# Cultural Encounters in Atlantic Societies, 1500-1800 **1998 Annual Seminar** **Tuesday, August 11** **SESSION 1** **Africa: Transforming Coastal Cultures** **Chair**: **Peter Wood**, Duke University **Alexander Byrd**, Rice University ["The Slave Trade from the Biafran Interior to Jamaica: Commerce, Culture Change, and Comparative Perspective"](/Byrd-wp98001 "The Slave Trade from the Biafran Interior to Jamaica: Commerce, Culture Change, and Comparative Perspective") **Magnus Huber**, University of Essen, Germany ["Afro-European Linguistic Encounters on the Lower Guinea Coast: The English Trading Posts on the Gold Coast and New World Creole Englishes"](/Huber-wp98002) **SESSION 2** **First Encounters** **Chair**: **Karen Ordahl Kupperman**, New York University **Melanie Perreault**, University of Central Arkansas ["Celibate Sailors, Hairy Chests, and Virgin Lands: Contesting Masculinities in the Americas"](/Perreault-wp98003) **Evan Haefeli**, Princeton University ["Of Manitous and Men: First Contact in North America"](/Haefeli-wp98004) **Juliana Barr**, University of Wisconsin, Madison ["Gender and the Rituals of First Contact: Indian-Euroamerican Communication in the Colonial Spanish Borderlands"](/Barr-wp98005) **Wednesday, August 12** **SESSION 3** **Gender Shifts** **Chair**: **Laurel Thatcher Ulrich**, Harvard University **John F. Campbell**, University of Cambridge, England ["Seeing 'She' across the Sea: Reassessing Notions of Womanhood in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Plantation World"](/Campbell-wp98006) **Ian David Chambers**, University of Warwick, England ["'Now we act more like women than Head Men': Gender and the Native American in the Colonial South"](/Chambers-wp98007) **Gunlög Fur**, Växjö University, Sweden ["Women's Authority and the Anomalies of Vision in Delaware Experiences of Colonial Encounters"](/Fur-wp98008) **Thursday, August 13** **SESSION 4** **The Melding of Cultures: The Darker Powers** **Chair**: **John Womack**, Harvard University **Frank T. Proctor III**, Emory University ["Black vs. White Magic: *Curandismo*, Race, and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Mexico"](/Proctor%20-%20WP%2098009) **Martha Few**, University of Miami ["Illness Accusations and the Cultural Politics of Power in Colonial Santiago de Guatemala, 1650-1720"](/Few-wp98010) **SESSION 5** **Syncretism: Nahuatl** **Chair**: **Louise M. Burkhart**, SUNY-Albany **David Tavarez**, University of Chicago "Boundaries of Evangelization: From Ideologies of Translation to Dialectics of Reception in Early and Mid-Colonial Nahua Doctrinal Genres" **Martin V. Fleming**, Tulane University ["Franciscan Missionary Theater in Sixteenth-Century New Spain: Conquering Expectations and the Syncretic Reality"](/Fleming-wp98012) **Friday, August 14** **SESSION 6** **Multiplicities** **Chair**: **Franklin W. Knight**, Johns Hopkins University **Jennifer M. Spear**, University of Minnesota "'The low orders of every color': Drinking, Dancing, and Disorder in Colonial Louisiana" **Clarence V. H. Maxwell**, University of Warwick, England ["Race and Slavery: The Birth of 'Customs of the Country' in Bermuda, 1616-1669"](/Maxwell-wp98014) **Saturday, August 15** **SESSION 7** **Linguistic Encounters: The Uses of Language** **Chair**: **Nancy L. Hagedorn**, St. John's University **Maria Candida D. M. Barros**, Museu Emilio Goeldi, Brazil ["The Office of *Lingua* (Interpreter): A Portrait of the Religious Interpreter in Brazil in the Sixteenth Century"](/Barros-wp98015) **John Pollack**, University of Pennsylvania ["Colonial Missionaries and Indian Languages in North America, 1600-1700"](/Pollack%20-%20WP%2098016) **Claudio Saunt**, University of Georgia ["The Power of Writing: Literacy and the Colonization of Southeastern Indians"](/Saunt%20-%20WP%2098017) **SESSION 8** **Economic Encounters** **Chair**: **Gloria Main**, University of Colorado, Boulder **Olutayo Adesina**, University of Ibadan, Nigeria ["The Culture of Entrepreneurship, Cross-Cultural Visions, and the