2027 will mark the 250th anniversary of the first federal constitution in the United States, the Articles of Confederation. This two-part conference series takes this comparatively overlooked anniversary as an opportunity to explore constitutions (broadly defined as consensual agreements of self-governance) in early modern North America, the global British Empire, and the early United States.

The present call focuses on constitutions from 1600 – 1777. A second conference anticipated in September 2027 will focus on constitutions after 1777 (recognizing that some paper submissions may overlap both periods).

The conference series is motivated by the recognition that constitutionalism is often narrowly understood to mean the British Constitution, the United States federal Constitution of 1787, and similar high-profile examples of self-government.

By contrast, we are interested in less well-known examples of constitutional thinking and drafting. Constructed sovereignty, after all, has a long legacy and has been deployed to restrain, empower, liberate, confine, exclude or include, and more, as members of nascent polities negotiate and craft their futures together. Our focus will include the contributions of Indigenous nations, maroon communities, religious groups, grassroots organizations, voluntary associations, successful and unsuccessful settler colonies, early abolitionist movements, among many others. We are as interested in projects that failed as those that have survived. And we aim to encounter peoples and ideas that have long been read out of constitutional history.

We solicit proposals for 20-minute presentations in conference panel format that redefine and broaden our understanding of constitutionalism. We are especially interested in three approaches, knowing well that they may overlap and emphasizing that we are open to suggestions:

Constitutions as empire- and state-making: The present conference looks chronologically to 1777 and the drafting of the first US federal constitution. How did British and American constitutional thought and practice at the macro-level change (or persist) in the centuries preceding this disruptive, transformational constitutional event?

Constitutional thinking and expression in everyday life: Well before the Articles of Confederation were drafted, Britons, Americans, Indigenous peoples, Africans, and African-descended people embraced constitutionalism in their religious societies, civic groups, reform movements, fraternal organizations, military associations, and at all levels of society. How did ordinary people embed and refine constitutional thought and practice in the ways they interacted with their immediate and imagined communities?

Constitutions as resistance: Indigenous nations, maroon communities of formerly enslaved people, religious radicals, and refugee communities (among others) also forged their own constitutional arrangements alongside and sometimes opposed to those of neighboring and/or encroaching British or settler communities. How can we recover constitutionalism before 1777 that operated in ways not necessarily legible through an Anglo-American constitutional lens? How did these constitutional ideas and practices shape the range of the possible?

Conference Details:

The first conference will take place April 8-10, hosted by the Program in Early American Economy and Society (PEAES) at the Library Company of Philadelphia and co-sponsored by the Program in British, Irish, and Empire Studies at the University of Texas in Austin. We anticipate being able to provide hotel rooms for participants and some travel support.

We will put together up to 7 separate panels, which will include a chair and a commentator (one person may fill both posts), who will provide both support for panel members and productive critique of their papers. The steering committee will select papers and put together the program, notifying participants no later than December 15. The final program will be shared with all participants no later than March 1. Anyone who accepts the invitation to present will be expected to attend the entire conference. If the participant is unable to do so, the steering committee reserves the option to rescind the invitation.

Please submit a single PDF document containing first a 300-word abstract and, second, a 2-page CV. If you wish to propose a three-person panel, please include a 150-word panel description, in addition to abstracts and short CVs. The committee may or may not accept all the papers in panel proposals. All applications should be sent to Max Moeller at [email protected] with the subject line “Constitutions Everywhere-First Conference” by October 21, 2026.

Steering Committee:

Jessica Choppin Roney, Library Company of Philadelphia and Temple University (Chair)

Justin Roberts, Program in British, Irish, and Empire Studies, University of Texas at Austin

Tanner Allread, Harvard University Law School

Liz Covart, Co-Founder, Clio Digital Media

Nicholas Cole, Oxford University

Sarah Barringer Gordon, University of Pennsylvania History & Law School (emerita)

Grace Mallon, Oxford University