This conference will bring together scholars from a range of disciplines and perspectives to examine the everyday life of empires in the long eighteenth century (1656-1833). The practices of creating nominally European domains on other peoples’ lands, whether outpost, factory, plantation or seaport, created a repertoire of policies, activities and meanings that were transported across the globe. Ranging over the period’s contending themes of dispossession, perpetual war, slavery and liberation, we will explore both the circulation of practices of imperial sovereignty in a global maritime empire and the irreducibility of the peoples and ways of life that empire attempted to exploit, reform, or extinguish.

Sponsored by SBU FAHSS Fund, the College of Arts and Sciences, Department of History, Department of English, Department of Africana Studies, Department of Sociology, Department of Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies and HISB.

Participants: Fredrik Albritton Jonsson, University of Chicago; Maria Alessandra Bollettino, Framingham State University; Christopher Leslie Brown, Columbia University; Rosi Carr, University of Edinbugh; Mita Choudhury, Purdue University Northwest; Ashley L. Cohen, University of Southern California; Kate Fullagar, Australia Catholic University; Jenna Gibbs, Florida International University; Jessica Hanser, University of Copenhagen; Tillman Nechtman, Skidmore College; Steven Pincus, University of Chicago; Patrick Rasico, Fisk University; Sudipta Sen, University of California at Davis; Sujit Sivasundaram, Cambridge University; Robert Travers, Cornell University; Christina Welsch, The College of Wooster; Natalie Zacek, University of Manchester;

Moderated by: Kathleen Wilson, Stony Brook University and and Michael Rubenstein, Humanities Institute at Stony Brok, and Stony Brook University

Event Schedule  (Subject to change)

Day 1 October 10

Coffee and Light Refreshments

1:00-1:30 PM Welcome and Opening Remarks  by David Wrobel  (Dean of College of Arts and Sciences);Kathleen Wilson (Distinguished Professor of History), Michael Rubenstein (Humanities Institute at Stony Brook Director/English Department)

Session I  1:30 PM – 3:30 PM  Reconceptualizing Empires I:  Global Currents

Steven Pincus, University of Chicago: Conceptualizing the British Empire

Ashley L. Cohen, University of Southern California: Entering Global Space and Time

Robert Travers, Cornell University: Illiberal Universalism and the Defense of Empire in the Age of Revolutions

Christina Welsch, The College of Wooster: Mustering the Soldiers of Empire

Mediator:  Mohamad Ballan (History Department)

Coffee Break 3:30-3:45 PM

Session II  3:45 – 5:15 PM Reconceptualizing Empires II:  Global Strategies, Local Designs

Kate Fullagar, Australian Catholic University: A Forgotten Anchor of Eighteenth-Century Imperial Reformation: The British Empire and Indigenous Agency in the Society Islands, 1767-1820  (via Zoom)

Jenna Gibbs, Florida International University: Protestant Missions, Education and Empire

Mita Choudhury, Purdue University Northwest: Dawn of the Anthropocene:  Reimagining Oceana in Enlightenment Britain

Mediator:  Eric Lewis Beverley (History Department)

Reception:  5:15-6 PM at HISB

Day 2 October 11

Coffee

9:45 – 10:00 AM Welcome

Session III  10:00 AM – 12:00 PM Cultures of Violence:  Slavery, War and Imperial Identities

Christopher Leslie Brown, Columbia: Survivors:  Africans in the British Empire

Maria Alessandra Bolletino, Framingham State University: The British Empire’s Sable Arm:  Black Soldiers in the Wars for Empire

Fredrik Albritton Jonsson, Chicago: The Fossil Tradition and the Imperial Machine (via Zoom)

Tillman Nechtman, Skidmore College: Captain Cook’s Hei-tiki: Material Culture, Gift Exchange and Looting during the Endeavour Voyage, 1768-1771

Mediator:  Shobana Shankar (History Department)

LUNCH 12:00 – 1:00 PM (On your own)

Session IV, 1:00 – 3:00 PM  Representing Imperial Geographies

Patrick Rascio, Fisk University: Creating the White Town of Calcutta in the 18th Century Empire

Rosi Carr, University of Edinburgh: From Gael to Gentlemen:  Whiteness and Mobility in Peripheral Colonial Space ( via Zoom)

Natalie Zazek, University of Manchester, UK: Sensing the Empire, Feeling the Metropole:  the Colonial Sensorium of Georgian London (via Zoom)

Jessica Hanser, University of Copenhagen: The British Meridian in China,  1684-1795 (via Zoom)

Mediator: Giuseppe Gazzola (Languages and Cultural Studies)

3:00 – 3:15 PM Coffee Break

Session V, 3:15 – 4:45 PM  Environmental and Legal Imaginaries of Empire

Sudipta Sen, University of California at Davis: Lex Indica:  Law and Lawlessness in British India

Sujit Sivasundaram, Cambridge University:  Diseases, Deep South Itineraries and the Indian Ocean (via Zoom)

Mediator: Tamara Fernando (History Department)

4:45-5:45 PM Closing Reception and Roundtable