A little over a week from now (July 18-20) marks the beginning of the thirty-sixth annual meeting of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR), held this year the society’s balmy hometown of Philadelphia, PA. To help get the broader Junto community excited, for what is my favorite conference of the year, I thought I’d offer a brief preview of a few of the panels and sessions I am particularly interested in this year.

I’ve highlighted below just one session from each scheduling block. This preview is just that—it does not represent all of the panels I’m interested in at this year’s conference. I have, for example, excluded all of the panels touching on the history of religion because Monica Mercado has already ably highlighted them over at Religion in American History. The wonderful thing about this year’s SHEAR meeting is the sheer number of fantastic offerings for each session block.[1] No matter your subfield—gender, slavery, religion, and economics—there are offerings sure to challenge your perceptions and shake up the historiography. You can find the full program here.

I invite our community to highlight the panels and sessions in which you are particularity interested in the comments section of this post, if I don’t mention them below.

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FRIDAY

8:30-10:15 AM: ROUNDTABLE: NEW APPROACHES TO THE EARLY AMERICAN CONTINENT

PRESIDING: Alan Taylor, University of Virginia

PANELISTS: Elizabeth Fenn, University of Colorado; Edward Gray, Florida State University; Sarah Pearsall, Cambridge University; Michael Witgen, University of Michigan

10:30 AM-12:15 PM: MEANINGS OF MASCULINITY IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 

PRESIDING: Lorri Glover, Saint Louis University

“The Waiting Man: The Black and White Masculinities of  Male Enslaved Domestics in Virginia, 1750-1799,” Cathleene Hellier, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

“An Honorable Death? The Stuart-Bennett Duel of 1819,” Matthew Byron, Young Harris College

“Calculated Murders of Intimate Partners in Early Nineteenth-Century Ballads,” Daniel Belczak, Case Western Reserve University

COMMENT: Craig Thompson Friend, North Carolina State  University  & Lorri Glove

2:00-3:45pm: BOUNDARIES OF CITIZENSHIP IN THE NEW AMERICAN REPUBLIC

PRESIDING: Douglas Bradburn, Fred W. Smith National Library at Mount Vernon

“The Loyalist Problem in New York and Pennsylvania,” Brett Palfreyman, Binghamton University

“The Argument against Confiscation in South Carolina and New York,” Tom Cutterham, New College, Oxford University

“Native Citizenship, Sovereignty, and the Law of Nations in the New Republic,” Greg Ablavsky, University of Pennsylvania Law School

“’Creating an Order of Citizens’: Black Northerners and  Civic Status in the Early Republican North,” Sarah Levine-Gronningsater, University of Chicago

COMMENT: Holly Brewer, University of Maryland

4:00 -5:00pm: PECHA-KUCHA (to inspire a lively atmosphere, bringing a  drink from the bar is encouraged)[2]

PRESIDING: Robyn Lily Davis, Millersville University

“Mapping the Louisiana Purchases of Indian Country,” Robert Lee, University of California, Berkeley

“Unrolling the Past: Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Petitions,” Nicole Topich, Harvard University

“The Visual Legacy of Benjamin Lay: Disabled Quaker Abolitionist,” Nathaniel Kogan, University of Texas at Arlington

“The Art of Removal: Portraiture, History, and Reform in McKenney and Hall’s History of the Indian Tribes of North America,” Sarah Matherly, Princeton University

SATURDAY

8:15-10:00am: THE POLITICS OF DOUGHFACEISM: PROSLAVERY, STATES’ RIGHTS, AND COMPROMISE IN ANTEBELLUM POLITICS

PRESIDING: Joanne Freeman, Yale University

“The Federalist Origins of the Doughface Epithet,” Nicholas Wood, University of Virginia

“The Doughface Meter: Southerners’ Views of Doughfaces,  and Vice Versa,” Matthew Mason, Brigham Young University

“Dough in the Hands of the Voters? How Doughfaces  Obtained Office in the 1850s,” Michael Landis, Tarleton State University

