Fall 2021:

September 17
Randy Browne (Xavier University)
Driving: Slave Drivers and the Management of Enslaved Laborers on British Caribbean Plantations
Respondent: Dusty Dye (UMD) 

October 15
Tracy Barnett (University of Georgia)
A Powder Keg: Buying and Selling Guns in the Antebellum South
Respondent: Derek Litvak (UMD)

November 5
Justin Clark (Nanyang Technical University, Singapore)
The Chronopolitics of Gradual Emancipation in Early Republican Pennsylvania
Respondent: JP Fetherston (UMD)

December 10
Holly Brewer (UMD)
Creating a Common Law of Slavery for England and its New World Empire
Respondent: Zachary Dorner (UMD)

Spring 2022:

February 4
Elizabeth Clay (University of Pennsylvaia) 
“Proceed Directly to Cayenne:” The Role of Amazonian Spice Production in Shaping Nineteenth-Century Slavery and Franco-American Commerce
Respondent: Katie Labor (UMD) 

March 4
Jerome Dotson (University of Arizona)
“Less than a peck of corn-meal per week:” Provisioning, Food Insecurity, and Plantation Reform in the Antebellum South
Respondent: Michael Guy (George Washington University)

April 1
Marjoleine Kars (University of Maryland – Baltimore College)
Multiple Crossings: The Lives of Two African Men in the Eighteenth-Century Dutch Atlantic
Respondents: Jordan Sly (UMD)

April 29
Matthew Mason (Brigham Young University)
Slavery and the Politics of Humanity in the Era of the American Revolution
Respondents: Hannah Nolan (UMD)

Fall 2020:

September 18
Sarah Barringer Gordon and Kevin Waite (University of Pennsylvania and Durham University, UK)
Westward on the Tortured Path: The Law of Freedom and Slavery in California and Utah
Respondent: Katie Labor (UMD) 

October 23
Travis Glasson (Temple University) 
A “Natural and Equivocal Character”: Peter Van Schaack and the Price of Conscience in the American Revolution 
Respondent: Derek Litvak (UMD)

November 13
Marcus P. Nevius (University of Rhode Island)
“An Intire Tax”: Dismal Plantation and the Question of Petit Marronage, 1760s to the 1790s
Respondent: Taylor Kocher (UMD)

Spring 2021:

February 5
Grant Stanton (University of Pennsylvania)
Revolutionary Insults: A Moral History of Boston and the Stamp Act Crisis
Respondent: Sophie Hess (UMD) 

March 5
Roger Bailey (University of Maryland – College Park)
“Nefarious and Inhuman Traffic”: US Naval Officers and the Transatlantic Slave Trade
Respondent: Christopher Bonner (UMD)

April 9
Carla Cervasco (Rutgers University)
The Tobacco Pipe-Makers Arms: Gender, Race, Clay, and Tobacco in the 17th Century Chesapeake
Respondents: Joshua Irvin (George Washington University)

Fall 2018:

September 28
Benjamin Carp (Brooklyn College)
The New York City Fire of 1776: Black Arsonists and Accusers 
Respondent: Holly Hynson (UMD) 

October 12
Margaret Gilliken (Winthrop University)
“Reduced from a State of Affluence to Straitened Circumstances”: How St. Dominguan Refugees Reversed Their Dire Circumstances 
Respondent: Lauren Michalak (UMD)

November 16
Scott Heerman (University of Miami)
Freedom as a Problem of State Power: The Case of the U.S. North, 1760-1820 
Respondent: Nathan Wuertenberg (George Washington) 

December 7
Katrina Ponti (University of Rochester)
A Spy on the Wall: John Gardiner Jr. and U.S. Foreign Relations in the Atlantic World 
Respondent: Roger Bailey (UMD) 

Spring 2019:

February 8
Chris Blakley (McNeil Center)
Sinews of the Slave Trade: Exchanging Animals in West Africa 
Respondent: Sophie Hess (UMD) 

March 2
Chris Bonner (University of Maryland)
Capital and Antislavery: Moses Grandy’s Pursuit of Freedom 
Respondent: Robert Levine (UMD)

April 12
Jenifer Egloff (New York University)
Trust in Numbers: Early Modern Atlantic Merchants and Mariners 
Respondents: JP Fetherston and Jessica Leeper (UMD)

