Conference: The War of 1812 - Myth and Memory, History and Historiography

Date: Thursday 12 July to Saturday 14 July 2012

The conference on 'The War of 1812: Myth and Memory, History and Historiography' is a result of a partnership between the Institute for the Study of the Americas at the University of London, the London Canadian Studies Association and the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

All sessions will be held in the Senate House of the University of London, which is on Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU.

For more information, please contact either Phillip Buckner or Tony McCulloch.

If you wish for more details about registering for the conference, please go to the website of the Institute for the Study of the Americas

via TSA e-bulletins.

Programme of Events

Thursday, 12 July 2012 

1:30-1:50 p.m.

REGISTRATION

1:50-2:00 p.m.

Opening Comments

2:00-3:30 p.m.

Session One

Session One (a): The War in the Chesapeake

• Christopher T. George (Independent Scholar, USA): 'New Information on the Battle for Havre de Grace, Maryland, May 3, 1813, and the British Sack of the Town'.
• John McCavitt (Visiting Research Fellow, Queen's University Belfast): 'The historiographical representation of Major General Robert Ross: an officer, a gentleman -- and a conflagrator'.
• Charles Neimeyer (Director, United States Marine Corps History): 'War Comes to Washington: The Chesapeake Campaigns of 1813-1814'.

Session One (b): The War in the Canadas

• Roch Legault (Royal Military College, Canada): 'The Key Ally: French Canada and the War of 1812'.
• Doug Leighton (Huron College, University of Western Ontario): 'After Moraviantown: Guerrilla Warfare in the Thames River Valley, 1813-1814'.
• Jean-René Thuot (Université du Québec à Rimouski): 'Loyalty to the Regime: Prominent Men, Militia and French Canadian Identity through the 1812 War'.

3:30-4:00 p.m.

Coffee Break

4:00-5:00 p.m.

Session Two

Session Two (a): Seeking Freedom

• Thomas Malcomson (George Brown College, Toronto): 'Freedom by Reaching the Wooden World: American Slavery and the British Navy during the War of 1812'.
• Gene Smith (Texas Christian University): 'Fighting for Freedom:  Race, Liberty, and Power during the War of 1812'.

Session Two (b): The American Navy and the War

• Jeff Seiken (Historian, U.S. Air Force): 'It is Victories We Want American Naval Planning and Operations in 1812 Revisited'.
• Donald G. Shomette (Independent Scholar): 'The Torpdeo Act: Bounty Hunting and American Submarine Warfare Innovations in the War of 1812'.

5:30-6:30 p.m.

Keynote One

Donald R. Hickey (Wayne State College, Nebraska): 'The Legacy of 1812:  How a Little War Shaped the Transatlantic World'.

Friday, 13 July 2012

9:00-10:30

Session Three

Session Three (a): The War in the Southern Borderlands

• James G. Cusick (University of Florida): 'The War of 1812 and the Spanish Floridas: The Significance of the War in the American South'.
• Daniel S. Murphree (University of Central Florida): 'A View from the Southern Borderlands: Reinterpreting the War of 1812 from a Florida Perspective'.
• Jim Piecuch (Kennesaw State University, Georgia):  'Allies No More: The Southern Natives' Response to the War of 1812'.

Session Three (b): Writing the History of the War

• Michael Patrick Cullinane (Northumbria University): 'Sulgrave Manor and 100 Years of Peace Among English-Speaking Peoples'.
• Alan Gordon (University of Guelph): 'Marshalling Memory: An Historiographical Biography of Brigadier-General Ernest Alexander Cruikshank'.
• J. Simon Rofe (University of Leicester): 'Theodore Roosevelt: The Historian of the War of 1812?'

10:30-11:00 a.m.

Coffee

11:00-12:00 a.m.

Session Four

Session Four (a): Financing the War

• Sarah Lentz (PhD student, Hamburg University, Germany): 'The American Government Loan of 1813: The Role of Nationality, Patriotism, and Public Opinion in Transatlantic Financial Networks in Times of War'
• Lisa R. Morales (Lone Star College, Texas): '”War Cannot Be Carried on Without Money”: The Strange Financial History of the War of 1812'.

Session Four (b): British Strategy in the Northwest and the Role of Brock

• Sandy Antal (Independent Scholar, Canada): 'The Cession of Michigan and British Strategy'.
• Brittney-Anne Bos (PhD student, Queen's University, Canada): 'Deconstructing the Myth Behind the Man: Sir Isaac Brock and Monuments to the British Gentleman Hero'.

12:00-1:00 p.m.

Keynote Two

Alan Taylor (University of California, Davis): 'Tales of Freedom and Slavery in the War of 1812'.

1:00-2:00 p.m.

Lunch

2:00-3:30 p.m.

Session Five

Session Five (a): First Nations and the War

• R. David Edmunds (University of Texas at Dallas): 'Tecumseh's Confederacy:  Who Joined, Who Didn't, and Why.'
• John Reid (St. Mary's University, Halifax): '”In the Midst of Three Fires, a French one, an American one, and an Indian one”: Imperial-Indigenous Negotiations during the War of 1812 in Eastern British America'.
• John Sugden (Independent Scholar, United Kingdom): 'Tecumseh and the Revolt in the West, 1805-1818'.

