Cambridge American History Workshop Conference

Get ready for an exciting in-person event all about American history. This conference is perfect if you're passionate about exploring the past, sharing ideas, and connecting with fellow history buffs. Whether you're a student, teacher, or just curious, come experience engaging talks, interactive sessions, and great conversations.

09:00 – 09:30 Registration and coffee in the Laurence Sterne Room. Speakers should arrive by 09:25.

09:30 – 09:45 Opening remarks

09:45 – 10:45 Reframing the Lincolns: Memory, Violence, and Public Imagination

Akaela Michels-Gualtieri, From Brutus to Judas: The Moral Collapse of Tyrannicide in American Political Thought (Cambridge)

Marr Sinisi, Oh, Mary! And the Campification of Mary Lincoln (East Anglia)

10:45 – 11:00 Coffee

11:00 – 12:00 Civil Rights: Politics, Allyship, and Strategic Calculation

Elliot Oppenheim, Southwest Georgia and the Problem of Allyship: Rethinking Civil Rights Historiography through Koinonia Farm (Cambridge)

Caitlin Lewis, How just ‘a couple of phone calls’ secured JFK the Presidential Election of 1960 (Manchester)

12:00 – 13:00 Indigenous Sovereignty and the Settler State

Alexis Ahn, Haudenosaunee Confrontations with State and Federal Investigations, 1888–1892 (Cambridge)

Dinos Pappas, Reforming from Within: American Indian Educational Activism and the Politics of Sovereignty, 1970–1980 (Stirling)

13:00 – 14:00 Lunch

14:00 – 15:00 Material Cultures of the American Century

Anna-Primrose Orchard, Separating the Men from the Boys — The Embodiment of Violence through Childhood Play (Nottingham)

Lauren Jarnach, The Written Republic: Textual Federalism and the Materiality of State Formation (Oxford)

15:00 – 15:15 Tea

15:15 – 16:15 Childhood, Empire, and the Making of American Power

Matthew Cunneen, Macro-Historical Patterns of Effectiveness in the American Militia System, 1775–1860 (Wolverhampton)

Will Comben, Flight, Motherhood, and Contesting Enslaved Femininity in the American South (Bristol)

16:15 – 17:00 Keynote: Dr Ben Zdencanovic (Assistant Professor of U.S. History, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge)

17:00 – 17:30  Closing Address: Professor Mia Bay (Paul Mellon Professor of American History; Fellow, Jesus College)

17:30  Close

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Host or Publisher Cambridge American History Workshop