In two weeks the CUNY Graduate Center will be hosting an all-star conference “The Antislavery Bulwark: The Antislavery Origins of the Civil War.”[1] This conference, co-organized by the Graduate Center, Harvard University, and the New York Historical Society, seeks to trace origins of the antislavery political movement from the eighteenth century to its apotheosis in the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments to the Constitution. Continue reading
Category Archives: Conferences
Highlights from the British Group of Early American Historians
This weekend it wasn’t just the swiftly-approaching independence referendum causing excitement in Edinburgh—it was also the annual conference of the British Group of Early American Historians (BGEAH: that’s “beggar” to some, “big-ear” to others), which brought together early Americanists from Southampton to Dundee and all points in between, plus a few from the far side of the Atlantic. In the stately setting of Edinburgh University’s Old Medical School, the theme we were given was “Better Together? Union and Disunion in the Early Modern Atlantic.” I couldn’t possibly cover everything, but in this post I’ll share a few of my personal highlights. Continue reading
Can The Comment
Like many academics, I’ve spent many hours this summer in conference rooms with fluorescent lighting and insufficient air conditioning. For the most part, this has been a real pleasure—after a year of teaching, it is always invigorating to hear others present their research and engage in fruitful conversations. But one part of the experience always fills me with dread: the comment. Continue reading
The Junto SHEAR 2014 Meet-up!
We’re happy to announce that we will be holding a meet-up at this week’s SHEAR conference in Philadelphia, PA. We will be hosting the meet-up for any interested readers, commenters, and conference goers at 9:00pm on Saturday July, 19 at the bar/restaurant in the DoubleTree Hotel.
All are welcome, but it would be appreciated if interested readers would comment on this post or tweet at Roy Rogers (@fauxintel) so that we may get a sense of the number of attendees.
Those Juntoists attending SHEAR look forward to what should be a great conference! See you on Saturday!
Guest Post: “George Whitefield at 300” Conference Recap
Jessica Parr received her PhD from the University of New Hampshire at Durham in 2012. Her research interests are on race and religion in the Early Modern British Atlantic. Her first book, Inventing George Whitefield: Race, Revivalism, and the Making of a Religious Icon is forthcoming from the University Press of Mississippi (2015). She currently teaches at the University of New Hampshire at Manchester. Here she recaps the recent “George Whitefield at 300” conference.
In 1740, during George Whitefield’s first visit to New England, Connecticut minister Reverend Daniel Wadsworth wrote in his diary: “met with the famous life of Whitefield: but what is it?”[1] Wadsworth’s comments no doubt reflected both the excitement and the unease that Whitefield’s visit provoked among New England clergy, who both looked to him as a man who could renew piety and New England, but also feared his potential for exacerbating existing religious tensions. Nonetheless, it is a poignant question, and one anyone who is familiar with “the Grand Itinerant” might ask. Continue reading
SHEAR 2014 Annual Meeting Preview
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. Continue reading
The Consequences of War: An Omohundro Institute Conference Recap
Last weekend, the world of early Americanists transferred itself to Canada, for the Omohundro Institute’s annual conference. Hosted by Dalhousie and St Mary’s Universities, Halifax (Nova Scotia) provided the backdrop to the academic festivities. Though it was a long and arduous journey to Halifax (at one point I thought I might have to Skype my paper from Philadelphia airport), and though the weather frequently failed to shine (to this Brit, it was very reminiscent of summer), the conference was a tremendously well-organized feast of academic camaraderie. What follows is necessarily only a partial recap, but one that I hope gives a flavor of what was on offer. If you have other reminiscences—not least on the many panels I missed!—please do share them in the comments. Continue reading
Slavery and Reparations: A Voice from Barbados and a Report from Ghana
You’ve probably heard about Ta-Nehisi Coates’s powerful Atlantic cover essay, “The Case for Reparations,” which appeared two weeks ago and has ignited a nationwide political conversation about the legacy of slavery and racial oppression in the United States. The level of debate among Coates’s many academic admirers and critics—including political commentators on both the Left and the Right—has been very high. Continue reading
Herb Sloan’s Contributions to Scholarship on Jeffersonian America
Last Tuesday, May 13, the Columbia University Seminar on Early American History and Culture and the Department of History hosted an evening in honor of Professor Herb Sloan of Barnard College. Herb, who is retiring this spring after 28 years as a member of Barnard’s history faculty, was the guest of honor at an evening commemorating both his contributions to the field of early American history, as well as a roundtable discussion on “Jeffersonian America.” Continue reading
Early America at the Berks
Later this week, thousands of women’s and gender historians will convene in Toronto for triennial meeting of the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women. The Berks lineup attests to the vibrancy of scholarship in early American gender history. To help you navigate the 198-page conference program, we thought we’d spotlight panels with papers on early America and the early modern Atlantic World. Continue reading
The Junto 