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The Beginnings of Shi’i Studies in Germany

The Beginnings of Shi’i Studies in Germany: Rudolf Strothmann and His Correspondence with Carl Heinrich Becker, Ignaz Goldziher, Eugeneo Griffini, and Conrelis van Arendonk, 1910 through 1926: Transactions, APS (Vol. 112, Part 1)

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Rudolf Strothmann (1877-1960) played a pioneering role in the scholarly exploration of Shi’i Islam in Western, especially German, scholarship. Between 1910 and 1923, he published many pathbreaking studies on the Zaydiyya, consulting primarily the recently purchased collections of Yemeni Zaydi manuscripts in Berlin. At the same time, he began to delve into Twelver Shi’i literature, culminating in his 1926 monograph on two prominent 7th- and 13th-century Imami scholars. Later in his life, Strothmann primarily focused on various strands of Isma’ilism.This study examines the earlier decades of Strothmann’s life and his development as a theologian and a scholar of Semitic languages and Islamic culture. It also sheds light on his scholarly work through his correspondence with several scholars. Illus.

Preserving Useful Knowledge: A History of Collections Care at the APS Library: Transactions, APS (Vol. 111, Part 1)

Preserving Useful Knowledge: A History of Collections Care at the APS Library: Transactions, APS (Vol. 111, Part 1)

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This book traces the history of collections care at the American Philosophical Society (APS) as revealed through its minute books, treasurers’ receipts, and librarians’ correspondence. It also examines the physical evidence presented by books and documents that were repaired by former restorers and conservators, including Library of Congress manuscript restorer William Berwick, book and manuscript restorer Carol Rugh (later Caorlyn Horton), and the Society’s first full-time conservator, Willman Spawn. Their painstaking repairs, which have not always aged well, present both a vital historical record and an ongoing challenge for today’s conservators. Illus.

James Logan’s “The Duties of Man As They May Be Deduced from Nature”: An Analysis of the Unpublished Manuscript: Transactions, APS (Vol. 111, Part 3)

James Logan’s “The Duties of Man As They May Be Deduced from Nature”: An Analysis of the Unpublished Manuscript: Transactions, APS (Vol. 111, Part 3)

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James Logan (1674-1751) of Philadelphia was a luminary with few equals in British America in the first half of the 18th century. He amassed the largest scholar’s library in the colonies, wrote and published on botanical science and optics, was an accomplished mathematician and astronomer, and a master of languages ancient and modern. As the representative of the Penn family in the colony, he was enmeshed in Pennsylvania politics, holding several major positions, including Chief Justice. In 1734 Logan turned his creative drive to moral philosophy, He compiled six or seven chapters, but in the end could not finish his treatise, and they survived only in a manuscript which was found about 1969. This analysis gives Logan’s effort new life.

Networks: The Creation and Circulation of Knowledge from Franklin to Facebook: Transactions, APS (Vol.111, Part 4)

Networks: The Creation and Circulation of Knowledge from Franklin to Facebook: Transactions, APS (Vol.111, Part 4)

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Inspired by the American Philosophical Society’s digitization of Benjamin Franklin’s postal records and by its involvement in “The Cybernetics Thought CVollective I(nitiative: A History of Science and Technology POrtal Project,” this book is based on a symposium that considered the different ways that social, scientific, and intellectual networks have influenced the pursuit of “useful knowledge.” The symposium was held in Benjamin Franklin Hall in Philadelphia on June 6-7, 2019. Illus.

The Chicago Lawyer Arthur Jerome Eddy and His Eclectic Art Collection: Transactions, APS (Vol. 111, Part 2)

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Arthur Jerome Eddy, the Chicago lawyer, author, and art collector, was a legend in his lifetime (1859-1920). He was the first person to buy radically modern paintings by Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia at the 1913 Army Show, the first American collector to purchase works by Vasily Kandinsky and Paul Klee, and arguably the first person to write a book about modern art in the U.S. A prominent corporation lawyer, one century later, Eddy is best known as a collector of modern art. This book explores how he began to collect, when and from whom he bought art, which artists he favored, and why he acquired certain works and not others. Illus.

Past, Present, and Future of Libraries: Transactions, APS (Vol. 110, Part 3)

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In October 2018, the Amer, Philosophical Soc. (APS) gathered a group of scholars, library professionals, & thought leaders to discuss the past, present, & future of the library. This also marked the 275th ann’y. of the APS, founded by Benjamin Franklin & several friends. Topics include: The Female Mind & the Art of Reading across the Color Line; Academic Libraries Supporting Change in Amer. Higher Educ., 1860-1920; Building the Native Amer. Collection at Amherst College; Toward Authentic Accessibility in Digital Libraries; Changing Attitudes Toward Access to Special Collections; Preservation of Electronic Gov’t. Info.; Speculation on the Future of Library Curation; The Collection Is the Network; Future Frontiers for Special Collections Libraries. Illus.

The Spirit of Inquiry in the Age of Jefferson

The Spirit of Inquiry in the Age of Jefferson: Transactions of the American Philosophical Society Volume 110, Part 2

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In commemoration of the 275th anniversary of the American Philosophical Society’s founding in 1743 and the birth of its long-time president, Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), the APS Library, along with the National Constitution Center, the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello, and the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania held a symposium in June 2018 that explored the history of science, knowledge production, and learning during the Age of Jefferson. The volume contains papers from many of the presenters at the symposium. The chapters touch on an enormous range of topics and fields, much like Jefferson's own intellectual life. Also much like Jefferson, they are international in scope. Subjects range from inoculation to animal magnetism to Jewish migrants in the eighteenth century. Both books are a testament to the mission Jefferson served throughout his life and that both institutions still aim to serve today: “to promote useful knowledge.”

