The Revolutionary Age: France, Haiti, and America

"The Revolutionary Age: France, Haiti, and America" will convene at The University of Pennsylvania's Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts on April 9–11, 2026. This conference will feature precirculated papers and presentations on the revolutionary upheavals that shook both metropolitan France and French colonies and populations in North America from the late eighteenth through the early nineteenth century. Papers will address both individual revolutions and comparative, transatlantic approaches that foreground the circulation of revolutionary ideas, images, printed materials, goods, individuals, and practices, whether from the American Revolution to France or from the French and Haitian Revolutions to other parts of the Americas.

Studies of the reception of French and Haitian revolutionary ideas and personages in early republican Philadelphia will be particularly featured throughout the conference. Participants will address the discursive, visual, and material legacies of the Francophone world’s revolutions as they shaped political debates, print culture, and community formation in early national America. A full program of events is available here: https://upenn.box.com/v/revolutionaryage.

"The Revolutionary Age" coincides with a spring 2026 exhibition at The Kislak Center: The Time to Right All Wrongs: France, Haiti, and Philadelphia in a Revolutionary Age. Drawing upon Penn's holdings of French and Haitian revolutionary documents, the exhibition explores these revolutionary movements, which brought numerous refugees from both France and the Caribbean to Philadelphia during the 1790s.

Registration is free and open to the public. Registrants will receive precirculated papers drafted by each presenter two weeks prior to the event; all attendees are requested to read these papers in advance of the sessions.

Sponsored by: The McNeil Center for Early American Studies and The Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts at The University of Pennsylvania. Funding provided by the Philadelphia Funder Collaborative for the Semiquincentennial.

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Host or Publisher McNeil Center for Early American Studies