Past Events



Policing the Montréal-Albany Contraband Trade: The 1730 Trial of Lydius

Friday Seminar
Sarah Templier, University of Ottawa
Mar 8, 2024 at -

Sarah Templier started as an assistant professor-replacement at the University of Ottawa in the summer of 2020 after obtaining her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Templier is a cultural and social historian of…



“Distressing the distressed”: Poverty and Rent Distraint in Early Republic New York

Brown Bag Session
Kristin O’Brassill-Kulfan, Rutgers University-New Brunswick
Mar 6, 2024 at -

Kristin O’Brassill-Kulfan is Assistant Teaching Professor and Coordinator of the Undergraduate Public History Program and Graduate Public Humanities Program at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ. She holds a PhD in…



Losing "the Mind" in Translation: Cognitive Science in Haudenosaunee Origin Stories

Friday Seminar
Ittai Orr, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Mar 1, 2024 at -

Ittai Orr is an assistant professor of English at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His research focuses on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American literature with an emphasis on early Native American…



The Holy Cause: Disestablishment and State-Building in Revolutionary New York

Friday Seminar
Sarah Barringer Gordon, Penn Carey Law
Feb 23, 2024 at -

Sarah Barringer Gordon is Arlin M. Adams Professor of Constitutional Law and Professor of History, Emerita at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. She is well known for her work on religion in American…



Roots of Building Culture in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1790s – 1850s

Brown Bag Session
Charlette Caldwell, Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
Feb 21, 2024 at -

Papers are circulated in advance. For copies, please contact the McNeil Center office. --



“Exile here”—Native Geographies of Slavery in Early Virginia

Friday Seminar
Hayley Negrin, University of Illinois at Chicago
Feb 9, 2024 at -

Hayley Negrin is an assistant professor of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago specializing in Indigenous and early American history. Her book manuscript in progress “Fugitive Lands: Sovereignty and Slavery…



The “Comfortable Harbour” on the Schuylkill: Naval Asylum Construction and the Beginnings of Federal Veterans’ Care

Brown Bag Session
Moyra Williams Eaton, Pennsylvania State University
Feb 7, 2024 at -

Papers are circulated in advance. For copies, please contact the McNeil Center office. --



Inventing Money in Early Pennsylvania

Friday Seminar
Simon Middleton, William & Mary
Jan 26, 2024 at -

Simon Middleton’s specialization is early American social history and political economy. He earned his PhD from the City University of New York Graduate Center in 1998. He taught at the University of East Anglia and the…



Uncle Tom Gets Religion: Evangelical Hymns in Nineteenth-Century Stage Productions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Brown Bag Session
Chase Castle, University of Pennsylvania
Jan 24, 2024 at -

Papers are circulated in advance. For copies, please contact the McNeil Center office. --



“I fear some interference will be necessary to resque her”: Addressing Marital Breakdown Outside the Courtroom

Friday Seminar
Lindsay Keiter, Pennsylvania State University-Altoona
Dec 1, 2023 at -

Lindsay Keiter is an assistant professor of history at the Pennsylvania State University’s Altoona campus. Her current research focuses on the economic functions of marriage in the late eighteenth through early…