Conference Program
Thursday, June 7, 2012
McNeil Center for Early American Studies, 3355 Woodland Walk
(34th and Sansom Streets)
2:30 – 3:15 Registration
3:15 – 3:45 Welcome
 Daniel Richter, MCEAS, University of Pennsylvania
Opening Remarks: Brian Luskey and Wendy Woloson
3:45 – 5:15

The Elusiveness of Shadow Economies

Chair: Brian Luskey, West Virginia University

Robert Gamble, Johns Hopkins University
"Promiscuous Commodities: The Culture of Secondhand in the Antebellum Mid-Atlantic"

Joshua Greenberg, Bridgewater State University
"The Era of Shinplasters: Making Sense of Unregulated Paper Money"

Colin Johnson, Indiana University
"The Misanthrope's Progress: On Hermits, Misers and Capitalist Development in Nineteenth-Century America"
5:15 – 5:45 Refreshment Break
5:45 - 7 :00 Keynote Address

Introduction: Cathy Matson, University of Delaware, and Program in Early American Economy and Society, Library Company of Philadelphia

Jane Kamensky, Brandeis University
"The Exchange Artist's Wife"
7:00 - 8:30 Buffet Supper
Friday, June 8, 2012
Library Company of Philadelphia, 1314 Locust Street

8:15 – 8:45 Registration and Coffee
8:45 – 9:00 Opening Remarks
John Van Horne, Library Company of Philadelphia
9:00 – 10:30 Trading on the Margins: Retail and Resale

Chair: Wendy Woloson, Independent Scholar

Paul Erickson, American Antiquarian Society
"More Than Books: Publishers, Booksellers, and the Boundaries of Legitimate Business"

Adam Mendelsohn, College of Charleston
"The Rag Race: Jews and the Trade in Castoff Clothing"

Ellen Gruber Garvey, New Jersey City University
"African American Importance in the Old Newspaper Business"
10:30 – 11:00 Coffee Break
11:00 – 12:30 Selling Intimacies: Service Economies in the Shadows
Chair: Kathy Peiss, University of Pennsylvania

Katie Hemphill, Johns Hopkins University
"Selling Sex in the City: Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century Baltimore"

Michael Ross, University of Maryland
"The Case of Follin & Murray: Scandalous Pregnancies, Afro-Creole Women, and Lying-In Hospitals in Reconstruction-Era New Orleans and Mobile"

Jamie Pietruska, Rutgers University
"'Purveyors of Futurity': Fortune-tellers and the Cultural and Legal Reimagination of Occult Prediction in the Gilded Age"
12:30 – 2:00 Lunch (On Your Own)
2:00 – 3:30 A Nation of Gaslight Capitalists
Part I: Smugglers and Thieves
Chair: Michelle Craig McDonald, Richard Stockton College of New Jersey

Craig Hollander, Johns Hopkins University
"Underground on the High Seas: The Illegal Slave Trade of the Early Republic"

Will Mackintosh, University of Mary Washington
"The Loomis Gang and the Funhouse Mirror of Nineteenth-Century Economic Modernity"

Andrew Wender Cohen, Syracuse University
"The Smuggler's Story: Contraband and the Nineteenth-Century Economy"
3:30 – 4:00 Coffee Break
4:00 – 5:30 A Nation of Gaslight Capitalists

Part II: Swindlers, Exploiters, and More Thieves

Chair: Roderick McDonald, Rider University

Corey Goettsch, Emory University
"Pinchbeck Capitalism: Mock Auctions in Nineteenth-Century America"

Brendan O'Malley, City University of New York
"Lickspittles, Land Sharks, and Boarding House Black-Legs: The Immigrant Exploitation Industry in Antebellum New York"

Michael Thompson, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
"'Some Rascally Business': Thieving Slaves, Unscrupulous Whites, and Antebellum Charleston's Illicit Cotton Trade"

5:30 – 7:00 Reception
Everyone attending the conference should read the papers in advance. Conference papers can be downloaded from a password protected location. Details for access will be given upon registration.