THURSDAY, MARCH 28
All sessions at the Library Company of Philadelphia, 1314 Locust Street, Philadelphia
9:00–9:45AM Registration & Coffee
9:45–10:00AM Welcome
Cathy Matson, PEAES and University of Delaware
Daniel K. Richter, McNeil Center and University of Pennsylvania
10:00–11:30AM Indigenous Sovereignty and the Ambitions of U.S. Empire
Chair: Michael Blaakman, Princeton University
Emilie Connolly, New York University
“Strategies of Succession and the 1797 Treaty of Big Tree”
Lauren Brand, Southern Nazarene University
“Facing West in Indian Country”
Robert Lee, Cambridge University
“The Indian Boundary Line and the Imperialization of U.S.–Indian Affairs.”
Comment: Elizabeth Ellis, New York University
11:30AM–12:00PM Break
12:00–1:30PM Industry, Trade, and the Imperial State
Chair: Cathy Matson, PEAES and University of Delaware
Susan Gaunt Stearns, University of Mississippi
“Selling the West: Frontier Merchants and Imperial Authority, 1780-1811”
Lindsay Schakenbach Regele, Miami University of Ohio
“How the National Firearms Industry Helped Make an Early Republic Empire”
Alicia Maggard, Williams College
“Pacific Mail, Industrial Empire: Building U.S. Power in the Pacific”
Comment: Honor Sachs, University of Colorado, Boulder
1:30–3:00PM Lunch on your own
3:00–4:45PM Knowledge Production and the Tools of U.S. Empire
Chair: Alexandra Montgomery, University of Pennsylvania
Tisa Wenger, Yale University
“Making Settler Religion: Missionary Benevolence in the Early Republic”
Sveinn Jóhannesson, Institute of Historical Research, London
“Science and the Imperial Impulse in the Early United States”
Michael Verney, Drury University
“Selling Empire: Publishing and Presenting Naval Imperialism in the Early American Republic, 1842-1860”
Comment: Ned Blackhawk, Yale University
4:45–5:00PM Keynote Introduction
Emily Conroy–Krutz, Michigan State University
Michael Blaakman, Princeton University
5:00–6:00PM Keynote Speaker
Kathleen DuVal, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
“Debating Empire, Race, and Nation in the Early Nineteenth Century”
6:00–7:00PM Reception
FRIDAY, MARCH 29
McNeil Center for Early American Studies, University of Pennsylvania, 3355 Woodland Walk (34th and Sansom Streets), Philadelphia
9:00–9:45AM Registration & Coffee
9:45–11:30AM Race, Slavery, and Geographies of Empire
Chair: Emily Conroy–Krutz, Michigan State University
Nancy O. Gallman, McNeil Center and Lewis & Clark College
“Unmaking an American Republic: Settlers, African Americans, and Constitutional Law in the Spanish Florida Borderlands”
Brandon Mills, University of Colorado, Denver
“From a Settler Empire to a Global Empire: Reconsidering the African Colonization Movement”
Scott Heerman, University of Miami
“Freedom in Chains: U.S. Empire and the Illegal Slave Trade”
Comment: Rashauna Johnson, Dartmouth College
11:30–11:45AM Break
11:45AM–1:30PM Law and the Politics of Imperial Expansion
Chair: Bethel Saler, Haverford College
Jessica Choppin Roney, Temple University
“Inalienable: The Limits of an Empire Based Upon Natural Rights”
Julia Lewandoski, University of California, Berkeley
“An Empire of Indian Titles: Private Land Claims in Early American Louisiana, 1803-1840”
Camille Suarez, University of Pennsylvania
“This Land is Not Your Land: The Land Claims Act of 1851, Unratified Treaties, and the Dispossession of Californios and Native Americans”
Comment: Sarah Rodriguez, University of Arkansas
1:30–2:30PM Lunch on your own
2:30–4:15PM Imperialism and Its Discontents
Chair: Andy Shankman, Rutgers University-Camden
Margot Minardi, Reed College
“Pax Americana? The Imperial Ambivalence of American Peace Reformers”
Nick Guyatt, University of Cambridge
“Imperialism and the American Imagination”
Amy Greenberg, Pennsylvania State University
“Mercenary Ambivalence: Military Violence in Antebellum America’s Wars of Empire”
Comment: Rosemarie Zagarri, George Mason University
4:15–5:00PM Closing Remarks
Michael Blaakman, Princeton University
Emily Conroy-Krutz, Michigan State University
5:00–6:00PM Reception
Co-sponsors
The Program in Early American Economy and Society at the Library Company of Philadelphia, the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, the Department of History at Princeton University, and Iona College’s Institute of Thomas Paine Studies are pleased to co-sponsor this two-day conference bringing together scholars of imperialism in its multiple early North American forms and spaces.
