#143 Interview with Joseph Kelly

The History of the Americans

Jack Henneman

History

4.9 • 632 Ratings

🗓️ 15 February 2024

⏱️ 89 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Joe Kelly is professor of literature and the director of Irish and Irish American Studies at the College of Charleston, and the author of Marooned: Jamestown, Shipwreck, and a New History of America’s Origin. In addition to Marooned, in 2013 Joe published America’s Longest Siege: Charleston, Slavery, and the Slow March Towards Civil War, which details the evolving ideology of slavery in America. He is also author of a study of the Irish novelist James Joyce, censorship, obscenity, and the Cold War (Our Joyce: From Outcast to Icon).

This conversation, which was great fun, covers a whole range of topics familiar to longstanding and attentive listeners, but with a new and provocative perspective. We talk about John Smith, Sir Francis Drake – who literally takes up a chapter in Joe’s book – the Sea Venture wreck, the role of the commoners in the struggle to survive on Bermuda, and the political philosophy of Stephen Hopkins, the one man to spend years in Virginia and then go on to sail on the Mayflower as a Stranger among the Pilgrim Fathers. Was Hopkins the moving force for or even the author of the Mayflower Compact, and the true original English-American political theorist? Finally, we have it out over the fraught question, as between Jamestown and Plymouth, which of our founding mythologies most clearly reflects the American we have become? Joe brings a new and fascinating perspective to that timeless argument.

Buy the book!: Marooned: Jamestown, Shipwreck, and a New History of America’s Origin

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the History of the Americans podcast, episode 143.
0:10.9	I'm your host, Jack Heneman, and we are recording my end of this on February 11, 2024, in New Orleans.
0:19.9	For those few of you who are new to the podcast, we are telling the history of the lands now
0:24.6	encompassed by the United States from the beginning without intentional presentism.
0:31.6	As given away in the title, this episode, is an interview.
0:36.4	Our guest today is Joseph Kelly, author of the fantastic book
0:40.6	Marooned, Jamestown, Shipwrecked, and a New History of America's Origin. Joe comes to us from a
0:48.2	secure, undisclosed location in the vicinity of Charleston, South Carolina.
0:59.6	Joe is professor of literature and the director of Irish and Irish-American studies at the College of Charleston. In addition to Marooned, in 2013, Joe published America's longest
1:06.2	siege, Charleston's slavery in the slow march towards civil war, which details the evolving
1:13.2	ideology of slavery in America. His first book was a study of the Irish novelist James Joyce,
1:20.4	Censorship, Obscenity, and the Cold War. Right now, he's at work on a new book about free speech, fascism, and the invention of liberal democracy.
1:30.8	This conversation, which was huge fun for me, at least, covers a whole range of topics familiar to longstanding and attentive listeners, but with a new and innovative perspective.
1:42.6	We talk about John Smith, Sir Francis Drake, who literally takes up a
1:47.3	chapter in Joe's book, How Awesome Is That, the Sea Venture Rec, the role of the commoners and the
1:54.2	struggle for survival on Bermuda, and the political philosophy of Stephen Hopkins, the one man
1:59.8	to spend years in Virginia, and then go on
2:02.8	to sail on the Mayflower as a stranger among the pilgrim fathers. So was Hopkins the moving
2:09.0	force for, even the author of the Mayflower Compact and the true original English-American
2:15.0	political theorist? Finally, we have it out over the fraught question as between Jamestown and Plymouth,
2:22.3	which of our founding mythologies most clearly reflects the Americans we have become?
2:29.1	Joe brings a new perspective to that timeless argument.
	...

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