Editor's Page

The State of SHEAR: Message from the Prez

Late last year, SHEAR's president, John Brooke, sent a letter to the organization's members enjoining them to renew their SHEAR membership and Journal of the Early Republic subscription, encouraging them to become "Friends of SHEAR," while also providing an update on the state of SHEAR. This important message bears repeating, as well as dissemination to the readership of the JER who are not already members; here, in John's words, are the main points:

Dear fellow SHEARite!

The year past has been an amazingly productive year for SHEAR and the Journal of the Early Republic. The foundations laid in the early years of the association are now being realized in full, as the society and the JER solidify our position as the nation's premier venue for scholarship between the Revolution and the Civil War. I hope that you are as pleased and excited about our progress as I am!

We have had a series of spectacularly successful annual meetings over the past several years: Philadelphia in 2005; Montréal in 2006; Worcester in 2007. Our very special thanks go out to the Local Arrangements Committee, headed by Caroline Sloat of the American Antiquarian Society, and to the entire AAS leadership and staff, who made the Worcester meeting run on time. The Worcester Art Museum put on a wonderful party on Friday night. Clark University, Old Sturbridge Village, Worcester Historical Museum, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and Worcester State College were also cosponsors. And last but not least, the Program Committee headed by Jeanne Boydston and Jan Lewis organized a stunning set of panels that have set a high standard for years to come.

In 2008 we will meet again in Philadelphia. Nancy Isenberg is chairing the Program Committee, which has issued a call for papers and panels under the very promising rubric of "Unmasking the Myths: Connecting the Personal and Political in the Early Republic." I hope that the sessions in this meeting will reconnect with the theme of the very interesting opening session at the 2005 meeting in Philadelphia, where we considered the interpretive and methodological problem of making "Connections" among different genres of historical subjects and writing in the wider early republic.

Over the past year the society has taken a series of steps to reorganize its operations. We now have a smoothly flowing relationship between the SHEAR administrative office at the McNeil Center, run by Amy Baxter-Bellamy and Alla Vilnyansky; the editorial office of the Journal of the Early Republic, run by Roderick McDonald and Kate Tyler Wall at the Library Company of Philadelphia's Cassatt House; and Eric Halpern, Paul Chase, and Sue Day, our contacts at Penn Press. Together, these individuals have realized the potential that the Transition Committee envisioned for SHEAR in Philadelphia five years ago.

Our special thanks here should go to the SHEAR Consortium, the institutions who gave time and resources to ensure the success of SHEAR's new commitment to Philadelphia. The McNeil Center, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the American Philosophical Society, and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania all have helped enormously in SHEAR's day-to-day operations.

A central part of those operations involve the editing of the Journal of the Early Republic. We all see the quality of the articles and reviews that Roderick and Kate, as well as our review editors Rachel Onuf and Rob Cox, put before us every three months, but what we do not see is the efficiency of their operation. Authors, reviewers, and readers alike owe them a great debt of gratitude. You should be aware that the complete back issue of the journal is now available on JSTOR, and new issues appear on Project Muse.

Among other SHEAR ventures, the Mellon Seminar for advanced undergraduate scholars had an excellent fourth year, guided by Elizabeth Varon of Temple and Bruce Dorsey of Swarthmore. Mellon funding will allow us to continue this acclaimed program for at least one more year. We are also proud to announce that Roderick McDonald, the JER's editor, has been awarded funding by the National Endowment for the Humanities...