What Ever Happened to the U.S. Congress's Portraits

What Ever Happened to the U.S. Congress's Portraits of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette? Retracing the Events that Led to the Conflagration of the Capitol and the Loss of the Pictures on 24-25 August 1814: Tran. of the American Philosophical Society V

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One of the greatest unsolved mysteries in American political culture is what became of the United States Congress’s state portraits of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette during the British invasion of the Capitol, Washington, D.C., on the night of 24–25 August 1814. Conceived by Benjamin Franklin during a diplomatic mission, requested by the American delegates at the height of the War of Independence, and granted by the French king after the signing of the Treaty of Paris, these official full-length images of the French monarchs arrayed in ceremonial magnificence were recently identified as atelier copies after Antoine-François Callet’s Louis XVI and Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun’s Marie-Antoinette (both 1783) and traced through Congress’s successive assembly rooms at New York City (1785), Philadelphia (1790), and Washington (1800). The fate of the royal portraits has been difficult to determine due to the incomplete documentary record and conflicting eyewitness accounts. Larkin initially takes a telescopic approach to the problem, moving from British and French production of state portraits to assert political claims in North America and despoliation of Western European countries of their art treasures, to show British and American interests at stake in the practice of looting and incendiary warfare waged across the Great Lakes and the Chesapeake Bay prior to the destruction of the public buildings in Washington, D.C. He then pursues a microscopic approach, analyzing period documents, letters, images, and plans to test the viability of two theories—that the royal portraits were burned by British troops during their occupation of the capital or looted by American scavengers during the chaotic aftermath. While physical evidence of the portrait artifacts remains elusive, this study of the images as objects of desire, danger, and loss breaks new ground for scholars desirous of constituting an art and material history for the War of 1812.
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T. Lawrence Larkin is Professor of Seventeenth- to Nineteenth-Century European Art at Montana State University, Bozeman. He has published on aspects of early modern French and American art and culture, with a two-fold interest in the portrait patronage and mythical permutations of Queen Marie-Antoinette and the trans-Atlantic diplomatic gifts and political culture of French, British, and American governments during the Revolutionary and Imperial Eras. His books include a monograph, In Search of Marie-Antoinette: Stefan Zweig, Irving Thalberg, and Norma Shearer (Palgrave-Macmillan), and an edited volume, Politics & Portraits in the United States & France during the Age of Revolution (Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press), both published in 2019.

The Power of Maps and the Politics of Border

The Power of Maps and the Politics of Borders: Papers from the conference held at the American Philosophical Society, October 2019: Transactions, APS (Vol. 110, Part 4)

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Some papers include: Unpacking the Meaning of Maps, Power, and Boundaries; The Legacy of Major Sebastian Bauman’s Map of the Siege of Yorktown; Mapping Old and New Empires in the Early U.S.; Cherokee Boundaries Above, Below, and Beyond; Cherokee Territoriality, Anglo-American Surveying, and the Creation of Borders in the Early 19th-Century West; Chickasaw and Cherokee Resistance to American Colonization, 1785-1816; Hydrography, Natural History, and the Sea in the 19th Century; William Darby’s “A Map of the State of Louisiana” and the Extension of American Sovereignty over the “Neutral Ground” in the Louisiana-Texas Borderland, 1806-1819; Initiating the World’s Longest Unfortified Boundary; Mapping Inequality, Resistance, and Solutions in Early National Philadelphia. Illus.

Benjamin Franklin, Swimmer: An Illustrated History (Transactions Vol 110, Part 1

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The story of Benjamin Franklin’s lifelong delight in swimming and his influence in making swimming popular in the western world has never been told. This book uses Franklin’s love of swimming to examine the founder’s life, times, and strong, inventive personality through a lens that historians have previously overlooked. Franklin’s personality emerges through the lens of swimming. We see him clearly as a leader, an inventor, and a strong, proud man. As he was in many fields, he was self-taught. He interacted with family, friends, and acquaintances through swimming. Swimming also offered him an entrée into British society.

Franklin discusses swimming in his Letters and in his Autobiography. Friends and family also comment on his swimming. Primary sources for this book include Franklin’s writing, that of his contemporaries, and other artistic and archaeological sources. When Franklin’s grandson Benjamin Franklin Bache was in his care in France he swam in the Seine. Bache’s Journal constitutes another important primary source for this book. The escapades of this engaging literate teenager in France with his grandfather never before have been published.

In 1968 the International Swimming Hall of Fame honored Franklin with membership. The citation mentions his various inventions that made swimming more efficient and his own feats as a swimmer, but most of all his success in promoting swimming as an essential part of any education. Benjamin Franklin’s advice about water safety and his conviction that everyone should learn to swim because it promotes health, hygiene, and safety is still relevant. Swimming has always been “useful knowledge.”

Sarah B. Pomeroy is Distinguished Professor of Classics and History, Emerita, at Hunter College and the Graduate School, CUNY. She is also Lady Joan Reid Author in Residence at Benjamin Franklin House, London, and a Member of the American Philosophical Society. Widely recognized as a pioneer in the fields of women’s history and classical studies, she uses not only textual sources but also artistic and archaeological evidence in order to reconstruct the past. Her publications include Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity (1975, 1995); Women in Hellenistic Egypt from Alexander to Cleopatra (1984, 1990); Spartan Women (2002); The Murder of Regilla. a Case of Domestic Violence in Antiquity (2007); and Pythagorean Women: Their Lives and Their Writings (2013). Her most recent book is Maria Sibylla Merian, Artist, Scientist, Adventurer (2017). Her books have been translated into Italian, Spanish, German, and Chinese. Professor Pomeroy received fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and she is an Honorary Fellow of St. Hilda’s College, the University of Oxford. Like Ben Franklin, she likes to play the harpsichord and to swim.