Conference Program


Friday February 10, 2017

The Skylight Room, 9th Floor, CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Ave., New York NY

10:30-11:00  Registration and Coffee

11:00 Welcome
Donald Robotham, Director, Advanced Research Collaborative, CUNY Graduate Center
Andrew W. Robertson, Executive Officer, History Program, CUNY Graduate Center
David Waldstreicher, CUNY Graduate Center

11:15-12:45   The First Reconstruction, I: Contexts for Black Politics
Moderator:  James Oakes, Graduate Center, City University of New York

Recasting White Supremacy: Black Resistance and the Problem of Slaveholding Authority
--Padraig Riley, Dalhousie University

Re-imagining Revolution in a Revolutionary Age
--Michael McDonnell, University of Sydney

A Different Revolutionary Settlement:  The Emergence of a Black Electorate, 1790-1822
--Van Gosse, Franklin & Marshall College

12:45-1:45  Lunch on your own

1:45-3:15  The First Reconstruction, II:  Politics as Mobility
Moderator:  Graham Hodges, Colgate University

Freedom and the Politics of Migration after the Revolution
--Samantha Seeley, University of Richmond

Reimagining the Archetypical American Immigrant
--Anna Law, Brooklyn College

Black Migration and Marronage in Illinois
--M. Scott Heerman, University of Miami

3:30-5:00  The First Reconstruction, III: Varieties of Black Political Practice, 1820-70 
Moderator:  Kellie Carter-Jackson, Hunter College

Practicing Formal Politics without the Vote: Black New Yorkers in the Aftermath of 1821
--Sarah Gronningsater, California Institute of Technology

“Agitation, tumult, violence will not cease”: Black Politics and the Compromise of 1850
--Andrew Diemer, Towson University

Jermain Loguen and the Politics of Race: 1840-1872
--Angela F. Murphy, Texas State University

Saturday February 11, 2017

McNeil Center for Early American Studies, Philadelphia PA

8:45-9:15 Sign-in / Coffee

9:15 Welcome
Daniel K. Richter, McNeil Center for Early American Studies
Van Gosse, Franklin and Marshall College

9:30-11:00  Legal History as African American Political History
Moderator: David Waldstreicher

Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America
--Martha S. Jones, University of Michigan

Protesting the Negro Seamen Acts: Toward a New Understanding of Personal Liberty, Policing, and Constitutional Change
--Kate Masur, Northwestern University

Textiles and the Material Culture of Law and Governance
--Laura F. Edwards, Duke University

11:15-12:30 Diaspora Politics and the Politics of Comparisons
Moderator: Van Gosse, Franklin and Marshall College

“Cuba Must Be Free”: African Americans and the Ten Years’ War, 1868-1878
--James Shinn, Yale University

Republican Citizenship in the post-Civil War South and French Algeria 1865-1887
--Timothy Roberts, Western Illinois University

12:30-1:45 Lunch on your own

1:45-3:30 End or Beginning? The Politics of Disfranchisement
Moderator:  Mia Bay, Rutgers University

Making Do in a ‘Murdered Democracy’: African Americans’ Recollections of Voting after the Revolution during the Era of Jim Crow
--Clare Corbould, Monash University

Battling the 'Sequel':  The Nineteenth Amendment, the Fifteenth Amendment, and Southern Black Women's Struggle to Vote, 1900s-1920s
--Liette Gidlow, Wayne State University

Disabling the Black Vote: Black Suffrage Activism and Disability in the Long 19th Century
--Rabia Belt, Stanford Law School

Former Slaves and the Politics of Nation Building
--Dale Kretz, Washington University

3:45-5:30  Black Political Cultures of the So-Called Nadir
Moderator:  Steven Hahn, New York University

“All Outside is the Sea”: Navigating Race, Citizenship, and Party in Boston, Massachusetts
--Millington Bergeson-Lockwood, Independent Scholar

“Gimme that ballot and get out mighty quick”: African Americans, Partisan Politics and Reform in Philadelphia, 1890-1910
--Julie Davidow, University of Pennsylvania

The Hidden History of Northern Civil Rights Law, 1875-1915
--Paul Finkelman, University of Pittsburgh Law School

The Politics of Uncertainty: Emigration and Fusion in the New South
--Luis-Alejandro Dinnella-Borrego, Homestead Middle School

5:30 Reception