May 3
Alyssa Penick (University of Michigan)
All Roads Lead to Disestablishment?: Comparing the Separation of Church and State in Maryland and Virginia in the Early Republic 
*Co-sponsored by the Fred W. Smith Library at George Washington’s Mount Vernon
Respondent: Matt Fischer (UMD)

Fall 2017:

September 29
Casey Schmitt (College of William and Mary)
“Nor any Spaniard I have met with”: Iberian Expertise and English Cacao in Seventeenth-Century Jamaica
Respondent: Matthew Ball (UMD)

October 13
James Illingworth (University of Maryland)
Black Enlightenment: State and Society in Antebellum New Orleans
Respondent: N/A

November 17
Matthew Kruer (University of Oklahoma)
Time of Anarchy: Colonial Rebellion and the Wars of the Susquehannocks, 1675-1685
Respondent: Derek Litvak (UMD)

December 8
Tyler Parry (Cal State Fullerton)
Hounds and “Inhuman Men-hunters”: Interspecies Violence in the Atlantic World
Respondent: Holly Hynson (UMD)

February 9
Greta LaFleur (Yale University)
Whither Rape in the History of Sexuality?
*Co-sponsored with Prof. Robert Levine and the Department of English’s Local Americanists Group
Respondent: Claire Lyons (UMD)

March 9
Sarah Pearsall (University of Cambridge) 
Polygamy and Power in Early America
Respondent: Rachel Walker (UMD)

March 30
Will Mackintosh (University of Mary Washington)
Red Jacket Bathed Here: Inventing Indian Origins for Leisure in the Early Republic
Respondent: Katie Labor (UMD)

April 20
Margot Minardi (Reed College)
American Internationalism in an Age of Nationalism: The Nineteenth-Century Movement for a Congress of Nations
Respondent: Roger Bailey (UMD)

May 4
Lindsay Chervsinky (Southern Methodist University)
The President’s Cabinet and the Whiskey Rebellion
*Co-sponsored by the Fred W. Smith Lirary at George Washington’s Mount Vernon 
Respondent: Lauren Michalak (UMD)

Fall 2016:

September 16
Richard Boles (Oklahoma State University)
“Not of whites alone, but of blacks also”: Black, Indian and European Protestants, 1730-1749

October 21
John Sweet (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
Rape, Recourse, and the Law of Seduction in the Early Republic

November 4
Clare Lyons (University of Maryland – College Park)
Global Transit, Sexual Slavery and the Making of an Eighteenth-Century Anglo-Oceanic World

December 2
Jane Manners (Princeton University)
“Infinitely Dangerous to the Revenue of the United States: A Case Study in the Decline of Congress’s Power of the Purse

Spring 2017:

January 27
Richard Bell (University of Maryland – College Park)
No Man’s Land: The Reverse Underground Railroad on the Eastern Shore

February 24
Robert Parkinson (Binghamton University)
An Incident at Yellow Creek: Chief Logan, Michael Cresap, and the Heart of American Darkness

March 17
Ellen Ledoux (Rutgers University)
The Queer Contact Zone: Empire and Military Masculinity in the Memoirs of Hannah Snell and Mary Anne Talbot, 1750-1810

April 21
Justene Hill (University of Virginia)
“Carry on a Traffic with the Negroes”: The Politics and Legalities of the Slaves’ Economy in Late-Antebellum South Carolina

May 12
Philip Gould (Brown University)
*Co-sponsored by UMD’s English Department

Fall 2015:

Spring 2016

February 5
Katlyn Carter (Princeton University)
The Politics of Secrecy in the Early Republic, 1789-1796
Respondent: Nicole Mahoney (UMD)
*Co-sponsored by the Fred W. Smith Lirary at George Washington’s Mount Vernon.

March 11
Joshua D. Rothman (Alabama University)
Slave Traders in the Eyes of the Enslaved
Respondents: Lucien Holness and Katie Labor (UMD)

April 1
Marjoleine Kars (UMBC)
Freedom Marooned: An Atlantic Slave Rebellion in the Early Modern Dutch Caribbean
Respondent: Matt Ball (UMD)

May 6
Natalie Joy (Northern Illinois University)
Finding Refuge in the Wigwam: Native Americans and the Underground Railroad
Respondent: Lindy Cummings (UMD)

Fall 2014:

Fall 2013:

Fall 2012:

Fall 2011:

Spring 2007

April 12
Harvey Amani Whitfield (University of Vermont)
Black Loyalists and Black Slaves in Maritime Canada

May 10
Pat Bonomi (New York University)
Slave Religion in British America: An Atlantic Story