D Waldstreicher
@DWaldstreicher
Followers
2,269
Following
559
Media
67
Statuses
4,350
History @ CUNY Graduate Center. The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley, Farrar Straus & Giroux, pb 3/7/24. More at
Joined October 2021
Don't wanna be here?
Send us removal request.
Explore trending content on Musk Viewer
España
• 431173 Tweets
Kroos
• 377861 Tweets
Project 2025
• 323058 Tweets
Portugal
• 272450 Tweets
Alemania
• 172076 Tweets
Nico
• 163582 Tweets
Lamine
• 150901 Tweets
Pedri
• 142909 Tweets
#ESPGER
• 98704 Tweets
المانيا
• 81035 Tweets
Almanya
• 72406 Tweets
Havertz
• 70704 Tweets
Morata
• 67061 Tweets
Wirtz
• 63871 Tweets
Carvajal
• 58985 Tweets
Musiala
• 49439 Tweets
Cucurella
• 49204 Tweets
スペイン
• 43096 Tweets
Merino
• 41833 Tweets
Dani Olmo
• 40083 Tweets
Rodri
• 38911 Tweets
Anthony Taylor
• 33915 Tweets
Ferran
• 31686 Tweets
De la Fuente
• 30523 Tweets
#Eurocopa2024
• 21851 Tweets
كروس
• 21832 Tweets
#GERESP
• 21747 Tweets
Spanien
• 18901 Tweets
Rudiger
• 18802 Tweets
クロース
• 16988 Tweets
Joselu
• 14824 Tweets
Fullkrug
• 14099 Tweets
Oyarzabal
• 13541 Tweets
Spain
• 10587 Tweets
ポルトガル
• 10547 Tweets
![[💀ISMAEL💀]](https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/865291932641177600/MgpwGrP3.jpg)
Pinned Tweet
It’s paperback day! and a good day to thank everyone who has help ed to spread word of The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley during the past year!
8
39
191
I know there are more important things happening today than bound galleys in the autumnal breeze, BUT….
29
88
658
My Jewish tweet today is that i have not experienced any uptick of antisemitism at all but this philozionism is beyond offensive and makes me feel unsafe
14
57
470
I grew up around the corner from Herr Friedman and I am here to tell you that his father, a Conservative rabbi, made a career of denouncing other Jews — & placed a red white and blue kippah on Reagan’s head shortly after that prez laid a wreath on Nazi soldier graves at Bitburg.
Any American Jew attending this rally is not a Jew — yes I said it!
516
190
918
1
71
431
The best moments in scholarship are when someone runs with one of your buried underdeveloped notions. In 1999 I suggested that fugitive ads in newspapers were the first published slave narratives.
@PatientlyZach
has developed the pt & c18 will never look the same. brilliant book!
11
85
430
There is no humor like bookstore workers' humor.
3
59
412
If you ever thought academia is not the real world, consider the implications of City College students getting beaten by police on 137th st because the president of Columbia invited them to
to clear out 116th. One thing i know: we at CUNY will disproportionately pay the price.
CW: footage of police violence
JFREJ members are outside CCNY supporting the student protestors. We've seen violence from the NYPD:
-charging the crowd
-kettling
-throwing protestors to the ground
-beating them with batons
-indiscriminate arrests without warning
36
803
1K
22
134
409
I wrote a piece about where Ron DeSantis gets his history from.
26
144
387
Independent State Legislature Theory utterly destroyed for the ersatz originalism it is. “It has no basis in historical fact.” Elections have to follow federal and state constitutional guidelines, not legislatures. Bravo
@rzhist
!
4
113
372
""In my nearly forty years as a faculty member, I have never seen such brazen cruelty toward students and faculty, such cowardice before what amounts to a right-wing witch hunt, and such blatant dishonesty." --Robin D.G. Kelley, always a bright light.
5
93
363
Am I missing something or are all the news services and pundits missing the fact that George Santos can’t serve in Congress if he hasn’t been a citizen for 7 years? (Article 1, Section 2, US Constitution.)
12
60
337
Page proofs for The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley… say the word and I’ll share Table of Contents, too!
