Event

Sarah Templier started as an assistant professor-replacement at the University of Ottawa in the summer of 2020 after obtaining her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Templier is a cultural and social historian of colonial North America and works on the practices of commerce and consumption. "Policing the Montréal-Albany Contraband Trade: The 1730 Trial of Lydius" is a chapter from her book manuscript “The Fabrics of Contraband. Global Textiles in Colonial Canada and New York, 1700-1760.” The book discusses how textile goods are at the core of crucial power dynamics between consumers, merchants, and colonial and metropolitan authorities. Dr. Templier also researches the power dynamics between enslaved people, colonists, and colonial authorities in French colonial Canada, and has an upcoming article on this topic: « Vol, sexe et race: Le témoignage de Jean-Baptiste Thomas, esclave noir à Montréal sous le régime colonial français, » Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française, (forthcoming Winter 2024). Dr. Templier is grateful for the time spent at the McNeil Center, holding the Barra Foundation Dissertation Fellowship in Art and Material Culture (2019 -2020).

Note: This seminar will be held at the Library Company of Philadelphia at 1314 Locust Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107.

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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. For regular updates about our seminars, please join our mailing list. Please email us at mceas@sas.upenn.edu with any questions.