Call for Proposals
October 9-11, 2025 | Philadelphia and Camden
Proposal deadline: February 15, 2025
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 (see www.homecoming250.org). 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. We welcome proposals from scholars researching any topic related to the US Navy and Marine Corps over their long history.
The inaugural day of this conference will be held at The McNeil Center for Early American Studies, 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). An opening reception will be held at the Library Company of Philadelphia on the evening of October 9th.
We invite proposals for papers and roundtables on the following themes:
- Maritime strategy, tactics, logistics, and diplomacy
- Chronologically and thematically comparative analyses of US maritime power
- Leadership and education within the Navy and Marine Corps
- Explorations of the social, medical, and environmental histories of these branches, including with respect to race and gender
- The Navy Department and the US economy
- Science, technology, and maritime power
- The histories of the Navy and Marine Corps in Philadelphia and Camden
Prospective presenters are invited to submit abstracts of 300 words that outline the research question and anticipated contributions to the conference. Submissions should be uploaded here by February 15, 2025. Accepted presenters will be asked to prepare a paper of no more than 9,000 words, which will be pre-circulated to participants, as well as a ten-minute PowerPoint surveying the main contributions of these papers. Roundtable submissions will not require papers or PowerPoints.
This conference will be chaired by Emma Hart, Director of the McNeil Center, and Katherine Epstein, Associate Professor of History at Rutgers-Camden.