Asst. Prof. Daniel Johnson, chair of the Department of American Culture and Literature, recently published “Making the Early Modern Metropolis: Culture and Power in Pre-Revolutionary Philadelphia” with the University of Virginia Press.
The book is a social and cultural history of colonial Philadelphia, the most dynamic city in the early modern Atlantic world. “Making the Early Modern Metropolis” takes readers into colonial Philadelphia’s homes, workshops, taverns, courtrooms and public spaces to provide a detailed exploration of how everyday struggles shaped the city’s growth. According to historian Paul Musselwhite, “Johnson takes early America’s archetypally ‘modern’ metropolis and reveals the city’s deep and complex roots in early modern European urban culture, with its struggles over commerce, labor, law, and the common good. In the process, this tremendous book helps to reframe the place of cities and civic culture in early American politics and society more generally.”