Book History Panels at the Society of Early Americanists Conference

I'm off to Philadelphia on Wednesday morning for the Seventh Biennial Conference of the Society of Early Americanists, which runs Thursday-Saturday 3-5 March. Very appropriately, there are some book history and digital humanities panels on the program [PDF]. I'm particularly fond of the Early American Libraries Roundtable in Session Four (which I helped organize), but will certainly be attending the others as well (well, one per session anyway).

Watch for tweets from me and others throughout the conference; we'll be using the #sea11 hashtag.

Thursday, 3 March

Session One (8:45-10:15)

Preserving History in the New Nation:

Chair: Charlene Mires, Rutgers-Camden & Director of MARCH (Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities)

• "Patriots and Antiquarians: Preserving the Revolution in the Early Republic," Alea Henle (University of Connecticut)
• "Patriots in the Attic: Heritage and Virtue after the Revolutionary Moment," Simon Gilhooley (Cornell University)
• "An Ancient Landscape for a New Nation: Sites, Cities, Collections," Whitney Martinko (University of Virginia)

Session Two (8:45-10:15)

Early American Sentimentalism and Religion:

Chair: Wendy Roberts (Northwestern University)

• "The Emotions of Anti-Revivalism in James Walcot's The New Pilgrim's Progress, or, the Pious Indian Convert," Laura Stevens (University of Tulsa)
• "On Mediocrity: Sentimental Modes and Pious Versifiers," Meredith Neuman (Clark University)
• "Tears Elect: Religious Influences in William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy, Abram Van Engen (Trinity University)
• "Sentiment, Religion, and the Concept of Religious Enthusiasm in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Historical Novels," Lawrence Zellner (SUNY Stony Brook)

Spectacular Rebellions and Secret Histories: The Haitian Revolution's Literary and Cultural Impact:

Chair: Thomas W. Krise (University of the Pacific)

• "The Price of Revolution: Toussaint Louverture's Buried Treasure and the Secret Evaluation of Haitian History," Christen Mucher (University of Pennsylvania)
• "Interrogating Toussaint in a Trans-Atlantic Context: Fabienne Pasquet's La deuxième mort de Toussaint Louverture," Mariana Past (Dickinson College)
• "Dancing on the Volcano: The Haitian Revolution and Intercultural Performance," Peter P. Reed (University of Mississippi)
• "Sophia Peabody's Cuba Journal: Uncovering Secret Histories of the Circumatlantic and the U.S.," Rita Williams (University of Delaware)

What's Coming - Digital Databases, Editing, and Publication:

Chair: Philip Barnard (University of Kansas)

• “The Digital Humanities and Early Americas Digital Archive: Recent Developments and Directions,” Ralph Bauer (University of Maryland, College Park)
• “Bridging Media and Editorial Approaches: Digitizing the Bicentennial Edition of Charles Brockden Brown’s Novels,” Raymond Craig (Kent State University)
• “Scholarship in the Digital Age: Digital Publication Models and Trends,” Mark Kamrath (University of Central Florida)

Session Four (3:00-4:30)

Collaborative Networks in Early America:

Chair: Sean X. Goudie (Pennsylvania State University)

• “The Severed Hand of the Law: Crime and Newspaper Literature in the Eighteenth-Century Anglo-Atlantic,” Gabriel Cervantes (Vanderbilt University)
• “Collaboration & Information Networks in Three Eighteenth-Century Gazettes,” Joseph Chaves (University of Northern Colorado)
• “Map Quests of the American Atlantic World: Networks, Enclaves, and the Invention of The American Atlas,” Martin Brückner (University of Delaware)
• “Imperial Networking: The American Philosophical Society and the Long Expedition, 1819-21,” Robert Gunn (University of Texas at El Paso)

Early American Libraries Roundtable:

• “Never a Library Fine: John Jay and the New York Society Library,” Jennifer Steenshorne (The Papers of John Jay, Columbia University)
• “Common Knowledge: An Overlap Study of Library Company Catalogs from the 1790s,” Cheryl Knott Malone (University of Arizona)
• “Cotton Mather’s Forgotten Library: Publishing the first American Bible Commentary Then and Now,” Reiner Smolinski, (Georgia State University)
• “Early Impressions: A First Look at Bermudian Book History,” Jeremy B. Dibbell (LibraryThing)
• “Reconstructing the 1829 Auction Sale of Thomas Jefferson’s Final Library,” Endrina Tay, (Thomas Jefferson Foundation-Monticello)
• “An American Reader in London: Rufus King and the Use of Books in Diplomacy,” David J. Gary (CUNY-Graduate Center)

Offensive Women: Female Transgression in the Print Culture of Early America:

Chair: Richard Frohock (Oklahoma State University)

• “The Transgressions of Ann Carson, the Most Offensive Woman in the Early Republic,” a joint presentation by Susan Branson (Syracuse University); Larisa Asaeli (Texas Christian University); and Dan Williams (Texas Christian University)
• “Witchcraft, Power, and Death: Dangerous Women in Northern Mexico in the Late Colonial Period,” Yolopattli Hernandez-Torres (Lycoming College)
• “The Ever-Curious Public: Charlotte Temple and the American Criminal Narrative,” Tim O’Neil (Oklahoma State University)
• “A Most Rigid Censor of Female Conduct: Politics, Ideology, and American Womanhood in Sansay’s The Secret History,” Alison Tracy Hale (University of Puget Sound)

Friday, 5 March

Session Six (10:30-12:00)

The Transatlantic Literary Marketplace:

Chair: Christopher Apap, Oakland University

• “John Neal’s Paratexts: Selling the Book to the American Reader,” Joshua Ratner(University of Pennsylvania)
• “Irving’s Geo-Political Sketch Book,” Lydia Fash (Brandeis University)
• “Paulding’s Humorous Response to English Critiques of America,” Maura Jortner (Baylor University)
• “The History of American Literary Hoaxes,” Tracy Hoffman (Baylor University)

Saturday, 5 March

Session Twelve (3:00-4:30)

What is the Future of the History of Books?

Chair & Respondent: Paul Erickson, American Antiquarian Society

• “Anachronisms: Winthrop, Savage, Hawthorne,” Patricia Roylance (Syracuse University)
• “Is There Paper in our Future? Material Textuality and Early Print Nationalism,” Jonathan Senchyne (Cornell University)
• “Can We Have Sex in the Archives?,” Jordan Alexander Stein (University of Colorado at Boulder)

See the conference website for full details on the meeting.