Carl Robert Keyes, Ph.D
Professor of History
Department Chair, History
Department Chair, Human Services and Rehabilitation Studies
Pre-Law Advisor
Degrees Earned
Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University, History, 2007
M.A., Johns Hopkins University, History, 2001
M.A., The American University, History, 1999
B.A., University of Michigan, Actuarial Mathematics and History, 1996
Undergraduate Courses Taught
American Encounters: A History of Colonial America in the Atlantic World
Revolutionary America, 1763-1815
Slavery and Freedom in British North America and the United States
Slave Narratives: A Reading and Research Seminar
Vocations in Public History
Women’s Studies: Images of Women in America
History of the United States, Parts 1 & 2
The West and the World, Parts 1 & 2
Digital Projects
Adverts 250 Project
Slavery Adverts 250 Project
https://twitter.com/SlaveAdverts250
Publications
“Advertising,” in U.S. Popular Print Culture to 1860, ed. Ronald J. Zboray and Mary Saracino Zboray, vol. 5, The Oxford History of Popular Print Culture, ed. Gary Kelly (Oxford University Press, 2019).
“Selling Gentility and Pretending Morality: Education and Newspaper Advertisements in Philadelphia, 1765-1775,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 141, no. 3 (October 2017): 245-274.
“History Prints, Newspaper Advertisements, and Cultivating Citizen Consumers: Patriotism and Partisanship in Marketing Campaigns in the Era of the Revolution,” in “Before Madison Avenue: Advertising in Early America,” special issue, American Periodicals: A Journal of History, Criticism, and Bibliography 24, no. 2 (Fall 2014): 145-185.
“A Revolution in Advertising: ‘Buy American’ Campaigns in the Late Eighteenth Century,” in Creating Advertising Culture: Beginnings to the 1930s, vol. 1, We Are What We Sell: How Advertising Shapes American Life … And Always Has, ed. Danielle Sarver Coombs and Bob Batchelor (Praeger, 2014), 1-25.
“Masculinity, Power, and Political Activity in Early America,” in Early American Literature 48, no. 1 (2013): 213-230.
Presentations
“‘Freedom is the Birthright of the People, and People Guardians of Liberty’: Civic Responsibility as a Marketing Strategy in the Early Republic,” Symposium in Honor of Toby L. Ditz, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, October 2018.
Comment, Panel on “‘An Ocean of Rumors: Newspapers and Information Management in the Atlantic World,” Twenty-Fourth Annual Conference of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, June 2018.
Featured Presenter, “Making the History of Enslavement in New England More Visible: The Slavery Adverts 250 Project as a Resource for Public Historians,” Interpreting Slavery and Freedom in New England Workshop, Center for Reconciliation, Providence, Rhode Island, March 2018.
Featured Presenter, “Undergrads Doing History: Using Digital Primary Sources to Motivate Students,” Webinar sponsored by Readex, October 2017.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEVXfYJHcfI
Comment, Panel on “Anxieties in Print: Commercial Uncertainty and Trust in the Revolutionary and Antebellum United States,” Thirty-Ninth Annual Meeting of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, Philadelphia, July 2017.
“‘The late total Stop to Business and other Discouragements’: News Coverage of the Stamp Act in Advertisements for Printed Materials,” Twenty-Third Annual Conference of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Ann Arbor, Michigan, June 2017.
“1766: Reading and Reflecting on a Year of Colonial American Newspaper Advertisements,” Seminar sponsored by Early Modernists Unite, Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, April 2017.
Featured Lecturer, “Patriotism, Partisanship, and Portraits of Thomas Jefferson: The Story of America’s First National Advertising Campaign, 1800-1802,” David Library of the American Revolution, Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania, April 2017.
Roundtable Panelist, “Engaging Students in Digital Scholarly Collaboration,” Forty-Eighth Annual Conference of the American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies, Minneapolis, Minnesota, March 2017.
“The American Book Trades and the Language of Civic Virtue in Eighteenth-Century Advertising,” Languages of the Book, Twenty-Fourth Annual Conference of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing, Paris, France, July 2016.
Comment, Panel on “The Visual Culture of Advertising Benevolence and Business in Early America,” Twenty-Second Annual Conference of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Worcester, Massachusetts, June 2016.
“Eighteenth-Century Advertising Ephemera: Paratexts that Framed Early American Magazines,” Early American Material Texts, McNeil Center for Early American Studies and Library Company of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, May 2016.
