In proposing an interdisciplinary roundtable for an academic conference, I generally submit a description along these lines—
Rather than presenting a paper, each participant in this interdisciplinary roundtable, including Xxxxxx Xxxxxxxx, author of (U. P., 20xx), will make a four- or five-minute opening statement that lays out a specific issue or question related to this book. This approach liberates the book’s author from having to serve as The Respondent; rather, the brief opening statements set off a lively, substantive discussion that engages members of the audience as well as panelists. I’ve shamelessly appropriated this format from the Joyceans’ “Living Book Reviews,” and in organizing 50+ panels along these lines, I’ve found it crucial to avoid two extremes: on the one hand, assembling a tableful of sycophants ready to drool on cue and/or the author, and, on the other, assembling a lineup that would include someone intent on an academic ambush: trashing author over her or his methods, conclusions, and maybe parents. No fan club, then, and no food fights. Thank you.
And here’s a list of follow-ups to several of these sessions:
Moore, Dennis D., et al. “Round Table: Colloquy with Kathleen Donegan on Seasons of Misery: Catastrophe and Colonial Settlement in Early America,” Common-place.org (Winter 2015) http://www.common-place.org/vol-15/no-02/roundtable/#.VSfZTvCWNpg
--- et al. “Hidden in Plain Sight: A Colloquy with Annette Gordon-Reed on The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family.” In “Between Literature and History,” special issue of Early American Literature 47.2 (2012): 443-60 http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/early_american_literature/v047/47.2.article.html
--- et al., “Colloquy with Marcus Rediker on The Slave Ship: A Personal History.” Atlantic Studies 7.1 (2010): 5-45 http://www.theasa.net/journals/name/atlantic_studies/5300/
--- et al., “Colloquy with the Author: Vincent Carretta and Equiano, the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man.” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 38 (2008): 1-14 http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/sec/summary/v038/38.moore.html
Silva, Cristobal, et al., “Critical Forum: Silva, Miraculous Plagues: An Epidemiology of Early New England Narrative.” William and Mary Quarterly, 70.4 (October 2013): 813-48. https://oieahc.wm.edu/wmq/browse_toc.cfm?issue_num=70_4
The following list is a work in progress, and on that note I’m certainly
Looking forward,
Dr. Dennis D. Moore dmoore@fsu.edu
Independent Scholar (850) 942-3796
University Distinguished Teaching Professor,
Florida State University Department of English, 1999-2019
Note: I conceived and organized all but one of these interdisciplinary roundtables—the one in 2014 on my Harvard U.P. book—and, except when an entry in this list indicates otherwise, I also served as moderator.
at the American Studies Association’s conferences, 1993 to 2020 and beyond:
November 2020 (Baltimore): colloquy I organized and will moderate on Ralph Bauer’s The Alchemy of Conquest: Science, Religion and the Secrets of the New World (U. P. of Virginia, 2019). Panelists: Santa Arias; Ralph Bauer; Tim Fosbury; Jennifer Greeson; Robert Gunn; Tamara Harvey; and Gretchen Woertendyke Note: one of two sessions designated as “Sponsored by the Early Americas Caucus”
November 2018 (Atlanta): colloquy I organized and moderated on Britt Rusert’s Fugitive Science: Empiricism and Freedom in Early African American Culture (NYU P, 2017). Panelists: Sari Altschuler; Tara Bynum; Brigitte Fielder; Laura Mielke; Scotti Parrish; Tony Perry; and Britt Rusert
Note: one of two sessions designated as “Sponsored by the Early American Matters Caucus”
November 2017 (Chicago): roundtable I organized and moderated on Dana Nelson’s Commons Democracy: Reading the Politics of Participation on the Early United States: “Colloquy with Dana Nelson on Reading the Politics of Participation in the Early U.S. and in the Age of Trump.” Panelists: Reneé Bergland; Robert Gunn; Sandra Gustafson; Dana Nelson; Donald Pease, Jr.; and Matt Shaw.
