The 8th Biannual conference of the European Early American Studies Association invites established scholars, post-doctoral students and graduate students to re-examine the fundamental concept of Atlantic history in light of current research on the themes of colonisations, revolutions, and reinventions, from 1492 to 1848. It is also an opportunity to examine the history of transformations in early America and, broadly, the early modern world, by taking fuller account of scholarship on the politics of primitive globalisation. We will focus on the empires that organised European settlements in disrupting and dislocating native peoples, prompting indigenous cultures to re-invent themselves; but we will  also be attentive to the processes that led to the formation of new Euro-American societies in the Americas, often shaped by the enslavement of Africans and other forms of unfree labor. In the North-American colonies, the West Indies, India, Latin America, and Africa, entire peoples and their lands were reinvented by trading companies, individual administrators, theoreticians and executors of empires, as well as by those rare voices, many of who were abolitionists, who developed a critical approach to European expansion abroad.

The social and political revolutions of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in the Americas and the Atlantic world led to the emergence of republican nations and, eventually, to modern (often exclusionary) democracies.  These offer a second major moment of reinvention through national, tribal, racial, and gender-based conflicts, as well as new forms of identities, forged through war and peace. In recent years, beyond a major historiographical focus on the Haitian Revolution, the term revolution has also come to refer to the second revolution of slavery and the revolution of antislavery in the Americas and the Atlantic world. Its meaning can also be extended to other insurrections and rebellions, as well as to the revolution of rights as embodied in the women’s rights movement in the United States, and to the upheavals culminating with the European revolutions of 1848 and their impact in the Atlantic world, most notably, leading to the French abolition of slavery in the colonies. Drawing on the theme of the 7th Biannual EEASA Conference in London in December 2018, on the making and unmaking of identities in the Atlantic world, the notions of colonisation, revolutions, and reinventions also invite participants to examine the individual stories of those who transformed their lives through imperial service, social mobility, flight, immigration, as well as by their commercial interactions and newly-crafted opportunities to serve as cultural intermediaries.

The Congress may include panels on the changes in the Atlantic World societies that resulted from cultural contact and conflict; the various manifestations of clashing visions of European empires and Native societies; resistance to empire and its many forms of oppression as well as and the rise of representative government and the universal validity of fundamental principles.  In sum, we welcome all papers that speak to the themes of colonisations, revolutions, and reinventions.

We encourage proposals from emerging and established scholars in all disciplines for traditional conference panels (three 20-minute papers with chair and Q&A), round tables, and other formats. Sessions are 90 minutes. We ask that panel proposals not be composed of participants from a single country or institution. The programme committee reserves the right to re-organize the composition of panels to meet this requirement. We also welcome individual proposals. Papers are posted on our website prior to the conference.

We also wish to focus on the research of doctoral students by devoting a half-day to discussion of their papers.

Submission Guidelines

All paper or session proposals should be in the format of a single electronic document (Word or .pdf) that begins with the surname and first initial of the contact person, e.g., « SmithJ.pdf »

This single document should contain:

1. Panel title & short, one paragraph description.
2. Proposals for each paper (no more than 200 words each) if a full session.
3. Single-page curriculum vitae for each participant.
4. Indication of any special requests, such as audio-visual equipment.
5. Email addresses for the designated contact person and each participant.

The deadline for submissions is December 15, 2019

Please submit your proposals by email: eeasa2020@gmail.com with EEASA2020 and your surname in the subject line.

Please note that all program participants will be required to register for the conference. To facilitate participation by younger scholars we offer a reduced conference fee to graduate students and can provide free accommodation to presenters who are graduate students or who are within two years of the award of their PhD and not in full-time academic employment.

Organising Committe

• Elodie Peyrol-Kleiber (Poitiers)
• Anne-Claire Faucquez (Paris-8)
• Hélène Roy (Poitiers)
• André Magord (Poitiers)
• Christèle Le Bihan (Poitiers)
• Pierre Gervais (Paris-3) Philippe Cauvet (Poitiers)

Scientific Committee

• Emma Hart (St Andrews)
• Marie-Jeanne Rossignol (Paris-Diderot)
• Allan Potofsky (Paris-Diderot)
• Elisabeth Heijmans (Leiden)
• Bertrand Van Ruymbeke (Paris-8)
• Joanne van der Woude (Groningen)
• Andrea Kökény (Szeged)