WMQ-EMSI Workshop

Early American Biographies

Huntington Library
Overseers' Room and Garden Terrace

Presenters’ papers are precirculated among the workshop participants. In each hour-long session devoted to a particular paper, brief respondents’ comments will be followed by thirty minutes of discussion among the participants. Audience members will then be invited to join the conversation.

Registration is limited; requests for registration and access to the workshop papers should be sent to Kelly Crawford (kscraw@wm.edu).

May 25, 2012

9-9:30am ~ Coffee

Welcome and Introduction
9:30-10am
Peter Mancall, Early Modern Studies Institute
Christopher Grasso, William and Mary Quarterly
Annette Gordon-Reed, Harvard Law School

Session 1
10-11am
Steven W. Hackel, University of California Riverside
"The Many Worlds of Father Junipero Serra, California's Founding Father"

Session 2
11-12pm
Rachel Hope Cleves, University of Victoria, British Columbia
"'Miss Bryant was the Man': A Female Husband in Early America"

Session 3
12noon-1pm
Gregory Nobles, Georgia Tech
"Audubon's Origins: A Sketchy Self-Portrait in Black and White"

1-2:30pm ~ Lunch

Session 4
2:30-3:30pm
Martha S. Jones, University of Michigan
"Popote: A Life History of Slavery, Law, and the Haitian Diaspora"

3:30-4pm ~ Coffee

Session 5
4-5pm
Joshua Piker, University of Oklahoma
"'Called by us the Acorn Whistler': Biography, Microhistory, and the Ragged Edge of the Historical Record"

May 26, 2012

9-9:30am ~ Coffee

Session 6
9:30-10:30am
James Sidbury, Rice University
James H. Sweet, University of Wisconsin, Madison
"African Lives, Atlantic Biography: The Individual, the Group, and Non-Western Subjectivities"

Session 7
10:30-11:30am
Jenny Hale Pulsipher, Brigham Young University
"A Seventeenth-Century Indian in King Charles' Court: The Atlantic Worlds of John Wompas"

11:30am-12noon ~ Coffee

Session 8
12noon-1pm
Catherine O'Donnell, Arizona State University
"A Saint, I Tell You: Elizabeth Seton's Oft-Told, Untold Life"

1-2:30pm ~ Lunch

Session 9
2:30-3:30pm
Michael Oberg, State University of New York, Geneseo
"Eleazer Williams and the War of 1812"

Final Discussion
3:30-4:30pm
Annette Gordon-Reed, Harvard Law School

The WMQ-EMSI Workshops are sponsored by the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute and the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and are hosted by the Huntington Library and the University of Southern California.

Image: Parson Weems’ Fable by Grant Wood (1891–1942). Oil on canvas, 1939, 38 x 50 inches. Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, 1970.43.