Today’s post is a public service announcement that proposals for “Women in Early America,” a workshop jointly sponsored by the William and Mary Quarterly and the University of Southern California-Huntington Library Early Modern Studies Institute, are due Friday, October 15. This workshop is one in an annual series designed to identify and encourage fresh trends in understanding the history and culture of early North America.
My original post on this workshop is here. The conference website with instructions for applying is here. I’ll just add two things: first of all, this is a dee-luxe conference. The setting, the accomodations, the food, and of course the intellectual companionship will be brilliant. You really shouldn’t miss out, if you have anything at all to say about women’s history. Secondly, the Call for Papers emphasizes that all of early North America is game, so Mexican and Canadian history is more than welcome. As Claudio Saunt, Ned Blackhawk, and others have argued, there really is an early American West, too–so think about it and do yourself a favor by applying to this conference.
For those of you who have never been to the magical, enchanting Huntingon Library and Gardens, here’s a little preview of the wonders that awaits you. There is no more beautiful or inspiring place to read, write, and think in North America:
Historiann 
Looks like a fab workshop–makes me wish I worked on women in early America! I do work on women, but a different geography and slightly earlier period. I also *really* like the of something like this targeted at mid-career scholars.
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er…should read “like the *idea” of something…”
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I love the images you have up today! The family portrait with that unnaturally *glowing* *whiter-than-white* baby is fascinating. What’s the story behind it?
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Will jump on this, pronto! The Huntington *is* great, although I haven’t been there for a bunch of years. And those *are* dee-licious graphical attachments to the post above.
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I live about 70 miles away from the Huntington Gardens. (You’re right. They can’t be recommended highly enough.) I’d be interested to visit the conference as a clueless amateur, if we’re welcome? The web site doesn’t say, nor does it say how much that might cost. If you have any inside info on that, please share!
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Sorry–it was sloppy of me not to include image captions/provenance as I ordinarily do.
The first image is of a Western Abenaki woman produced in the 18th C. The second is a painting is a post-mortem portrait of Margurite Bourgeoys (1620-1700), a nun of the Congregation de Notre Dame in Montreal, by Pierre LeBer (1700), and the last is a portrait of the Moravian Protten Family by Johann Valentin Haidt (1751). (More information here.) It’s interesting because although the child’s skin is whitened beyond belief, she’s painted with her hand in the “preaching position”–something we never see with girl children, let alone girl children of African descent.
The Prottens were Christian Protten (1715-1769), an Afro-Dane Moravian missionary, his wife, a former slave from St. Thomas and also a missionary, Rebecca (1718-1780) with baby Anna Maria. If I recall correctly, neither this baby nor a previous child of hers (by a previous marriage) survived. (More information here.) I don’t have my copy of the book, but I learned about Rebecca Protten through Jon Sensbach’s fine biographical study, Rebecca’s Revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World (2005). (I may have misremembered some of the details about her husbands and children.)
I didn’t realize this until looking up Bourgeoys’s dates that she was Canada’s first woman saint! (Beatified by JPII in 1982).
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Huntington Library is fucken schweeeet! What hotel are they putting everyone up at?
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Let’s hope it’s the Green Hotel in Pasadena, which hasn’t actually been a hotel since the wealthy snowbirds used to take the Southern Pacific down there for the winter. It’s been repurposed into a pretty ritzy condominium type venue, I think. I took a house tour there once, and wow, you wouldn’t want to come back!
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I stayed at a very nice hotel in downtown Pasadena–walking distance to most stuff you’d want or need. It was extremely comfortable, with a rooftop pool and exercise room.
I’m usually more of a No-Tel Motel kind of gal, so I appreciate the luxury when I can git it.
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I’ve been to some great fucken restaurants in Pasadena, but I can’t remember the names of any of them. One was a great two-room Italian place, and I also remember this awesome tavern-type place with an old-style barroom and also a regular dining room.
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You are inducing Huntington envy. I think CPP is thinking of Mi Piace, in Old Town. Walking distance from the Westin, where the HEH put me up the last time I did something for them.
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Yes–the Westin is where I stayed. Well remembered, Susan. They have a shuttle that will take you over to the Huntington on a moment’s notice, and take you back to the hotel at the end of the day!
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Mi Piace is not the place I was thinking of, but it does look fucken awesome! Dunno when I’ll be in Pasadena again, but I’ll try it.
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The bookstore has a “stunning” collection of books and ephemera to purchase. STUNNING.
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Quixote–I just found your comment today in that ol’ spam filter. You ask a good question. I’m not sure that it costs anything to just attend and listen in–there were people who did that when I did the same seminar in 2009. But I’m sure there will be details posted once they’ve selected the participants and got the program all set, probably sometime in the early spring of 2009.
Since it’s a conference with precirculated papers, I’m not sure that anyone but conference participants has access to the papers, but I may well be very wrong about that.
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