November 2016 (Denver): Colloquy on Elizabeth Maddock Dillon’s New World Drama: The Performative Commons in the Atlantic World, 1649-1849 (in the “New Americanists” series, Duke U.P., 2014), recipient of the 2015 Barnard Hewitt Award for Outstanding Research in Theatre History, from the American Society for Theatre Research, and one of two Finalist Mentions for the A.S.A.’s 1915 John Hope Franklin Prize for the year’s best book in American Studies”; FYI, there was a colloquy on that year’s other finalist at the Society of Early Americanists’ June 2016 conference
Note: one of two sessions designated as “Sponsored by the Early American Matters Caucus”
October 2015 (Toronto): “Colloquy with Ed Baptist on The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (Basic Books, 2014)” Panelists: Susanna Ashton (Clemson U.); Edward E. Baptist (Cornell U.); Brigitte Fielder (U. of Wisconsin); and James Stewart (Pennsylvania State U., emeritus)
Note: one of two sessions designated as “Sponsored by the Early American Matters Caucus”
November 2014 (Los Angeles): “Colloquy with Kathleen Donegan on Seasons of Misery: Catastrophe and Colonial Settlement in Early America (Penn, 2013)” Panelists: Sari Altschuler; Kathleen Donegan; Birgit Brander Rasmussen (American Studies and Ethnicity, Race and Migration, Yale); Karen Stolley (Spanish and Portuguese, Emory); Abram Van Engen (Washington U., St. Louis); and Kathleen Wilson (History and Cultural Analysis and Theory, Stony Brook; president, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies)
Note: one of two sessions designated as “Sponsored by the Early American Matters Caucus”
Nov. 2013 (Washington): “Colloquy on Annette Kolodny’s In Search of First Contact: The Vikings of Vinland, the Peoples of the Dawnland, and the Anglo-American Anxiety of Discovery (Duke U.P., 2012)” Panelists: Ralph Bauer, Maryland; Anna Brickhouse, Virginia; Lauren Coats, LSU; former A.S.A. president Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Stanford; Annette Kolodny; and Birgit Brander Rasmussen, Yale
Note: one of two sessions designated as “Sponsored by the Early American Matters Caucus”
Nov. 2012 (San Juan, Puerto Rico): “Colloquy with Eliga Gould on Among the Powers of the Earth: The American Revolution and the Making of a New World Empire (Harvard, 2012)”
Nov. 2010 (San Antonio): “Colloquy on Affiliation, Attachment and Change in Early America and Beyond,” focusing on recent books by three of the panelists: Catherine O’Donnell Kaplan’s Men of Letters in the Early Republic (2008); Bryan Waterman’s Republic of Intellect: The Friendly Club of New York City and the Making of American Literature (2007); and Ivy Schweitzer’s Perfecting Friendship: Politics and Affiliation in Early American Literature (2006)
Nov. 2009 (Washington): “Colloquy on Stephanie Smallwood’s Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora, recipient of the 2008 Frederick Douglass Prize from the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition”
Nov. 2006 (Oakland): “Colloquy with Joanna Brooks on American Lazarus: Religion and the Rise of African-American and Native American Literatures, recipient of the Modern Language Association’s William Sanders Scarborough Prize”
Nov. 2002 (Houston): “Colloquy with Ellen Messer-Davidow on Disciplining Feminism: From Social Activism to Academic Discourse (Duke, 2002)”; panelists included former A.S.A. president Janice Radway; Deborah Rosenfelt; and Annette Kolodny
Nov. 2001 (Washington): “Colloquy with the Author: Judith Stacey and In the Name of the Family: Rethinking Family Values in the Post-modern Age, Five Years Later”; at that time, author was Professor of Sociology and the Streisand Professor of Contemporary Gender Studies, U. of Southern California; panelists included two other sociologists and former A.S.A. president, historian Elaine Tyler May
Oct. 1999 (Montréal): an exception to having the author(s) present: “Conversation on Affirmative Action: The Shape of the River and the National Agenda.” Participants: Elson S. Floyd, President, Western Michigan U.; Glenn Loury, Director, Institute on Race and Social Division, Boston U.; Nicholas Katzenbach, Esq. (cancelled); Ellen Messer-Davidow, English and Women’s Studies, U. of Minnesota
Nov. 1998 (Seattle): “Failing the Future? A Conversation on Higher Education and the Nation in the Twenty-First Century.” Participants: Annette Kolodny, author of Failing the Future: A Dean Looks at Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century (Duke UP); Gregory Jay; Ellen Messer-Davidow; and law professor john powell [sic]
Nov. 1997 (Washington): Conversation: Lawrence Levine’s The Opening of the American Mind. Participants: Thadious Davis; Robert Gross; Larry Levine; Ellen Messer-Davidow; Stanley Katz; and Ray Suarez, then of National Public Radio’s “Talk of the Nation”
at the Society of Early Americanists’ conferences, 1999 to 2021 and beyond:
Twelfth biennial conference, Atlanta, Mar 2021: colloquy I am proposing and will moderate on Lisa Brooks’ Bancroft Prize-winning Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War (Yale U. P., 2018). Panelists: Allison Bigelow; Lisa Brooks; Drew Lopenzina; Martha Elena Rojas; and Laura Stevens.
