Conference
Philadelphia: May 1-3, 2025
The McNeil Center for Early American Studies will host “Where is Early America?," a state of the field conference from May 1-3, 2025 in Philadelphia. The conference will feature panels and roundtables focused on the Americas before the age of revolutions. Our sessions aim to propose new frameworks for comprehending the earliest period of European colonization in America and novel arguments for scholarly attention to this era. This conference is chaired by Emma Hart, Director of The McNeil Center for Early American Studies.
Photo credit: "Beadwork and Raised Picture of Woman and Servant by Unknown Maker," Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Object No. 2000-333 (1660-1680)
Thursday, May 1
5:00 PM to 6:30 PM: Seminar
Plantation, Mobility, and the Policing of Labor in the Seventeenth-Century English Atlantic
Paul Musselwhite, Dartmouth College
Location: Kislak Special Collections, Van Pelt Library, 6th Floor, University of Pennsylvania
6:45 PM to 8:00 PM: Opening Reception
Location: The McNeil Center for Early American Studies, University of Pennsylvania, 3355 Woodland Walk
Friday, May 2
Location: American Philosophical Society
Franklin Hall, 427 Chestnut Street and Philosophical Hall, 104 S. 5th Street
8:00 AM to 8:15 AM: Registration & Continental breakfast
Franklin Hall
8:15 AM to 8:30 AM: Welcome from Emma Hart, Director of The McNeil Center
Franklin Hall
8:30 AM to 10:00 AM: Concurrent sessions 1 & 2
Session 1: The Seventeenth-Century Atlantic World Today and Tomorrow
Franklin Hall
Mark Peterson (Chair), Yale University
BJ Lillis, American Antiquarian Society
Tianna Mobley, Yale University
Boone Ayala, University of Chicago
Wulfstan Scouller, Yale University
Session 2: Imagined Geographies and Intercultural Ties in Early America
Philosophical Hall
Deborah Hamer (Chair), The New Netherland Institute
Land, Love, and Loathing in New Netherland
Amanda Faulkner, Columbia University
Where is New Sweden?
Elizabeth Hines, Johns Hopkins University
At the Water's Edge: Environmental Identities in Early America
Sarah Mallory, Harvard University
“Rejected by the Spaniards”: Classifications of the Enslaved in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Slave Trade
Andrea C. Mosterman, University of New Orleans
10:00 AM to 10:15 AM: Break
10:15 AM to 11:45 AM: Concurrent sessions 3 & 4
Session 3: What is Early American Literature?
Franklin Hall
Sarah Rivett, Princeton University (Chair)
Anna Brickhouse, University of Virginia
Christopher Trigg, Nanyang Technological University
Kirsten Silva Gruesz, University of California, Santa Cruz
Rachel Trocchio, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Session 4: Transplanting Early America: Plants, Scientific Labour, and Art in the Early Modern Atlantic World
Philosophical Hall
Phillip Emanuel (Chair), McNeil Center for Early American Studies
Magnifying parasites, translating labor: The revival of cochineal transplantation projects in the eighteenth-century Atlantic
Diana Heredia-López, University of Texas at Austin
A Jamaican Garden in Ireland
Kate Luce Mulry, California State University, Bakersfield
Vere, Lady Lynch: Women colonists as artists and scientists in early English Jamaica
Eleanor Stephenson, University of Cambridge
11:45 AM to 1:15 PM: Break
1:15 PM to 2:45 PM: Concurrent sessions 5 & 6
Session 5: Whose Early and Which America? Geographic and Chronological Approaches from Beyond an Anglo-Atlantic Perspective
Franklin Hall
Casey Schmitt (Chair), Cornell University
Elise A. Mitchell, Swarthmore College
Gabriel de Avilez Rocha, Brown University
Elizabeth Ellis, Princeton University
Miguel Valerio, Washington University in St. Louis
Alejandra Dubcovsky, University of California, Riverside
Session 6: Radical Imaginings in Early America
Philosophical Hall
Heather Miyano Kopelson (Chair), University of Alabama
The Radical Idea of American Abundance: Thomas Morton’s 1637 Pastoral
Peter Emanuel Diamond, University of Pennsylvania
The Scope of Early American Learning: Cotton Mather’s Quotidiana
Thomas Vozar, University of Florida
Indigenous Utopias: The Limits of Reimagining Native North America
Marie Balsley Taylor, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
2:45 PM to 3:00 PM: Break
3:00 PM to 4:30 PM: Concurrent sessions 7 & 8
Session 7: French Colonialism in Early America
Franklin Hall
Ann M. Little (Chair), Colorado State University
Chris Hodson, Brigham Young University
Christopher Parsons, Northeastern University
Brett Rushforth, The Huntington Library
Sophie White, University of Notre Dame
Session 8: Authority and Rebellion in Early America
Philosophical Hall
Adrian Chastain Weimer (Chair), Providence College
“Reduced to Satan’s ways”: How New England’s Puritans and New France’s Catholics absorbed, usurped, and assimilated sacred Native rites of scalping through greed, fear, and war
Jonathan Joseph (J.J.) Nattrass, George Washington University
Resisting Imprisonment in Seventeenth-Century North America
Wendy Warren, Princeton University
