2024 BHC Meeting Program

The Program Committee included Caitlin Rosenthal (University of California at Berkeley) (chair); Michael Aldous (Queen’s University Belfast); Atiba Pertilla (German Historical Institute); Hannah Tucker (Copenhagen Business School); Louise Walker (Northeastern University); along with BHC President Sharon Murphy (Providence College). 

Thursday, March 14th

Childcare room, Thursday, 12:00am - Friday, 12:00am

L’Apogee A (fl. 17)

Room available for parents to use with their children.

Dissertation Colloquium, 8:00am - 12:00pm

Ocean State Suites

Dissertation Colloquium Lunch, 12:00pm - 1:00pm

Ocean State Suites

Please get your lunch and proceed to the publishing workshop.

Workshop 1: Publishing in Business History, 12:15pm - 1:30pm

Capital Ballroom (fl. 2)

Open to ALL Emerging Scholars. Sponsored by the Dissertation Colloquium.

Chair: Eric Godelier, École Polytechnique

Walter Friedman (Business History Review)

R. Daniel Wadhwani (Management & Organizational History)

Chris McKeen (Cambridge University Press) 

Andrew Popp (Enterprise and Society)

Workshop 2: Narratives of Business History: Fact, Fiction, and the Archive, 1:30pm - 3:00pm

Narragansett Bayview Room (fl. 17)

Open to ALL conference attendees.

Organizers: Marina Moskowitz and Andrew Popp

The recent publication of Hernan Diaz’ Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Trust—a four-voice narrative about the life of a New York City financier—brings a long tradition of novels about business back into the spotlight. While Trust can sit easily on a bookshelf of business fiction alongside Theodore Dreiser’s The Financier, Frank Norris’ The Pit, Sinclair Lewis’ Babbitt, and Philip Roth’s American Pastoral, among others, it also raises questions that are at the heart of writing of history. What sources do we as historians “trust”? What are the roles of memoir, biography, and other personal narratives in our assessment of past business practices? How do business professionals, firms, and ultimately, historians, shape the archives that are at the core of our research? And how do we separate fact from fiction? (Or conversely, is there a place for fiction in our teaching, our research, and our writing?)

In this discussion-based workshop, we aim to explore these questions in an open-ended conversation. Participants certainly do not have to have read Trust (or other business fictions) to attend, but just be willing to exchange ideas about how we craft business history; what the benefits and pitfalls might be of drawing on other genres, whether as source material, teaching tools, or models of writing; and how we can be creative in constructing both our archives and the narratives we draw from them?

Workshop 3: Careers in Business History, 1:45pm - 3:00pm

Capital Ballroom (fl. 2)

Open to ALL Emerging Scholars. Sponsored by the Dissertation Colloquium.

Chair: Eric Godelier, École Polytechnique

David Sicilia, Department of History, University of Maryland

Paula de la Cruz Fernandez, University of Florida

Takafumi Kurosawa, Faculty of Economics, Kyoto University

Susie Pak, Department of History, St. John's University

Registration, 2:30pm - 5:30pm

L'Apogee Reception Area (fl. 17)

BHC Trustees Meeting, 3:00pm - 5:30pm

Summit (fl. 18)

Workshop 4: Careers Outside the Academy, 3:30pm - 5:00pm

Narragansett Bayview Room (fl. 17)

Open to ALL conference attendees.

Meet historians who have made careers outside of academic jobs.  They will discuss their experiences, the pros and cons, how to seek such work, and answer your questions.

Gabriela Recio Cavazos, Business History Group

Paula de la Cruz Fernández,  Edita.us, Business History Group

Louis Hyman, Johns Hopkins

Eric Abrahamson, Vantage Point

Glenn Bugos, Moment LLC

Dalit Baranoff, Business History Group

Kenneth Lipartito, Florida International University & Business History Group

Opening Plenary, 5:45pm - 7:15pm

Capital Ballroom (fl. 2)

Climate Change and Business History: New Directions in a Time of Environmental Challenges 

Moderator: Bart Elmore, Professor of Environmental History and Core Faculty Member of the Sustainability Institute, Ohio State University

Panelists: 

Naomi Oreskes, Henry Charles Lea Professor of the History of Science in the Department of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University

Bathsheba R. Demuth, Dean's Associate Professor of History and Environment and Society, Brown University

Discussant: The Audience

Generously sponsored by the Business History Initiative and Special Collections & Archives, Baker Library, at Harvard Business School.

Presidential Reception, 7:30pm - 9:30pm

The Dorrance

Located in the historic 1901 Union Trust Company building at 60 Dorrance St., the Dorrance is a mere two-block walk from the hotel.

Generously sponsored by the Providence College School of Arts & Sciences.

Friday, March 15th

Childcare room, Friday, 12:00am - Saturday, 12:00am

L’Apogee A (fl. 17)

Room available for parents to use with their children.

