Inside the white-walled, vitrine-filled museum, it is easy to assume that the objects within it neutrally represent history’s many turns. Conservation shapes how those objects are preserved, displayed, and interpreted. From putting back together shards of a pot after excavation to using a solution to remove acid from paper, the field’s practices are aimed at allowing access to historical materials. I worked in conservation for several years, and was initially drawn to the field because of the ethics of keeping extant objects of history accessible to researchers. However, until I was asked to repair a few cracks in a life-size painted plaster bust at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University, I did not realize how fraught the decision to preserve can be. Although the discipline of conservation has an ethos of care, many of the objects that make up the museum instead conspicuously mark its anti-humanist foundations. Conservation can mask the museum’s colonial and imperial origins.

In early January, my partner and I became first-time parents. We immediately fell in love with every minute detail of this tiny stranger whom we had brought home. Like many new parents, we sent photos and videos to our family members, hoping to share our joy and introduce our little one to those we love.

The McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania is co-sponsoring a summer internship with Insurrect! The stipend for the internship is $3,000. This internship is open to undergraduate students enrolled at McNeil Center Consortium institutions. Interns are expected to work 35 hours per week for 8 weeks. Beginning and end dates will be arranged between the Insurrect! and the intern, but the internship will conclude by September 1, 2024. One half of the stipend will be paid at the beginning of the internship, and the other half will be remitted at its completion.

This roundtable includes reflections from four scholars who presented on a panel, “Mutual Aid in Early America” at the Society of Early Americanists (SEA) Biannual Meeting in June 2023, chaired by Liz Polcha. In this roundtable for Insurrect!, the panelists reflect on their own presentations as well as the conversation that ensued. Teachers and writers have a different orientation to mutual aid than organizers, but as several of the authors in this roundtable point out, that does not mean that mutual aid isn’t on our minds in our pedagogy and research. What we offer here is a larger reflection on a question that Kimberly Takahata poses below: how can we support and engage in mutual aid without placing our own demands upon it? Further, each author offers a list of suggested resources for further reading (thanks to Eagan for this idea!)

Helen Hunt Jackson’s Ramona, first published in 1884, was initially met with mixed reviews by readers of the time. The novel is set after the Mexican-American War throughout the state of California following the life of a Scottish-Native American woman, Ramona, that was orphaned and subsequently fostered by a  Mexican family, the Morenos. In the novel, the relationship between Ramona and her foster mother, Gonzaga Moreno, is described as full of tension due to Ramona’s mixed racial background. We see Ramona grow into a beautiful young woman who falls in love with Alessandro, a Native American man who has a friendly work relationship with the Morenos. Throughout the novel, we see the many hardships that both Ramona and Alessandro face due to the discrimination against Native American communities and how this pushes Alessandro to his demise. The novel ends with Ramona marrying Felipe Moreno, her once foster brother, and essentially being rescued from hardship and living a comfortable life. 

Opponents of ‘Affirmative Action’ frame the policy as something that is given, defining it as an unfair advantage extended to the undeserving. For example, Roger Clegg, former president and general counsel for the Center for Equal Opportunity that appeared before the US Supreme Court this June in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, 600 U. S. (2023), exemplifies this misperception, oversimplifying the matter in his 2007 statement to The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission: