Past Years
Triangle Early American History Seminar
All sessions held on Fridays at 4 p.m. at the National Humanities Center unless otherwise noted.
2007-2008
September 7, Holly Brewer, (NCSU), “Marriages ‘Under the Age of Consent’: The Perils of Demography and the Power of Ideology” (co-sponsored by the Triangle Legal History Seminar)
September 21, Wayne Lee (UNC-CH), “Subjects, Clients, Allies or Mercenaries? The British Use of Irish and Indian Military Power, 1500-1815”
October 5, Andrew J. Lewis (American University), “Making Natural History ‘Science,’ 1780-1840”
October 12, Sally E. Hadden (Florida State), “Law Firm Partners of the 1790s: DeSaussure and Ford” (Carr Building, Duke)
November 16, Seth Rockman (Brown University), “Plantation Goods: The Textiles and Farm Implements that Cemented the Slaveholding Republic”
December 7, Theresa J. Campbell (UNC-G), “Political Friendship in Revolutionary America”
January 26, Elizabeth Fenn (Duke), “The Heart of the World”
February 15, William R. Ryan (UNC-G), The World of Thomas Jeremiah (Chapter VI): “The Greatest Hope and Deepest Fear (December 1775-January 1776)”
March 7, L. Maren Wood (UNC-CH), “Origin Stories of Venereal Disease in the Anglo-American North, 1750-1820”
April 18, Watson Jennison (UNC-G), “Experiments in Republicanism: The Trans-Oconee Republic”
May 9, Elizabeth Fenn (Duke), “Commerce” (Chapter 4 of Encounter at the Heart of the World: The Rise and Fall of the Mandan People)
2008-2009
September 26, Georgina Gajewski (UNC-CH), “Adventurers in the Brush Line: Itinerant Artists as Entrepreneurs in Early North Carolina”
October 10, Wayne Lee (UNC-CH), “Peace Chiefs and Blood Revenge: War with the North American Indians”
November 7, Philip J. Stern (Duke), “’A Sort of Republic for the Management of Trade’: Imagining a Company-State (in East India v. Sandys, 1682-1684)”
December 12, Kathleen DuVal (UNC-CH), “The Siege of Pensacola”
January 23, Trevor Burnard (Warwick/NHC), “American Transformations: The Development of Plantation Societies and Planter Elites in the American South and the British Caribbean, 1660-1720”
February 20, Pauline Maier (MIT), “The People and Their Constitution 1787-88”
March 20, Katy Simpson Smith (UNC-CH), “’Authors of Their Being’: The Enactment of Elite Southern Motherhood, 1750-1820”
April 24, Randy Browne (UNC-CH), “The ‘Bad Business’ of Obeah: Power, Culture and the Politics of Slave Religion in the Pre-Emancipation British Caribbean”
May 8, Marjoleine Kars (UMBC), “Rebellion, Civil War, and Revolution in Dutch Berbice, 1763-1764”
2009-2010
September 11, Al Young (Northern Illinois University), “Doing Biography of Ordinary People: Rewards and Risks”
October 9, Mia Bay (Rutgers/NHC), “‘An Ambidexter Philosopher who can Reason Contrarywise’: Thomas Jefferson in Free Black Political Thought”
October 23, Jonathan Hancock (UNC-CH), “‘God is angry about this’: Cherokees, Missionaries, and the Stakes of Earthquake Interpretation”
December 4, Brett Rushforth (William & Mary), “‘Nit’aouakara – I make him my slave / my dog’: Reconsidering Indigenous Slavery in the Pays d’en Haut”
January 29, Laurent Dubois (Duke), “The Banjo in the Caribbean”
February 12, Robert DuPlessis (Swarthmore), “Textiles and Imperial Cultures in the Early Modern Atlantic”
March 19, Jack Greene (JHU/NHC), “Not All Lemmings: A Reconsideration of the British Response to Colonial Resistance in the Years before the American Revolution”
April 23, Rosemarie Zagarri (George Mason), “Calcutta on the Potomac: An East Indian Nabob in the Early American Republic”
May 7, Heidi Giusto (Duke), “South Carolina and Atlantic World Warfare”
2010-2011
August 27, 2010, Elvira Vilches (NCSU), “New World Gold: Cultural Anxiety and Monetary Disorder in Early Modern System”
September 3, 2010, Alan Taylor (UCDavis), “Remaking Americans: Louisiana, Upper Canada, and Texas”
October 8, 2010, Cynthia Radding (UNC-CH), “San Ildefonso de Ostimuri: Colonial Spaces in the Fragmented Communities of Northern New Spain”
November 12, 2010, Jane Mangan (Davidson), “Moving Mestizos: Paternal Power and Maternal Absence in Mestizo Children’s Lives”