Breakfast, 7:00am - 8:30am

Biltmore Ballroom (fl. 17)

Book Exhibit, 7:00am - 5:00pm

L'Apogee Reception Area (fl. 17)

Registration, 7:59am - 5:00pm

L'Apogee Reception Area (fl. 17)

Concurrent Sessions 1, 8:00am - 9:30am

Session a: Nervy Crooks, Wet Businessmen, Generous Airline Executives, & the Battle for the Public Interest
Capital Ballroom (fl. 2)
Chair: Daniel Robert, U. S. Patent and Trademark Office
Discussant: Sarah Elvins, University of Manitoba
Joanna Grisinger, Northwestern University
"Airlines, Regulators, and “Unusual Hospitality” "
Kyle Volk, University of Montana
"Wet Businessmen vs. Prohibition; or, The Politics of Personal Liberty in the Long Progressive Era"
Susanna Blumenthal, University of Minnesota
"Frenzied Finance: Con Artistry in the Progressive Era"
Session b: Conceptualizing the Corporation
Summit (fl. 18)
Chair: David Sicilia, University of Maryland, College Park
Discussant: Naomi Lamoreaux, Yale University
Jared Berkowitz, University of Chicago
""A matter of discretion": Corporations and Personhood in Progressive Legal thought, 1890-1929"
Dan Du, University of North Carolina, Charlotte
"Behind the Teacup: Transforming Joint-Stock Corporations to Reform China’s Tea Economy, 1881-1911"
Knut Sogner, BI Norwegian Business School
"Freedom of contract and company freedom. The progessive turn in Norwegian corporate law, 1890-1940"
Session c: Public-Private Partnerships in the Arts and Education
Summit C (fl. 18)
Chair: Alex Taylor, University of Pittsburgh
Discussant: Hannah Pivo, Columbia University
Matthew Wisnioski, Virginia Tech, and Michael Meindl, Radford University
"Broader Impacts: The Magic School Bus and the Rise of Public-Private Partnerships for Science Education"
Jennifer Kaufmann-Buhler, Purdue University
"The Design Necessity: NEA’s Federal Design Improvement Program and the Crisis in Design"
Mark Hauser, University of South Florida
"Challenging the “Obstinate, Indifferent and Cold-Blooded Exhibitor”: The American Legion Film Service as Hollywood Rival and Resource"
Session d: Frontiers of Trust: Insurance, Credit Rating, and Advertising Networks
Ocean State Suite A (fl. 2)
Chair: Anil Askin, Brown University
Discussant: Dalit Baranoff, Independent Scholar
Amanda Mushal, The Citadel
"“Clarke has obtained Reports”: Early Credit Rating Counterintelligence in the Ledgers of R.G. Dun & Company"
Robin Pearson, University of Hull
"The Marketing of Life Insurance in Turkey and China during the late 19th and early 20th Centuries "
Jennifer Black, Misericordia University
"Networks for Sale: Advertising and Infrastructure in the US, 1830-1860"
Session e: Negotiated Economies: Reckoning with Ghana's Uncharted Business History
Ocean State Suite B (fl. 2)
Chair: Laurent Beduneau-Wang, Africa Business School (ABS), Mohammed VI Polytechnique University
Discussant: Mattie Webb, Yale University
Christabel Agyeiwaa, University of California, Santa Barbara
""Only Legally Authorized Dealers": Business Publics in Ghana's Economic Landscape, 1960s-1990s"
Fauziyatu Moro, University of Wisconsin, Madison
"Energizing Accra: Charcoal Production and the Politics of Fuel Access in a West African City"
Tracy Mensah, Western Carolina University
"Commercial Bloodsuckers and Industrial Vampires"
Session f: Women and the Creation of Capital: Gendered Activity at the Heart of the Public Interest
Ocean State Suite C (fl. 2)
Chair: Mary Yeager, UCLA
Discussant: Karin Wulf, Brown University and John Carter Brown Library
Hannah Knox Tucker, Copenhagen Business School
"Absence Makes the Balance Sheet Grow Longer"
Amanda Gibson, University of Virginia
"Subject to be drawn by Mary Hamilton: An Analysis of Women’s Transactions in the Records of the Wilmington Savings Fund Society, 1832-1853"
Ann Daly, Mississippi State University
"Free and Enslaved Women’s Labor at the Early US Mint"
Session g: Hotels and the Public Good in the Great Depression
Narragansett Bayview Room (fl. 17)
Chair: Emmet von Stackelberg, Harvard University
Discussant: Vicki Howard, University of Essex
Megan Elias, Boston University
"Bed, Bath, Boom and Bust: American Hotels and the Great Depression"
Daniel Levinson Wilk, SUNY-Fashion Institute of Technology
"The Customer Isn’t Always Right at the Statler Hotel"
Shaun Richman, SUNY Empire State University
"We Always Had a Union: New York’s Hotel Workers Unions, 1912-1953"
Session h: Scaling Up in New Directions
L'Apogee B (fl. 17)
Chair: David Thomson, Sacred Heart University
Discussant: Susan V. Spellman, Miami University of Ohio
Rebecca Giblon, Princeton University
"From Fields to Homes: Rural Farm Companies’ Offseason Gas-Powered Washing Machine Production in the United States and Canada, 1907-29"
Kelly Kilcrease, University of New Hampshire
"J.F. McElwain Shoe Company and the Melville Corporation: The Secrets of Success for an Early Business Alliance in the Shoe Industry"
Stefano Tijerina, University of Maine
"Central Maine Power: Electric Power as a Means to the Betterment of Society, 1915-1929"