“‘Curious Monuments of the Infancy of Our Country’: Eighteenth-Century Marketing of Material Culture Commemorating the American Revolution,” Twentieth Annual Conference of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Halifax, Nova Scotia, June 2014.
Featured Lecturer for Phi Alpha Theta Induction, “Telling the Truth about History: Civic Engagement and Thoughtful Citizenship,” Framingham State University, Framingham, Massachusetts, April 2014.
“Creating Citizen Consumers in the Revolutionary Era: Periodicals, Patriotic Prints and Publications, and the Rise of National Advertising Campaigns,” Lawrence D. Stokes Seminar, Department of History, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, January 2013.
Panelist for Faculty Development Workshop, “‘Doing’ History Outside the Classroom: Undergraduate Participation in the Worcester Women’s Oral History Project,” Why Engagement Matters: Education for Democracy and the Transformation of Higher Education, Colleges of Worcester Consortium, Worcester, Massachusetts, April 2012.
“‘A New Spring to the Business’: Mathew Carey and Innovations in Consumer Advertising in Eighteenth-Century America,” Ireland, America, and the Worlds of Mathew Carey, Trinity College Dublin, National Library of Ireland, and McNeil Center for Early American Studies, Dublin, Ireland, November 2011.
“Cultivating the Citizen Consumer: Marketing Books and Prints in the Revolutionary Era and the New Nation,” Before Madison Avenue: Advertising in Early America, Center for Historic American Visual Culture and Program in the History of the Book in American Culture, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts, November 2011.
Roundtable Participant, “Best Practices for Promoting and Facilitating Undergraduate Research,” Eightieth Annual Meeting of the Pennsylvania Historical Association, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, October 2011.
“Marketing the New Nation: Patriotic Imperatives in Advertisements for Early American Prints,” Historical Prints – Fact and Fiction, Center for Historic American Visual Culture, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts, November 2010.
“Marketing, Not Muses: The Business of Advertising in American Literary Magazines in the Late Eighteenth Century,” Book Culture from Below, Eighteenth Annual Conference of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing, Helsinki, Finland, August 2010.
“Managing Supply and Inciting Demand: Advertising Innovations and the Book Trade in Eighteenth-Century America,” 124th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, San Diego, January 2010.
Grants and Awards
Member, American Antiquarian Society, elected April 2015.
https://americanantiquarian.org/memberlistk
Fellow, Bright Institute, Knox College, 2018-2020.
https://www.knox.edu/academics/majors-and-minors/history/the-bright-institute
Fellow, “The Digital Antiquarian Workshop,” Digital Humanities Summer Seminar, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts, June 2015.
Fellow, “Encountering Revolution: Print Culture, Politics, and the British American Loyalists,” Summer Seminar, Program in the History of the Book in American Culture, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts, June 2011.
Lois F. McNeil Dissertation Fellowship, Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library, 2004-2005.
Jacob M. Price Visiting Research Fellowship, William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan, 2003.
Friends of the McNeil Center Dissertation Fellowship, McNeil Center for Early American Studies, 2002-2003.
Research Fellowship, Program in Early American Economy and Society, Library Company of Philadelphia, 2002.
Research Fellowship, David Library of the American Revolution, 2001 & 2002.
Professional Service
Committee Member, American Studies Seminar, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts, 2009-present.
Host, “Teaching History at Liberal Arts Colleges,” Twenty-Fourth Annual Conference of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, June 2018.
Subject Expert Peer Reviewer, Slavery and Print Culture in Early America, William and Mary Quarterly, 2018-2019.
Subject Expert Peer Reviewer, Early American Print Culture, New England Journal of History, 2017.
Subject Expert Peer Reviewer, Advertising and Consumer Culture, Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2017, 2019.
Subject Expert Peer Reviewer, Gender and Masculinity, Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2017.
Subject Expert Peer Reviewer, History of Advertising, Gastronomica: The Journal of Critical Food Studies, 2017.
Program Committee Member, “Before Madison Avenue: Advertising in Early America,” Center for Historical American Visual Culture and Program in the History of the Book in American Culture, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts, 2010-2011.
Subject Expert Peer Reviewer, Early American History, Historical Journal of Massachusetts, 2010-2011.
Professional Affiliations
American Historical Association
Organization of American Historians
Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture
Friends of the McNeil Center for Early American Studies.
Society for Historians of the Early American Republic
Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing
Historical Society of Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania Historical Association