NNI Scholars' Seminar

The New Netherland Institute hosts a zoom seminar where academics, public historians, and graduate students meet to discuss a piece of chapter or article length pre-circulated work on New Netherland and the Dutch Atlantic World. Moderated by NNI’s director, Dr. Deborah Hamer, the seminar meets four times per semester on Wednesdays from noon to 1:30 (EST). This time was selected to enable the participation of both American and European scholars.

At the seminar, participants discuss pre-circulated scholarly work of chapter or article length that is in progress. Attendees are expected to have read the work in advance of the seminar. Presenters offer a brief introduction to their papers, and the remainder of the time will be devoted to discussion. Scholars of all ranks, included graduate students, and public historians are warmly invited to attend and contribute to the discussions. As these papers are works in progress, please do not cite them outside of the seminar without first requesting the permission of the author.

Email NNI.Seminar@gmail.com to join the listserv. Papers and zoom links are circulated to the email list a week in advance of the seminar session.  If you have a PhD or are a PhD candidate and you would like to present a paper related to New Netherland or the Dutch Atlantic World, please email NNI.Seminar@gmail.com with your CV and an abstract of the paper that you would like to present. 

2025 - 2026

September 17, 2025: Giovanna Montenegro, Binghamton University

Moravian Missionaries and their Engagement with Saamaka Cultural Traditions

October 15, 2025: Nancy Um, Getty Research Institute

A Trail of Coins from Yemen to New York: Networks of Money, People, Things, and Power in the Inventory of Margrieta van Varick, ca. 1695

November 19, 2025: David Veevers, Bangor University [UK]

December 17, 2025: Jonas Danen, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat München 

January 14, 2026: Marian (Molly) Leech, University of Pennsylvania

Unmaking Possession in the Delaware River Valley, 1620-1655

February 11, 2026: Agnes Trouillet, University of Paris Nanterre

March 11, 2026: Paul Feller-Simmons, University of Oklahoma

Cantors in New York and the Eighteenth-Century Dutch Sephardic Atlantic

April 15, 2026: Alan Mikhail, Yale University

2024 - 2025

September 18, 2024: Mark Thompson, University of Groningen

The "Right Line": Disputing Borders and Allegiances in the Mid-Atlantic Borderlands

October 16, 2024: Thato Magano, Rutgers University & Leiden University

"They must behave like wild animals indoors": Deconstructing the Gendered and Racialized Contours of Sodomy in Jessie Burton's Seventeenth Century Amsterdam

November 20, 2024: Dennis Maika, New Netherland Institute

"Those with an interest in the Country": Private Entrepreneurship in New Amsterdam, 1640-1645

December 11, 2024: Martijn van den Bel, Centre archéologique Inrap

Lost Letters from the Second Anglo-Dutch War, 1665-1667: Anglo Dutch Commerce in the Leeward Islands  

January 15, 2025: Virginie Adane, Nantes Université

Empires in Contact: Slavery and Settlement in Seventeenth-Century Schenectady

February 19, 2025: Kyle Dieleman, Dordt University [US]

Theological Approaches to Slavery in the Early Modern Dutch Reformed Tradition and Impacts on New Netherland

March 19, 2025: Jennifer Motter, College of William & Mary

Collection, Cultivation, & Control: Dutch Saltworks in the 17th c. Atlantic

April 23, 2025: Amanda Faulkner, Columbia University

Maritime Lives on Land: Seafaring Experiences and Colonial Communities in New Netherland

2023-2024

October 18, 2023: Hilde Neus, University of Suriname

Seventy Women of Color Against the Civil Guards, Suriname, 1778

November 15, 2023: Lou Roper, SUNY New Paltz

Poachers Turned Gamekeepers: The Guinea Company and How the English Empire Became a Matter of "State"

December 13, 2023: BJ Lillis, Princeton University

The Settler-Colonial Manor: Indigenous Landscapes and Enslaved Labor in the Creation of New York's Manors

January 17, 2024: Elizabeth Hines, University of Chicago

Anglo-Dutch Imperial Experiments

February 21, 2024: Esther Baakman, Radboud University

Reporting Empire, 1667-1713

March 20, 2024: Stephanie Porras, Tulane University, and Aaron Hyman, Johns Hopkins University

Recasting the Silver Fleet, or the Propaganda of Piracy in the Age of Global Extraction

April 16*, 2024: Simon Middleton, College of William & Mary

*please note that this meeting will be on Tuesday rather than our usual Wednesday.

The "manie and great inconveniences which do dayly arise by dealing for monie": Current Money and Community in early America

The New Netherland Institute Seminar began in Fall 2021. Presenters and paper titles from past seminars:

Spring 2023

January 18: Joris van den Tol, Radboud University

A Network against the (first) Act of Navigation in the Anglo-Dutch Atlantic

February 22: Mark Meuwese, University of Winnipeg

The Indigenous peoples of Guyana and the Restructuring of the South Atlantic, 1645-1700

April 19: Jared Hardesty, Western Washington University

Two Sisters and a Suriname Plantation: Fairfield Estate, the Dutch Atlantic, and Rethinking New England Slavery

Fall 2022

September 14: Maeve Kane, University at Albany

The Capacious Sacrament of Necessity: Community Formation in Early American Godparentage Networks

October 19: Danny Noorlander, SUNY Oneonta

The Elephant and the Finch: A Musical History of the Early Slave Trade

November 16: Christopher Ebert, Brooklyn College, and Thiago Krause, Universidade
Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro

After the Fall (of Recife): Preserving and Recreating Dutch-Brazilian Ties in the South Atlantic, c. 1655-1730

December 14: Ayasha Guerin, University of British Columbia

Beavers and Boundaries: The Colonization of Manhattan

Spring 2022

February 16: Andrea Mosterman, University of New Orleans

Neither Enslaved nor Free: Conditional Manumissions and the Struggle for Freedom of New Netherland’s African Community

March 16: Melissa Morris University of Wyoming

Tobacco and Colonization in the mid-seventeenth century: New Netherland and beyond

April 20: Michael Oberg (SUNY Geneseo)

On Turtles Back and Ancestors

May 18: Timo McGregor MacMillan Center, Yale University

Protective Politics: Violence, Property, and Community in the Dutch Empire

Fall 2021

September 15: Evan Haefeli, Texas A&M University

Forging Peace despite the Covenant Chain: The Delaware Indian Scare of 1694

October 13: Erin Kramer, Trinity University

Brother Corlaer’s New House: Reorienting Mohawk-Dutch Spaces (1660-1686)

November 17: Mark Thompson, University of Groningen

Mattahorn's Dilemma

December 15: Wim Klooster, Clark University

A Petition to Keep New Netherland: Amsterdam’s Fear of English Ascendancy