December 10, 2010, Randy Browne (UNC-CH), “‘The Right of a Master to Punish’: Penal Reform and the Amelioration of Slavery in the British Caribbean” (co-sponsored with the Triangle Legal History Seminar)
January 14, 2011, Christopher Cameron (UNC-C), “The Puritan Origins of Black Abolitionism in Massachusetts”
February 4, 2011, Amy Bushnell (Brown University), “‘These People are not Conquered Like Those of New Spain’: Florida’s Reciprocal Colonial Compact”
March 11, 2011, Tyler Will (UNC-CH), “Staging Gender: Masculinity, Politics, and the Passions in the Pamphlet Plays of the American Revolution”
April 1, 2011, Kate Haulman (American University), “Rods and Reels: Fishing, Dancing, and Being Elite in Early Philadelphia”
April 29, Rebecca Scott ( University of Michigan), “‘Mistress of Her Own Person’: Contesting Enslavement through Law in the Era of the Haitian Revolution” (co-sponsored with the Triangle Legal History Seminar)
May 6, Holly Brewer (NCSU), “The Seventeenth-Century Contest over a Common Law of Slavery” (co-sponsored with the Triangle Legal History Seminar)
2011-2012
September 2, Elizabeth Fenn (Duke), “Upheavals: Eighteenth-Century Transformations of the Mandan World”
November 4, Nora Doyle (UNC-CH), “Living and Writing the Body: American Childbearing Narratives, 1750-1850”
November 18, Molly Warsh (Texas A&M and Omohundro Institute), “American Baroque: Pearls and the Nature of Empire, 1492-1700”
December 9, Jonathan Hancock (UNC-CH), “Earthquakes and the Problem of Indian Unity in the Trans-Appalachian West, 1811-1814”
January 20, Jake Ruddiman (Wake Forest), “‘Feared by many, loved by none’: Relationships among Young Continental Soldiers and Civilians”
February 24, Vincent Brown (Duke), “Apongo aka Wager, Prince of Guinea and Rebel of Jamaica: Locating African Authority in the Atlantic World”
March 23, John Roche (UNC-CH), “Governing the Good Americans”
April 13, James Roberts (Johns Hopkins), “Planting People for a Secure Jamaica: Environment, Climate, and a Settlement Proposal in Edward Long’s History of Jamaica (1774)”
April 27, Lisa Lindsay (UNC-CH) and John Sweet (UNC-CH), “The Black Atlantic and the Biographical Turn: Slavery, Migration, and the Origins of the Modern World”
2012-2013
September 28, John Hart (Duke), “Fish, Dams and the Transformation of Eighteenth-Century Rhode Island”
October 12, Fitz Brundage (UNC-CH), “Torture, Civilization, and the Conquest of North America, 1500-1750”
November 16, Cassandra Pybus (U. of Sydney), “Negotiating Freedom: The Remarkable Story of an Enslaved Family in Revolutionary Virginia,” (Institute for Arts and Humanities, UNC-CH) (co-sponsored by the Triangle African American History Colloquium)
December 7, Linda M. Rupert (UNC-G), “‘Henceforth All Slaves Who Seek Refuge in My Domains Shall Be Free’: Spanish Royal Decrees Regarding Inter-Imperial Marronage in the Eighteenth-Century Caribbean” (co-sponsored by the Triangle Legal History Seminar)
January 25, Andrew Cayton (Miami U.) and Fred Anderson (U. of Colorado), “Writing the History of Imperial America, 1672-1764: Problems and Possibilities” (co-sponsored by the Triangle Global British History Seminar)
February 8, Christopher Cameron (UNC-C), “The Calvinist/Arminian Debate and Black Theology in the Anglo-Atlantic World” (co-sponsored by the Triangle African American History Colloquium)
March 8, Mary Kupiec Cayton (Miami U.), “Benevolent Awakening: Toward an Evangelical Culture of Sensibility in New England, 1740-1830”
April 19, Megan Cherry (NCSU), “Factional Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century New York”
May 3, Warren Milteer (UNC-CH), “A Diversity of Life Experiences: Free People of Color in Colonial North Carolina” (co-sponsored by the Triangle African American History Colloquium)
2013-2014
September 20, Daniel Papsdorf (Duke), “Spider Webs and ANT(S) in the Native Southeast: 1763–1803”
October 4, Carolyn Eastman (Virginia Commonwealth), “Sentimental Philosopher: Celebrating and Forgetting Oratory in the Early American Republic”
November 8, Brooke Bauer (UNC-CH), “‘Stay at Home and defend yourselves, your Women, and Children’: The Influence of Warfare, Disease, and Town Relocation on Eighteenth-Century Catawba Women”
