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1998 Seminar Program


The sessions of the 1998 Atlantic History Seminar are listed below. Each presenter's name is linked to an abstract of the paper presented. A full list of Working Paper titles from the Seminars, arranged alphabetically by author, is also available.

[Please note that participants' affiliations are given as of the time of the Seminar and may have changed since then.]


Monday, August 10

Opening Reception and Dinner
Harvard Faculty Club

Tuesday, August 11

SESSION 1
9:30 a.m., Cronkhite Graduate Center

Africa: Transforming Coastal Cultures
Chair: Peter Wood, Duke University

Alexander Byrd, Rice University
"The Slave Trade from the Biafran Interior to Jamaica: Commerce, Culture Change, and Comparative Perspective"

Magnus Huber, University of Essen, Germany
"Afro-European Linguistic Encounters on the Lower Guinea Coast: The English Trading Posts on the Gold Coast and New World Creole Englishes"

SESSION 2
2:00 P.M., Cronkhite Graduate Center

First Encounters
Chair: Karen Ordahl Kupperman, New York University

Melanie Perreault, University of Central Arkansas
"Celibate Sailors, Hairy Chests, and Virgin Lands: Contesting Masculinities in the Americas"

Evan Haefeli, Princeton University
"Of Manitous and Men: First Contact in North America"

Juliana Barr, University of Wisconsin, Madison
"Gender and the Rituals of First Contact: Indian-Euroamerican Communication in the Colonial Spanish Borderlands"

Wednesday, August 12

SESSION 3
9:30 a.m., Cronkhite Graduate Center

Gender Shifts
Chair: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Harvard University

John F. Campbell, University of Cambridge, England
"Seeing 'She' across the Sea: Reassessing Notions of Womanhood in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Plantation World"

Ian David Chambers, University of Warwick, England
"Now we act more like women than Head Men": Gender and the Native American in the Colonial South"

Gunlög Fur, Växjö University, Sweden
"Women's Authority and the Anomalies of Vision in Delaware Experiences of Colonial Encounters"

Thursday, August 13

SESSION 4
9:30 a.m., Cronkhite Graduate Center

The Melding of Cultures: The Darker Powers
Chair: John Womack, Harvard University

Frank T. Proctor III, Emory University
"Black vs. White Magic: Curandismo, Race, and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Mexico"

Martha Few, University of Miami
"Illness Accusations and the Cultural Politics of Power in Colonial Santiago de Guatemala, 1650-1720"

SESSION 5
2:00 p.m., Cronkhite Graduate Center

Syncretism: Nahuatl
Chair: Louise M. Burkhart, SUNY-Albany

David Tavarez, University of Chicago
"Boundaries of Evangelization: From Ideologies of Translation to Dialectics of Reception in Early and Mid-Colonial Nahua Doctrinal Genres"

Martin V. Fleming, Tulane University
"Franciscan Missionary Theater in Sixteenth-Century New Spain: Conquering Expectations and the Syncretic Reality"

Friday, August 14

SESSION 6
9:30 a.m., Cronkhite Graduate Center

Multiplicities
Chair: Franklin W. Knight, Johns Hopkins University

Jennifer M. Spear, University of Minnesota
"'The low orders of every color': Drinking, Dancing, and Disorder in Colonial Louisiana"

Clarence V. H. Maxwell, University of Warwick, England
"Race and Slavery: The Birth of 'Customs of the Country' in Bermuda, 1616-1669"

Saturday, August 15

SESSION 7
9:30 a.m., Cronkhite Graduate Center

Linguistic Encounters: The Uses of Language
Chair: Nancy L. Hagedorn, St. John's University

Maria Candida D. M. Barros, Museu Emilio Goeldi, Brazil
"The Office of Lingua (Interpreter): A Portrait of the Religious Interpreter in Brazil in the Sixteenth Century"

John Pollack, University of Pennsylvania
"Colonial Missionaries and Indian Languages in North America, 1600-1700"

Claudio Saunt, University of Georgia
"The Power of Writing: Literacy and the Colonization of Southeastern Indians"