COMMENT: Nicole Etcheson, Ball State University & Joanne Freeman

 10:15-12:00pm: NATIVE PEOPLE OF THE SOUTHEAST IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC

PRESIDING: Daniel K. Richter, University of Pennsylvania

“Catawba Indian Land Leasing System in South Carolina, 1790-1840,” Brooke Bauer, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

“The Nottoway Indians of Virginia: Cultural Survival in a Binary Racial Society,” Royce Gildersleeve, George Mason University

“Life after the Reservation: Chowans as Free People of Color  in North Carolina,” Warren Milteer Jr., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

COMMENT: Andrew K. Frank, Florida State University  & Daniel K. Richter

1:45-3:30pm: THE EMANCIPATION PROCESS IN THE ANTEBELLUM PERIOD

PRESIDING: Barbara Krauthamer, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

“Immediate, Not Gradual: Achieving African American  Freedom during the First Emancipation,” Paul Polgar, College of William and Mary

“Come-Outerism versus Disunionism: A Founding Family  Confronts the Crises of the 1840s,” David N. Gellman, DePauw University

“Reducing Freemen to Slavery: Reversing Emancipation in Antebellum America,” M. Scott Heerman, Johns Hopkins University

COMMENT: James Downs, Connecticut College  & Barbara Krauthamer

3:45-5:30pm: THE SOUTH AMERICAN QUESTION IN THE EARLY  REPUBLIC: DIPLOMACY, STATE BUILDING, AND POLITICAL ECONOMY

PRESIDING: Brian Rouleau, Texas A&M University

“Contracted Weaponry: The Law of Nations and the U.S.-Latin American Arms Trade, 1793-1818,” Andrew Fagal, Binghamton University; Edward Pompeian, College of William and Mary

“’An universal alteration in the commercial relations of the universe’: U.S. Political Economy and South America, ca. 1815-1825,” Martin Öhman, University of Virginia

“’Anywhere where we have diplomatic powers we can affect  regulation’: Managing New Markets in an Age of Latin  American Revolutions, 1810-1830,” Lindsay Schakenbach, Brown University

COMMENT: Andrew Shankman, Rutgers University at Camden & Brian Rouleau

SUNDAY

8:30-10:15am: RUMOR, GENDER, AND INTERRACIAL RELATIONSHIPS  IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC

PRESIDING: Steven H. Deyle, University of Houston

“’A Mixture of the Anglo-Saxon with Anglo-African’: The  Interracial Experience and Gender in Antebellum America,” Danielle Demiantschuk, University of Western Ontario

“’No Wonder He Avoids Decent Ladies’: Gossip about  Interracial Mixing,” Lynn Kennedy, University of Lethbridge

“In the Shadow of the Quadroon: Writing the History of White Creole Women after the Louisiana Purchase,” Marise Bachand, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières

COMMENT: Lucia McMahon, William Paterson University  & Steven H. Deyle

10:30-12:15pm: WOMEN AND PROPERTY IN EARLY AMERICA

PRESIDING: Kirsten E. Wood, Florida International University

 “’Great Value in the Personal Property Here’: Elite Women’s  Ownership in Early National New York City,” Alisa Wade Harrison, The Graduate Center, City University of New York

“’The consideration due to him as the head of his family’: Hostility to Women’s Separate Estates in the Early National South,” Lindsay Keiter, College of William and Mary

“Widows and Waste: Disputing Dower Rights in Early National New Jersey,” Eleanor McConnell, Frostburg State University

COMMENT: Stephen A. Mihm, University of Georgia  & Kirsten E. Wood

These are, to reiterate, just a few of the amazing panels & sessions at this year’s conference. There are many, many more, which you can find in the full conference program.

I hope to see many members of the broader Junto community in Philadelphia next weekend, either at one of these sessions, in the hotel lobby, at the graduate student meet-and-greet, or avoiding temperance in all its forms.

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[1] See what I did there?

[2] This is why SHEAR is great.