January 17, Brandon Bayne (UNC-CH), “Witnesses to Life and Death: Natural Histories, Martyrdom, and the Jesuit Expulsion from Northern New Spain”
February 14, Travis Glasson (Temple), “Sunshine Patriots: Merchant Politics and the Crisis of the America Revolution” (Co-sponsored with Triangle Global British History Seminar)
March 7, Randy Browne (Xavier), “Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean, 1803-1834”
April 25, Benjamin Irvin (U. of Arizona), “Disability and the Invalid Pensioners of the Revolutionary War: A Study of Virginia Veterans”
2014-2015
Oct. 17, Ben Reed (UNC-CH), “Oratorian Spiritual Culture and the Production of Expertise in Seventeenth-Century Mexico City”
Nov. 7, Reeve Huston (Duke), “Democratic Pentecost: Explaining the Emergence of Multiple Democracies in the United States, 1826-28”
Dec. 5, Elizabeth Ellis (UNC-CH), “Friends or Enemies?: The Petites Nations’ Shifting Alliances in the Eighteenth-Century Lower Mississippi Valley”
Jan. 23, Thomas Sheppard (UNC-CH), “A Radical Change of System: The Navy Board and Civilian Control, 1815-1820”
April 10, Justin Blanton (UNC-CH), “Becoming Chiquitano: Crafting Ethnic Identity in the Imperial Borderlands of the Greater Paraguayan River Basin”
April 24, Holly Brewer (U. of Maryland), “Slavery and Sedition” (co-sponsored by the Triangle British Global History Seminar and the Triangle Legal History Seminar)
May 1, Sarah Meacham (Virginia Commonwealth), “‘The Polite Assurance and Affable Cheerfulness of a Gentleman’: Status and Emotions in the Eighteenth-Century South”
2015-2016
September 25, Cynthia Radding (UNC-CH), “Amerindian Spaces in the Production of New Spain’s Northern Frontier”
October 16, Peter Silver (Rutgers), “Declaring for Liberty: Oppression and Insurrection in the War of Jenkins’s Ear” (co-sponsored with Triangle Global British History Seminar)
November 20, Paul Otto (George Fox University and National Humanities Center), “Making and Marketing Wampum: Continuity and Change”
February 19, Craig Friend (NCSU), “Lunsford Lane of Raleigh: Blackness and Masculinity in the Early American Republic”
March 25, Steve Pincus (Yale), “Radical Declaration: An Imperial Perspective on American Independence” (co-sponsored with TGBHS)
April 15, Garrett Wright (UNC-CH), “‘To See the King on Behalf of My Nation’: Central Plains Diplomacy and Sovereignty in the 1720s”
April 27, Simon Newman (University of Glasgow), “Runaway Slaves Across the British Atlantic World: Britain, the Caribbean, West Africa and North America”
April 29, Richard Godbeer (VCU), “‘Times are Much Changed and Maids Are Become Mistresses’: Elizabeth Drinker and Her Servants”
2016-2017
September 23, Robert Richard (UNC-CH), “‘This Monster Feeding Upon Our Vitals’: Bank Wars and Hard Times in North Carolina”
October 7, Lisa Ford (University of New South Wales), “The King’s Peace and the Imperial Constitution: Boston, 1764-1770” (co-sponsored by the Triangle Global British History Seminar)
November 18, Juliana Barr (Duke), “Slavers for a White God: Religious Symbols at War in the Spanish Borderlands”
January 20, Deborah Hamer (Omohundro Institute), “Marriage and Mobility: The Challenges of an Expanding Dutch Atlantic World” (co-sponsored by the Working Group in Feminism and History)
February 3, Chris Grasso (William and Mary and National Humanities Center), “Instituting Skepticism and Faith in Early America”
February 17, Karin Wulf (William and Mary and Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture), “Lineage: Genealogy and the Politics of Family History in British America, 1680-1820” (co-sponsored by the Working Group in Feminism and History)
March 3 Honor Sachs (Western Carolina University), “Slaves and Lawyers: Freedom Suits and Legal Representation in Revolutionary and Early National Virginia”
March 31, Shauna Sweeney (Omohundro Institute) “Market-Women and the Military: The West Indies Regiments and the Informal Economy in Late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century Jamaica (co-sponsored by the Working Group in Feminism and History)