38
29
335
The 68th annual Francis Parkman Prize honoring literary merit in the writing of history is given to David Waldstreicher for The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: A Poet’s Journeys through American Slavery and Independence (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).
47
22
221
Underrated Historians from the Past,
#2
: Michael Paul Rogin. I know, he was in poli sci and has a pol theory following, but historians are still catching up to his insights into 19-20c political culture. astonishingly interdisciplinary, anticipated all the work on Jackson since.
18
22
217
"'The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley' is at once historical biography at its best, literary analysis at its sharpest and a subversive indictment of current political discourse questioning the relevance of Black life in our country’s history."
15
47
190
It's a thrill when the hometown paper notices.
9
24
178
Or rather it’s because some of said senior historians, being of a certain age, have longstanding intellectual agendas that were threatened by the project and the hype, and they went for the weakest factual and rhetorical links in it. Not to mention being in their own bubble.
Why were the critics of the
#1619Project
nearly all senior historians, either w/ tenure or retired? Because few younger scholars or graduate students are willing to risk their careers to call out a problematic narrative on the history of race in America.
25
4
30
7
23
173
My latest for Boston review, on Nick Witham's Popularizing the Past: Historians, Publishers, and Readers in Postwar America, with riffs on Hofstadter, Boorstin, John Hope Franklin, Gerda Lerner, Howard Zinn, and, of course, Harvey Neptune, Staughton Lynd:
5
40
140
Underrated Historians from the Past (first of a series, if folks like it). Vincent Harding. (Perhaps only underrated because appreciated for the many other things he did.)
8
23
139
Thread (1) This is pretty good - especially Noam Chomsky's pithy summary (see next tweet) - but I wish it had more of Staughton's own words.
3
27
133
I still like seeing it in print. Hometown paper, paper of record, grey lady, my breakfast table…
10
8
132
And did YOU know that they got an electoral college bump for 3/5 of the enslaved?
DID YOU KNOW?
The state of Virginia produced winners in SIX STRAIGHT Presidential Elections.
Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe won in 1800, 1804, 1808, 1812, 1816, and 1820 (respectively)
NOW YOU KNOW!
#POTUS
🇺🇸
12
25
218
5
22
129
Comaroff, Jasanoff, Jasanoff, Comaroff, Let's call the whole thing off.
3
4
113
If folks still wonder why Trump and some evangelicals now think they can say what good jews’ politics should be — it’s because jews like his ambassador to Israel, this guy, said it is ok to play this game. THIS identity politics is the real threat.
Any American Jew attending this rally is not a Jew — yes I said it!
516
190
918
2
29
112
Imagine what he’d say if an official said “Policing is a calling,” while cutting police budgets across the system.
Teaching is a calling. You don't do it for the money, you do it because you believe in the kids that come into your classrooms.
The largest school system in the country is only as strong as the teachers behind it.
Happy
#TeacherAppreciationWeek
to all our amazing NYC teachers!
2K
37
267
4
25
107
Proud to have new article, "Racism, Black Voices, Emancipation, and Constitution-Making in Massachusetts, 1778" in the Journal of American Constitutional History 2:2 (2024), 325-55. It's a spin-off from my Wheatley research & open access here:
3
22
100
Hey Justice Alito, give me a call. I study Deeply Rooted history, even though I’m not Deeply Rooted myself (only 3-5 generations). How ‘bout you?
3
4
95
Counterfactual questions like this are not “basic.” They are often rhetoric designed to distract. As Jim Oakes likes to say, if things had been different, they’d have been different.”
"
@woodyholtonusc
conclusion still begs a basic question, particularly concerning slavery: What might have happened had the British won the Revolutionary War, or had the Revolution never happened at all?"
-
@seanwilentz
on 'Liberty is Sweet' for
@nybooks
4
7
21
3
14
85
@NormieUtah
@Tyler_A_Harper
No. It is saying, I work here, i have responsibilities here to the students, and it is my workplace more than yours. That used to be common sense.
1
0
81
Staughton Lynd: occam’s razor. “I think Wilentz seeks to push ‘freedom national’ as an interpretation of 1787 rather than understanding it as an anti-slavery strategy developed in response to 1787.”
