REBEL WITH A CAUSE

Abstract

As a historian of early America, my subject predates the invention of lm or video, voice or music recording, or even photography. When I watch my modernist colleagues deliver multi-media lectures – including lm clips, snatches of popular music or speeches, and photos – I feel a twinge of envy. The closest 18thcentury Americans ever got to a multi-media presentation was to paint the words: “No Stamp Act!” on the side of a porcelain teapot. A few years ago, after discussing the origins and consequences of the Boston tea party, including reading contemporary newspaper accounts, letters, and cartoons, I treated my students (and I will admit, myself) to the Boston tea party scene from Disney’s 1957 lm Johnny