“Crafting Narratives of Empire” Conference Program

Crafting Narratives of Empire: Contested Roots of Revolution in the Long Eighteenth Century

Hosted by the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies (ITPS) at Iona University and the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy at the University of Missouri

September 22nd – 24th, 2022, New Rochelle, New York and virtually via zoom webinar

#ITPSKinderCon

Conference website: https://theitps.org/2022-conference/

In-person conference registration: https://itps.ticketleap.com/itpskindercon/

Covid-19 Precautions: to ensure everyone’s comfort and safety we ask that all in-person attendees remain masked while indoors except for when eating/drinking and/or delivering their own presentations.

*Special thanks to the Robert David Lion Gardner Foundation for supporting this conference*

Thursday, September 22nd

Registration and Information Desk: 3pm – 6pm

Location: Lobby, Spellman Hall

Conference Welcome: 4pm – 4:15pm

Introduction: Nora Slonimsky, Iona University/ITPS

Speakers: Tricia Mulligan, Interim Provost, Iona University, and Alec Zuercher Reichardt, University of Missouri /Kinder Institute

Location: Location: Henry Lecture Hall, La Penta Auditorium (105)

Opening Book Talk with Elizabeth Ellis, Princeton University: 4:15pm – 5:15pm (hybrid session)

Zoom Registration: : https://iona.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_k5BiAQoxRj2–bmHG_GC9g

Chair/Commentator: Nora Slonimsky, Iona University/ITPS

Location: Location: Henry Lecture Hall, LaPenta School of Business 105

Dr. Elizabeth Ellis is an Assistant professor at Princeton University and a citizen of the Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma. Her opening talk will discuss her new book, The Great Power of Small Nations: Indigenous Diplomacy in the Gulf South. The Great Power of Small Nations will be published October 31, 2022 by the University of Pennsylvania Press. You can pre-order it with a discount between September 15th and October 3rd using the code ELLISITPS30-FM. Thank you to Penn Press for facilitating!

Performance, Commentary, and Reception 5:30pm – 7pm (hybrid session)

Zoom Registration: https://iona.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_8P-bdbpeTuih-oBIRc0DcQ

Chair/Commentator: Michael Crowder, Iona University/ITPS

Location: La Penta Terrace and Henry Lecture Hall, LaPenta School of Business 105

Inspired by the internship collaboration between Iona University and the Center for Digital History at George Washington’s Mount Vernon, this event features live performances of Revolutionary Era historical tunes from the Early American Music Manuscripts Database. Under the direction of Dr. Adam Rosado (Iona University), student ensemble musicians will perform adapted tunes from the database, as well as an arrangement of Thomas Paine’s “American Crisis No. 1.” Dr. Hilary Jones (Iona University) will perform eighteenth century adapted tunes, with commentary on the art of researching and playing historical music manuscripts. Dr. James Ambuske (Center for Digital History, Mount Vernon) will introduce the performances.

Friday, September 23rd

Registration and Information Desk: 8am – 4pm

Location: Lobby, Spellman Hall

Session One: 9am – 10:30am

1A: Forging Citizenship and Nationality in American Empire

Chair/Commentator: Andrew Robertson, Graduate Center, CUNY

Location: Faculty Dining, Spellman Hall

  1. Evan Turiano, Queens College, CUNY, “Somerset and the Revolutionary Politics of Fugitive Slave Rendition”
  2. Duangkamol Tantirunkij, Graduate Center, CUNY, “Slave Litigants, Speculators, and Settlers: The Struggle for Legal Personhood in the Northwest Territory during the 1790s”

1B: Recrafting Imperial Narratives from the Periphery: Colonial Subjects and the Shaping of the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic World (hybrid session)

Zoom Registration: https://iona.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_8qPEgVD8TkyWqK8tQQfmDg

Chair/Commentator: Michael Blaakman, Princeton University

Location: Faculty Reception, Spellman Hall

  1. Brendon Floyd, University of Missouri, “Culprits of the Atlantic: The United Irish, British Armed Service, and the Age of Revolution”
  2. Shannan Mason, University of Missouri, “18th Century Athenaeum in Flux: Challenging the Transatlantic Center/Periphery Narrative of Scientific Knowledge Exchange between London and Philadelphia”
  3. Joseph Ross, Independent Scholar, “‘The Strongest Assurances…of Enjoying Some of Those Lands’: American Colonists and the Crafting of Imperial Land Policy in British North America, 1763-1775” (virtual)

– break: 10:30am to 10:45am –

Session Two: 10:45am – 12:15pm

2A: Imperial Policy and Indigenous Politics

Chair/Commentator: Elizabeth Ellis, Princeton University

Location: Faculty Dining, Spellman Hall

  1. Ryan Langton, Temple University, “Controlling the Great Old Path: Colonies, Clans, Towns, and Traders Competing over Creek-British Diplomacy”
  2. BJ Lillis, Princeton University, “To the Heart of Empire: Pressing Indigenous Land Claims in London in 1766”
  3. Robert Paulett, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, “From Indians to Interest: Lord Shelburne’s Archive and a New Narrative of Indigenous Subjecthood in the British Atlantic”

