October 10-11, 2025 | Philadelphia and Camden
The US Navy and the Marine Corps were founded in Philadelphia in 1775 and will mark their 250th anniversary in the city of their birth in October 2025. To coincide with the anniversary, this conference will bring together scholars from the whole sweep of US history to discuss the Navy and Marine Corps in their various contexts. While these branches of America’s military forces have primarily served to project national power on and across the seas, their importance to our understanding of the nation’s past goes far beyond naval yards, sailors, or fleets.
The inaugural day of this conference will be held at the McNeil Center and the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania, and focus on the era spanning from 1775 to 1850. The second session, including papers concerned with 1850 to the present, will take place at Rutgers University-Camden and on the storied battleship New Jersey (BB-62).
This conference is chaired by Emma Hart, Director of the McNeil Center, and Katherine Epstein, Professor of History at Rutgers-Camden.
Please read the following registration instructions carefully. Separate registrations are required for each day of this event.
The first day of the conference, Friday, October 10, will be hosted by the McNeil Center at Penn’s Kislak Center for Special Collections on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania. Registration is free but required due to space constraints. Please be sure to bring photo ID for entrance into Van Pelt Library. Register here for the October 10 sessions.
The second day of the conference, Saturday, October 11, will be hosted by Rutgers University-Camden aboard the battleship USS New Jersey. To attend this day of the conference, you must purchase a ticket from the Battleship. The ticket costs $15 and will allow you to tour the battleship as well as attend the conference. The battleship does not permit outside food. If you wish to purchase a brown-bag lunch with your ticket, you will have the option to do so for an additional $15. Register here for the October 11 sessions.
Friday, October 10
Location: Kislak Special Collections, Van Pelt Library, 6th Floor, University of Pennsylvania
8:45 PM to 9:15 AM: Breakfast
Sponsored by the The Albert Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest
9:15 AM to 9:30 AM: Opening Remarks
Emma Hart, Richard S. Dunn Director, The McNeil Center for Early American Studies
9:30 AM to 11:00 AM: Session 1. The First American Navies
Andrew Shankman (Chair), Rutgers University-Camden
Manning the First American Navy: The Military Mobilization of Maritime Labor in 1775
Chris Magra, University of Tennessee
A Revolutionary Partnership: The Relationship between the Continental and South Carolina State Navies, 1775–1780
Benjamin Schaffer, University of South Carolina
Commerce, Diplomacy, and the US Navy in St. Domingue in 1799–1800
Paul A. Gilje, University of Oklahoma, Emeritus
11:15 AM to 12:45 PM: Session 2. The Early Republican Navy: Anti-Slavery Patrols and the War of 1812
Larrie Ferreiro (Chair), George Mason University
The US Navy’s Suppression of the African Slave Trade during the Quasi-War
Andrew Fagal, Princeton University
The Foxardo Affair, David Porter, and the Question of Slavery: The US Navy’s Anti-Piracy Campaign and Its Relation to the Slave Trade in the Nineteenth-Century
Justin P. Jones, Vanderbilt University
Elias Hutchins—A Naval Life over Neptune’s Dominions
Andrew J. Lyter, University of Portsmouth
12:45 PM to 2:00 PM: Break
2:00 PM to 3:30 PM: Session 3. Officer Culture in the Jacksonian Era
Lindsay Schakenbach Regele (Chair), Miami University
‘We have met the enemy and they are [us]’: Swagger, Discretion, and Codes of Manhood in the Perry-Elliott Controversy
Rodney Hessinger, John Carroll University
The Navy Adrift: The First Moral and Intellectual Reformation of the US Navy
Amber Shoopman-DeVries, Southeast Community College
An Officer and a Gentleman: Dueling and Honor Culture in the US Navy and Marine Corps, 1775–1865
Laura June Davis, Columbus State University
3:30 PM to 3:45 PM: Break
3:45 PM to 5:15 PM: Session 4. Exploration and the Antebellum Navy
Dael Norwood (Chair), University of Delaware
Globalizing the US Navy in Antebellum America
Konstantin Dierks, Indiana University
Cartographic Conflict: The US North Pacific Exploring Expedition, Cross-cultural Violence, and Imperial Mapmaking in Japan, 1853–1856
Michael Verney, Drury University
Unraveling the History of Two Children’s Dresses Made of Tapa: Material Culture, Imperialism, and the 1899 USS Albatross Scientific Expedition
Janika Dillon, Northeastern University
Saturday, October 11
Location: USS New Jersey, 100 Clinton St., Camden, NJ
10:00 AM to 11:30 AM: Session 5. Sea Power in the Age of Industrialization and Globalization
Richard Immerman (Chair), Temple University, Emeritus
Alfred Thayer Mahan and the Promise of Sea Power
Nicholas A. Lambert, Independent Scholar
Battleship Gunnery Computers and the Pax Americana
Katherine Epstein, Rutgers University-Camden
Ruling the Air Waves: The US Navy, Radio, and Patents
Kathryn Steen, Drexel University
11:30 AM to 11:45 AM: Break
11:45 AM to 1:00 PM: Session 6. Wielding the Trident in World War II
Marc Gallichio (Chair), Villanova University
Six Oilers: The Epic History of American Naval Logistics in the Second World War
Salvatore Mercogliano, Campbell University
The Evolution of the Combat Information Center (CIC), 1943–1945
Timothy Wolters, Iowa State University
1:00 PM to 1:30 PM: Break
1:30 PM to 2:15 PM: Keynote by Admiral William J. Fallon, USN, ret.
2:15 PM to 3:45 PM: Session 7. The Navy in the Nuclear Era
Mary X. Mitchell (Chair), New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University-Newark
The Foundations of United States Navy Nuclear Deterrence: Strategy, Technology, Operations, Institutions and Individuals, 1945–1975
David Alan Rosenberg, National Security Archive
Behind Legends and Myths: What Admiral Rickover’s Personal Papers Reveal about the Father of the Nuclear Navy
Claude Berube, Independent Scholar
The Second Korean War and the Shootdown of Deep Sea 129
Lillian Young, University of New Hampshire
3:45 PM to 4:00 PM: Closing remarks by Katherine Epstein, Professor of History, Rutgers University-Camden
4:00 PM: Departure