Guest Post: What Happens at the Southern…

December 11, 2015 By Jessica Parr in Conferences, Guest Posts Tags: Caribbean, conferences, recap, Richard S. Dunn, Slavery, South Carolina, Southern Historical Association Leave a comment

Robert Taber, a postdoctoral associate with the University of Florida Writing Program, wrote his dissertation on the connection between family life and grassroots politics in colonial Saint-Domingue and is the author of Navigating Haiti’s History: Saint-Domingue and the Haitian Revolution.

Mr. Wolf’s Bingo Card. Historista Blog

According to The Junto archives, this post is the first-ever recap of the Southern. I’m a Yankee by birth but undertaking graduate studies at Florida all-but-guaranteed my attending at least one Southern, and I now have four of the last five under my belt. The Southern is, perhaps, a unique conference, with qualities that make it one of my favorite annual gatherings.

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Guest Post: Emerging Histories of the French Atlantic

October 23, 2015 By Joseph M. Adelman in Conferences, Guest Posts Tags: Atlantic History, Atlantic World, conferences, French Atlantic, guest post, Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture 2 Comments

Robert Taber, a postdoctoral associate with the University of Florida Writing Program, wrote his dissertation on the connection between family life and grassroots politics in colonial Saint-Domingue and is the author of Navigating Haiti’s History: Saint-Domingue and the Haitian Revolution.

12182067_10207193046840010_1433097522_n More than 30 scholars from three continents gathered at the Williamsburg Inn from October 16th through the 18th to present emerging histories of the French Atlantic. Sponsored by the Omohundro Institute, and made possible through considerable labor and financial investment, one hundred scholars were able to enjoy a great conference atmosphere. Three days of panels, workshops, and roundtables pushed for our collective knowledge of the French Atlantic to be wider, deeper, and better integrated, fulfilling a plan first sketched out in the summer of 2010.

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Guest Post: British Group in Early American History Conference Recap

September 10, 2015 By Joseph M. Adelman in Conferences, Guest Posts Tags: BGEAH, conferences, Guest Posts 1 Comment

Today’s guest post comes from Abigail B. Chandler, an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell.

The annual British Group of Early Americanists Conference was held from September 3-6 at the University of Sheffield in Sheffield, England and drew a wide variety of scholars from the United Kingdom, the United States and France. In keeping with BGEAH traditions, there were many excellent papers, a key note address on Thursday night, a book club discussion on Friday and a conference dinner on Saturday, while newer traditions were started with some panels providing pre-circulated papers.

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Recap: “So Sudden an Alteration” Conference (9-11 April 2015)

April 24, 2015 By Jessica Parr in Conferences Tags: 18th Century, 19th Century, academia, American Revolution, Archives, Atlantic History, capitalism, Conference, conferences, Constitution, cultural history, Digital History, Early Republic, Gordon Wood, legal history, Massachusetts Historical Society, Political history, Print Culture, social history, visual culture, Woody Holton 1 Comment

Two weeks ago, 175 historians descended upon the Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS) in Boston for a three-day conference that considered the political, social, economic, and global parameters of the American Revolution. The conference consisted of eight panels (with pre-circulated papers), two keynotes, and some special presentations on digital projects. The conference proceedings were live-tweeted under #RevReborn2, and fellow Juntoist Joseph Adelman provided some live coverage on the blog. The Junto has also had some post-conference commentaries, including “You Say You Want a Revolution” by Joseph Adelman and “The Suddenness of the Alteration: Some Afterthoughts on #RevReborn2” by Michael Hattem.

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The Week in Early American History

April 19, 2015 By Joseph M. Adelman in The Week in Early American History Tags: Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin, conferences, dissertations, food history, George Washington, George Whitefield, historical memory, Job Market, Native Americans, OAH, popular culture, Slavery, television, Turn, twitter Leave a comment

This has been a momentous week for early Americanists, with the 150th anniversary of the Lincoln assassination to start the week and, especially for those of us in Massachusetts, the annual commemorations of Patriot’s Day this weekend. We have lots of great links for you below the fold!

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The Early Americanists’ Guide to #OAH2015

April 16, 2015 By Michael D. Hattem in Conferences Tags: conferences 1 Comment

Tomorrow begins the 2015 OAH Annual Meeting and The Junto is happy to provide a guide to the panels of most obvious interest to our readers. Continue reading →

The “Suddenness” of the “Alteration”: Some Afterthoughts on #RevReborn2

April 14, 2015 By Michael D. Hattem in Commentary, Conferences, Historiography Tags: American Revolution, Conference, conferences, David Library of the American Revolution, historiography, Massachusetts Historical Society 4 Comments

As most, if not all, of our readers are aware, this past weekend was the “So Sudden an Alteration” conference hosted by the Massachusetts Historical Society in commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the Stamp Act.[1] It was the second of three conferences dedicated to rebirthing Revolution studies, hence, the hashtag #RevReborn2. (NB: You can find the immense backchannel coverage of the conference Storified here: Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3. You can also find Joseph Adelman’s interactive TAGSExplorer that chronicled the Twitter coverage). This post is not intended to be a standard Junto-type conference recap. Instead, I just want to offer some afterthoughts on the conference, specifically in light of the piece I wrote before the conference, entitled “Have Cultural Historians Lost the Revolution?” as well as numerous other pieces I have written about the historiography of the Revolution and the state of Revolution studies for the blog, particularly before the first #RevReborn conference back in 2013. Continue reading →

Live Coverage of “So Sudden an Alteration” Conference

April 11, 2015 By Joseph M. Adelman in Conferences Tags: American Revolution, conferences, Massachusetts Historical Society, twitter 2 Comments

As you know from last week’s posts by Michael and Ken, this weekend is the second major conference in two years on the American Revolution, So Sudden an Alteration, hosted by the Massachusetts Historical Society.

There have already been a number of great papers, and some hot debates on the meaning of studying the Revolution, with more to come today.

We will have full coverage next week, but in the meantime, you can keep up with the conference on Twitter by following the hashtag, #RevReborn2, or Juntoists at the conference, including me (@jmadelman), Jessica Parr (@ProvAtlantic), Michael Hattem (@MichaelHattem), and Tom Cutterham (@tomcutterham).

You can also follow several friends of the blog: Liz Covart (@lizcovart), John Bell (@Boston1775), and the MHS institutional account (@MHS1791).

UPDATE (4/12, 8pm): Now that the conference is over, you can also check out several summations of the conference.

Michael Hattem created a Storify for each of the three days of the conference:

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3

And there is also a more basic archive of tweets and an interactive explorer.

No Politics, No Revolution

April 7, 2015 By Ken Owen in Commentary, Conferences, Historiography, Recent Scholarship Tags: "The American Revolution Reborn", American Revolution, conferences, historiography, Massachusetts Historical Society, Political history 23 Comments

If there is a current orthodoxy among historians of the American Revolution, it is that the study of the Revolution has lost its focus. In their introduction to the Common-Place edition recapping the McNeil Center’s “The American Revolution Reborn” conference, Patrick Spero and Michael Zuckerman wrote of “a field that had grown stale” and that was “losing its verve, and worse, its center.” The call for papers for the forthcoming Massachusetts Historical Society conference effectively described the field as being stuck in a historiographical rut. There is a reason that study of the Revolution has lost its center. It has failed to concentrate its focus on politics. Continue reading →