School of Arts & Sciences Review, St. Bonaventure University Page 16

16 | School of Arts & Sciences

onage and about the British conduct of
the war. Schaeper was also interviewed
on the John Batchelor Show, which is
broadcast nationally seven nights per
week on the ABC radio network. One
of the main topics of this interview con-
cerns Edward Bancroft's relationship
with Benjamin Franklin and the charge
made by some historians that Franklin
might also have been a British
agent.

"Edward Ban-
croft" is
Schaeper's sixth
book on Euro-
pean and Ameri-
can history.

Edward Bancroft
(1745-1821) might
not be well known to
the general public,
but his name is famil-
iar to all historians of
the American Revolu-
tion. Born in Massa-
chusetts in 1745, he ran
off to sea while a
teenager. He spent some years working
as a physician on plantations in South
America and moved to London in the
late 1760s. There he quickly estab-
lished himself as a natural scientist,
physician, novelist and supporter of
the American cause. Later in life, he
became one of the world's experts on
vegetable dyes.

Today he is best known for spying on
Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, John
Paul Jones and numerous other Ameri-
cans in Paris. From 1777 to 1783 he
lived in France, and under the guise of
friend and supporter he spied on
Americans.

Using secret codes and aliases and put-
ting messages in a tree in the Tuileries
Gardens, he regularly sent the informa-
tion he collected to his superiors in
London.

"He was one of the most amazing
spies in all of history," said Schaeper.

Schaeper's years of research included
looking through documents in two
dozen archives in Britain, France and
America. One of the most exciting as-

pects of his work was the discovery of
Bancroft's descendants, including sev-
eral distant cousins who live in Lon-
don but did not know each other.

It wasn't until the 1890s that the world
discovered that Bancroft had been a
spy, Schaeper said. "Until then, Ameri-

cans viewed him as a loyal

patriot, one who for several

years aided Franklin,

Adams, Jones and others

in their work in France,"

he said.

In Britain, his reputation

rested primarily on his

work in science and in

textile dyes. During his

years in South Amer-

ica, one of the topics

that caught his inter-

est was eels. He was

able to demonstrate

that the shock emit-

ted by certain eels

was the same as

that emitted during

Benjamin Franklin's experiments with
kites.

"It became clear that his whole life was
interesting -- and actually that's what
made him a good spy," Schaeper said.

Schaeper's book demonstrates Ban-
croft's importance as a physician and
scientist, and tackles the portrayal of
him as an arch-traitor by other writers.
When the American Revolution
started, Bancroft remained loyal to
Britain. He fully sympathized with
American grievances, but he thought
that the Americans and British would
benefit if the empire held together.

"He generally thought the Americans
had some grievances, but thought if
they stayed united with Britain they
could be one glorious empire. His ini-
tial hope was that London would rec-
oncile with the colonists," Schaeper
said.

Schaeper investigates Bancroft's working
methods and shows how he performed
his spy work without being detected by
astute people like Franklin and Adams.
Schaeper also assesses Bancroft's im-
portance to the British during the war.

Dr. Kaplan Harris, as-
sociate professor of
English and director of
the Graduate Program
in English, had a review
essay published in the
journal Postmodern

Culture 20.3. His essay, "A Zine
Ecology of Charles Bernstein's Se-
lected Poems," is online at
http://tinyurl.com/cng7fyx.
He also was interviewed about his
writing for the podcast series, "Into
the Field" (episode #5), hosted by
Steve McLaughlin for the magazine
Jacket2 (June 2011). To listen, go to
http://tinyurl.com/d343vqq.

Dr. Julie Hens, assistant professor of
biology, and her research student,
Alvin Kim, presented two posters at
the Annual National Meeting for the
Society of Developmental Biology
(SDB), held July 21-24, 2011. The ti-
tles and authors of the research pre-
sented were "Localization of CTGF
in mouse embryonic mammary gland
development" by Anita Sambamurty,
Kim, Tiffany Barkley, and Hens, and
"Regulation and expression of CTGF
during adult mammary gland mor-
phogenesis" by Kim, Sambamurty,
Barkley and Hens. In addition, Hens,
Kim and Jennifer Andrews published
a review article titled "The Role and
Function of Cadherins in the Mam-
mary Gland" in Breast Cancer Re-
search.

Dr. Alva Cellina published "La vision
e identidad del feminismo en la
Poesía de Clementina Suarez" for the
journal Cuadernos del Lazarillo, Re-
vista Literaria y Cultural, which is
published in Salamanca, Spain. She
also attended an international Confer-
ence on Hispanic Literature in Cuzco,
Peru, to present on "La voz y la ima-
gen feminista de Eva Perón."

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