Business and Economic History at SHEAR 2016

The 2016 annual meeting of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR) is taking place this week in New Haven, Connecticut, on July 21-24. The conference brochure, including the program, is now available.
    The presidential plenary is a conversation with "Hamilton" creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, filmed last April with Joanne B. Freeman and Brian Phillips Murphy. The musical also features in Session 19, "A Critical Roundtable on Hamilton." Other sessions of particular interest to business and economic historians include

Session 15: "Costly Improvements: The Promises and Pitfalls of Early National Development"
Session 25: "Loopholes, Traps, and Hidden Agendas: The New Rules of Maritime Trade for the Early American Republic"
Session 38: "Baubles, Bonnets, and Banknotes: The Business of Fashioning Early America"

Individual papers include

"Coverture and Contract: Enforcing Wives’ Dependence in the Early Republic," by Lindsay Keiter, College of William and Mary (session 5)
" 'No Admittance for Unprotected Females': African American Entrepreneurial Networks and Discourses of Respectability in Antebellum New York City," by Jennifer Hull, Colgate University (session 7)
"Lunsford Lane: Entrepreneurialism and Black Manhood in Slavery and Freedom," by Craig Thompson Friend, North Carolina State University (session 14)
"Putting the Tariff Back into the Nineteenth Century," by Robin L. Einhorn, University of California, Berkeley (session 24)
"Antimonopoly, the Bank Veto, and Public Finance, 1790-1863," Richard R. John, Columbia University (session 24)
"Seeing the State’s Slaves: 'Public Hands,' Internal Improvement, and the Practice of State Slavery," by Aaron Hall, University of California, Berkeley (session 29)
"Race, Property, and Widowhood in Revolutionary Virginia: Mary Willing Byrd and Slavery," by
Ami Pflugrad-Jackisch, University of Toledo (session 30)
" 'Her title to said negroes is perfect & complete': Slavery, Marriage, and Women’s Challenges to Coverture in the Nineteenth-Century South," by Stephanie Jones-Rogers, University of California,
Berkeley (session 30)
"The Commoditization of Bodies: Physicians and the Business of Healing in the Economics of Slavery," by Savannah Williamson, University of Houston (session 48)

    SHEAR also sponsors a series of graduate research seminars--luncheon programs that "permit grad students and senior faculty to discuss common themes, important areas of research, and the challenges faced by scholars in the field." This year Ellen Hartigan O'Connor and Joshua Rothman will be co-facilitators of a session on "History of Capitalism: Capitalism, Labor, and Political Economy."
    Those unable to attend can follow along in the Twitter world at #SHEAR2016. The meeting website is www.shear.org/annual-meeting/.