Eleventh biennial conference, Eugene, OR, 27 Feb-2 Mar 2019: colloquy I organized and moderated on Sari Altschuler’s The Medical Imagination: Literature and Health in the Early United States (Penn, 2018).
“Religion and Politics in Early America” conference at Washington University in St. Louis, March 2018: colloquy I organized and moderated on Molly Farrell’s Counting Bodies: Population in Colonial American Writing (Oxford, 2016). Panelists: Joshua Bartlett; Molly Farrell; Nick Miller; Ana Schwartz; Jason Shaffer; and Hilary Wyss.
Tenth biennial conference, Tulsa, March 2-4, 2017: colloquy I organized and moderated on Paul Giles’ The Global Remapping of American Literature (Princeton U.P., 2011), with Paul Giles (U. of Sydney); Elizabeth Polcha (Northeastern U.); Cristobal Silva (Columbia U.); Cassander Smith (U. of Alabama); and Caroline Wigginton (U. of Mississippi)
“Translation and Transmission in the Early Americas” conference at Washington, D.C. and the U. of Maryland, June 2016: “Colloquy with Anna Brickhouse on The Unsettlement of America: Translation, Interpretation and the Story of Don Luis de Velasco, 1560-1945, recipient of the SEA’s first-ever Book Prize and of the Modern Language Association’s 2015 James Russell Lowell Prize; one of two Finalist Mentions for the American Studies Association’s 1915 John Hope Franklin Prize for the year’s best book in American Studies (FYI, I organized and moderated a colloquy on that year’s other finalist for the A.S.A.’s 2016 conference)
Ninth biennial conference and second joint conference with the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Chicago, June 2015: “Colloquy with Michael Ziser on Environmental Practice and Early American Literature, in Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture series.” Panelists: Thomas Hallock; Daniel Richter; Marion Rust; and Michael Ziser
“London and the Americas, 1492-1815” conference at Kingston U., London, July 2014: “Colloquy with Jonathan Beecher Field on Errands into the Metropolis: New England Dissidents in Revolutionary London.” Panelists: Field, Richard Frohock; Heather Kopelson; Danielle Skeehan; and Kelly Wisecup
Eighth biennial conference, Savannah, March 2013: “Colloquy with Cristobal Silva on Miraculous Plagues: An Epidemiology of Early New England Narrative (Oxford, 2011)”
Note: one of four Special Panels on the first day of the conference; working closely with the book review editor of the WMQ, I arranged for the print follow-up to this session that appears now as a Critical Forum piece in the journal
“Triumph in My Song: Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century African Atlantic Culture, History and Performance,” College Park, MD, June 2012: “Colloquy with Frances Smith Foster on ’Til Death or Distance Do Us Part: Love and Marriage in African America”
Seventh biennial conference, Philadelphia, March 2011: “Colloquy with Annette Gordon-Reed on [Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning] The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family”; panelists also included scholars in African American literature and historian who directed the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture
Sixth biennial conference, Hamilton, Bermuda, May 2009: “Colloquy with Marcus Rediker on The Slave Ship: A Personal History”
Fifth national conference, June 2007 (Williamsburg and Jamestown), coinciding with the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture’s 13th annual conference: second Presidential Panel, “Colloquy with Elizabeth Maddock Dillon on The Gender of Freedom: Fictions of Liberalism and the Literary Public Sphere”
Fourth national conference, March 2005 (Alexandria): first-ever Presidential Panel: “Colloquy with Cathy Davidson on Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America, 20 Years Along”
Third national conference, April 2003 (Providence): “Colloquy with Julie Ellison on Cato’s Tears and the Making of Anglo-American Emotion”
Second national conference, March 2001 (Norfolk): “Colloquy with the Author: Joyce Chaplin’s An Anxious Pursuit”
First national conference, March 1999 (Charleston): “Colloquy with the Authors [Elizabeth Barnes, Philip Gould, Julia Stern and David Waldstreicher]: Sentiment and the Early American Novel.”
