Early American History Seminars in Boston for 2011-12

The Massachusetts Historical Society has announced the line-up for the Boston Area Early American History Seminar in the coming academic year. All sessions start at 5:15 P.M., with the end determined by the liveliness of the conversation and the hunger of the participants.

4 October 2011
Paul A. Gilje, University of Oklahoma
Contested Commerce: Free Trade and the Origins of the War of 1812
Comment: Drew McCoy, Clark University

1 November 2011
Todd Estes, Oakland University
The Constitution Goes Public: Strategy and Timing in the Ratification Debate, Early Fall 1787
Comment: Pauline Maier, MIT. This event will take place at McMullen Museum at Boston College.

6 December 2011
Abigail Chandler, University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and Ruth Wallis Herndon, Bowling Green State University
Panel Discussion on Colonial Family Law
Comment: Cornelia Hughes Dayton, University of Connecticut

7 February 2012
J. L. Bell, Boston 1775
Marital Infidelity and Espionage in the Siege of Boston
Comment: Robert Allison, Suffolk University

6 March 2012
Karin Wulf, College of William and Mary
Ancestry as Social Practice in Eighteenth-Century New England: The Origins of Early Republic Genealogical Vogue
Comment: Laurel Ulrich, Harvard University

3 April 2012
Len Travers, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth
The Court-Martial of Jonathan Barnes
Comment: Colin Calloway, Dartmouth College

1 May 2012
Joanne van der Woude, Harvard University
The Classical Origins of the American Self: Puritans and Indians in New England Epics
Comment: Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, Northeastern University

These aren’t lectures. Rather, the main speaker supplies his or her paper in advance, available to seminar subscribers by email or mail and to others at the M.H.S. itself. The commenter responds to that paper, and discussion proceeds as if everyone has actually read it—which they usually have. There are usually sandwiches afterward to facilitate further discussion.