SESSION 8
2:00 p.m., Cronkhite Graduate Center

Economic Encounters
Chair: Gloria Main, University of Colorado, Boulder

Olutayo Adesina, University of Ibadan, Nigeria
"The Culture of Entrepreneurship, Cross-Cultural Visions, and the Construction of African-American Standards of Inheritance"

Stephen Hum, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
"'Birds Die for Food': Money and the Mentalities of Exchange among the Iroquois and the English in the Mid-Eighteenth Century"

Monday, August 17

SESSION 9
9:30 a.m., Cronkhite Graduate Center

Encounters on the Far Margins of Atlantic Empires
Chair: Paul Mapp, Harvard University

Ned Blackhawk, University of Washington
"The Violent Edge of Empire: The Spanish-Ute Alliance and the Origins of the Great Basin Indian Slave Trade"

Michael Witgen, University of Washington
" 'They Have for Neighbors and Friends the Sioux': The Migration, Adaptation, and Transformation of the Western Ojibwas in the Dakota-Ojibwa Alliance"

Linda Wimmer, Bridgewater State University
" 'To Encourage a Trade with the Indians': Brazilian Tobacco and Cross-Cultural Relations in the Hudson's Bay Company Fur Trade, 1690-1750"

SESSION 10
2:00 p.m., Cronkhite Graduate Center

Military Encounters
Chair: Fred Anderson, University of Colorado, Boulder

Guy Chet, Yale University
"Starting Over: The Transformation of European Warfare in Colonial New England"

Adam Rothman, Columbia University
"Slaves, Soldiers and Free Men in the Battle of New Orleans"

Tuesday, August 18

SESSION 11
9:30 a.m., Cronkhite Graduate Center

Ethnic Identities
Chair: Joyce Goodfriend, University of Denver

James H. Williams, Middle Tennessee State University
"Defining, Defending, and Expanding Dutchness: The Cultural Struggle for the Early Mid-Atlantic Colonies"

Natalie A. Zacek, Johns Hopkins University " 'Tomb of the Blissful Man': The Jews of Nevis, West Indies"

Wednesday, August 19

SESSION 12
9:30 a.m., Cronkhite Graduate Center

Religious Identities
Chair: Patricia Bonomi, New York University

Patrick Griffin, Northwestern University
" 'The Very Scum of Mankind': Context, Meaning, and the Creation of Scotch-Irish Ethnicity in Pennsylvania, 1717-1741"

Elizabeth Lewis Pardoe, Princeton University
"Poor Children and Enlightened Citizens: Lutheran Education in America, 1748-1800"

SESSION 13
2:00 p.m., Cronkhite Graduate Center

Creole Cultures
Chair: John Womack, Harvard University

Beatriz Helena Domingues, Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, Brazil
"Tradition and Modernity in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Iberia and the Iberian-American Colonies"

Susan Lindsey Lively, Harvard University
"Reacclimating to the Colonies: American Travelers Abroad and Their Experiences Returning to the Colonies, 1740-1776"

Jorge Cañizares Esguerra, Illinois State University
"Nation and Nature: Creole Patriotic Representations of Nature in Colonial Spanish America"

Thursday, August 20

SESSION 14
9:30 a.m., Cronkhite Graduate Center

Impact of the New World on the Old, I
Chair: Bernard Bailyn, Harvard University

Benjamin Schmidt, University of Washington
"American Allies: The Dutch Encounter with the New World, 1492-1650"

William O'Reilly, National University of Ireland, Galway
" 'Informing the heart's desire': European Perceptions of Early America"

Vera Lind, University of the Saarland, Germany
"Crossing the Atlantic Twice: Black Africans in Late Eighteenth-Century Germany—Encounters of Color, Race, Identity, and the Exotic"

Friday, August 21

SESSION 15
9:30 a.m., Harvard Faculty Club Library

Impact of the New World on the Old, II
Chair: Bernard Bailyn, Harvard University

Jorge Martins Ribeiro, Oporto University, Portugal
"Diplomacy and American Independence: The Portuguese Atlantic World and the United States"

Marcy Norton, University of California, Berkeley
"Tobacco, Chocolate, and the Indianization of Europeans"

SESSION 16
2:00 p.m., Harvard Faculty Club Library

Closing Session

Members of the Seminar

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© 1999 by The President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Pages last revised March 19, 1999.