Ben Franklin's World

The vast and varied landscapes of Texas loom large in our American imaginations. As does Texas culture with its BBQ, cowboys, and larger-than-life personality. But before Texas was a place that embraced ranching, space flight, and country music, Texas was a place with rich and vibrant Indigenous traditions, and with Spanish and Mexican cultures and […]

The post Episode 381: Martha Menchaca, Texas in the Spanish Empire first a...

The American Revolution was a movement that divided British Americans. Americans did not universally agree on the Revolution’s ideas about governance and independence. And the movement’s War for Independence was a bloody civil war that not only pitted brother against brother and fathers against sons; it also pitted wives against husbands. Cynthia A. Kierner is […]

The post Episode 380: Cynthia A. Kierner, The Tory’s Wife firs...

Women make up eight out of every ten healthcare workers in the United States. Yet they lag behind men when it comes to working in the roles of medical doctors and surgeons. Why has healthcare become a professional field dominated by women and yet women represent a minority of physicians and doctors who serve at […]

The post Episode 379: Susan H. Brandt, Women Healers in Early America first appeared on Ben Franklin's World.

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When we study the history of Black Americans, especially in the early American period, we tend to focus on slavery and the slave trades. But focusing solely on slavery can hinder our ability to see that, like all early Americans, Black Americans were multi-dimensional people who led complicated lives and lived a full range of […]

The post Episode 378: Tara Bynum, Everyday Black Living in Early America first appeared on Ben Fr...

  2023 marked the 250th anniversary of the arrival of Phillis Wheatley's published book of poetry in the British American colonies. Phillis Wheatley was an enslaved African woman who, as a teenager, became the first published African author of a book of poetry written in English. Ade Solanke, an award-winning playwright and screenwriter, has written […]

The post Episode 377: Ade Solanke, Phillis Wheatley & the Playwright...

Colonial America was born in a world of religious alliances and rivalries. Missionary efforts in the colonial Americas allow us to see how some of these religious alliances and rivalries played out. Spain, and later France, sent Catholic priests and friars to North and South America, and the Caribbean, purportedly to save the souls of […]

The post Episode 376: Kirsten Silva Gruesz, Cotton Mather’s Spanish Lessons first appear...

Over the past decade, we’ve heard a lot about “fake news” and “misinformation.” And as 2024 is an election year, it’s likely we’re going to hear these terms even more. So what is the origin of misinformation in the American press? When did Americans decide that they needed to be concerned with figuring out whether […]

The post Episode 375: Jordan E. Taylor, Misinformation Nation: Fake News in Early America first appeared on B...

The so-called “March to the American Revolution” comprised many more events than just the Stamp Act Riots, the Boston Massacre, and the Tea Crisis. One event we often overlook played an essential and direct role in the events needed to draw the thirteen rebellious British North American colonies into a union of coordinated response. That […]

The post Episode 373: Adrian Weimer, The Gaspee Affair first appeared on Ben Franklin...