Early American Seminar Series
Free and open to all, the Early American Seminar Series brings senior scholars, junior faculty, and advanced graduate students to College Park to discuss their work in progress. The seminar is composed of graduate students and faculty from the University of Maryland and a host of other area institutions and is convened by Professors Rick Bell, Christopher Bonner, Holly Brewer, Clare Lyons, and Whit Ridgway.
The seminar meets at regular intervals throughout the academic year on Fridays at 4pm in Taliaferro Hall 2110. Papers (typically 30-40 pages) are pre-circulated among seminar participants seven days in advance of each meeting. The ninety-minute workshop is followed by dinner with the presenter at a local restaurant.
To join the seminar email list or to apply to present a work in progress in future cycles, please contact Prof. Rick Bell (rjbell@umd.edu) or Prof. Holly Brewer (hbrewer@umd.edu).
Schedule of Events, 2016-2017:
September 16: Richard Boles, Assistant Professor, Oklahoma State University, “Not of whites alone, but of blacks also’: Black, Indian and European Protestants, 1730-1749.”
October 21: John Sweet, Associate Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “Rape, Recourse, and the Law of Seduction in the Early Republic.”
November 4 – Co-Sponsored by UMD’s Miller Center: Clare Lyons, Associate Professor, University of Maryland, College Park, “Global Transit, Sexual Slavery and the making of an Eighteenth-Century Anglo-Oceanic World.”
December 2: Jane Manners, Princeton University, “’Infinitely Dangerous to the Revenue of the United States’: A Case Study in the Decline of Congress’s Power of the Purse.”
January 27: Richard Bell, Associate Professor, University of Maryland, College Park, “No Man’s Land: The Reverse Underground Railroad on the Eastern Shore.”
February 24 – Co-Sponsored by Fred W. Smith Library at Mount Vernon: Robert Parkinson, Assistant Professor, Binghamton University, “An Incident at Yellow Creek: Chief Logan, Michael Cresap, and the Heart of American Darkness.”
March 10: Ellen Ledoux, Associate Professor of English, Rutgers University, “The Queer Contact Zone: Empire and Military Masculinity in the Memoirs of Hannah Snell and Mary Anne Talbot, 1750-1810.”
April 21: Justene Hill, Assistant Professor of History, University of Virginia, “’Carry on a Traffic with the Negroes’: The Politics and Legalities of the Slaves’ Economy in Late-Antebellum South Carolina.”
May 12 – Co-Sponsored by UMD’s English Department: Philip Gould, Professor of English, Brown University, Paper title tbd. Lunch at 12:30 in Key 2120, discussion at 3:30 in Tawes 3132.
Other DC-area seminars of interest to scholars of Early American history include:
The Slavery, Memory and African Diasporas Seminar hosted by Howard University
The Early Modern Global History Seminar hosted by Georgetown University
The 19th-Century U.S. History Workshop hosted by Georgetown University