2B: State-building in Theory and Practice (hybrid session)

Zoom Registration: https://iona.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_kG2b3ouwSiadmqRp4MT6Wg

Chair/Commentator: Armin Mattes, Papers of James Madison

Location: Faculty Reception, Spellman Hall

  1. Edgar Esparza, University of Chicago, “‘[A] system which we wish to last for ages’: An Analysis of Early American External and Internal Sovereignty, 1774-1790”
  2. Douglas S. Harvey, Independent Scholar, “Idleness and Luxury as Nature’s Storehouse for Funding Government: Eighteenth-Century Social Welfare in Herman Husband’s Liberation Theology”
  3. Timothy Leech, The Mary Baker Eddy Library, “To ‘immediately raise an Army’: Reconsidering Narratives of State Formation during the American Revolution”
  4. Grace Mallon, Kinder Institute/University of Oxford, Title Forthcoming (virtual)
  5. Alyssa Penick, University of Virginia, “Dismantling Establishment and Enacting Sovereignty: Religion and Authority in the Revolutionary Chesapeake” (virtual)

– Lunch: 12:15pm to 2pm –

Session Three: 2pm – 3:30pm

3A: Surviving Empire: Small Indigenous Nations in the Long Eighteenth Century

Chair/Commentator: Daniel Mandell, Truman State University

Location: Faculty Dining, Spellman Hall

  1. Brooke Bauer, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, “Catawba Women and South Carolina Empire-building in the Late Eighteenth Century”
  2. Matthew Kruer, University of Chicago, “Dismembering the Imperial Body Politic: Conestoga Constitutionalism and Settler Counter-Sovereignty”
  3. Hayley Negrin, University of Illinois, Chicago, “Cockacoeske’s Rebellion: Nathaniel Bacon, Indigenous Slavery and International Law in the Powhatan World”

3B: Creating National Narratives (hybrid session)

Zoom Registration: https://iona.zoom.us/j/97457763100?pwd=c3RlT2tUK1cxZldkQklSZ0JrUEEwQT09

Chair/Commentator: Mark Boonshoft, Virginia Military Institute

Location: Faculty Reception, Spellman Hall

  1. Billy Coleman, Kinder Institute, University of Missouri, “Benjamin Franklin and the Colonial Roots of American National Music” (virtual)
  2. Shira Lurie, Saint Mary’s University, “Rupture or Continuity? The Partisan Battle for a New Political Culture” (virtual)
  3. Eran Zelnik, California State University, Chico, “A Nation of Minutemen: How the Myth of Lexington and Concord Helped Forge an Empire”

– break: 3:30pm to 3:45pm –

Session Four: 3:45pm – 5:15pm

4A: Somerset v. Steuart at 250: Controversy, Opportunity, and Imperial Context (hybrid)

Chair/Commentator: David Waldstreicher, Graduate Center, CUNY

Zoom registration: https://iona.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_s3Tu2MBxSxOOW4kSMV3OVA

Location: Hynes Institute, Spellman Hall

  1. John Blanton, City College, CUNY
  2. Henry Buehner, Chestnut Hill College
  3. Harvey Neptune, Temple University
  4. Lee B. Wilson, Clemson University (virtual)

4B: Roundtable: DH and Databasing Colonial Legacies (hybrid session)

Zoom Registration: https://iona.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_yHYxK9ecTDejdk8H64L8hg

Chair/Commentator: Alexi Garrett, Saint Michael’s College (virtual)

Location: Faculty Reception, Spellman Hall

  1. Ben Bankhurst, Shepherd University
  2. Alison Booth, University of Virginia (virtual)
  3. Linford Fisher, Brown University
  4. Alexandra Montgomery, Fred W. Smith Library at George Washington’s Mount Vernon and the Leventhal Map Center
  5. Marcus Nevius, University of Rhode Island
  6. Kyle Roberts, Congregational Library and Archives (virtual)
  7. Kaitlin Tonti, Albright College (virtual)
  8. Ben Wright, University of Texas, Dallas

Keynote and reception with Steven Pincus, University of Chicago: 5:30pm – 7:30pm (hybrid session)

Zoom Registration: https://iona.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_C5PnfxDmSt2C1mPkuKLp_w

Introduction/Commentator: Kellen Heniford, Iona University/ITPS, and the Richards Center, Penn State University

Location: Burke Lounge

Saturday, September 24th

Registration and Information Desk: 8am – 4pm

Location: Lobby, Spellman Hall

Session Five: 9am – 10:45am

5A: Perspectives on Loyalists

Chair/Commentator: Lauren Duval, University of Oklahoma

Location: Faculty Dining, Spellman Hall

  1. Sarah Beth Gable, Brandeis University, “What Does it Mean to be Inimical?: Massachusetts Communities, Ambiguous Allegiances, and Political Consensus in the American Revolution”
  2. Patrick O’Brien, University of Tampa, “Patriots in the True Sense of the Word: Captain John MacDonald and a View of the American Revolution from the Canadian Maritimes”
  3. Jessica Choppin Roney, Temple University, “Statelessness in Empire Building: Two Revolutionary Diasporas”

