The ITPS (Institute for Thomas Paine Studies)

@theitps.bsky.social

At Iona University, the #ITPS studies the worlds of early American and Atlantic history, past and present. Supports #DH #PublicHistory and #archives with programming, publications, digital media, events, fellowships, internships, and more. www.theitps.org

On this day in 1920, the 19th Amendment was certified, giving women the Constitutional right to vote. After Congress sent the Amendment to the states 15 months earlier, the National Woman’s Party would sew a new star on this flag whenever a new state ratified it. 🧵

National Woman's Party activists watch Alice Paul sew a star onto the NWP Ratification Flag. 1920. Photo by the National Photo Company. National Women's Party Records, Library of Congress.

Interested in learning more about our current exhibition, Elemental: Crafting Books from Nature? Check out this article: www.brown.edu/news/2025-06... Elemental is on view until Dec. 15, M-Th, 10 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. and 2 p.m. to 4:45 p.m., and F 10 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. Photo credit: Rythum Vinoben.

Beyond the pages: John Carter Brown Library exhibition celebrates the making of rare books

“Elemental: Crafting Books from Nature” is an ode to the physical book, exploring thousands of years of practical knowledge and natural resources that led to the production of books.

brown.edu

So the London reprints of Common Sense from 1776 CENSORED extra mean and snarky comments about the king but the Edinburgh reprints did NOT —- i repeat: the SCOTTISH reprints KEPT all the very mean and snarky comments about the king, the ROYAL BRUTE OF BRITAIN. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🥇

Still unsurpassed as the best close reading of a non-literary text in my field. Robert A. Ferguson, “The Commonalities of COMMON SENSE.” William and Mary Quarterly (2000)

The opening page of the essay. Here is the first paragraph: 
-HISTORIANS always note the great impact of Thomas Paine's of the most brilliant pamphlets ever written in the English lan-guage." Yet, despite the frequency of these claims, scholars rarely bring them together as mutually informing insights or controlling premises.! On the one side, the twin appeals of the pamphlet-the historical assertion of immediate impact and the literary assessment of timeless merit-make it an extraordinary source for gauging how Americans think about themselves and their country, then and now. On the other side, the same unique combination of instant effect and lasting influence welcomes rhetorical analy-sis, turning Common Sense into a seminal text for thinking about "the art of persuasion" in American life. One can go further. Precisely how the pamphlet persuades its readers is an object lesson in the workings of modern democratic culture, and the way Americans have absorbed it into collective or national memory remains an untold story in ideological formations.

PUBLICATION DAY! _I Have Avenged America: Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Haiti's Fight for Freedom_ is now available from @yalepress.bsky.social To celebrate, I am going to post some of the most extraordinary Dessalines quotations below! yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

I Have Avenged America

A moving and humane portrait of the abolitionist revolutionary Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who led Haiti’s fight for independence from French colonial rule  ...

yalebooks.yale.edu