Call for Papers Anti-Popery:  The Transatlantic Experience, c. 1530–1850 Philadelphia, 18-20 September 2008

The McNeil Center for Early American Studies and the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, in cooperation with The Catholic University of America, Columbia University, and Boston University, will hold a conference in Philadelphia September 18-20, 2008, on the uses of anti-popery in the early modern world. Antagonism towards the pope and his co-religionists was nearly universal in the Protestant societies of Europe and colonial America. In recent years historians on both sides of the Atlantic have begun to realize that anti-Catholic fears represented more than blind prejudice or ignorance. Instead, anti-popery was a powerful set of ideas that early modern Europeans used to understand their world and their place in history. This conference will explore the diverse uses of anti-popery in the Protestant Atlantic – whether religious, social, legal, economic, or political – from the time of the Reformation to the era of massive Catholic migration to America in the mid-nineteenth century.

To view the draft program (subject to change), click here.

To register to attend and to acquire access to the precirculated papers (available in August), click here.

For more information, please contact mceas@ccat.sas.upenn.edu or

Conference organizers: Evan Haefeli, Brendan McConville, and Owen Stanwood.

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