Past Brown Bag Sessions



"The Black Jeremiad: Speculative Indigeneity in Ottobah Cugoano and the Haitian Declaration of Independence"

Brown Bag Session
Raymond Leonard, Rutgers University
Sep 28, 2022 at -

Papers are circulated in advance. For copies, please contact the McNeil Center office.  --



"The Mathematics of Truth: Peripatetic Freedom Calculations in Narrative of the Life of Sojourner Truth"

Brown Bag Session
K. Avvirin Gray, Washington and Lee University
Sep 14, 2022 at -

Papers are circulated in advance. For copies, please contact the McNeil Center office.  --



Black Refuge Women's Survival and Resistance in Revolutionary Era Portsmouth and Norfolk

Brown Bag Session
Adam McNeil, Rutgers University
May 4, 2022 at -

Adam McNeil is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at Rutgers University focusing on Black Women’s lives during the Revolutionary and Founding eras in the Chesapeake Bay.



‘Of themselves or from their Grandmothers advise’: The Power of Muskogee Women’s Communication Networks and Maintenance of Mvskoke Enfulletv, 1796-1814

Brown Bag Session
Keely Smith, Princeton University
Apr 13, 2022 at -

Keely Smith is a Ph.D. Candidate at Princeton University. She studies Indigenous communication networks in the North American southeast and Indian Territory during the 18th and 19th centuries. Her dissertation explores…



Bountiful Women: Maroon Women, the Colonial State, and the Creation of the Maroon Landscape in Colonial Jamaica, 1655-1705

Brown Bag Session
Shavagne Scott, New York University
Mar 30, 2022 at -

​Shavagne Scott is a doctoral student in NYU’s Department of History, specializing in the Black Atlantic world and comparative slavery. 



Policing Occupied Boston, 1774-1775

Brown Bag Session
Nicole Breault, University of Connecticut/American Philosophical Society
Mar 16, 2022 at -

Nicole Breault is a Ph.D. Candidate in History at University of Connecticut. Her research interests include legal history, social and cultural history, urban governance, institutions, gender, material culture, and space…



Justice, Fairness, and Good Governance in a Republic of Creditors, 1779-1791

Brown Bag Session
Jonah Estess, American University
Mar 2, 2022 at -

Jonah Estess is a Ph.D. Candidate at American University. His interests include both popular and authoritative understandings of public debt, nation building, banking, and federal monetary policy during the early…



Paying by the Hundreds and Thousands: Sugar Money in Barbados, 1640-1713

Brown Bag Session
Teanu Reid, Yale University
Feb 2, 2022 at -

Teanu Reid is a joint Ph.D. student in History and African American Studies at Yale University. Her dissertation project explores the hidden economic activities of enslaved and free people of color in Barbados, Jamaica…



'Now, to return’: John Lawson and Empire’s Public Diary

Brown Bag Session
Katrina Dzyak, Columbia University
Jan 19, 2022 at -

Katrina Dzyak is a PhD candidate in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where she studies American literature pre-1900.



“Making ‘the Indian’: Wax Figures and the Construction of Race in Early America”

Brown Bag Session
Ryan Bachman, University of Delaware
Apr 29, 2020 at -