Michael Jarvis
Associate Professor
455 Rush Rhees Library
Rochester, New York 14627-0070
jrvs@mail.rochester.edu
phone: 585.275.4558
fax: 585.756.4425
Ph.D., College of William and Mary, 1998
Courses Offered
(subject to change)
Spring 2009
HIS146: Democratic America, 1800-1865
HIS 344W/444: When New York was the Wild West
Fall 2009
HIS 121: Introduction to History: Piracy
HIS 377W/477: Topics in Early American History
Spring 2010
HIS 269: Archaeology of Early America
HIS 378W/478: Topics in Revolutionary America
Fields of Interest
Early American social and economic history; Atlantic World networks; Bermuda and the Caribbean; Maritime labor and culture.
My principal research interests involve inter-colonial networks of migration, economic and intellectual exchange, and cultural cross-fertilization in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Atlantic world. I use the island of Bermuda to study patterns of family migration, shipboard life, labor and communication within American coasting trades, the social consequences of sustained maritime mortality and a commercial economy, and the emergence of non-plantation-based systems of slave labor. These elements helped Britain's scattered colonial holdings to become a coherent American entity. I am currently revising my dissertation for publication by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture as At the Crossroads of the Atlantic: Maritime Revolution and the Transformation of Bermuda, 1612-1815.
Although my principal specialty is in social and economic history, I dabble in a broad range of approaches to studying early America's past. My ten years of archaeological fieldwork include excavations of colonial and Revolutionary sites in Massachusetts, New Jersey, Virginia and Bermuda, most notably with Jamestown Rediscovery at the original 1607 fort site in the summer of 1995. The following year, I researched and wrote Bermuda's Architectural Heritage: St. George's (Bermuda National Trust, 1998), which surveys the architecture of Bermuda's first capital and the oldest inhabited town in British America. I am also a firm believer in "experiential" history, practicing the ancient craft of blacksmithing and sailing and teaching on the brigantine Corwith Cramer and s chooner Harvey Gamage to gain insights into maritime labor and culture and to explore the ports and islands visited by the Bermudian mariners I study. An avid shipwreck diver, I am also consulting on the excavation and reconstruction of an eighteenth-century Bermuda sloop wreck. By weaving together documents, artifacts, material culture, folklore, architecture, and recovered experiences, I strive to develop the fullest picture possible of past peoples, places, and activities.
Representative Publications:
- "Maritime Masters and Seafaring Slaves in Bermuda, 1680-1783," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series LIX (July 2002), 585-622.
- Bermuda's Architectural Heritage: St. George's. volume II, Bermuda National Trust Architectural Heritage Series (1998).
- "The Vingboons Chart of the James River, circa 1617," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., LIV:357-74 (1997), with Jeroen van Driel.
- "'The Fastest Vessels in the World': The Origin and Evolution of the Bermuda Sloop, 1620-1800." Bermuda Journal of Archaeology and Maritime History VII:31-50 (1995).
