Incarceration Nation: 
Voices from the 
Early American Gaol

Call for Papers

The McNeil Center for Early American Studies and the Library Company of Philadelphia, in cooperation with the Department of History of the University of Maryland, College Park and the Department of English of the College of New Jersey, will convene a conference in Philadelphia, April 3-4, 2009, on the experience of the incarcerated in jails and prisons in early America.

While scholars have paid lavish attention to the political and ideological underpinnings of the development of prison infrastructures and supervision programs, the experience of those incarcerated in jails and prisons has so far escaped sustained examination. On the occasion of the 180th anniversary of the opening of Eastern State Penitentiary, this conference will explore issues of incarceration in early America from the perspective of inmates, visitors, and workers on the inside of early jails and prisons. Subjects of particular interest include:

  • ritual and spectacle
  • fictive incarceration experiences
  • images of incarceration
  • material culture
  • psychological dimensions of captivity
  • hygiene and sanitation
  • mimetic corruption
  • infrapolitics of confinement
  • sexuality and violence
  • the experiential dialectic between the body and the state
    • Please send 250 word abstracts and a brief c.v. to the McNeil Center) no later than Friday, January 18, 2008. Priority will be given to proposals advancing innovative thinking based on unpublished research. Any questions should be directed to the conference organizers Michele Lise Tarter and Richard Bell.