Past Friday Seminars



“A Distant People”: The History of Slavery and Race in the US Declaration of Independence

Friday Seminar
Steve Sarson, Université Jean Moulin
Mar 24, 2023 at -

Steve Sarson is Professor of American Civilization at Université Jean Moulin in Lyon, France. He did his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University and previously taught at Towson State University in Baltimore and Swansea…



Our Ridiculous Resistance: Love, Latinidad, and Some Jokes in the Baroque

Friday Seminar
Ana Schwartz, University of Texas at Austin
Feb 24, 2023 at -

Ana Schwartz is the author of Unmoored: The Search for Sincerity in Colonial America (OIEAHC January 2023), a case study in the history of the desire to escape history. Since completing this work, she has been…



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

Friday Seminar
Matthew Kruer, University of Chicago
Feb 10, 2023 at -

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…



Settlers’ Botany: Science, Classification, and Conflict in the Caribbean

Friday Seminar
Hannah Anderson, University of Toronto
Jan 27, 2023 at -

Hannah Anderson is the University College Fellow in Early American History at the University of Toronto. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2021. Her book manuscript, Lived Botany: Settlers…



“No Such Place”: Law and Geography in Western Newfoundland, 1763-1778

Friday Seminar
Arianne Sedef Urus, McNeil Center for Early American Studies
Jan 13, 2023 at -

Arianne Sedef Urus, Barra Postdoctoral Fellow at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, is an environmental and legal historian of the eighteenth-century Atlantic World. Her current book project, provisionally…



Hereditary Term Slavery and the Pursuit of Restitution in Antebellum Pennsylvania

Friday Seminar
Cory James Young, University of Nebraska-Lincoln and 2020-2021 Friends of the MCEAS Dissertation Fellow
Dec 9, 2022 at -

Cory James Young is currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Young is a historian of abolition and slavery in the American North. He received his Ph.D. from Georgetown…



Freedom, Faith and Family: Black Migrants and the formation of their West Philadelphia Community

Friday Seminar
Donna Rilling, Stony Brook University
Nov 4, 2022 at -

Donna Rilling is Associate Professor of History at the State University of New York at Stony Brook where she focuses on the history of the early American republic. She completed her doctoral work at the University of…



Treaty Claims and the Reorganization of Fiduciary Colonialism in the Wake of Indian Removal

Friday Seminar
Emilie Connolly, Brandeis University and 2017-2018 MCEAS Consortium Dissertation Fellow
Oct 21, 2022 at -

Emilie Connolly is an Assistant Professor of History at Brandeis University. She specializes in the nineteenth-century U.S., with a focus on the history of political economy, colonialism, and the Indigenous peoples of…



Own Nothing: Rethinking Theft in Slavery's Archives

Friday Seminar
Ajay Batra, University of Southern California and 2019-2020 MCEAS Hamer Dissertation Fellow
Oct 7, 2022 at -

Ajay [UH-jay] Kumar Batra is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Southern California’s Society of Fellows in the Humanities. Batra is a literary and cultural historian working at the intersection of…



Race, Labor, and Unfreedom: Imagining the Pennsylvania Trans-Appalachian West: 1747-1780

Friday Seminar
Lucien Holness, Virginia Tech and 2018-2019 MCEAS Consortium Dissertation Fellow
Sep 23, 2022 at -

Lucien Holness is an Assistant Professor of History at Virginia Tech, specializing in African American history and the early United States. His current book project examines the making of free soil and black freedom, as…