Coffee will be available all day, 8:30am - 5:30pm

Balcony (fl. 2)

Generously sponsored by the Center for Economy and Society, Johns Hopkins University

Coffee will be available all day, 8:30am - 5:30pm

L'Apogee Reception Area (fl. 17)

Generously sponsored by the Center for Economy and Society, Johns Hopkins University

Concurrent Sessions 2, 9:45am - 11:30am

Session a: Sources, Methods, and Rationales of Business History
Capital Ballroom (fl. 2)
Chair: Laura Linard, Harvard Business School, Baker Library
Discussant: Daniel Wadhwani, University of Southern California and Copenhagen Business School
Louis Hyman, Johns Hopkins University, and Samuel Backer, Johns Hopkins University
"Big Labor/Big Data: AI Approaches to the History of the American Federation of Labor "
Atiya Hussain, Graduate Institute
"Methods and Archives: New Turns in Business History"
Daniel Raff, The Wharton School
"What Do (Business) Historians Do?"
Session b: Champions of the Common Good: Insurances and the Process of Shaping Community Interests
Summit (fl. 18)
Chair: Sharon Murphy, Providence College
Discussant: The Audience
Jan Logemann, Göttingen University
"Business for the Common Good? Conflicts over Municipal and Non-Profit Funeral Businesses in Twentieth Century Germany"
Christina Lubinski, Copenhagen Business School
"Competing for Labor and the Public Good: Provident Funds in India, 1910s to 1950s"
Michael Ralph, Howard University
"Violence and the Task of Valuation"
Heather Welland, SUNY Binghamton
"Organized Labour and Industrial Life Insurance Agents in Britain, 1919-1939"
Session c: States and Markets in East Asia and Beyond
Summit C (fl. 18)
Chair: Takafumi Kurosawa, Kyoto University
Discussant: Michael Thornton, Northeastern University
John D'Amico, Yale University
"Debt, Merchants, and the State in Early Modern Japan"
Bill Kelson , University of Georgia
"“A Proto-Developmental State? Late-Qing China’s Self-Strengthening Movement and Energy-Intensive Industrialization”"
Lillian Tsay, Brown University
"Mobilizing Sweetness: Sugar, Confectionery, and State Control in Wartime Japan, 1937-1945 "
Jason Petrulis, The Education University of Hong Kong
"“Making a Global Beauty Business: The Rise and Fall of Hong Kong Wigs in the 1960s”"
Session d: Chemical Commodities and Environments, ca. 1900 – Present
Ocean State Suite A (fl. 2)
Discussant: Kathryn Steen, Drexel University
Katherine Mintie, Yale University
"Oil of Vitriol: Sicilian Sulfur Mining and the Photo-Chemical Trade at the Turn of the Twentieth Century"
Emmet von Stackelberg, Harvard University
"From the World to Rochester: The Raw Materials of Kodak’s Motion Picture Film"
Joris Mercelis, Johns Hopkins University
"The Return of the Natural: Soda Manufacturing and the Twentieth-Century Global Chemical Industry"
Alison McManus, Johns Hopkins University
"Patents and Pesticides in the Ongoing Green Revolution"
Session e: Financial Institutions and the Public ‘Good’
Ocean State Suite B (fl. 2)
Chair: Graeme Acheson, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK
Discussant: The Audience
Jessica Lomas, Henley Business School
"Credit institutions as mechanisms to alleviate poverty: The case of Monte di Pietà (Perugia, Italy)"
Linda Perriton, Stirling Management School
"Legal change and financial efficacy: The impact of the 1844 Savings Bank Act on trust accounts and trusteeship"
Victoria Barnes, School of Law, Queen’s University Belfast, and Lucy Newton, Henley Business School
"Piggy banks, money boxes and saving stamps: how British retail banks used artefacts to encourage children’s savings habits"
Amanda Ciafone, University of Illinois Urbana, Champaign
"Superannuation: Older Workers, Pensions, and Technological Change in the Early Twentieth Century"
Session f: Conceptualizing Entrepreneurial Disruption
Ocean State Suite C (fl. 2)
Chair: Hartmut Berghoff, Institute of Economic and Social History
Discussant: Juliette Levy, University of California, Riverside
William Krause, Vanderbilt University
"Wisdom in the Workplace: The National Training Laboratories, Sensitivity Training, and a Mass Public in the Early Cold War"
Stephen Adams, Salisbury University
"Influence of the Ecosystem: Power and the Development of an Entrepreneurial Region"
Lauren Eaton, Copenhagen Business School
"Disruptive Discourse – The Evolution of Entrepreneurship Concepts"
Sonia Jaimes-Penaloza, Universidad Icesi
"Neither Heroes nor villains: Entrepreneurial Actions as Stakeholders in The Valle del Cauca 1930-1945"
Session g: The Role of Colonial Capitalism in Empire-Building
Narragansett Bayview Room (fl. 17)
Chair: Michael Aldous, Queens University
Discussant: Marcelo Bucheli, University of Illinois
Hagar Zheng Gal, Harvard University
"Aswim in a Sea of Poppies: Opium Competition and the Limits of English Empire, 1790-1840"
Mary O'Sullivan, University of Geneva
"The Political Economy of Colonial Capitalism: Ireland as Colony or Kingdom in a Shattered British Empire, 1774-1785?"
Claire Wrigley, University of California, Berkeley
"An English Village in the Congo: Towards a History of European Imperial Capitalism in the Twentieth Century"
Andrew Primmer, University of Reading
"“Railway Imperialism” in South Central Africa: The Beira Railway Company and Colonial Expansion in Southern Africa"
Session h: Creativity, Beautification, and Optimization in the 1960s American Advertising Industry
L'Apogee B (fl. 17)
Chair: Daniel Levinson Wilk, Fashion Institute of Technology
Discussant: Jennifer Black, Misericordia University
Kovacs Peter, University of California, San Francisco
"Philip Morris, Alpine, and DDB: The Advent of the “Creative Revolution” in Cigarette Advertising"
Cynthia Meyers, College of Mount Saint Vincent
"The 1960s Creative Revolution in Advertising: Resistance from Traditionalist Ad Agencies"
Alex Taylor, University of Pittsburgh
"Beautify America with Billboards: Art and the Outdoor Advertising Lobby, 1967"
Lee McGuigan, University of North Carolina
"Public Culture and Private Value: Advertising Optimization Models and the Financing of American Mass Media"

