Occom Circle: A Digital Edition and Website

FAIN: RQ-50470-10

Dartmouth College (Hanover, NH 03755-1808)
Ivy T. Schweitzer (Project Director: November 2009 to June 2016)

Creation of a digital edition and website that will provide free online access to the works of Mohegan Indian leader and intellectual, Samson Occom (1727-1792) and materials pertaining to Occom's associates and activities. (24 months)

"Occom Circle" is a digital edition and website, already underway in prototype, that will provide free on-line access to works housed in Dartmouth College's Libraries of, by, and about Samson Occom (1727-1792), a Mohegan Indian, intertribal leader, public intellectual, and the most important Indian writer in North America in the 18th century. This digital edition uses text encoding to provide accessibility and longevity beyond traditional print and microform editions. Creating clusters of correspondences and networks of associations, this edition evokes the tumultuous "circle" in which Occom lived through annotations and hyperlinks. It facilitates access to documents through search functions, links to other digital archives, makes them available to scholars in many disciplines, as well as teachers, students, institutions, Indian tribes and general readers. Digital technology allows humanists to bring the past to life in order to inform the present and shape the future.

Associated Products

“ ‘And there was a large number of people’: The Occom Circle Project at the Dartmouth College Library” (Article)
Title: “ ‘And there was a large number of people’: The Occom Circle Project at the Dartmouth College Library”
Author: Laura Braunstein
Author: Peter Carini
Author: Dawn Dumpert.
Abstract: Digital Humanities in the Library: Challenges and Opportunities for Subject Specialists is a collection of essays focusing on the role of the subject specialist in creating, supporting, and promoting digital humanities projects. Chapter authors include experts from diverse areas, such as humanities subject specialists, digital humanities librarians, special collections librarians, and professors and graduate students from many disciplines. This book, published in collaboration with the ACRL Literatures in English Section and with a foreword by Joan K. Lippincott, provides valuable discussions around the role of subject specialists in digital humanities, gives practical advice regarding support of and collaboration with digital humanities projects, and describes real-world examples to inspire subject specialists to increase their own knowledge and expertise. Digital Humanities in the Library was edited by Arianne Hartsell-Gundy, Laura Braunstein, and Liorah Golomb, and is appropriate for all types of academic libraries and collections devoted to Library and Information Science.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: http://akastore.ala.org/detail.aspx?ID=11391
Access Model: a book; we will link it to the OC when it's available.
Format: Other
Periodical Title: Digital Humanities in the Library: Challenges and Opportunities for Subject Specialists
Publisher: Association of College and Research Libraries

“Native Sovereignty and the Archive: Samson Occom and Digital Humanities” (Article)
Title: “Native Sovereignty and the Archive: Samson Occom and Digital Humanities”
Author: Ivy Schweitzer
Abstract: Can practitioners maintain a feminist and postcolonial approach to the uses of technology? How can we insure they support Native American “survivance,” a portmanteau term coined by scholar Gerald Vizenor (Anishinaabe) by combining the words “survival” and “resistance” to describe the active assertion by Native peoples of their presence, identity, vitality and futurity, against mainstream culture’s imposition of historical absence, victimization, deracination, and oblivion. This leads to questions more specifically about the digital. How do texts and their meanings change in the process of transcribing written pages into word-processed documents that are represented digitally, thus encompassing scribal, print, and digital knowledges? What, then, is the status of oral traditions and the literacy represented by wampum belts and story boxes, which figure prominently in Occom’s activities? What do we lose and what do we gain through digital remediation and, most importantly, can digital technology support and advance what scholars have labeled “ethnic archives,” and the epistemic evolution of archives in the digital age? Before describing The Occom Circle and how it addresses these questions, I will discuss how changing notions of sovereignty, archives, and the digital illuminate this project.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: http://www.amspressinc.com/rais.html
Access Model: subscription
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Resources for American Literary Study
Publisher: AMS Press, Inc. New York

“Relational Textualities of Indigenous America in the Colonial Period: The Occom Network,” (Article)
Title: “Relational Textualities of Indigenous America in the Colonial Period: The Occom Network,”
Author: Ivy Schweitzer
Abstract: In order to glean a fuller understanding of Occom’s role and achievements, I will examine the politics of the orality/textuality divide within the pre-contact history of literacy in the Americas, and survey the evolution of an interdisciplinary scholarship that uses new methodologies to produce fresh understandings of Native literacies and adaptations. Finally, I will apply these methods to a reading of a major early Indian literary genre at which Occom excelled: the journal.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/crocc/
Access Model: a book; we will link it to the OC when it's available.
Format: Other
Periodical Title: Indigenous Textual Cultures
Publisher: University of Otago Centre for Research on Colonial Culture

The Occom Circle (Database/Archive/Digital Edition)
Title: The Occom Circle
Author: Ivy Schweitzer
Abstract: A freely accessible, scholarly digital edition of handwritten documents by and about Samson Occom (1727-1792) housed in Dartmouth College. Occom was a Mohegan Indian, Presbyterian minister and missionary, intertribal leader, public intellectual, and important Indian writer. Dartmouth’s archives hold a wealth of primary holograph materials pertaining to Occom and his circle, which included Eleazar Wheelock, founder of Moor’s Indian Charity School in Lebanon, CT, other Native American students at Moor’s, and a wide range of prominent figures in North America and Great Britain involved in Indian missionary efforts.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~occom/
Access Model: open access

The Occom Circle (Exhibition)
Title: The Occom Circle
Curator: Dawn Dumpert.
Curator: Ivy Schweitzer
Abstract: Exhibition of the Occom Circle by invitation of the organizers of the Digital Antiquarian Conference, May 29, 2015, at the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA
Year: 2015
Primary URL: http://http://www.americanantiquarian.org/digitalantiquarian
Primary URL Description: The conference schedule and twitter feed.

