Past Seminars



Empire from the Ground Up: Fortification and Government in English Newfoundland

Seminar
Hannah Kaemmer, McNeil Center for Early American Studies
Mar 28, 2025 at -

Hannah Kaemmer is the Barra Postdoctoral Fellow at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies. Her research focuses on the built environments of empire and the intersection of science, environment, and architecture in…



The Visible and Obscured Labor of Enslaved Elders on Virginia Plantations

Seminar
Daniel Livesay, Claremont McKenna College
Feb 27, 2025 at -

Daniel Livesay is Associate Professor of History at Claremont McKenna College. His work analyzes issues of race, slavery, and family in the early-modern Atlantic World. His first book, Children of Uncertain Fortune:…



Locating the Lost in Sixteenth-Century La Florida

Seminar
Matthew Bahar, Oberlin College and Conservatory
Jan 31, 2025 at -

Matt Bahar is Associate Professor of History at Oberlin College. He received his PhD at the University of Oklahoma in 2012 and was an NEH Long-term Fellow at the Huntington Library in 2014-2015. His research and…



Columbus’s Shovel: Mortuary Intelligence and the Discovery of Indigenous Sovereignty, 1492-1514

Seminar
Christopher Heaney, The Pennsylvania State University
Jan 24, 2025 at -

Christopher Heaney is an Associate Professor of Modern Latin American History at the Pennsylvania State University, where he trains students in the ethnohistory of science, museums, race, and deathways in the Andes,…



Slavery’s Uncertain Inheritances: Kinship, Family, and the Archive

Seminar
Sasha Turner, Johns Hopkins University
Dec 6, 2024 at -

Sasha Turner is Associate Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of Contested Bodies: Pregnancy, Childrearing and Slavery in Jamaica which examines the struggles for control over biological…



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

Seminar
Sherri Cummings, Rhode Island College
Nov 22, 2024 at -

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. …



Telling Time and Tracing Trade: Locating Indigenous and European Exchange Networks in 16th Century Ontario

Seminar
Megan Anne Conger, University of Georgia
Oct 25, 2024 at -

Megan Anne Conger is an Assistant Research Scientist at the Center for Applied Isotope Studies. She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Georgia in 2022. An archaeologist by training, Megan’s…



Paradise of Women: Sex, Labor, and Utopianism in the Early Nineteenth Century

Seminar
Elizabeth Hewitt, The Ohio State University
Oct 4, 2024 at -

Elizabeth Hewitt is Professor and Chair in the Department of English at The Ohio State University, Columbus. Her most recent books include Speculative Fictions: Explaining the Economy in the Early United States (2020)…



In View and Under Review: French Colonial Senegal during the “Interregnum of Abolition”

Seminar
A. Véronique Charles, Columbia University
Sep 20, 2024 at -

A. Véronique Charles is a researcher, writer, and interdisciplinary scholar in literary studies. She is a postdoctoral fellow at the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at Columbia University where she is also a…



Gender and the Racialization of Authorship at the End of the Seventeenth Century

Seminar
Joseph Rezek, Boston University
Sep 6, 2024 at -

Joseph Rezek is Associate Professor of English at Boston University, where he has recently served as the Director of the American & New England Studies Program. He was awarded an NEH fellowship in 2024-2025 for his…