7
9
82
Working hard to get ready for this....
The McNeil Center will debut the first endowed lecture series in the field of early American Studies: the Benjamin Franklin Distinguished Lectures. Please join us in Nov. 2024 for the inaugural lectures, to be given by
@DWaldstreicher
. More info here:
0
12
26
9
10
81
If you're in NYC on March 7, come to a book launch at the Graduate Center! Skylight Rm, 630pm. Co-sponsored by the Leon Levy Center for Biography & The Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean. So grateful to
@elizmchenry
for joining us!
2
16
80
Conservatives 1851: US colleges do abolitionist indoctrination. This didn’t happen in the 1810s.
Conservatives 1811: US colleges do secular indoctrination. This didn’t happen before the flood.
2
24
78
As in, “Who are these men (and women!) wearing blue and heavily armed? Are they a standing army?”
Our Founding Fathers wouldn't recognize the America we live in today.
They would be horrified, and rightfully so.
18K
2K
15K
2
6
77
When a historian starts saying “Of course,” and “To be sure,” the one thing you can be sure of is that straw men are being set up.
6
6
73
Starred review in Publishers Weekly:
"...a magisterial biography....Tracing Wheatley’s trajectory from a promising student to a national celebrity, he explores her development as an artist and focuses on how Wheatley crafted “subversive” meanings..." 1/2
2
17
72
Yes. In Revolution/early republic (ok founders if you must) history, the politeness has had two key causes imho: (1) trying to keep lines of communication open, (2) trying to keep lines of funding open. Founders chic was an attempt to evade the reckoning; it fed the monster.
I guess I wish the joint
@AHAhistorians
/
@The_OAH
statement said, "originalism is bullshit and always has been, it has nothing to do with history, and we've been wrong to be polite about it this whole time."
3
14
54
5
13
70
1st day on twitter: what are these buttons for?
2nd day: wait, she’s here too?
3rd day: gosh i’m clever
4th day: people like me!
5th day: haven’t seen him for 20 years!
6th day: i’m addicted
7th day: gotta stop (utter failure)
8th day: let me know….
8
0
69
"McCullough has to ignore several generations of progressive historiography to make Adams a champion of democracy." Interpretive differences indeed: I'm doing my job. "Founders Chic as Culture War," Radical History Review 84 (Fall 2002), 185-94. DM me for a pdf.
3
11
68
Here is Phillis, right between Barbra and Christina Sharpe: seems about right to me….
4
10
65
Statues like this are neither good art nor good history. They're founder fetishism. Why are we celebrating their so-called cult of honor, i.e. violence? Please stop promoting it,
@AmRevMuseum
. Constitution Center too. The Revolution's iconoclasm is the more worthy tradition.
#OnThisDay
in 1756, Continental Army officer, senator, and vice president Aaron Burr was born in Newark, N.J.
This dueling statue of Burr, from
@NYHistory
, was featured in our past exhibit
#HamiltonWasHere
.
6
14
70
16
6
62
One of them is Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773 edition). No marginalia, alas - I checked.
There are more than 12,000 books (in 13 languages!) in the AMAZING John Quincy Adams collection, displayed in the library at the family’s “Peace field” estate in Quincy, MA 📚 📖 🇺🇸
8
35
209
2
6
60
Now up on C-Span website: at the Harvard Bookstore with
@agordonreed
.
Yes, that's unmistakably Peter Onuf in the front row.... and later, my friend and onetime colleague from our Bennington College days, Steven Cramer, asking me to read a poem!
1
11
59
My email inbox is so much fun today. This from a grad school classsmate: "My heartfelt congrats on the new book. I hope it brings you much joy, and of course also pisses off all the right people." Bonus points for anyone who can guess the author!
5
0
58
John B. Hench: historian of print, major domo of AAS research programs, first scholar who bonded with me over old newspapers, set the mold for running a fellowship program: supportive in every sense, snobbish in none. The Worcester diaspora will miss him.
6
7
54
I believe I showed it goes back to October 1787.
It is important to understand that this debate about the Constitution is not new. It goes back to the 1840s when some abolitionists began to split over the question of whether the Constitution was a proslavery document.
