Sarah M S Pearsall
Biographic Data
| ID | 1161287 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sarah M S Pearsall |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sarah M S |
| FAMILY NAME | Pearsall |
| SIGNATURE | PEARSALL S M S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cambridge |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 38 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
The Cambridge History of the American Revolution
The second volume focuses on the years of upheaval during the American Revolution between 1775 and 1789. It breaks new ground by surveying a wide range of internal conflicts in the thirteen colonies, the trauma of a bloody war and its consequences, as well as the continental, hemispheric, and global forces shaping warfare and politics in this era. Together, the essays expand our understanding of how various people navigated military occupation, c…
Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
This article, concentrating on trends in the field of gender and sexuality studies of the last decade or so, makes a case for expanding both the geography and the methodology for early modern gender studies, broadly conceived. Themes considered here include the intermingling of the intimate and the imperial as well as marriage, law, slavery and labor, freedom, settler colonialism, intersectionality, queer studies, mothering, and reproduction. Thi…
Polygamy
Introduction
The picture looks familiar to Western eyes-the happy couple cutting the cake to celebrate their marriage. The pose is classic wedding stuff-hands of both spouses holding the knife on the tall white cake. It was a special moment, one to treasure in photos. Yet one man's expression is cheeky, like a naughty school boy. The expression and the picture suggest that they were doing something utterly traditional, yet at the same time outrageously subver…
The Politics of Fashion in Eighteenth-Century America, by Kate Haulman
The crisp white of a man’s waistcoat, set off by a dark cut-away coat, could signify ‘high metropolitan style’ or ‘republican simplicity’—or indeed both—in the new American republic of the 1780s. Writing of these possibilities, Kate Haulman concludes that ‘it depended on who was looking and judging’ (p. 185). ‘Looking and judging’ are at the centre of Haulman’s adroit and wide-ranging analysis of the meanings of appearance, from clothing to hair …
David Underdown’s Revel, Riot and Rebellion
e d fo r p u blic a tio n
Native American Men – and Women – at Home in Plural Marriages in Seventeenth‐Century New France
‘To live among us without a wife is to live without help, without home, always a vagabond’.1 So declared an Algonquin ‘juggler’ (or healer, or as the Jesuits had it, sorcerer), Pigarouïch, who was in the process of converting to Christianity in the 1630s. He fretted over the consequences of giving up multiple wives (something acceptable, even desirable, for a powerful healer), should his wife, by choice or necessity, leave him. He found this poss…
Having Many Wives” in Two American Rebellions
Here is a fine example of a Kotyiti glaze polychrome jar of the globular variety, dating from 1680-1694.It comes from the Kotyiti settlement near present-day Santa Fe, New Mexico.Founded after the Pueblo Revolt in 1680, this community likely included refugees from the pueblos of Cochiti, San Felipe, and San Marcos.The Spanish subsequently destroyed it in the re-conquest of the area in 1694.As archaeologists such as Robert W. Preucel, Patricia V. …
Introduction
Julie Hardwick, Sarah M. S. Pearsall, Karin Wulf, Introduction: Centering Families in Atlantic Histories, The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 70, No. 2, Centering Families in Atlantic Histories (April 2013), pp. 205-224
The Power of Feeling”? Emotion, Sensibility, and the American Revolution
In January 1776, Thomas Paine demanded to know whether “the Power of feeling” did not require that American colonists declare independence from Great Britain. Paine's efforts included an appeal to “common sense,” to the idea that it was only natural for colonists to end their ties with Britain. For Paine, independence did not depend on elaborately wrought arguments; instead, it should be obvious to all, even the most unlettered. His own emotional…
Gender
Both the history of gender and the history of the Atlantic world have blossomed as fields of inquiry in the last 30 years, but the relationship between these two subjects remains unclear. Melding them is a profound challenge to historians in both fields. In part there is a need to make Atlantic history more than simply imperial history in a new guise. Rather, for the history of the Atlantic to be as wide-ranging as the Atlantic world itself, it i…
The Farewell Between Husband and Wife
This chapter attends to the separation of a husband and a wife during and immediately after the American Revolution, considering what attended those moments when the ‘silken cords’ of marriage were stretched by distance and disorder. Concentrating on New England (especially Newport, Rhode Island) and England, it seeks to answer the question of why a husband did not return to his wife at the war's end, and what this meant. Women in such circumstan…
Credit in Life and Letters
This chapter examines the ways that credit was a value also inculcated by families. Credit and debt were critical to the Atlantic economy, and fathers in particular were uncomfortably aware of this fact. They thus sought to create ‘men of credit’ out of sons especially. The profound loss of credit, in the form of ruin, was a specter that haunted families, communities, and nations. Letter writers, men and women, measured each other's credit, in do…
Familiarity in Life and Letters
This chapter defines the concept of familiarity, a means by which even individuals not related by family could achieve family-like relationships. Such familiarity — distinguished from either politeness or intimacy — allowed individuals adrift to join other circles and so find the support they implied. The chapter enumerates the ways familiarity could be established among non-family members by such means as the education and care of a child, or co…
Prologue ‘This Silent Art’
Conclusion
This concluding chapter briefly surveys the central themes and arguments of the book. It also revises notions of ‘self-fashioning’ and the alleged emergence of the modern self in the 18th century. ‘Self-fashioning’ worked in tandem with fashioning others, in ways both strategic and internalized. Understanding the nebulous origins of the modern self requires first understanding what had to be stripped away, at least partially, to make room for tha…
Epilogue
Author Webpage These transatlantic letters continued to help ameliorate the struggles of life for some families, well beyond the eighteenth century. Like their authors, these letters have crossed the Atlantic and circulated; this process did not end with the death of their original authors. Eighteenth‐century familiar letters speak about more than just their production and initial reception; they also speak about the choices of subsequent generat…
Sensibility in Life and Letters
This chapter probes the domestic origins of sensibility, or, as here defined, the ability to display a feeling heart. In many respects, sensibility originated in families, while also, like familiarity, moving beyond the immediate household-family. To write with feeling in familiar letters was one way to demonstrate that feeling, and to ensure the continuation of the ‘connexions’ with which so many were concerned. All kinds of epistolary manuals, …
Fractured Families
This chapter provides general background for the many reasons families experienced Atlantic distance in the 18th century, including the increased importance of the colonies, economic growth, migration, slavery, war, and revolution. These factors all separated families and caused concerns, not simply for the families involved but for the larger culture as a whole. Anxieties about the family and the fragility of its bonds in this period in part ref…
The Old Husband and the Young Wife
This chapter investigates a scandal in a family, examining why a cuckolded ‘old husband,’ a rich West Indian planter, was willing to offer forgiveness to his adulterous wife (who had slept with her own stepson-in-law, an Anglican clergyman). It raises issues about the lives of families divided between Jamaica and England, focusing on their wealth, ambitions, and sexuality, and the complicated ways in which distance between family members created …
The Repentant Son and the Unforgiving Father
This chapter, which focuses on Virginia and Scotland, looks at a rupture between a father and a prodigal son, over issues of sensibility and sentiment, but mainly over issues of credit, in the period immediately following the American Revolution. It seeks to understand why a father remained so furious at a son who died young that it was difficult for the son to obtain forgiveness, even in death. The importance of credit, in economic, political, a…
Atlantic Families
Prologue Introduction PART I: DEALING BY INK ALTOGETHER: MECHANISMS OF CONNECTION AND DISCONNECTION Introduction to Part I 1. Fractured Families: The Perils and Possibilities of Atlantic Distance 2. Familiarity in Life and Letters 3. Sensibility in Life and Letters 4. Credit in Life and Letters PART II: WHAT MAY BE OUR LOT: STORIES OF CONNECTION AND DISCONNECTION Introduction to Part II 5. The Repentant Son and the Unforgiving Father: Making a Ma…
The State of the Union
Books reviewed in this article: Merril D. Smith (ed.), Sex and Sexuality in Early America Beryl Satter, Each Mind a Kingdom: American Women, Sexual Purity, and the New Thought Movement, 1875–1920 Sharon R. Ullman, Sex Seen: The Emergence of Modern Sexuality in America M. E. Melody and Linda M. Peterson, Teaching America about Sex: Marriage Guides and Sex Manuals from the Late Victorians to Dr Ruth
"Narratives of Self" and the Abdication of Authority in Wideman's Philadelphia Fire
Journal Article “Narratives of Self” and the Abdication of Authority in Wideman’s Philadelphia Fire Get access Susan M. Pearsall Susan M. Pearsall University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar MELUS, Volume 26, Issue 2, June 2001, Pages 15–46, https://doi.org/10.2307/3185516 Published: 01 June 2001
Atlantic Families
Prologue Introduction PART I: DEALING BY INK ALTOGETHER: MECHANISMS OF CONNECTION AND DISCONNECTION Introduction to Part I 1. Fractured Families: The Perils and Possibilities of Atlantic Distance 2. Familiarity in Life and Letters 3. Sensibility in Life and Letters 4. Credit in Life and Letters PART II: WHAT MAY BE OUR LOT: STORIES OF CONNECTION AND DISCONNECTION Introduction to Part II 5. The Repentant Son and the Unforgiving Father: Making a Ma…
Having Many Wives” in Two American Rebellions
Here is a fine example of a Kotyiti glaze polychrome jar of the globular variety, dating from 1680-1694.It comes from the Kotyiti settlement near present-day Santa Fe, New Mexico.Founded after the Pueblo Revolt in 1680, this community likely included refugees from the pueblos of Cochiti, San Felipe, and San Marcos.The Spanish subsequently destroyed it in the re-conquest of the area in 1694.As archaeologists such as Robert W. Preucel, Patricia V. …
Introduction
The picture looks familiar to Western eyes-the happy couple cutting the cake to celebrate their marriage. The pose is classic wedding stuff-hands of both spouses holding the knife on the tall white cake. It was a special moment, one to treasure in photos. Yet one man's expression is cheeky, like a naughty school boy. The expression and the picture suggest that they were doing something utterly traditional, yet at the same time outrageously subver…
Native American Men – and Women – at Home in Plural Marriages in Seventeenth‐Century New France
‘To live among us without a wife is to live without help, without home, always a vagabond’.1 So declared an Algonquin ‘juggler’ (or healer, or as the Jesuits had it, sorcerer), Pigarouïch, who was in the process of converting to Christianity in the 1630s. He fretted over the consequences of giving up multiple wives (something acceptable, even desirable, for a powerful healer), should his wife, by choice or necessity, leave him. He found this poss…
Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
This article, concentrating on trends in the field of gender and sexuality studies of the last decade or so, makes a case for expanding both the geography and the methodology for early modern gender studies, broadly conceived. Themes considered here include the intermingling of the intimate and the imperial as well as marriage, law, slavery and labor, freedom, settler colonialism, intersectionality, queer studies, mothering, and reproduction. Thi…
Introduction
Julie Hardwick, Sarah M. S. Pearsall, Karin Wulf, Introduction: Centering Families in Atlantic Histories, The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 70, No. 2, Centering Families in Atlantic Histories (April 2013), pp. 205-224
The Power of Feeling”? Emotion, Sensibility, and the American Revolution
In January 1776, Thomas Paine demanded to know whether “the Power of feeling” did not require that American colonists declare independence from Great Britain. Paine's efforts included an appeal to “common sense,” to the idea that it was only natural for colonists to end their ties with Britain. For Paine, independence did not depend on elaborately wrought arguments; instead, it should be obvious to all, even the most unlettered. His own emotional…
"Narratives of Self" and the Abdication of Authority in Wideman's Philadelphia Fire
Journal Article “Narratives of Self” and the Abdication of Authority in Wideman’s Philadelphia Fire Get access Susan M. Pearsall Susan M. Pearsall University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar MELUS, Volume 26, Issue 2, June 2001, Pages 15–46, https://doi.org/10.2307/3185516 Published: 01 June 2001
The State of the Union
Books reviewed in this article: Merril D. Smith (ed.), Sex and Sexuality in Early America Beryl Satter, Each Mind a Kingdom: American Women, Sexual Purity, and the New Thought Movement, 1875–1920 Sharon R. Ullman, Sex Seen: The Emergence of Modern Sexuality in America M. E. Melody and Linda M. Peterson, Teaching America about Sex: Marriage Guides and Sex Manuals from the Late Victorians to Dr Ruth
"Narratives of Self" and the Abdication of Authority in Wideman's Philadelphia Fire
