ACADEMIC PRESENTATIONS, CONFERENCE PANELS, AND OTHER PUBLIC TALKS (in reverse chronological order)

[last updated July 29, 2008]

ACADEMIC PRESENTATIONS

Apr. 2008

“Historicizing the Geographic Turn.”  Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies seminar, Indiana University (Bloomington IN).

Feb. 2007

“Letter Writing, Stationery Supplies, and Consumer Modernity in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World.”  Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies seminar, Indiana University (Bloomington IN).

Dec. 2006

“Geographical Imaginaries of America in the Eighteenth-Century Anglophone Atlantic World.”  Conference entitled “From Colonies Into Republics in an Atlantic World: North America and the Caribbean in a Revolutionary Age,” University Paris 7 Denis Diderot (Paris, France).

Nov. 2006

“The Hazards of Military and Civilian Communications in Revolutionary America.”  Winton M. Blount Symposium on Postal History, National Postal Museum, Smithsonian Institution (Washington DC).

Oct. 2006

“How Global Was the Global in Early America?”  History Department Brown Bag Seminar, Indiana University (Bloomington IN).

Mar. 2006

“The Myopia of Consumer Modernity in the Eighteenth-Century Anglophone Atlantic World.”  Annual meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (Montreal, Canada).

Oct. 2005

“The Material Culture of Letter Writing and Economic Capabilities in Early America: Getting, Spending, Patronizing, Using, Exploiting.”  History Workshop seminar, University of Delaware (Newark DE).

Jun. 2005

“Letter Writing and Bourgeois Recognitions of Power in Early America: The Colonial, the Imperial, the Atlantic, and the Global.”  Annual meeting of the Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture (Santa Barbara CA).

Apr. 2005

“Slave Literacy and Visions of Agency in Early America.”  Biennial meeting of the Society of Early Americanists (Alexandria VA).

Apr. 2004

“Investing in Letter Writing in Early America.” History of the Book seminar, Institute for Advanced Study, Indiana University (Bloomington IN).

Feb. 2004

“Agency Sometimes Matters: Literate Culture and Race in Early Transatlantic America.”  Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies seminar, Indiana University (Bloomington IN).

Dec. 2003

“How to Write the History of Agency in Early America.”  Bloomington Cultural History Workshop, Indiana University (Bloomington IN).

Nov. 2003

“The Writing Desk: A Transatlantic Dialogue.”  With Dena Goodman, History Department, University of Michigan.  Boston Furniture Symposium: New Research on the Federal Period, Peabody Essex Museum (Salem MA).

Sep. 2003

“Epistolary Culture and Middle-Class Formation in Eighteenth-Century Anglo-America.”  Class and Class Struggles in North America and the Atlantic World, 1500‑1820 conference, Montana State University (Bozeman MT).

Jun. 2002

“Epistolary Culture, Codes of Masculinity, and Visions of Social Change in Early America.”  Enlightened Masculinities colloquium, Gender and Enlightenment Research Network, University of London (London, England).

May 2002

“What is the Opposite of ‘the Self’: Problems in Conceptualizing and Historicizing Selfhood.”  First annual workshop (“Signs of the Self in the Eighteenth Century”), Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Indiana University (Bloomington IN).

Jul. 2001

“Prescriptions and Practices of ‘Selfhood’: Letter Writing in Anglo-America, 1680‑1800.”  Annual meeting of the Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture (Glasgow, Scotland).

May 2001

“When Was Race at Stake? The Social and Cultural Symbolism of Literacy and Letter Writing in Anglo-America, 1680-1800.”  History Subject Group Work in Progress Seminar, University of Sussex (Brighton, England).

Apr. 2001

“Race, Writing Literacy, and Letter Writing in America, 1700-1800.”  Annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians (Los Angeles CA).

Jan. 2000

“Letter Manuals, Literary Innovation, and the Problem of Defining Genre in Anglo-American Epistolary Instruction, 1568-1800.”  Annual meeting of the Bibliographical Society of America (New York NY).

June 1999

“Letter Writing, Literacy, and Free and Enslaved Blacks in America, 1700-1800.”  Brunel-Cambridge Conference on Early American History and Culture, Brunel University (Uxbridge, England).

Mar. 1999

“The Pedagogy of Letter Writing and the Americanization of Politeness, 1750‑1800.”  Institute of United States Studies seminar at the University of London (London, England).

Mar. 1999

“Letter Writing as Social Practice in America, 1750-1800.”  Graduate Seminar in History, 1680-1830, at Lincoln College, Oxford University (Oxford, England).

Nov. 1998

“Letter Writing, Identity, and Social Evaluation in America, 1750‑1800.”  American History Seminar at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge University (Cambridge, England).