14
61
203
2
6
52
At a time when community and province studies were the rage, Axtell pushed envelopes with big themes, syntheses, critical public history, engaging classic essays on topics like “white indians” & scalping. he was deprovincializing early america (at w&m!) long before the vastness.
RIP James Axtell, who taught at the College of William and Mary and was long a leading figure in Native American history. I did not know him personally, but I admired his talents as a scholar and a writer.
4
26
184
0
3
49
Originalism and Founders Chic were always going to end here.
Why, yes, I did enjoy it when Vivek said that it was the greatness of the Constitution that helped the patriots win the American Revolution.
23
31
435
1
7
52
@daniel_dsj2110
He has a point, but the same argument could be made about op eds and book reviews and this very interview. But of course he doesn’t mean his…
1
1
49
In case you haven’t heard: paperback is out!
David Waldstreicher’s THE ODYSSEY OF PHILLIS WHEATLEY is a paradigm-shattering biography of Phillis Wheatley, whose extraordinary poetry set African American literature at the heart of the American Revolution. In paperback today!
0
4
11
2
11
51
"Waldstreicher writes with his pleasing long-windedness...." Have I died and gone to academic heaven?
2
6
50
It’s official (or rather, marketed): Gordon Wood is now a right wing cult.
6
4
49
It’s a big problem for grand narratives emphasizing revolutions and change, too.
The Civil War is a big analytical problem for any grand narrative of US history that emphasizes stability, cohesion, and continuity over time.
3
1
48
5
1
49
My new article, "Racism, Black Voices, Emancipation, and Constitution-Making in Massachusetts, 1778," Journal of American Constitutional History (open access) - for those who may not have seen my earlier posting.
2
18
50
Writing a paper that gets me to Jamaica & royal governors and deep into my Jack Greene shelf. Incomparable.
1
1
47
Re reactions to Somerset v. Steuart: the best and latest analysis is Matthew Mason's “North American Calm, West Indian Storm: The Politics of the Somerset Decision in the British Atlantic,” Slavery and Abolition 41:4 (2020): 723-47.
1
8
47
Go Bette! Critique that historiography!
Bette Midler wishes more authors would write about race and Reconstruction: "The villainy of the impeached Andrew Johnson should be common knowledge, but it is not."
4
17
86
3
1
46
Sam Tanenhaus gave me my start as a published writer many years ago. He has also modeled what it means to keep history and literature in dialogue. I can hardly say how excited I am to talk with him about my book!
The Odyssey Of Phillis Wheatley
Book Talk With David Waldstreicher
Thursday, November 9, 7:00 p.m.
David Waldstreicher will talk about his book The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley. The talk will feature the author in conversation with Sam Tanenhaus.
0
1
2
0
11
46
Her crackpot realism helped get us here. Israel is mimicking the US during the Gulf War: respond to terrorism with endless bombing and destruction, which of course proves the terrorists right in the eyes of the world and creates more terrorists. Didn't even need to read her book.
Hillary Clinton criticizes pro-Palestinian protests and says many young people she’s spoken to “don't know very much at all about the history of the Middle East or, frankly, about history in many areas of the world.”
6K
1K
6K
6
4
46
Here is my tribute to Staughton, from 2010, a version of my intro to the 2009 Cambridge ed. of Intellectual Origins of American Radicalism, which includes some info on the reception of that book, now (I'm glad) more simply remembered as his best known.
0
12
43
Have always wanted to visit that legendary bookstore but this is even better!
2
0
43
Eureka! I have finally found the 2009 letter in which David Brion Davis wrote that "Of course i have long supported the book's [Slavery's Constitution] and am delighted to learn so many new things that confirm and strengthen the crucial thesis." (1/2)
🙂At 1000 followers (i am still new here)I will reveal what Adam’s, Sean Wilentz’s and my teacher David Brion Davis said about this.🤭🤭
4
3
26
3
3
43
Au contraire: avoid people who scan the room while not really listening to you; instead make friends and future readers by treating colleagues as you would like to be treated.Of all all times to judge people by their institutional affiliations! ivy types will ivy, born or bred.