Journal Article “Narratives of Self” and the Abdication of Authority in Wideman’s Philadelphia Fire Get access Susan M. Pearsall Susan M. Pearsall University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar MELUS, Volume 26, Issue 2, June 2001, Pages 15–46, https://doi.org/10.2307/3185516 Published: 01 June 2001
The Farewell Between Husband and Wife
This chapter attends to the separation of a husband and a wife during and immediately after the American Revolution, considering what attended those moments when the ‘silken cords’ of marriage were stretched by distance and disorder. Concentrating on New England (especially Newport, Rhode Island) and England, it seeks to answer the question of why a husband did not return to his wife at the war's end, and what this meant. Women in such circumstan…
Credit in Life and Letters
This chapter examines the ways that credit was a value also inculcated by families. Credit and debt were critical to the Atlantic economy, and fathers in particular were uncomfortably aware of this fact. They thus sought to create ‘men of credit’ out of sons especially. The profound loss of credit, in the form of ruin, was a specter that haunted families, communities, and nations. Letter writers, men and women, measured each other's credit, in do…
Familiarity in Life and Letters
This chapter defines the concept of familiarity, a means by which even individuals not related by family could achieve family-like relationships. Such familiarity — distinguished from either politeness or intimacy — allowed individuals adrift to join other circles and so find the support they implied. The chapter enumerates the ways familiarity could be established among non-family members by such means as the education and care of a child, or co…
Prologue ‘This Silent Art’
Conclusion
This concluding chapter briefly surveys the central themes and arguments of the book. It also revises notions of ‘self-fashioning’ and the alleged emergence of the modern self in the 18th century. ‘Self-fashioning’ worked in tandem with fashioning others, in ways both strategic and internalized. Understanding the nebulous origins of the modern self requires first understanding what had to be stripped away, at least partially, to make room for tha…
Epilogue
Author Webpage These transatlantic letters continued to help ameliorate the struggles of life for some families, well beyond the eighteenth century. Like their authors, these letters have crossed the Atlantic and circulated; this process did not end with the death of their original authors. Eighteenth‐century familiar letters speak about more than just their production and initial reception; they also speak about the choices of subsequent generat…
Sensibility in Life and Letters
This chapter probes the domestic origins of sensibility, or, as here defined, the ability to display a feeling heart. In many respects, sensibility originated in families, while also, like familiarity, moving beyond the immediate household-family. To write with feeling in familiar letters was one way to demonstrate that feeling, and to ensure the continuation of the ‘connexions’ with which so many were concerned. All kinds of epistolary manuals, …
Fractured Families
This chapter provides general background for the many reasons families experienced Atlantic distance in the 18th century, including the increased importance of the colonies, economic growth, migration, slavery, war, and revolution. These factors all separated families and caused concerns, not simply for the families involved but for the larger culture as a whole. Anxieties about the family and the fragility of its bonds in this period in part ref…
The Old Husband and the Young Wife
This chapter investigates a scandal in a family, examining why a cuckolded ‘old husband,’ a rich West Indian planter, was willing to offer forgiveness to his adulterous wife (who had slept with her own stepson-in-law, an Anglican clergyman). It raises issues about the lives of families divided between Jamaica and England, focusing on their wealth, ambitions, and sexuality, and the complicated ways in which distance between family members created …
The Repentant Son and the Unforgiving Father
This chapter, which focuses on Virginia and Scotland, looks at a rupture between a father and a prodigal son, over issues of sensibility and sentiment, but mainly over issues of credit, in the period immediately following the American Revolution. It seeks to understand why a father remained so furious at a son who died young that it was difficult for the son to obtain forgiveness, even in death. The importance of credit, in economic, political, a…
Atlantic Families
