Draper Chair in Early American History

Professor Robert A. Gross

he Draper Chair in Early American History was endowed by University of Connecticut graduates James L. and Shirley A. Draper for the support of research and teaching in the history of colonial America and of the United States down to the middle of the nineteenth century. Its establishment was designed to enhance and highlight the significance of the early American field in the graduate program in History at UConn, which now includes ten faculty members, based in Storrs and the branch campuses, specializing in a wide range of topics, from legal, religious, and environmental history in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to the political and social history of the American Revolution and the early republic. Under the aegis of Robert A. Gross, the first to hold the professorship, the Draper Chair helps to sustain a variety of activities in the early American field, including periodic worships and colloquia, research assistantships, and national conferences.

The Draper Graduate Student Conference in Early American Studies was inaugurated in the fall of 2005 to feature an interdisciplinary theme of interest to master’s and doctoral students at UConn and across the country. Now in its third year, the conference is the only regular gathering in the early American field to be run and hosted by graduate students themselves, who choose the theme, issue the call for papers, invite keynote speakers, and select and organize the panels. To extend the reach of the conference and expose graduate student participants to research resources in the vicinity of UConn, the meeting is held in collaboration with a nearby learned society or museum. The initial conference, co-sponsored by the American Antiquarian Society, focused on the theme, "Coming to Our Senses: Rediscovering Early America," with Rhys Isaac and Karen Kupperman as keynote speakers. The sequel in 2006, held in collaboration with Mystic Seaport, took as its theme "Imagining Environments: Navigating Space and Place in the Early Atlantic World" and featured Alan Taylor and Karen Halttunen as plenary speakers. Since its inception, the Draper Conference has attracted participants from around the country and become an important event in the scholarly calendar of Uconn’s History Department, which looks forward to welcoming its guests to campus.