Construction of African-American Standards of Inheritance"](/wp98018) **Stephen Hum**, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor ["'Birds Die for Food': Money and the Mentalities of Exchange among the Iroquois and the English in the Mid-Eighteenth Century"](/Hum-wp98019) **Monday, August 17** **SESSION 9** **Encounters on the Far Margins of Atlantic Empires** **Chair**: **Paul Mapp**, Harvard University **Ned Blackhawk**, University of Washington ["The Violent Edge of Empire: The Spanish-Ute Alliance and the Origins of the Great Basin Indian Slave Trade"](/Blackhawk-wp98020) **Michael Witgen**, University of Washington " 'They Have for Neighbors and Friends the Sioux': The Migration, Adaptation, and Transformation of the Western Ojibwas in the Dakota-Ojibwa Alliance" **Linda Wimmer**, Bridgewater State University " 'To Encourage a Trade with the Indians': Brazilian Tobacco and Cross-Cultural Relations in the Hudson's Bay Company Fur Trade, 1690-1750" **SESSION 10** **Military Encounters** **Chair**: **Fred Anderson**, University of Colorado, Boulder **Guy Chet**, Yale University ["Starting Over: The Transformation of European Warfare in Colonial New England"](/Chet-wp98023) **Adam Rothman**, Columbia University ["Slaves, Soldiers and Free Men in the Battle of New Orleans"](/Rothman%20-%20WP%2098024) **Tuesday, August 18** **SESSION 11** **Ethnic Identities** **Chair**: **Joyce Goodfriend**, University of Denver **James H. Williams**, Middle Tennessee State University "Defining, Defending, and Expanding Dutchness: The Cultural Struggle for the Early Mid-Atlantic Colonies" **Natalie A. Zacek**, Johns Hopkins University " 'Tomb of the Blissful Man': The Jews of Nevis, West Indies" **Wednesday, August 19** **SESSION 12** **Religious Identities** **Chair**: **Patricia Bonomi**, New York University **Patrick Griffin**, Northwestern University [" 'The Very Scum of Mankind': Context, Meaning, and the Creation of Scotch-Irish Ethnicity in Pennsylvania, 1717-1741"](/Griffin-wp98027) **Elizabeth Lewis Pardoe**, Princeton University ["Poor Children and Enlightened Citizens: Lutheran Education in America, 1748-1800" ](/Pardoe-wp98028) **SESSION 13** **Creole Cultures** **Chair**: **John Womack**, Harvard University **Beatriz Helena Domingues**, Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, Brazil ["Tradition and Modernity in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Iberia and the Iberian-American Colonies"](/Domingues-wp98029) **Susan Lindsey Lively**, Harvard University ["Reacclimating to the Colonies: American Travelers Abroad and Their Experiences Returning to the Colonies, 1740-1776"](/Lively-wp98030) **Jorge Cañizares Esguerra**, Illinois State University ["Nation and Nature: Creole Patriotic Representations of Nature in Colonial Spanish America"](/CanizaresEsguerra-wp98031) **Thursday, August 20** **SESSION 14** **Impact of the New World on the Old, I** **Chair**: **Bernard Bailyn**, Harvard University **Benjamin Schmidt**, University of Washington "American Allies: The Dutch Encounter with the New World, 1492-1650" **William O'Reilly**, National University of Ireland, Galway [" 'Informing the heart's desire': European Perceptions of Early America"](/OReilly-wp98033) **Vera Lind**, University of the Saarland, Germany ["Crossing the Atlantic Twice: Black Africans in Late Eighteenth-Century Germany—Encounters of Color, Race, Identity, and the Exotic"](/Lind-wp98034) **Friday, August 21** **SESSION 15** **Impact of the New World on the Old, II** **Chair**: **Bernard Bailyn**, Harvard University **Jorge Martins Ribeiro**, Oporto University, Portugal ["Diplomacy and American Independence: The Portuguese Atlantic World and the United States"](/Martins%20Ribeiro%20-%20WP%2098035 "Diplomacy and American Independence: The Portuguese Atlantic World and the United States") **Marcy Norton**, University of California, Berkeley ["Tobacco, Chocolate, and the Indianization of Europeans"](/Norton-wp98036) **SESSION 16** **Summary and Interpretation** Members of the Seminar