April 21 Digital Tools for the Humanities, Bibb Edwards (Independent Scholar) and Mishio Yamanaka (UNC-CH)
2017-2018
September 22, Holly White (William and Mary), “‘Attend to the advice of your mother’: Parental Assertions of Control”
October 20, Mandy Cooper (Duke), “Cultures of Emotion: Families, Friends, and the Making of the United States”
November 17, Andrew Fitzmaurice (University of Sydney), “The Company Commonwealth”
December 1, Aubrey Lauersdorf (UNC-CH), “Apalachee Politics and Diplomacy in the Seventeenth Century”
January 26, Ebony Jones (NCSU), “William Neptune Dehaney, a ‘most infamous man’: Slavery and Geographies of Punishment in the Nineteenth-Century Caribbean”
February 16, Nathaniel Millett (St. Louis University), “Indigenous Life in the British West Indies during the First Half of the Eighteenth Century”
March 2, Jon Sensbach (University of Florida), “The Sacred World of Mary Prince”
April 27 Josh Lynn (Yale), “The Black Douglass and the White Douglas: Embodying Race, Manhood, and Democracy in Antebellum America”
2018-2019
December 7, Lucas Kelley (UNC-CH) “‘We will mark a line for the white people’: Creating and Enforcing Borders in the Tennessee and Cumberland River Valleys”
January 11, Samantha Seeley (University of Richmond), “Removal and the Right to Remain in the Early American Republic”
February 15, Paul Mapp (William & Mary), “A North Pacific Mystery”
March 8, Tony Frazier (NC Central) “Baptism and Liberty in England: New Light on the 1729 Yorke-Talbot Slavery Opinion”
March 29- Peter Villela (UNC-G), “Deciphering the Ruins: Recovering ‘Aztec History’ in Mexico City after the Epidemic of 1576”
2019-2020
November 8, Simon Middleton (William & Mary), “The Price of the People: Money and Power in Early America”
December 6, Daniel Livesay (Claremont McKenna), “Acting Your Age: Elderly Virginians of Color and the Bind of Antebellum Paternalism”
January 10, Christina Snyder (Pennsylvania State University), “The Once and Future Moundbuilders: Rethinking the Chronology of American History”
February 28, Jacob Lee (Pennsylvania State University), “The Military Invasion of New Orleans, 1803: A Non-Event in Louisiana History”
[remainder of season cancelled due to COVID-19]
2020-2021
September 11, Alejandra Dubcovsky (UC-Riverside), “Women in War, War with Women: Rethinking the 1702 Siege of San Agustín” (Zoom)
October 23, Nicole Maskiell (U. of South Carolina), “Good Enough to Suckle the Child” (Zoom)
December 4, TEAHS “happy hour” Group Discussion & Networking Hour (Zoom)
January 15, Rebecca Brannon (James Madison U.), “‘it is at most but the life of a cabbage’: The New Fear of Dementia after the Revolution” (Zoom)
March 19, Kathleen DuVal (UNC-CH), “How Native Nations Survived the Imperial Republic” (Zoom)
2021-2022
October 22, Laurel Daen (U. of Notre Dame), “Legal Disability and Civic Membership in Late Colonial America” (Zoom)
November 5, Patricia Dawson (UNC-CH), “‘While My Heart is Straight: Changing Visions of Cherokee Sartorial Identity, 1794-1838” (Zoom)
November 19, Megan Lindsay Cherry (NCSU), “Shooting the Sh*t about Androboros: British North America’s First Play” (Zoom)
February 4, Owen Stanwood (Boston College), “The Mystery of the Apalachites: Imagining Kingdoms and Colonies in the Early American South” (Duke East Campus Classroom Building, room 229, masks and vaccinations required)
April 8, Ana María Silva Campo (UNC-CH), “An Economic Inquisition? Religion and the Right to Wealth in Early Spanish America” (Zoom)
2022-2023
September 30, Welcome Back Happy Hour, Kathleen DuVal’s house, Durham
October 28, Francesca Langer (UNC-CH), “A Paper Rome: Neoclassicism as Speculative Fiction in Early American Newspapers”
December 2, Pete Sigal (Duke), “The Naked Native in a Mayan Cave”
February 3, José Manuel Moreno Vega (UNC), “Generous Hosts, Ungrateful Guests: Indigenous Voices and Strategies Under Colonial Expansion in Northwestern New Spain”
March 24, Carolyn Eastman (VCU) (cancelled)
April 14, Phil Stern (Duke), “The Wild Chimera of a Visionary Brain: Corporations and the Legal Geography of ‘British’ North America, or How Some People in Eighteenth-Century Connecticut Got the Idea That They Could Colonize Pennsylvania”