“A Comision for to kiep a Coort of Common pl:” The Trials and Tribulations of Establishing Local Governance in the Hudson Valley, 1683-1750
William P. Tatum, III, Dutchess County
4:30 PM to 5:30 PM: Reception
Franklin Hall
5:30 PM to 7:00 PM: Plenary Session
Franklin Hall
When was Early America? Deep History's Challenge to Colonial History
Kathleen DuVal (Chair), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
François Furstenberg, Johns Hopkins University
Elizabeth Ellis, Princeton University
Ann McGrath, Australian National University
Christen Mucher, Smith College
Saturday, May 3
8:00 AM: Registration & Continental Breakfast, Franklin Hall
8:30 AM to 10:00 AM: Concurrent sessions 9 & 10
Session 9: Space and Time in Indigenous Early America
Franklin Hall
Mark L. Thompson (Chair), University of Groningen
Finding Anatamaha: Political and Environmental Spaces in the Indigenous Mississippi River Delta to 1785
Eric Toups, University of Michigan
Three 17th-Century Maps of the Delaware River: Or How Text, Pictographs, and “Geographical Names” Translate Native Presence
Agnès Trouillet, Université Paris Nanterre
From Constantinople to Paquimé: Writing the History of Sixteenth-Century North America
Kai R. Werner, William & Mary
Session 10: Money and Value in Early America
Philosophical Hall
Simon Middleton (Chair), William & Mary
Hans Sloane, Rat-Eating, and Imperial Theories of Discernment
Jacob Myers, University of Pennsylvania
Money and the Gift in Early American History
Katie A. Moore, University of California, Santa Barbara
10:00 AM to 10:15 AM: Break
10:15 AM to 11:45 AM: Concurrent sessions 11 & 12
Session 11: Mapping and Misinformation: Indigenous Technologies and Spatial Management Across the Americas
Franklin Hall
Marcy Norton (Chair), University of Pennsylvania
Vikram Tamboli, Smithsonian National Museum for Natural History
Marian Leech, University of Pennsylvania
Casey Price, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
John Kuhn, Binghamton University
Session 12: The Importance of Smuggling in the Formation of the Atlantic Colonies
Philosophical Hall
Christian Koot (Chair), Towson University
Claire Steele, Georgetown University
Adrian Finucane, Florida Atlantic University
Mary Draper, Midwestern State University
Jared Ross Hardesty, Western Washington University
11:45 AM to 1:15 PM: Break
1:15 PM to 2:45 PM: Concurrent sessions 13 & 14
Session 13: Slavery Across and Between Empires
Franklin Hall
Alison Games (Chair), Georgetown University
Where did the English Atlantic’s slaving begin? Connections between Luanda and Providence Island, 1626 to 1641
George Clay, Georgetown University
Empires in contact: slavery and settlement in seventeenth-century Schenectady
Virginie Adane, Nantes Université
How Unique were Early American Plantations? Slavery and the Global Plantation Complex
Justin Roberts, Dalhousie University
“East India Indians” in Colonial Virginia
Jason R. Sellers, University of Mary Washington
Session 14: Early America in Religious Studies
Philosophical Hall
Michael Baysa (Chair), University of Vermont
Philippa Koch, Missouri State University
Shari Rabin, Oberlin College
Anca Wilkening, Harvard University
2:45 PM to 3:00 PM: Break
3:00 PM to 4:30 PM: Concurrent sessions 15 & 16
Session 15: Identity in Verse: Poetry in the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic
Franklin Hall
Abigail Scott Rawleigh (Chair), Indiana University, Bloomington
Pain the Poetics of New England Identity
Lucas Hardy, Youngstown State University
Poetic Lives: Puritans and Personal Expression
Benjamin Crawford, University of Alabama
“Controversy, Crises, and Tears: Or American Seventeenth Century Poetry Under Construction in New England
Betty Booth Donohue, Independent Scholar
Session 16: Teaching Early America to All Students
Philosophical Hall
Jordan B. Smith (Chair), Widener University
Carla Cevasco, Rutgers University-New Brunswick
Christian Ayne Crouch, Bard College
Christian Pinnen, Mississippi College
Brooke Bauer, University of Tennessee
Thursday, May 1
5:00 PM to 6:30 PM: Seminar
Plantation, Mobility, and the Policing of Labor in the Seventeenth-Century English Atlantic
Paul Musselwhite, Dartmouth College
Location: Kislak Special Collections, Van Pelt Library 6th Floor, University of Pennsylvania, 3420 Walnut Street
6:45 PM to 8:00 PM: Opening Reception
Location: McNeil Center for Early American Studies, University of Pennsylvania, 3355 Woodland Walk
Friday, May 2
8:00 AM to 4:30 PM: Conference sessions
4:30 PM to 7:00 PM: Cocktail hour and plenary
Location: American Philosophical Society, 427 Chestnut Street
Saturday, May 3
8:00 AM to 4:30 PM: Conference sessions
Location: American Philosophical Society, 427 Chestnut Street
Hotel
Wyndham Philadelphia - Historic District
400 Arch Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
To book a hotel room at the conference rate of $159 plus tax, please use this link:
Wyndham Philadelphia - McNeil Center Conference Hotel
Must book by April 4 to get this rate.