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The McNeil Center
Where is Early America?| 1-3 May 2025

The McNeil Center for Early American Studies is pleased to announce a state of the field conference, to be held in May of 2025. 

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Upcoming Events



Columbus’s Shovel: Mortuary Intelligence and the Discovery of Indigenous Sovereignty, 1492-1514

Seminar
Christopher Heaney, The Pennsylvania State University
Jan 24, 2025 at - | Location: McNeil Center for Early American Studies, 3355 Woodland Walk/Zoom

Christopher Heaney is an Associate Professor of Modern Latin American History at the Pennsylvania State University, where he trains students in the ethnohistory of science, museums, race, and deathways in the Andes,…



Locating the Lost in Sixteenth-Century La Florida

Seminar
Matthew Bahar, Oberlin College and Conservatory
Jan 31, 2025 at - | Location: McNeil Center for Early American Studies, 3355 Woodland Walk/Zoom

Matt Bahar is Associate Professor of History at Oberlin College. He received his PhD at the University of Oklahoma in 2012 and was an NEH Long-term Fellow at the Huntington Library in 2014-2015. His research and…



Black Philadelphia in the 18th and 19th Centuries

Conference
Feb 20, 2025 - Feb 22, 2025 at - | Philadelphia, PA

The McNeil Center for Early American Studies, 1838 Black Metropolis, and the Library Company of Philadelphia will be partnering together to host “Black Philadelphia in the 18th and 19th Centuries” on February 20-22,…

About the McNeil Center

Established as the Philadelphia Center for Early American Studies in 1978, and renamed in honor of its benefactor Robert L. McNeil, Jr., in 1998, the McNeil Center facilitates scholarly inquiry into the histories and cultures of North America in the Atlantic world before 1850, with a particular but by no means exclusive emphasis on the mid-Atlantic region.

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