Past Events

The National Park Service is reimagining how the agency tells the complex story of the Transcontinental Railroad at Golden Spike National Historical Park and other historic sites in the American West. Responding to longstanding absences, the project team seems innovative ways of documenting, preserving, and interpreting labor, environmental, and indigenous histories of the TCRR (among other topics). The working group will bring together scholars, educators, interpreters, cultural resources experts, and other partners to discuss current trends in TCRR scholarship and…

The run-up to the U.S. presidential election is in full swing. Due to the highly-charged, difficult, and sometimes dangerous path of democracy in recent years, both in the US and abroad, the role of the upcoming 250th anniversary of the American Revolution is critical to consider. What can this commemoration be used for? Who or what is considered revolutionary, and from what perspective? Against the backdrop of a presidential election, what role can the upcoming 250th anniversary of the American…

Presence, Violence, Absence, and Heritage: Exploring Indigenous-Settler Interactions across Centuries of Pennsylvania History Chair/Commenter: David Horst Lehman, Westminster College “A Little Valley’s Hopes of Prosperity and Preservation Amid Chaos: Swedish Incorporation of English Imperialism in the Delaware Valley and the Decline of Lenape Power Before the Arrival of William Penn: 1669-1682” Cole Mellinger, Independent Scholar “Those Abandoned People”: Extralegal Violence and the Construction of Indian Policy on the Mid-Atlantic Frontier, 1754-1768” Sarah Donovan, College of William & Mary “Presence and…