Prologue Introduction PART I: DEALING BY INK ALTOGETHER: MECHANISMS OF CONNECTION AND DISCONNECTION Introduction to Part I 1. Fractured Families: The Perils and Possibilities of Atlantic Distance 2. Familiarity in Life and Letters 3. Sensibility in Life and Letters 4. Credit in Life and Letters PART II: WHAT MAY BE OUR LOT: STORIES OF CONNECTION AND DISCONNECTION Introduction to Part II 5. The Repentant Son and the Unforgiving Father: Making a Ma…
Gender
Both the history of gender and the history of the Atlantic world have blossomed as fields of inquiry in the last 30 years, but the relationship between these two subjects remains unclear. Melding them is a profound challenge to historians in both fields. In part there is a need to make Atlantic history more than simply imperial history in a new guise. Rather, for the history of the Atlantic to be as wide-ranging as the Atlantic world itself, it i…
The Power of Feeling”? Emotion, Sensibility, and the American Revolution
In January 1776, Thomas Paine demanded to know whether “the Power of feeling” did not require that American colonists declare independence from Great Britain. Paine's efforts included an appeal to “common sense,” to the idea that it was only natural for colonists to end their ties with Britain. For Paine, independence did not depend on elaborately wrought arguments; instead, it should be obvious to all, even the most unlettered. His own emotional…
Having Many Wives” in Two American Rebellions
Here is a fine example of a Kotyiti glaze polychrome jar of the globular variety, dating from 1680-1694.It comes from the Kotyiti settlement near present-day Santa Fe, New Mexico.Founded after the Pueblo Revolt in 1680, this community likely included refugees from the pueblos of Cochiti, San Felipe, and San Marcos.The Spanish subsequently destroyed it in the re-conquest of the area in 1694.As archaeologists such as Robert W. Preucel, Patricia V. …
Introduction
Julie Hardwick, Sarah M. S. Pearsall, Karin Wulf, Introduction: Centering Families in Atlantic Histories, The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 70, No. 2, Centering Families in Atlantic Histories (April 2013), pp. 205-224
The Politics of Fashion in Eighteenth-Century America, by Kate Haulman
The crisp white of a man’s waistcoat, set off by a dark cut-away coat, could signify ‘high metropolitan style’ or ‘republican simplicity’—or indeed both—in the new American republic of the 1780s. Writing of these possibilities, Kate Haulman concludes that ‘it depended on who was looking and judging’ (p. 185). ‘Looking and judging’ are at the centre of Haulman’s adroit and wide-ranging analysis of the meanings of appearance, from clothing to hair …
David Underdown’s Revel, Riot and Rebellion
e d fo r p u blic a tio n
Native American Men – and Women – at Home in Plural Marriages in Seventeenth‐Century New France
‘To live among us without a wife is to live without help, without home, always a vagabond’.1 So declared an Algonquin ‘juggler’ (or healer, or as the Jesuits had it, sorcerer), Pigarouïch, who was in the process of converting to Christianity in the 1630s. He fretted over the consequences of giving up multiple wives (something acceptable, even desirable, for a powerful healer), should his wife, by choice or necessity, leave him. He found this poss…
Introduction
The picture looks familiar to Western eyes-the happy couple cutting the cake to celebrate their marriage. The pose is classic wedding stuff-hands of both spouses holding the knife on the tall white cake. It was a special moment, one to treasure in photos. Yet one man's expression is cheeky, like a naughty school boy. The expression and the picture suggest that they were doing something utterly traditional, yet at the same time outrageously subver…
Polygamy
Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
This article, concentrating on trends in the field of gender and sexuality studies of the last decade or so, makes a case for expanding both the geography and the methodology for early modern gender studies, broadly conceived. Themes considered here include the intermingling of the intimate and the imperial as well as marriage, law, slavery and labor, freedom, settler colonialism, intersectionality, queer studies, mothering, and reproduction. Thi…
The Cambridge History of the American Revolution
The second volume focuses on the years of upheaval during the American Revolution between 1775 and 1789. It breaks new ground by surveying a wide range of internal conflicts in the thirteen colonies, the trauma of a bloody war and its consequences, as well as the continental, hemispheric, and global forces shaping warfare and politics in this era. Together, the essays expand our understanding of how various people navigated military occupation, c…
History (19 works) · Law (12 works) · Political science (12 works) · Art (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Politics (10 works) · Psychology (10 works) · Gender Studies (9 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Aesthetics (7 works)