Over three sunny May days in Philadelphia, 150 early Americanists convened to discuss the state of our field at the McNeil Center’s “Where is Early America?” conference. Several attendees commented that the gathering felt like things used to before the pandemic—
a testament to the crowd, the liveliness of the conversations, and the abundance of old friends and colleagues.
Inevitably, we did not come up with a definitive answer to the question driving the conference. It was a question formulated by myself and our associate director, Peter Olsen-Harbich, in response to two developments that we have observed over our time at the McNeil Center. First, the research interests of recent fellowship applicants reveal a decreasing proportion of younger early Americanists working on pre-Revolutionary topics. This prompted our plan to gather together scholars who do research before 1750 to ask: how can we invigorate interest in early America’s earlier centuries?
The second development that encouraged us to take this pre-1750 focus is the omnipresence of America’s 250th anniversary. It’s entirely proper that this important landmark be widely recognized and discussed. With the Benjamin Franklin Distinguished Lectures, and events with partners ranging from Historic Trappe to WHYY Philadelphia to the Library of Congress, the McNeil Center will be leading important conversations about this landmark anniversary. Nevertheless, historians know well that context is everything, and we need to sustain our discussions about early America as broadly as possible if we are to argue for the importance of the pre-modern era to understanding America today.
So, although we didn’t find the definitive early America after three days of intensive discussion at the McNeil Center, or in the conference rooms of the American Philosophical Society, we certainly reiterated the vitality of our field’s early modern centuries. What stood out especially was scholars’ desire to question the boundaries that sometimes seem more to restrict our inquiry rather than to expand it. As I listened to conversations that urged me to cross between history and art history; to think about manors, convents, and corporations on both sides of the Atlantic side-by-side; to put on the hat of a religious studies scholar; to broaden my assumptions about value as a concept; or to jettison the customary early American chronology that assumes 1450 to be the distant past, I realized how rich our field can be when we challenge its fundamental parameters.
Since we’ll be convening again on a bi-annual basis, we at the McNeil Center are hopeful that we will continue these conversations before too long. In fact, we would love for you to tell us what we should talk about! This conference was in part conceived in response to requests from our community for an opportunity to convene en masse to address the state of our field. We think it was a big success, and we can’t wait to see you all again soon.
Emma Hart
Richard S. Dunn Director
McNeil Center for Early American Studies
Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of American History
University of Pennsylvania