Session Five (b): The British Navy and the War

• Brian Arthur (Greenwich Maritime Institute, University of Greenwich): 'Cargoes and Cash: the United States Blockaded to Defeat, 1812-1815.'
• Martin Salmon (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich): '”Never before in the history of the world did an English frigate strike to an American The impact of American naval victories on British national consciousness'.
• Barbara Thompson (South West Maritime Society): 'The Role of Plymouth and Dartmoor during the War of 1812'.

3:30-4:00 p.m.

Coffee Break

4:00-5:00

Session Six

Session Six (a): Cultural Implications of the War

• Nicole Eustace (New York University): 'The “Beauty and Booty” Scandal of 1812: Sexual Passions, Patriotic Myths, and the Mantle of Liberty'.
• Steven Watts (University of Missouri): 'Crisis and Sanctification: The War of 1812 and American Culture'.

Session Six (b): International Implications of the War

• H.G. Callaway (Independent Scholar, USA): 'A.J. Dallas, The War of 1812 and the Law of Nations'.
• Magdalena Marczuk-Karbownik (University of Łódź, Poland):  'Was the Monroe Doctrine a Consequence of the Treaty of Ghent?'

5:15-6:15 p.m.

Keynote Three

Andrew Lambert (King's College London): 'Sideshow?:The War of 1812 in British Grand Strategy.'

Saturday, 14 July 2012

9:00-10:30 a.m.

Session Seven

Session Seven (a): Memories of the War

• Julia Roberts (University of Waterloo): 'His and Hers: Imagined Narratives, Gender, and the War of 1812'
• Joseph Stoltz (PhD candidate, Texas Christian University): 'Hidden Amongst the Cotton Bales: The Battle of New Orleans's Changing Place in American Memory'.

Session Seven (b): Privateering during the War

• Faye Kert (Independent Scholar, Canada): 'True, publick and notorious”: The Privateering War of 1812'.
• Edward J. Martin (PhD student, University of Maine):  'Maine's Mode of Privateering: A Tale of Fraud and Collusion in the Northeastern Borderlands, 1812-1815'.
• Keith Mercer (Saint Mary's University, Halifax): 'Paradoxes of Patriotism: The British Navy in Nova Scotia during the War of 1812'.

10:30-11:00 a.m.

Coffee Break

11:00-12:00 a.m.

Session Eight

Session Eight (a): Origins of the War

• Troy Bickam (Texas A&M University): 'Contesting the American Revolution during the War of 1812'.
• Andrew J. B. Fagal (PhD student, Binghamton University, N.Y.): 'The Future Character of the New Empire": American Armament and the Origins of the War of 1812'
• Session Eight (b): Black Participation in the War
• Penny Carballo and Alan Nigel Smith (Independent Scholars, UK): 'The War of 1812 and the Black Spartans of Trinidad'.
• John McNish Weiss (Independent Scholar, United Kingdom): 'Cochrane and his Proclamation: Liberator or  Scaremonger?'

12:00-1:00 p.m.

Lunch

1:00-2:00 p.m.

Keynote Four

Cecilia Morgan (University of Toronto): 'The War of 1812 in Upper Canada and its Afterlife: Gender, Commemoration and memory in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Ontario'.

2:00-3:00 p.m.

Session Nine

Session Nine (a): Naval Officers and their Code

• Ellen Gill (University of Sydney): '”Martial honour, my passport to love”: Family, duty and the war of 1812'.
• Justin Reay (Oxford University): '"With a lone ship he swept the oceans": David Porter and the cruise of the Essex in the Pacific 1813-1814'.

Session Nine (b): Religion and the War

• René Lafferty (Brock University): 'The Account We Must Render to God: Luck, Prayer, and Providence in the Winning and Losing of the War of 1812'.
• James Tyler Robertson (PhD student, McMaster Divinity College): 'Expel the Faithless Foe: British North American Churches and the Role of Religion in the War of 1812'.

3:00-3:30 p.m.

Coffee Break

3:30-5:00 p.m.

Session Ten

Session Ten (a): American National Identity and the War

• Richard A. Herrera (U.S. Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas): 'Toward an American Army: American Soldiers, the War of 1812, and National Identity'.
• Susan J. Jerome (University of Rhode Island): 'A Symbol of Patriotism The Stonington Battle Flag'.
• Daniel Preston (University of Mary Washington): 'Sectional Reconciliation in the Aftermath of the War of 1812:  James Monroe in New England, 1817'.

Session Ten (b): Remembering the War in New York and Ontario

• Thomas A. Chambers, (Niagara University): '”American Antiquities Are So Rare”: Remembering the War of 1812 on the Niagara Frontier'.
• Maria Moncur (Phd student, Queen's University, Canada): 'Fickle Friends and Uncertain Enemies: War of 1812 Storytelling in New York and Ontario, 1840 to 1910'.
• Elaine Young (PhD student, University of Guelph): 'Bloody Battles to Baseball Diamonds: Tourism and Leisure on the battlefields of the Niagara Frontier'.

5.00pm end of conference