Empire and Identity
in the early modern world, 1350-1850

Seventh FEEGI Biennial Conference
Georgetown University, Washington DC
21-23 February, 2008

You can download the final program, which includes abstracts of the papers (PDF, 428K). The conference flyer and details of registration and local information may be of historical interest, although the conference is now passed.

Informal no-host gathering to meet officers and other attendees at Martin's Tavern in Georgetown.

On Friday, registration and all panels and breaks will be in the Leavey Program Room in Leavey Center, Georgetown University. The evening reception is in the historic Riggs Library.

8:30am–9:00am—Registration

9:00am—Welcome from the President of FEEGI

Kris Lane, College of William and Mary

People in Motion
9:15am–10:45am—Session One

Chair: Kris Lane, College of William and Mary and President of FEEGI
Mary Jane Maxwell, Western Kentucky University—“Journeys of Faith and Fortune: Christian Merchants in the Dar al-Islam”
Richard Bond, Virginia Wesleyan College—“‘Most Villainously Detaining’: English and Spanish Captives in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic”
Jeff Fortin, State University of New York at Oneonta—“African-American Imperialism: Creating the Black Atlantic World, 1795–1817”

10:45am–11:15am—Coffee Break

Imperial Strategies
11:15am–12:30pm—Session Two

Chair: Carla Gardina Pestana, Miami University
Mark Meuwese, University of Winnipeg—“Underestimating the Natives: Revisiting the Dutch West India Company's Failure to Capture the Portuguese Empire in the Southern Atlantic, 1623–1626”
Lauren Benton, New York University—“Island Chains: Penal Colonies and Imperial Sovereignty, 1780-1840”

12:30pm–2:30pm—Lunch

Lunch independently—a list of local restaurants will be provided.

Transforming Local Identities
2:30pm–4:00pm—Session Three

Chair: Willem Klooster, Clark University
Sebastian Marc Barreveld, Stanford University—“‘Can Leopards lose their spots?’ The education of Ambonese children in the United Provinces, 1621–1629”
Zoltán Biedermann, Center for Overseas History, Lisbon—“Manipulating Identities: Princely Conversions in Early Colonial Sri Lanka (1500–1650)”
Poppy Fry, Saint Anselm College—“The ‘Fingo Emancipation’ of 1835 and the Development of Cape Liberalism”

4:00pm–4:30pm—Coffee Break

Framing Empire
4:30pm–6:00pm—Session Four

Chair: Daniel K. Richter, University of Pennsylvania
Anya Zilberstein, Concordia University—“‘England is Like this a Cold Northern Country’: Natural History, Climate, and the Idea of Regions in the British Empire”
Giancarlo L. Casale, University of Minnesota—“Empires of the Mind in Tunuslu Hajji Ahmed’s World Map”

6:15pm–7:15pm—Reception

Riggs Library, Georgetown University

On Saturday, our base is the Intercultural Center (ICC), home of the GU History Department. For lunch, we return to the Leavey Program Room. For the banquet, we head to Adams-Morgan.

8:30am–9:00am—Registration

History Department, ICC 600

Trades and Traders
9:00am–10:30am—Session Five

Chair: Marcy Norton, George Washington University
Location: ICC 103
Peter Mark, Wesleyan University and Jose da Silva Horta, Universidade de Lisboa—“New Christian and Jewish Weapons Traders in 17th-century West Africa: From Lisbon to Amsterdam to Marrakesh to Senegal”
George Bryan Souza, University of Texas at San Antonio—“Sri Lankan Cinnamon, the Mahabadda, the Portuguese and the Company: Commerce and Communal Relations, c. 1590–c. 1690”
Henriette de Bruyn Kops, Georgetown University—“Seaborne Imperialists or Tightfisted Opportunists? Conflicting Images of the Dutch in the 17th Century”

10:30am–11:00am—Coffee Break (ICC 600)

Views of Empire
11:00am–12:30pm—Session Six

Chair: Philip J. Stern, American University
Location: ICC 103
Eleanor Hughes, Yale Center for British Art—“Classical Orient, Romantic Orient: 18th-Century British Visual Culture and the Levant”
Phyllis Hunter, University of North Carolina Greensboro—“From Massachusetts to Madras:  Renegotiating Identity in the First British Empire”
Amélia Polónia, University of Porto—“Global and Local Interactions in the Portuguese Overseas Empire: Networks and Cooperation Patterns in the Construction of Social Identities of Seafaring Communities”

12:30pm–2:00pm—Business Meeting and Lunch

Leavey Program Room, Leavey Center.
All FEEGI members are welcome.
On the Agenda: Elections and other discussion of FEEGI business.
Sandwiches and drinks will be provided.

Commodities and Objects
2:00pm–3:30pm—Session Seven

Chair: David Hancock, University of Michigan
Location: ICC 103
Elizabeth Sutton, University of Iowa—“Natural History and Ethnography: Classifying Animals, Plants, and Africans in Early Modern Dutch Travel Accounts”
Michelle Craig McDonald, Stockton College—“From Imperial to National Commodity: How Coffee’s Identity Was Repackaged”
Christina Folke Ax, University of Copenhagen—“Objects of Empire and the Construction of Identity in 18th-century Colonial Iceland”

3:30pm–4:00pm—Coffee Break (ICC 600)

Conflict on the Margins
4:00pm–5:30pm—Session Eight

Chair: Linda Rupert, University of North Carolina Greensboro
Location: ICC 103
Matthew Restall, Pennsylvania State University—“Yucatan and Belize: A New History of a Forgotten Frontier”
John Savage, Lehigh University—“Sacred Science in Slave Society: ‘Poison’ and Identity in Martinique”
Allan Dwyer, Memorial University of Newfoundland—“‘The most outrageous Set of People’:  British Imperial Identity and the Newfoundland Irish Threat, 1740–1800”

Banquet and Keynote Address
6:30pm–8:30pm

Kris Lane, President of FEEGI, College of William and Mary:

“Everybody Must Get Stoned:
Rock Medicine in the Early Modern World”

 

Banquet at Las Canteras, a Peruvian restaurant in Adams-Morgan.

Note: additional charge will apply for the banquet.

Acknowledgments

FEEGI is grateful for institutional support for the 2008 conference from the dean of the college at Georgetown University, and from the departments of history at University of Maryland Baltimore County, University of North Carolina Greensboro, Pennsylvania State University, and also Georgetown University again. For full acknowledgments, please download the final program.