Event



The Conestoga “Commonwealth”: Indigenous Constitutionalism and Settler Counter-Sovereignty

Friday Seminar
Matthew Kruer, University of Chicago
Feb 10, 2023 at - | Location: McNeil Center for Early American Studies, 3355 Woodland Walk/Zoom

Matthew Kruer

Matthew Kruer is an Assistant Professor of Early North American History at the University of Chicago. He specializes in early American and Indigenous histories, with a focus on the relationship between small Indigenous nations and the development of British settler colonialism. His book Time of Anarchy: Indigenous Power and the Crisis of Colonialism in Early America (Harvard University Press, 2022) examines the role of the Susquehannock nation on the outbreak of multiple colonial rebellions and the reconfiguration of Anglo-Indigenous relations in the 1670s and 1680s. His current project, Sovereigns and Subjects: Indigenous Nations within the British Atlantic Empire, investigates Native articulations and enactments of sovereignty and their influence on settler constitutionalism.

 

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The McNeil Center sponsors a seminar that meets on Friday afternoons approximately twice a month between September and May, with the paper for each session circulated in advance. Over two hundred people attend at least once a year, with an average attendance of 40 to 50 at meetings held at various sites in the Delaware Valley. While most of the regular attendees are graduate students and faculty from institutions in the Philadelphia area, participants come from as far afield as Long Island, New York City, Princeton, Baltimore, Annapolis, and Washington. 

The McNeil Center will utilize a hybrid format for seminars in which participants may gather together at the McNeil Center building (or occasionally at an MCEAS Consortium institution host in the Philadelphia area) or attend via Zoom. All in-person attendees must comply with the University of Pennsylvania’s COVID-19 policiesMasks are optional in the seminar room. For regular updates about our seminars, please join our mailing list. Please email us at mceas@sas.upenn.edu with any questions.