The McNeil Center for Early American Studies, The Library Company of Philadelphia, The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and Stenton Museum invite proposals for an international interdisciplinary conference in
Philadelphia reconsidering early Pennsylvania culture in an Atlantic World context. James Logan (1674-1751), Provincial Secretary to the Penn family, and his vast political, trade and knowledge networks provide a lens for
examination of the Atlantic World in the first half of the eighteenth century. This conference is an effort to consider Logan’s milieu in the widest possible way. James Logan studied the sexuality of plants, mentored Benjamin Franklin and John Bartram, served as Mayor of Philadelphia and Chief Justice of Pennsylvania, shaped his province’s relationships with Native Americans, traded furs, owned slaves, was a gentleman-merchant, book collector, and scholar. His nearly 3,000-volume library remains intact at the Library Company of Philadelphia. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania archives include numerous papers collections related to his activities, and The National Society of The Colonial Dames in America in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania preserves his house, Stenton.
Committed participants include Anthony Grafton of Princeton University, Bernard Herman of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Gary B. Nash of the University of California, Los Angeles. Among possible themes for paper proposals are intellectual history, knowledge networks, natural and moral philosophy; books, poetry and literature, collecting, and botany; religion, in particular Quakerism; material culture, archeology, architecture, houses, foodways, landscapes, land acquisition and urban development; economics, industry, commerce; gender, servitude, enslavement and social structure; and politics, imperialism, and European-Native American interactions.
This conference aims to engage an interdisciplinary dialog. Proposals are encouraged from literary scholars, historians, archeologists, material culture studies, and other disciplines. The organizers will consider both
individual papers and panel submissions. Papers for many of the panels will be pre-circulated. PowerPoint presentations, especially those relating to visual and material culture, may also be pre-circulated. Non-traditional panels and presentations (such as tours, workshops, brief papers or demonstrations) will be considered.
Please submit 250-word proposals and a one-page c.v. via e-mail no later than 30 September 2013; proposals should be headed with the title of the paper and the presenter’s name, affiliation, and contact information.
Submissions and queries may be directed to mceas@ccat.sas.upenn.edu.
The deadline for submissions is 30 September 2013.