know about the ships that made these transatlantic voyages and connected the eighteenth-century British Atlantic world through trade, people, and information?

Phillip Reid, author of The Merchant Ship in the British Atlantic, joins us to explore the eighteenth-century British merchant ship and the business of transatlantic shipping.

How did black women in colonial Louisiana navigate French and Spanish black and slavery codes to retain control of their bodies, families, and futures?

Jessica Marie Johnson, author of the award-winning book Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World, joins us to investigate what viewing the history of the Atlantic World through the histories of slavery and gender can show us about what life was really like for colonists, settlers, and the enslaved.

In Episode 307, Michael Hattem helped us investigate the role history played in the American Revolution and the ways early historians used history as a tool to unite Americans as one people after the Revolution.

This bonus episode brings us back together with Michael so we can explore a few topics we didn’t have time to explore in our full-length episode: Historical schools of thought, how schools of thought develop, & the different schools of historical thought when it comes to the American Revolution

The story of the founding of the United States usually begins with English settlement at Jamestown in 1607, describes the development of 13 British North American colonies, and then delves into the imperial reforms of the 1760s and 1770s.

Have you ever wondered where this familiar narrative came from and why it was developed?

Michael Hattem joins us to investigate the creation of the “grand narrative” with details from his book, Past and Prologue: Politics and Memory in the American Revolution.