Grad Students: Networking is critical for success in academia. But the real question is WHO to network with. I’ve known grad students who will spend time at conferences drinking beers in the bars with grad students from unranked programs. Is that 1/
288
109
2K
3
4
43
For those who don’t know: he co-wrote the book. And heads the Leon Levy Center for Biography at CUNY Grad Center.
2
5
42
Emily Wilson is owning twitter on the eve of publication of her Iliad translation. It was a thrill to read her Odyssey and find she was reading it as i think phillis wheatley did - with women and the enslaved central.
People sometimes talk about "feeling seen" as if it were definitely good. The Odyssey is, among 10,000 other things, a poem about the joys of being in hiding, or being in disguise, or being unseen, unrecognized, hidden, or being somebody else.
22
331
3K
0
5
41
So important, and so brilliant, by Francois Furstenberg: "By turning education into a content-free, artificial-intelligence-generated performance, “skills” can be detached from individual, embodied human beings and turned into pure commodities."
1
10
41
Every cabinet secretary should have access to an education that prevents them from becoming a shill for corporate capitalism.
Every student should have access to an education that aligns with industry demands and evolves to meet the demands of tomorrow’s global workforce.
4K
466
4K
1
1
39
Nobody says this to scientists or innovative artists who teach to make a living. We do not know what niche knowledge will be useful to whom i the future. “A teacher affects eternity”
applies here.
1
4
39
@davidhuyssen
Only the NYT would unself-consciously write “as Wall Street types would put it” and in doing so push metaphor toward objective fact. The magic of journalistic objectivity. Doing Trump’s laundry every day.
1
4
38
We’re going beyond the Beyond!
We are pleased to announce our end of the year event for 2024: Beyond the Founders, 20 Years Later to be held Friday, 10 May from 2:00-5:30PM.
The hybrid event will feature two roundtables on the collection's impact and legacy. Please see the event poster for RSVP information!
1
16
32
3
8
37
@MichaelHattem
@varsha_venkat_
I would go even further: if you did it once, i.e. wrote a dissertation, you’re a historian the way a doctor or musician is still that even if not currently practicing composing or performing. b/c you can do it anytime. Current practice means something but it’s secondary.
2
1
38
The Cambridge Companion to Oxford Handbooks, edited by Guy Whose University Awards Merit Raises for Edited Essay Collections
The Oxford Handbook of People Who Completely Forgot They Had Agreed to Contribute.
31
484
4K
2
3
38
So looking forward to talking about my book with Scott Casper, who was not only a classmate and mentor (to everyone) in grad school but also an expert on biography, print culture, the memory on slavery….
Join us virtually on Tuesday, 11/14 at 7pm EST, as David Waldstreicher discusses the life and works of Phillis Wheatley Peters and his new book, "The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: A Poet’s Journeys Through American Slavery and Independence." Register here:
0
24
28
0
10
37
Maybe Myth America would not seem so limited or one-sided if it had taken more seriously the classic and recent American Studies work on myths instead of equating myth with right wing propaganda?
@AmericanStudier
@JohannNeem
@bencarp
@JohnFea1
@markdboonie
Both the Commission & Hedgehog essay argue instead for forms of patriotism: Commission’s goal was “patriotic education”; essay suggests historians miss “Any story suggesting that we Americans are something better, or even that we have ideals that should inspire us to be better.”
1
0
41
4
2
36
I never imagined anyone could depict my interpretation and others like it as “new,” or “misconstrued critical debates” “slighted the antislavery impulses” or “missed the crucial subtlety” much less while claiming DBD as “intellectual hero” & “mentor” (No Property in Man, xv, 1)
2
2
35
Shamless self-promotion from Lit Hub's March list: "If anyone needed further proof that the incredible life of Phillis Wheatley deserves its own blockbuster prestige TV series they need look no further than David Waldstreicher’s 500-page biography."
1
0
35
Excellent NYT letter to the editor by colleague
@sarahechinn
responding to latest ivy-oriented anti-woke/cancel/pc drivel on the op-ed page.
2
7
34
This is why we fall in love with Philly over and over again.
