Event

Emilie Connolly is an Assistant Professor of History at Brandeis University. She specializes in the nineteenth-century U.S., with a focus on the history of political economy, colonialism, and the Indigenous peoples of North America. Her current book project, provisionally titled "Fiduciary Colonialism: Indian Trust Funds and the Routes of American Capitalism," examines how the federal government became both dispossessor of and trustee to the continent's first peoples. The project argues that federal trusteeship, often cast as a benevolent practice, in fact advanced an imperial strategy named "fiduciary colonialism": a form of territorial acquisition and population management carried out through the expansion of administrative control over Indigenous wealth. Connolly’s next book project will explore the implications of Indigenous polities’ longstanding immunity to colonial taxation.

Registration is required for the seminar. Please click on the button below to register.

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The McNeil Center sponsors a seminar that meets on Friday afternoons approximately twice a month between September and May, with the paper for each session circulated in advance. Over two hundred people attend at least once a year, with an average attendance of 40 to 50 at meetings held at various sites in the Delaware Valley. While most of the regular attendees are graduate students and faculty from institutions in the Philadelphia area, participants come from as far afield as Long Island, New York City, Princeton, Baltimore, Annapolis, and Washington. 

The McNeil Center will utilize a hybrid format for seminars in which participants may gather together at the McNeil Center building (or occasionally at an MCEAS Consortium institution host in the Philadelphia area) or attend via Zoom. To get access to the seminar papers and Zoom links, or to join our mailing list, please email us at mceas@sas.upenn.edu.