Today in our Ideas Matter segment we check in with Mass Humanities to discuss an online Humanities resource, the American Antiquarian Society’s new collection exhibit, the Isaiah Thomas Broadside Ballad Project, or, as Thomas called it, “Verses in Vogue with the Vulgar.”
We are joined by Molly Hardy, ACLS Public Fellow and Digital Humanities Curator at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, MA, and project manager of the Isaiah Thomas Broadside Ballad project, and Pleun Bouricius, Director of Grants and Programs for Mass Humanities. With them, we will explore this online collection of popular music materials from the early 1800’s, including the use and reuse of popular tunes during the early nineteenth century, which, we as we learned this week from the Pharrell Williams/Marvin Gaye trail outcome, would be seen as plagiarism today.
