Events

October 24-26, 2024
October 23-25, 2025
October 22-24, 2026

All the conferences will take place in Williamsburg, Virginia, on the campus of William & Mary and at various locations in Colonial Williamsburg. Please watch these pages for future Calls for Proposals and for registration information.

From the Call for Proposals

The American Revolution of 1776-1783 implicated Virginia and Virginians in distinctive ways. From the proclamation by former Virginia royal governor Lord Dunmore encouraging enslaved people to join the British and resist the American patriots to the final decisive battle at Yorktown, to the first presidents, Virginia played a pivotal role in the struggle for American independence and the founding of a new nation. Some 200 years later, scholars, curators, interpreters, and educators are transforming our understanding of Virginia in the long eighteenth century, casting new light on the political, intellectual, and social contexts of change in the Old Dominion and the larger Atlantic World.

For 2026: Virginia’s Revolutionary Histories & Beyond explores Virginia’s distinctive role and influence in local and global contexts. The conference leans into innovative approaches to that past through an increased commitment to education strategies and programs, immersive experiences on site at W&M and CWF, along with the traditional focus on leading scholarly work. Sessions that feature integration of these different perspectives within sessions, workshops, or panels are especially welcome.

We expect to attract at least 100 presenters and can accommodate a range of sessions designed for researchers, educators, and the public. We encourage submissions of traditional academic research, the work of public historians, experiential workshops in areas of professional expertise, and others, particularly submissions designed to incorporate major anniversaries and commemorative events related to each organization (e.g., the completion of the Brafferton School building, the closing of the Williamsburg Bray School, the founding of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society, the 100^th anniversary of Colonial Williamsburg, the 250^th anniversary of the founding of First Baptist Church, and others).

Sessions will be held in the School of Education on W&M’s campus. Site visits and plenary sessions will take place both at W&M and in the Historic Area of Colonial Williamsburg. Limited events will be available simultaneously via online video.

If the American Revolution inaugurated new ways of speaking and thinking about freedom, it also took place in and helped to create a world marked by multiple forms of unfreedom. Within the European-dominated colonies, nations, and empires of early America, slavery and subjugation as well as distinct economic and political constraints curtailed its rhetoric of universal rights. Indigenous polities, too, sought to exercise their own ideas about freedom and unfreedom, while African-descended people struggled to enact projects of liberation and belonging. The contests between and within these groups throughout the Atlantic world were powerfully shaped by the efforts of individuals, communities, colonies, and nations to grapple with the opportunities and challenges of freedom and servitude in an Age of Revolution.  The United States’ own contest for and over freedom both emerged in this context and reshaped it in ways that we continue to debate today.  Those debates require engaging with early America’s contested freedoms.

“Contested Freedoms” will feature scholarly and public conversations exploring how freedom was defined and experienced in the long era of revolution. In recognition of the 300^th anniversary of the Brafferton Indian School, the conference sponsors (the OI, Colonial Williamsburg, and William & Mary) are committed to a strong throughline of programming focused on Indigenous history. In addition, submissions that include connections to other 1773 anniversary topics such as the Committees of Correspondence and the ramifications of the Boston Tea Party, and with a focus on mental health and Williamsburg’s Public Hospital (in recognition of the 300^th anniversary of Williamsburg’s Public Hospital) are encouraged. The program committee also welcomes sessions exploring any aspect of Vast Early America. In addition to sessions featuring research-in-progress, the committee encourages sessions that provide perspective on the “state of the field” or comparative perspectives. Sessions devoted to freedom and unfreedom in the classroom or in public facing programming are also especially welcome.

Proposals for workshop and panel sessions are due by June 1, 2023. Participants who would like to be considered for a travel subvention should email us directly at oieahc@wm.edu. This information will be collected by the conference organizer only. The program committee will not consider these requests when evaluating session proposals.

The American Revolution had political, social, and economic implications that reverberated well beyond the thirteen British colonies that came to form the United States. This conference—the first of five in the “For 2026” conference series—will feature scholarship on the immediate and longer-term legacies of those years. The program committee encourages a broad perspective, from comparative hemispheric revolutions to the changing as well as static laws of slavery, new US treaties with Native Americans and other nations, new economic structures, and much more. As we launch this conference series, the committee will seek to build a program that addresses the comprehensive significance of the American Revolution, balancing perspectives on the period of revolution itself with those that look at the roots of the era’s events and the implications of developments for the early Republic and beyond. In addition to proposals focused on revolutionary legacies, the Program Committee invites proposals for sessions and papers exploring all aspects of Vast Early America.