Philadelphia–Franklin’s Walk

On October 6, 1723 a young runaway named Benjamin Franklin walked down a Delaware River wharf, stepped onto dry land, and for the first time his life, trod the streets of Philadelphia. His circuit that morning would become the iconic passage in a story of his...

Northwest Ordinance–Marietta, Ohio

If you were a young scholar of American Literature back in the 1990s, most likely, you were a new historicist. To be a “new” historicist, as opposed to the old ones (with their sclerotic ideas about bibliography and history of thought) meant that you (the...