Paper and panel proposals are invited for a conference on “From Conquest to Identity: New Jersey and the Middle Colonies in the Seventeenth Century,” to be co-sponsored by the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, the New Jersey
Historical Commission, and Kean University and to be held in Trenton, New Jersey, on March 27–29, 2014.
Confirmed participants include Charles Gehring, Evan Haefeli, Ned C. Landsman, Robert C. Ritchie, and the members of the program committee: Wayne Bodle, Stanley N. Katz, Christian Koot, Maxine N. Lurie, Jonathan Mercantini, Daniel K. Richter, and Cynthia Van Zandt.
The 350th anniversary of the conquest of New Netherland and the founding of English New Jersey provides an occasion to examine a number of topics connected to the origin and evolution of the Middle Colonies. The organizers are especially interested in the theme of innovation and experimentation—both as these words were understood in the seventeenth century and as an interpretive device for understanding the period—and in interdisciplinary approaches, particularly but not exclusively those drawing on archaeological research.
Among specific topics that might be explored are conquest, reconquest and the reality of empire; geography and mapping; land use, property holding, and European-Native interaction in the Hudson and Delaware watersheds; and contrasting views of various issues from the imperial metropole and the mid-Atlantic periphery. While the organizers are open to a wide range of proposals relating the conference themes to broader trends in seventeenth-century North American history, they particularly hope this conference will provide a venue for discussion of new ways of thinking about New Jersey and the Middle Colonies in the period from 1664 to 1689.
Proposals are welcome for papers of approximately thirty pages in length, which will be pre-circulated to all conference participants. Suggestions for complete panels will also be considered, but the organizers reserve the right to accept, reject, or reassign individual papers.
Submit proposals of approximately 500 words, along with curriculum vitae, to mceas@ccat.sas.upenn.edu no later than Tuesday, April 30, 2013. Accepted panelists will be notified by mid-June 2013. Papers will be due for pre-circulation no later than January 15, 2014. Some support for participants’ travel and lodging will be available.
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