5B. Structures of Eighteenth Century-Empire (hybrid session)

Zoom Registration: https://iona.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ceAg1HBoS3-aOJ0iJCmWzA

Chair/Commentator: Katlyn Carter, University of Notre Dame (virtual)

Location: Faculty Reception, Spellman Hall

  1. Philippe Halbert, Yale University, “Letters to Louisiana: Reading Madame Bégon as Imperial Microhistory, 1748-1753″(virtual)
  2. Michael Kimaid, Bowling Green State University, Firelands College, “Power in Science and Empire: An Inquiry into the Origins of a Concept”(virtual)
  3. Virginia Mondello, LUMSA University, “Self-Government, Municipalism and Central Administration: Institutional Relations in Colonial North America”(virtual)

– break: 10:45am to 11am –

Session Six: 11am – 12:45pm

6A: Imperial Crises

Chair/Commentator: Joseph Adelman, Framingham State University

Location: Faculty Dining, Spellman Hall

  1. Joel W. Herman, Trinity College, Dublin, “Complicating Imperial Models: the Newspaper and the Centre-Periphery Framework”
  2. Grant Kleiser, Columbia University, “No Condition to Reap the Imagined Benefits of Free Ports: A Reassessment of the Imperial Crisis, 1764-1776”
  3. Helena Yoo Roth, Graduate Center, CUNY, “‘Virtual Representation’ as a Matter of Time and Communications in the Coming of the American Revolution”
  4. Robert Swanson, Rutgers University, Camden, “Richard Stockton and the Transformation of Imperial Identity”

6B: Roundtable: Claiming [the] States (hybrid session)

Zoom Registration: https://iona.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_R_M8JHAgRtWzTF2tbw8wFg

Chair/Commentator: Hannah Farber, Columbia University

Location: Faculty Reception, Spellman Hall

  1. Emilie Connolly, Brandeis University (virtual)
  2. Yoav Hamdani, Columbia University (virtual)
  3. Sean Harvey, Seton Hall University (virtual)
  4. Lindsay Regele, Miami University of Ohio (virtual)

– Lunch: 12:45pm to 2:15pm –

Session Seven: 2:15pm – 3:45pm

7A: Reevaluating Salutary Neglect and Narratives of Authority

Chair/Commentator: Emma Hart, University of Pennsylvania/McNeil Center for Early American Studies

Location: Faculty Dining, Spellman Hall

  1. Megan Cherry, North Carolina State University, “Did Salutary Neglect Exist? A Case Study of New York, c.1691-1715”
  2. Zachary Deibel, Binghamton University, “Learning in Eighteenth-Century New York: Perceptions, Anxieties, Prescriptions, and the State”
  3. Winston Hill, Yale University, “Heats and Animosities: Jamaica, New York, and the Imperial Narrative”
  4. Amy Watson, University of Alabama at Birmingham, “Georgia: A British Imperial Project in an Age of ‘Neglect’”

7B: Empires on the Peripheries (hybrid session)

Chair/Commentator: Asheesh Siddique, University of Massachusetts, Amherst (virtual)

Webinar registration: https://iona.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_l-oy5lhpTByBJ8wF6dCZzg

Location: Faculty Reception, Spellman Hall

  1. Boaz Berger, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, “Counter-Revolution or Gradual Process? The Role of Empire in British Public Participation in the Aftermath of the American Revolution”
  2. Emily Chastain, Boston University School of Theology, “Building a Methodist Empire, Establishing an Independent Network” (virtual)
  3. Jeffers Lennox, Wesleyan University, “Among the Powers of the Hearth: Indigenous Nations, Canada, and the Limits of Revolution” (virtual)
  4. Anjali Malhotra, Alexander College, “Revisiting the Lost Chivalry and the Sovereign Indian-Nation Community: The Sikh Empire in British Imperial India”

– break: 3:45pm to 4pm –

Session Eight: 4pm – 5:30pm

8A: Roundtable: Public History and Commemoration (hybrid session)

Zoom Registration: https://iona.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_QKTu9GdvRvawq027OG3n1w

Chair/Commentator: Michael Crowder, Iona University/ITPS

Location: Faculty Reception, Spellman Hall

  1. Shirley Brown Alleyne, Center for Brooklyn History, Brooklyn Public Library
  2. Margaret Downey, Thomas Paine Memorial Association
  3. Aaron Noble, New York State Museum
  4. Mary Tsaltas-Ottomanelli, Independent Scholar

Plenary and closing reception: 5:45pm – 7:30pm (hybrid session)

Zoom Registration: https://iona.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Q7ABFTYiTI2vLK_CzuGJoA

Introduction/Commentator: Alec Zuercher Reichardt, University of Missouri/Kinder Institute

Location: Burke Lounge, Spellman Hall

  1. Christian Ayne Crouch, Bard College
  2. Tawny Paul, University of California, Los Angeles
  3. Josh Piker, William and Mary and Editor, The William and Mary Quarterly at the Omohundro Institute
  4. Andy Shankman, Rutgers University, Camden, and Editor, The Journal of the Early Republic (virtual)

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