Extreme Makeovers: Histories of Self-Fashioning in the Mid-Atlantic

Saturday, November 4, 9 a.m.–5:30 p.m.

In the spirit of Benjamin Franklin’s lifelong pursuit of self-creation, this years’ symposium explores the contexts and strategies for self-fashioning in American history. Free and open to the public.

Program Schedule:

Colonial Self-Inventions
9 a.m.–11 a.m.

David Furlow, Independent Scholar, The Evolving Identity of Isaac Allerton, an Enigmatic Entrepreneur of the South Delaware River

Patrick Erben, Omhundro Institute of Early American History and Culture/ University of West Georgia, “In these Seven Languages”: Francis Daniel Pastorius and the Writing of the Multilingual Self

Timothy J. Shannon, Gettysburg College, The King of the Indians: The Curious Career of Peter Williamson

Stephen Hague, Stenton, “From the Wilds of Pennsylvania”: James Logan, Material Culture, and the Formation of Colonial Elite Identity

Discussant: Michael Zuckerman, University of Pennsylvania

Migrating Racial Selfhoods
11:30 a.m.–12:45 p.m.

Gregory Nobles, Georgia Institute of Technology, John James Audubon: An Unfinished Portrait in Black and White

Nina Reid–Maroney, University of Windsor, Fashioning Freedom: A Philadelphia Story from the Canadian West, 1861

Discussant: Kathryn Wilson, The Historical Society of Pennsylvania

1 p.m.–2 p.m. Lunch (on your own)

Identity and Improvement
2 p.m.–4 p.m.

Brian Luskey, University of Northern Colorado, “Pretends to Understand Clerkship”: Commercial Education and Social Identity in the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic World

John Fea, Messiah College, An Ambition for “Great and Noble Things”: Philip Vicker Fithian’s Rise from South Jersey Farmer to Citizen of the World

Paul Kahan, Temple University, British Identity, Anglo Autodidacticism, and the Formation of the Library Company of Philadelphia

Discussant:  C. Dallett Hemphill, Ursinus College

Fashioning Nineteenth-Century Social Mobility
4:15 p.m.–5:30 p.m.

Tanya Sheehan, Columbia University, What a “Doctor of Photography”Can Do: Photographic Retouching and Social Remaking in Late Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia

Herb Ershkowitz, Temple University, John Wanamaker and the Transformation of Late Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia

Discussant: Kathy Peiss, University of Pennsylvania