The Occom Circle (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: The Occom Circle
Abstract: A presentation of the Occom Circle project at the invitation of the Friends of the Dartmouth Library. This event took place in the 1902 Room under the famous portrait of Occom, and brought faculty, alumni, students, and community members together for a “sneak preview” of the website.
Author: Ivy Schweitzer
Author: Peter Carini
Date: 5/14/2014
Location: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH

Research within the Discipline of Premodern Studies: The Occom Circle (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Research within the Discipline of Premodern Studies: The Occom Circle
Abstract: A description of the Occom Circle Project, its goals and contributions to teaching and research in early Modern Studies.
Author: Ivy Schweitzer
Date: 12/10/14
Location: First Matariki Humanities Colloquium.University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand
Primary URL: http://http://matarikinetwork.org/events/matariki-humanities-colloquium-pre-modern-studies/
Primary URL Description: Description of the Colloquium and schedule of events and papers.

Occom Circle Assessment Report (Report)
Title: Occom Circle Assessment Report
Author: Peter Carini
Abstract: In September 2014, we asked four users (one Dartmouth undergraduate student, one recent Dartmouth graduate, and two researchers working in the field and in digital humanities) to evaluate the website. Peter Carini (co-PI) and John Cocklin of the Library Assessment Committee developed the assessment questions after polling the Occom Project Team Membership for ideas. The assessment focused heavily on the database side of the site since the text side of the site had not been developed out sufficiently to assess at the time the questions were devised. The full report is in the Appendix, with my comments.
Date: 9/29/14
Access Model: included in appendix

Who's the Boss (Blog Post)
Title: Who's the Boss
Author: Laura Braunstein
Abstract: About a language usage discovery found through Occom's journals.
Date: 10/4/13
Primary URL: http://raunerlibrary.blogspot.com/2013/10/whos-boss.html
Blog Title: Who's the Boss
Website: Rauner Special Collections LIbrary Bog

Occom to Wheatley (Blog Post)
Title: Occom to Wheatley
Author: Dawn Dumpert.
Abstract: In 1765, Samson Occom, a minister and Mohegan Indian who figured largely in the founding of Dartmouth, traveled to Great Britain to solicit funds for the Indian Charity School run by Eleazar Wheelock. Occom kept a detailed journal during his tour, and in its back pages, he lists the letters he sent to America. Occom records that, in March of 1766, he wrote to "Mrs. Wheatley in Boston," noting directly underneath that he has also sent a letter "to a Negro Girl Boston." There can be little doubt that the girl to whom Occom refers is Phillis Wheatley, a slave who would have been about 12 years old at the time.
Date: 10/15/13
Primary URL: http://raunerlibrary.blogspot.com/2013/10/occom-to-wheatley.html
Blog Title: Occom to Wheatley
Website: Rauner Special Collections LIbrary Bog

Trial and Conflict (Blog Post)
Title: Trial and Conflict
Author: Peter Carini
Abstract: The adage that “all your dysfunctional relationships have one thing in common, you” comes to mind whenever Eleazar Wheelock’s legacy is up for examination. This is particularly the case with a recent acquisition of Wheelock documents (five in his hand) ranging from the time of his calling to the Second Congregational Church in Lebanon, Connecticut, in 1735 to 1771 after his arrival in Hanover.
Date: 12/9/14
Primary URL: http://raunerlibrary.blogspot.com/2014_12_07_archive.html
Blog Title: Trial and Conflict
Website: Rauner Special Collections LIbrary Bog

English 19 Early American Literatures: Writing, Resistance, and Revolution (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: English 19 Early American Literatures: Writing, Resistance, and Revolution
Author: Ivy Schweitzer
Abstract: In 1492, the scholar Antonio de Nebrija published the first grammar of the Spanish language, dedicated to Isabella I, of Castille. When the queen asked why she would want a work like this, Nebrija responded: “Majesty, language is the perfect instrument of empire.” The conquest of the Americas, which would change history forever and precipitate the modern era, is inextricably bound up with language and its various modes of transmission. This course explores a multicultural history of the technologies of “writing,” broadly understood, in North America--Native American, Spanish, French, and English, from 1500 to 1800. We will study three strands of that history: The Pre-columbian world and the oral vs. scribal debate; Conquest and religion, especially Puritanism/Protestantism; European settler colonialism, especially relations with Indigenous peoples and Atlantic slavery. In the second half of the course, we will focus on four figures: Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Samson Occom, and Phillis Wheatley, all of whom used writing in different ways to make “revolutions.” Finally, we will consider the recent turn to digital archives and work with the Occom Circle and other digital sites to explore how digital tools open networks of associations masked by maleness and whiteness.
Year: 2015
Audience: Undergraduate

Indigenous Archives in the Digital Age (Conference/Institute/Seminar)
Title: Indigenous Archives in the Digital Age
Author: Ivy Schweitzer
Author: Elizabeth Maddock Dillon
Abstract: A Workshop and Symposium co-sponsored by the Society of Early Americanists and Dartmouth College to launch the Occom Circle project
Date Range: 9/9-11/16
Location: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
Primary URL: http://sites.dartmouth.edu/indigenousarchives-conference/
Primary URL Description: The website for this symposium contains the schedule, registration for the conference and information about lodging and travel to the area.

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