US History Workshop

The Georgetown U.S. History Workshop welcomes distinguished scholars from outside Georgetown to present cutting-edge research in U.S. history. We sponsor discussions of pre-circulated papers and recently published books. Students and scholars from the D.C. area are welcome to attend.  Please contact Prof. Chandra Manning for more information. If you wish to be added to the seminar’s email list, please email guhistory@georgetown.edu.

All events take place at 4pm in ICC 662 unless otherwise stated.

2019-2020

Margaret O’Mara (September 17) – The Code (ICC 662, 12:30pm)

Lawrence Glickman (October 2) – Free Enterprise: An American History

Erin Chapman (October 30) – “Lorraine Hansberry”

Cory Young (December 3) – “Beyond Pennsylvania: Gradual Abolition Migrations in Black and White”

Ari Ne’eman (January 21) – “Exploring Disability in American History”

Elsa Barraza Mendoza (February 25) – “Slavery and Jesuit Universities”

2018-2019

February 14 – Erin Mauldin (University of South Florida). “Unredeemed Land: An
Environmental History of Civil War and Emancipation in the Cotton South,”

2017-2018

October 24, 12:30-2:00 PM, ICC 662
Dr. Herbert Brewer, Assistant Professor, Morgan State University (2017-18 Georgetown/Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow for Study of Slavery)
“Restless and Ambitious Men”: Chesapeake Free Blacks and the American Colonization Society”

November 28, 12:30-2:00 PM, ICC 450
Dr. Julia Bernier, 2017-18 Georgetown/Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow for the Study of Slavery
“Ransomed!” Abolitionists Debate Compensated Manumission”

March 27, 3:30-5:00 PM, ICC 662
Gregory Downs, UC Davis
“The Civil War the World Made: Cuba, Spain, and the Crisis of U.S. Politics in the 1850s”

2016-2017

“Slavery, Revolution, and the Limits of Freedom in the Atlantic World”
September 26, 11:30-1:00 PM, CCAS Boardroom (ICC 2nd floor, enter through 241)
A conversation with Greg Grandin (New York University) & Adam Rothman (Georgetown University)
This is an Americas Initiative event co-sponsored by the Georgetown U.S. History Workshop

“A World More Concrete: Real Estate and the Remaking of Jim Crow South Florida”
November 14, Time and Location TBD
Nathan Connolly (Johns Hopkins)
This is part of the History at the Intersections Research Seminar Series

2015-2016

October 5, 4:30-6:30 PM, ICC 662
Lisa McGirr, Harvard University
“Prohibition and the Rise of the 20th Century Penal State”

October 15, 7:00-9:00 PM, Film Screening Classroom (Second Floor of the Healy Family Student Center)
Marcus Rediker, University of Pittsburgh
Film Screening of Ghosts of Amistad

November 2, 12:30-2:00 PM, ICC 450
Michael Zakim, Tel Aviv University
“The Bottom Line, or How Capitalism Re-Invented the Truth”

April 11, 4:00-6:00 PM, ICC 701
Gary Gerstle, Cambridge University
“Liberty and Coercion: The Paradox of American Government from the Founding to the Present”
RSVP and more details: https://liberty-and-coercion.eventbrite.com

2014-2015

The 19th Century U.S. Seminar is on hiatus for fall 2014.  Please check with us in late fall for the spring 2015 schedule.

2013-2014

October 4
Walter Johnson, Harvard University
discusses his book River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom, with comments by Adam Rothman

November 8
Barbara Krauthamer, University of Massachusetts Amherst
“Runaway Slave Women in Antebellum America”

December 6
Randy Sparks, Tulane University
“The Havana-New Orleans Connection in the Illegal Slave Trade”

January 17
Daniel Rood, University of Georgia
“The Richmond-Rio Circuit: Entangled Technologies and Mass Consumption in the Slaveholding Atlantic World, 1760-1860”

February 28
Jonathan Levy, Princeton University
“Corporations, Profit and Non-Profit.”

March 21
Laurent Dubois, Duke University
“The Banjo and Blackface Minstrelsy”

April 4
Rebecca McLennan, University of California, Berkeley
“Living Law in Early America”

2012-2013

October 22
Aaron Marrs, State Department
“What is the Meaning of the Transportation Revolution?”

November 12
Kristin Hoganson, Illinois University
“Between Place & Space: Pioneers, Kickapoos, & the Politics of Locality”

January 28
Edward Rugemer, Yale University
“The Politics of Slavery Transformed: Th Impact of Abolitionism & the Haitian Revolution in Jamaica & South Carolina”.
This talk was featured in The Hoya, the Georgetown University newspaper.

February 25
Robin Blackburn, Essex University, UK, and the New School, NY
discusses his recent book The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights

March 25
Ed Baptist, Cornell University
“Right Hand, Left Hand and the Whipping-Machine: Enslaved Labor and the Making of Modern Power”

April 15
Megan K. Nelson, Harvard University
 “Blue and Gray and Gold: Mining in the Civil War Southwest”

2011-2012

September 12
Richard White, Department of History, Stanford University
discusses his recent book Railroaded

October 17
John Brooke, Department of History, Ohio State University
“Forging the Civil War North: Political Crisis, Fugitive Slaves, and Liminal Rupture in Antebellum America, 1850-1854”

December 8
Tera Hunter, Department of History, Princeton University
“Bound as Fast in Wedlock as a Slave Can Be: Slavery and Marriage Entanglements”

January 23
Seth Rockman, Department of History, Brown University
“Negro Cloth: Mastering the Market for Slave Clothing in Antebellum America”

February 6
Amy S. Greenberg, Pennsylvania State University
 “Imperial Amnesia: Forgetting the U.S. Mexico War and Its Veterans”

March 19
Millington Bergeson-Lockwood, George Mason University
” A Woman’s Place is Where She is Needed: African American Women and the Politics of Gender, Race, and Party in Boston MA during the late 19th Century”

April 16
Thomas Andrews, Department of History, University of Colorado at Denver
“Slaves and Non-Human Animals in the Antebellum US South”