at the Modern Language Association’s annual conference, 2018:
January 2018 (NYC): colloquy I organized and moderated on Robert L. Gunn’s Ethnology and Empire: Languages, Literature, and the Making of the North American Borderlands (NYU P., 2016), recipient of the 2016 Early American Literature Book Prize. Panelists: Anna Brickhouse; Robert Gunn; Laura Mielke; Birgit Brander Rasmussen, Oliver Scheiding; and Kelly Wisecup
at the Southeastern American Studies Association’s biennial conferences, 1997 to 2021 and beyond:
March 2021 (Birmingham): interdisciplinary plenary session I am organizing and will moderate on keynote speaker Imani Perry’s More Beautiful and More Terrible, Ten Years On
March 2019 (Atlanta): interdisciplinary plenary session I organized and moderated on keynote speaker Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America (Viking, 2017)
[March 2017 (Chapel Hill Williamsburg): in middle of organizing this conference, the N.C. legislature passed the “bathroom bill,” so my Board colleagues and I unanimously agreed to pull out of N.C. The College of William and Mary very generously agreed to host it, on a different weekend; I was unable to participate, having already committed to the SEA’s conference in Tulsa; sigh]
February 2015 (Atlanta): at invitation of conference organizer, I organized and moderated interdisciplinary plenary session with keynote speaker: “Colloquy with Robin D.G. Kelley on Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression, Twenty-Five Years Along.” Panelists: Catherine Fosl; Frances Smith Foster; Chanta Haywood; Robin D.G. Kelley; and Robbie Lieberman
February 2013 (Charleston): plenary session with keynote speaker: Colloquy with Eric Foner on The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery,” recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for History and the Bancroft Prize. Panelists: Sean Adams; Molly Farrell; Eric Foner; Leslie Harris; Sherita Johnson; Dennis Moore; and Michael Ross
February 2011 (Atlanta): plenary session: “Colloquy with Michael Elliott on Custerology: The Enduring Legacy of the Indian Wars and George Armstrong Custer.” Panelists: Melanie Benson; Michael Elliott; Paul Erickson; Richard Fox; Tatia Jacobson; John Miles; and D.M.
February 2009 (Fairfax, VA): plenary session: “Colloquy with Woody Holton on Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution (finalist for National Book Award)”
at the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies’ conferences, time to time:
July 2019 (Edinburgh, as International Conference on the Enlightenment): interdisciplinary roundtable I organized on Clifford Siskin’s System: The Shaping of Modern Knowledge (MIT, 2016). Panelists: Michelle Burnham (Santa Clara U.), moderator; Tita Chico (U. of Maryland); Ruth Hill (Vanderbilt U.); Ourida Mostefai (Brown); Cliff Siskin (NYU); and Christine Yao (U. College London)
August 2003 (Los Angeles, meeting jointly with ASECS; please see following list)
at the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies’ conferences, 1994 to 2021 and beyond:
March 2021 (Toronto): colloquy I have organized and will moderate on the recipient of the 2018 Early American Literature Book Prize, Caroline Wigginton’s In the Neighborhood: Women’s Publication in Early America (U Mass P, 2016)
Note: session originally scheduled for 2020, but rescheduled in light of the coronavirus; sponsored by ASECS’s Americanist affiliate, the Society of Early Americanists
March 2019 (Denver, 50th annual ASECS conference): colloquy I organized and moderated on Tita Chico’s The Experimental Imagination: Literary Knowledge and Science in the British Enlightenment (Stanford, 2018)
March 2018 (Orlando): colloquy I organized and moderated on Ramesh Mallipeddi’s Spectacular Slavery: Witnessing Slavery in the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic (U. Virginia P., 2016)
Note: session sponsored by ASECS’s Americanist affiliate, the Society of Early Americanists
March 2017 (Minneapolis): “Colloquy on Abram Van Engen’s Sympathetic Puritans: Calvinist Fellow Feeling in Early New England (Oxford U.P., 2015)”, with Matt Cohen (U. of Texas); Molly Farrell (Ohio State U.); Michael Hoberman (Fitchburg State U.); Joy A. J. Howard (independent scholar); Anne Myles (U. of Northern Iowa); and Abram Van Engen (Washington U. in St. Louis)
