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History PhDs Reunite at Annual Meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory

History PhDs Reunite at Annual Meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory

The 2024 Annual Meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory proved to be second Happy Valley last week.

The conference, which took place in Fargo, ND this year, was themed “Colonial (dis)Entanglements.”  A combination of doctoral students (past and present) and faculty members from Penn State’s history department attended the meeting, with stellar results.  Christina Snyder, president-elect of the American Society for Ethnohistory, was joined by council members Amara Solari and Julie Reed on the organizing board.  Snyder and Reed are full-time professors in the History Department, while Solari teaches in the Art History department.

In addition to these organizing stars, four Penn State historians presented papers at the conference.  These papers are, in order of conference presentation:

  • Professor Matthew Restall, “The Invention of Aztec and Maya Human Sacrifice”
  • Micaela Wiehe, “Indios on the Move: 16th-Century Migration and Enslavement”
  • Cesar J. Ovando, “From Allies to Adversaries: The Kaqchikel Dilemma During the Conquest of Guatemala”
  • Travis Meyer, “Carnal K’iche’an Confessions: Gender and Sexuality in an 18th-Century Mayan Confessional Manual”
Travis Meyer, who is halfway through his doctoral program, was awarded with the Best Paper Presented by a Graduate Student.

Finally, three of our historians were featured scholars in a panel discussion, “Contested Power: Indigenous Women in the Colonial Americas”.  These were Edward Green, Katherine Godfrey, and Christopher Thrasher.

Kate Godfrey, Ed Green, and Chris Thrasher helped lead a roundtable discussion on indigenous women in the colonial Americas.

Congratulations to all our incredible Penn State Historians – past, present, and future!

The complete program of the 2024 Annual Meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory can be found here.

Prof. Matthew Restall looking suitably proud with eight of his past and present PhD students from our History program, all of whom presented papers at the Ethnohistory conference in Fargo last week. They are, from the left, Micaela Wiehe, Cesar Ovando, Meghan McDonie, Mark Christensen, Matthew Restall, Rob Schwaller, Samantha Billing, Travis Meyer, and Kate Godfrey.