Past Seminars



Policing the Montréal-Albany Contraband Trade: The 1730 Trial of Lydius

Friday Seminar
Sarah Templier, University of Ottawa
Mar 8, 2024 at -

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…



Losing "the Mind" in Translation: Cognitive Science in Haudenosaunee Origin Stories

Friday Seminar
Ittai Orr, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Mar 1, 2024 at -

Ittai Orr is an assistant professor of English at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His research focuses on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American literature with an emphasis on early Native American…



The Holy Cause: Disestablishment and State-Building in Revolutionary New York

Friday Seminar
Sarah Barringer Gordon, Penn Carey Law
Feb 23, 2024 at -

Sarah Barringer Gordon is Arlin M. Adams Professor of Constitutional Law and Professor of History, Emerita at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. She is well known for her work on religion in American…



“Exile here”—Native Geographies of Slavery in Early Virginia

Friday Seminar
Hayley Negrin, University of Illinois at Chicago
Feb 9, 2024 at -

Hayley Negrin is an assistant professor of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago specializing in Indigenous and early American history. Her book manuscript in progress “Fugitive Lands: Sovereignty and Slavery…



Inventing Money in Early Pennsylvania

Friday Seminar
Simon Middleton, William & Mary
Jan 26, 2024 at -

Simon Middleton’s specialization is early American social history and political economy. He earned his PhD from the City University of New York Graduate Center in 1998. He taught at the University of East Anglia and the…



“I fear some interference will be necessary to resque her”: Addressing Marital Breakdown Outside the Courtroom

Friday Seminar
Lindsay Keiter, Pennsylvania State University-Altoona
Dec 1, 2023 at -

Lindsay Keiter is an assistant professor of history at the Pennsylvania State University’s Altoona campus. Her current research focuses on the economic functions of marriage in the late eighteenth through early…



“But not citizens” - The Racial Boundaries of Citizenship Under the Constitution

Friday Seminar
Derek Litvak, McNeil Center for Early American Studies
Nov 17, 2023 at -

Derek Litvak is a Barra Postdoctoral Fellow at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, where he works at the intersections of African-American, constitutional, and intellectual histories. His current project,…



Debility, Impairment, and Settler Colonialism in the Antebellum United States

Friday Seminar
Elaine LaFay, Rutgers University-New Brunswick
Nov 3, 2023 at -

Elaine LaFay is an assistant professor of history at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. She is a historian of climate and the body, specializing in the nineteenth century United States. Her current research seeks to…



Venus or Louisa or Mimah or Rose: Marronage and Lurking as Relation

Friday Seminar
SJ Zhang, University of Chicago
Oct 6, 2023 at -

SJ Zhang is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Chicago. Professor Zhang’s current project, Going Maroon and Other Forms of Family, considers how reproduction and carceral forces shaped the decisions…



Mr. Peale's Corporation: The Invention of the Permanent Collection

Friday Seminar
Whitney Martinko, Villanova University
Sep 22, 2023 at -

Whitney Martinko is an associate professor of History at Villanova University and the author of Historic Real Estate: Market Morality and the Politics of Preservation in the Early United States (Early American Studies…