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The McNeil Center
Where is Early America?| 1-3 May 2025

The McNeil Center for Early American Studies is pleased to announce a state of the field conference, to be held in May of 2025. 

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Upcoming Events



Domestic Carceral Labor: Race, Gender, and the Transformation of Punishment at Eastern State Penitentiary

Brown Bag Session
Whitney Fields, Rutgers University-New Brunswick
Nov 20, 2024 at - | Location: McNeil Center, Room 105/Zoom

Whitney N. Fields is a PhD Candidate in History at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. She received a B.A. in History and American Studies from the College of William and Mary in 2015. Her work combines carceral studies,…



Sentimentalism Aside: Child Labor and the Youthful Realities of Elleanor Eldridge, 1785-1830”

Friday Seminar
Sherri Cummings, Rhode Island College
Nov 22, 2024 at - | Location: McNeil Center for Early American Studies, 3355 Woodland Walk/Zoom

Dr. Cummings is jointly appointed in History and Africana Studies at Rhode Island College. Her research interests include Africa and the Atlantic World, Early African American History and Africana Intellectual History. …



Mutable Materiality: The Art of Devotion in the Early Modern Afro-Iberian Atlantic

Brown Bag Session
Nathalie Miraval, Yale University
Dec 4, 2024 at - | Location: McNeil Center, Room 105/Zoom

Nathalie Miraval is a PhD Candidate in the Art History Department at Yale University. Her research focuses on the spiritual expressive cultures of the early modern Afro-Iberian Atlantic, with a focus on gender and race…

About the McNeil Center

Established as the Philadelphia Center for Early American Studies in 1978, and renamed in honor of its benefactor Robert L. McNeil, Jr., in 1998, the McNeil Center facilitates scholarly inquiry into the histories and cultures of North America in the Atlantic world before 1850, with a particular but by no means exclusive emphasis on the mid-Atlantic region.

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