Delivering books on horseback. Amazon ain’t got nothing on us. 😎😎😎
324
5K
45K
1
4
32
“I read a good deal of literary criticism, and a lot of the cues I’ve taken for my own writing come from it….”— Richard Hofstadter, 1960. Quoted in Nick Witham’s forthcoming book Popularizing the Past: Historians Publishers & Readers in Postwar America, p.21
1
2
33
So honored by
@GreenidgeKerri
’s review!
David Waldstreicher's "thoroughly researched, beautifully rendered and cogently argued biography" THE ODYSSEY OF PHILLIS WHEATLEY is out today!
@nytimesbooks
reviews
0
3
11
0
4
33
Good company.
The fascinating life of Phillis Wheatley is revealed in a new biography that also shows the poet to be a more subversive writer than was previously thought, writes
@TiyaMilesTAM
.
2
20
47
2
2
33
This is Marcus on Richard Dunn, his advisor, "a kind heart and a generous soul." He treated folks like me who wandered into his backyard (and his kitchen at MCEAS seminars) the same way. He played the long game. May his memory be for a blessing.
After I had submitted a terrible first draft of the first chapter of my dissertation, he said it read “rather like Marx and Engels marching through the modes of production.” I bravely replied, “I take that as a compliment.” He smiled and said, “I didn’t mean it as one.”
3
2
126
2
3
33
Monday 3/13 at 6pm: so looking forward to conversing with
@kcarterjackson
about The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley, @ MHS and online. MHS has the best collection of Wheatley manuscripts - and the best Wheatley web pages - and even a desk said to have been hers....
And you can hear David Waldstreicher talk about his new book in a few short weeks at the MHS. Register here:
0
1
3
1
13
32
In which Chervinsky fails to note that the problem with the pioneers book she admits was lame was the same as in the Adams book she loved: founder worship and character-driven narrative and lack of attention to contexts other historians have labored to explain.
#founderchicagain
David McCullough “made history fun for generations of readers and convinced millions that reading was a worthy endeavor.”
@lmchervinsky
offers an appreciation of the late historian and writer for
@BulwarkOnline
.
0
5
7
2
2
32
My review of Pekka Hamaleinen’s Indigenous Continent, in The Atlantic.
Americans think of Indigenous people in terms of tragedy and, eventually, disappearance.
But this misses an important element: Native power, and the way tribes contended with European settlers for primacy over the continent, writes David Waldstreicher.
5
24
54
0
8
30
After discussing Panera and Dunkin’ Donuts with my partner this morning, I am here to announce that we are in the Bad Bagel = Good Donut phase of capitalism.
7
1
31
Before most historians recognized the importance of early American newspapers, the AAS collected them, microcarded & filmed them, then digitzed them. Still doing it!!
We're excited to announce that we've acquired what may be the only known copies of the Herald of Freedom, the newspaper of Peter Humphries Clark, the famous Black abolitionist from Ohio. Read more on our blog:
2
19
56
1
7
30
"Waldstreicher makes the point that beyond that, she was a brilliant writer who was, as Waldstreicher puts it, an “organic intellectual of the enslaved.”
1
4
30
@profblmkelley
When i got to Temple U. in 2004 with a 2 yr old , older colleagues reminisced about the old day care center, watching each other’s kids in the hallways…and scheduled me for a 830 am class. Then wondered why i eventually left no doubt.
0
2
29
The leadership fetish is one of the things that got us here.
Jon Meacham sees “character” as the driver of historical change. Biden invited him to the White House historian meeting.
2
0
9
2
3
29
At Mount Vernon on Thursday: looking forward to conversing with Patrick Spero about Phillis Wheatley and whether George Washington was a fanboy.
1
5
29
When a scholar I've admired since grad school (G.J. Barker-Benfield) takes the trouble to write a thorough review, it's a sensible thrill. And I finally earned the notice of H-Nationalism, 26.5 years after my book on... nationalism! My half-known life!
1
0
30
Striking parallel in dog-that-didn’t-bark argument from Woodward that Jim Crow didn’t exist before it was codified in law, and Wilentz’s that the constitution wasn’t pro slavery because it didn’t explicitly say property in man. Both arguments aimed at present political exigencies
1
2
30