Note: session sponsored by ASECS’s Americanist affiliate, the Society of Early Americanists
March 2016 (Pittsburgh): “Colloquy on Russ Castronovo’s Propaganda 1776: Secrets, Leaks and Revolutionary Communications in Early America (in “Oxford Studies in American Literary History”) and William Beatty Warner’s Protocols of Liberty: Communication Innovation and the American Revolution (Chicago; recipient of ASECS’s 2013-2014 Gottschalk Prize)”
Note: session sponsored by ASECS’s Americanist affiliate, the Society of Early Americanists
March 2015 (Los Angeles): “Colloquy on Hilary Wyss’s English Letters and Indian Literacies: Reading, Writing, and New England Missionary Schools, 1750-1830 (U. Pennsylvania P., 2012)”; Panelists: Kevin Berland; Drew Newman; Dan Radus; Marie Taylor; and Hilary Wyss Note: one of two sessions sponsored by ASECS’s Americanist affiliate, the Society of Early Americanists
March 21, 2014 (Williamsburg): interdisciplinary colloquy on my own Harvard University Press edition, Letters from an American Farmer and Other Essays, organized and co-chaired by Ralph Bauer and Ritch Frohock
Note: I did not organize this one, which was one of two sessions sponsored by ASECS’s Americanist affiliate, the SEA
March 2012 (San Antonio): “Colloquy with [art historian] Wendy Bellion on Citizen Spectator: Art, Illusion and Visual Perception in Early National America”
March 2011 (Vancouver): “Colloquy with Matt Cohen on The Networked Wilderness: Communicating in Early New England”
March 2010 (Albuquerque): “Colloquy with Leonard Tennenhouse on The Importance of Feeling English: American Literature and the British Diaspora, 1750-1850”
March 2008 (Portland): “Colloquy with Laura Stevens on The Poor Indians: British Missionaries, Native Americans, and Colonial Sensibility”
March 2007 (Atlanta): “Colloquy with Vincent Carretta on Equiano the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man”
Spring 2006 (Montréal): “Colloquy with Joseph Roach on Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance”
April 2004 (Boston): “Colloquy with the Author: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth”
August 2003: joint meeting with International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (Los Angeles): “Colloquy with the Author: Sandra Gustafson’s Eloquence is Power: Oratory & Performance in Early America” (UNC Press, for the Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture, 2000)”
Apr. 2001 (New Orleans): “Tropicolloquy: A Conversation with Srinivas Aravamudan on Tropicopolitans [Duke UP, 1999]”
Apr. 2000 (Philadelphia): “Colloquy with the Author: Beth Fowkes Tobin’s Picturing Imperial Power: Colonial Subjects in Eighteenth-Century British Painting [Duke UP, 1999]”
March 1997 (Nashville, in conjunction with southeastern-regional affiliate): please see details in next list
March 1994 (Charleston, in conjunction with southeastern-regional affiliate): please see details in next list
at Southeastern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies’ meetings, 1994-2008:
2008 (Auburn): at invitation of conference organizer, “Colloquy with the Author, on Martin Brückner’s The Geographic Revolution in Early America: Maps, Literacy, and National Identity”
2001 (Huntsville): at invitation of conference organizer, “Colloquy with the Author, on David Shields’ Civil Tongues & Polite Letters in British America”
1998 (Atlanta): “Colloquy with the Author, on Grantland Rice’s Transformation of Authorship in America”
1997 (Nashville, in conjunction with national conference), “Colloquy with the Author: Lynn Hunt and The Family Romance of the French Revolution, Five Years Later,” with art historian Heather McPherson as moderator
1996 (Tallahassee): “Colloquy with the Author: Robert Markley and Fallen Languages: Crises of Representation in Newtonian England, 1660-1740”
1994 (Charleston) in conjunction with national conference, first SEASECS: “Colloquy with the Author, discussing Marie-Hélène Huet’s Monstrous Imagination”; panelists also included an art historian, a French scholar, and a specialist on Alexander Pope