Announcing a Conference,

Women's Economies in Colonial British America

Sponsored by the Program in Early American Economy and Society

Friday, October 1, 2004

At the Library Company of Philadelphia,

1314 Locust St., Philadelphia, PA

The theme of this conference reflects a recent flourishing of scholarship

about the role of women in shaping the early North American economy during

a time of both unprecedented economic development and significant changes

in traditional family, household, and market economies. These changes were

evinced everywhere European peoples settled in mainland North America

during the early modern era, and recent scholarly work on women's

experiences makes it imperative for us to rethink many long-standing

generalizations about such topics as frontier and urban female economies;

family strategies for dividing labor and creating economic efficiencies

within the household; shaping new economic identities out of varied

European, African, West Indian, and Native American cultures; the nature of

women's retailing and entrepreneurship aside from household roles; the

varieties of negotiation of race and class in economic contexts;

comparative women's economies from region to region, plantation to farm, or

across generations and social origins; and much more. The papers and

comments at this conference include some of the finest of this new work,

including that by Ellen Hartigan-O'Connor, Serena Zabin, Carole Shammas,

Marla Miller, Mary Beth Sievens, Stephanie Grauman Wolf, Kristi

Rutz-Robbins, Kate Fawver, and others.

            The papers prepared for this conference will be posted on the

PEAES web pages by September 1, 2004. We encourage everyone coming to the

conference to read them in advance, and then join us for a lively

discussion about the authors' findings and arguments.  This conference is

free and open to everyone interested in this topic. For further questions,

please contact Cathy Matson, PEAES Director, at cmatson@udel.edu.