Nov. 1998

“Letter Writing and Representations of Selfhood in America, 1750-1800.”  American Studies Works in Progress Seminar at St Cross College, Oxford University (Oxford, England).

Jul. 1998

“The Middling Sort and the Social Category of Class in Eighteenth-Century Anglo‑America.”  Colloquia at the American Antiquarian Society (Worcester MA).

Apr. 1998

“Letter Writing and the Diffusion of Family Responsibility in America, 1750‑1800.”  Annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians (Indianapolis IN).

Mar. 1998

“Gender and the Iconography of Letter Writing in Early American Portraiture, 1750‑1800.”  Seminar at the National Museum of American Art / National Portrait Gallery (Washington DC).

Jan. 1998

“Letter Writing and the Rise of Male Domesticity in America, 1750-1800.”  Annual meeting of the American Historical Association (Seattle WA).

Nov. 1997

“Letter Writing and the Reevaluation of Public Authority in America, 1750‑1800.”  Annual meeting of the American Studies Association (Washington DC).

May 1997

“The ‘Complete Art of Polite Correspondence’: The Literature of Letter Writing in America, 1750-1800.”  Annual conference of the American Literature Association (Baltimore MD).

Apr. 1997

“Children, Letter Writing, and the Middle-Class Project of Self-Improvement in America, 1750-1800.”  Newberry Library Seminar in Early American History (Chicago IL).

Apr. 1997

“New Languages of Masculinity and the Formation of a Scientific Community in America, 1750-1800.”  Annual meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (Nashville TN).

Mar. 1997

“Secret Letters and Family Wars: A Reinterpretation of the American Revolution.”  Public lecture, David Library of the American Revolution (Washington Crossing PA).

Oct. 1996

“Women’s Letters as a Site of Revolutionary Struggle: Private versus Public in the Mid‑Atlantic, 1775-1783.”  Annual meeting of the Pennsylvania Historical Association (State College PA).

Sep. 1996

“Family Versus Science: Dilemmas of Masculinity in the Letters of Alexander Garden (1730-1791).”  Annual conference of the Northeast American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (Worcester MA).

July 1996

“Cosmopolitan Ideals and Middle-Class Realities: Dilemmas of Masculinity in the Letters of Jeremy Belknap (1744-1798).”  Annual conference of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (Nashville TN).

June 1996

“The Feminization of Letter Writing in Early America, 1750‑1800.”  Annual conference of the Institute for Early American History and Culture (Boulder CO).

Feb. 1996

“Letter Writing, Masculinity, and American Men of Science, 1750‑1800.”  McNeil Center for Early American Studies (Philadelphia PA).

CONFERENCE PANELS

July 2008

Comment on panel: “The Private and Public Meaning of Sentiment and Seduction.”  Annual conference of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (Philadelphia PA).

May 2008

Comment on paper by Elizabeth Wingrove.  Seventh annual workshop (“New Directions in Eighteenth-Century Studies”), Center for Eighteenth‑Century Studies, Indiana University (Bloomington IN).

July 2007

Comment on panel: “Thomas Jefferson: Family, History, Memory.”  Annual conference of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (Worcester MA).

May 2007

Sum-up session comment.  Sixth annual workshop (“Sensing and Feeling: The Embodiment of Experience in the Eighteenth Century”), Center for Eighteenth‑Century Studies, Indiana University (Bloomington IN).

May 2006

Comment on papers by David Bates and Jody Greene.  Fifth annual workshop (“Lines of Amity, Lines of Enmity: War and Peace in the Eighteenth Century”), Center for Eighteenth‑Century Studies, Indiana University (Bloomington IN).

May 2004

Sum-up session comment.  Third annual workshop (“Geographies in the Eighteenth Century: The Question of the Global”), Center for Eighteenth‑Century Studies, Indiana University (Bloomington IN).

Comment on papers by Lauren Benton and Eliga Gould.  Third annual workshop (“Geographies in the Eighteenth Century: The Question of the Global”), Center for Eighteenth‑Century Studies, Indiana University (Bloomington IN).

May 2003

Comment on papers by Paula Lee and Miranda Spieler.  Second annual workshop (“Death in the Eighteenth Century: Theory and Practice”), Center for Eighteenth‑Century Studies, Indiana University (Bloomington IN).

OTHER PUBLIC TALKS

Mar. 2004

“What Should We Know About the History of Iraq?”  Progressive Faculty Coalition Weekly Spring Forum, Indiana University (Bloomington IN).

Nov. 2003

“A Continuing Forum on American Empire and its Alternatives”  Progressive Faculty Coalition Teach-In, Monroe County Public Library (Bloomington IN).