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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



Insurgent Making

Brown Bag Session
Hampton Smith, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Mar 26, 2025 at - | Location: McNeil Center, Room 105/Zoom

Hampton Smith is doctoral candidate in the History, Theory, and Criticism of Art and Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is completing a dissertation, “Making against Slavery: Artisanry,…



Southern New England Absence and Presence in the Colonial Archival Record

Brown Bag Session
Lydia Curliss, University of Maryland
Apr 9, 2025 at - | Location: McNeil Center, Room 105/Zoom

Lydia Curliss (Nipmuc) is a PhD Candidate at the University of Maryland, College of Information.  Her research interests include Indigenous Knowledges, cultural heritage memory institutions and their collections,…



"Work and Be Happy": Craft, Slavery, and Social Reform in Philadelphia, 1783-1840

Brown Bag Session
Bethany McGlyn, University of Virginia
Apr 23, 2025 at - | Location: McNeil Center, Room 105/Zoom

Bethany McGlyn is a PhD candidate and Jefferson Scholars Foundation Fellow at the University of Virginia studying craft labor and material culture in early national Philadelphia. In spring and summer 2025, Bethany will…

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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