Business Historians in Business School Lunch, 11:30am - 1:00pm

Biltmore Ballroom (fl. 17)

Concurrent Sessions 3, 1:00pm - 2:30pm

Session a: Corruption, Capitalism, and Fraud in 19th-Century America
Capital Ballroom (fl. 2)
Chair: Christopher McKenna, University of Oxford
Discussant: Christopher McKenna, University of Oxford
Pamela Laird, University of Colorado, Denver
"Corruption and the Array of Publics"
David Thomson, Sacred Heart University
"“Bonds Negotiated in the Grossest Fraud”: Fraud, Corruption, Trust, and Mississippi State Debt in the Antebellum United States"
Justene Hill Edwards, University of Virginia
"Mistrust, Gilded Age Corruption, and the Failure of the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company"
Session b: More than Words: Visual Representations of Political Economy in the 20th Century
Summit (fl. 18)
Chair: Jennifer Kaufmann-Buhler, Purdue University
Discussant: Veronique Pouillard-Maliks, University of Oslo
Bianca Centrone, Princeton University
"Corporative Aesthetics: Propaganda, State Control, and the Fascist Economic Project in Italy, 1922-1943"
Pablo Federico Pryluka, Princeton University
"Images of the Middle Class: Advertising National Automobiles in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile during the 1960s"
Paula Vedoveli, Fundação Getulio Vargas
"Visualizing the National Economy: Mapping and Measuring National Wealth and Income, 1930s-1970s"
Session c: Business, Labor, and the "Public Interest" in the United States and the Soviet Union
Summit C (fl. 18)
Chair: Steven Usselman, Georgia Tech
Discussant: JoAnne Yates, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Ashton Merck, North Carolina State University
"“We Have a Responsibility to Feed Our Country”: Essential Work, Critical Infrastructure, and Food Inspection"
James Nealy, Harvard University
"“The Shchekino Method: Flexible Production with Socialist Characteristics”"
Session d: Quantification between Public and Private Practices
Ocean State Suite A (fl. 2)
Chair: Eric Godelier, Ecole Polytechnique
Discussant: William Deringer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Siddharth Sridhar, University of Toronto
"Yields and Costs: Performance Indicators and Imperial Renewal in British Malaya"
Laurent Beduneau-Wang, Africa Business School (ABS), Mohammed VI Polytechnique University (UM6P)
"The limit of nitrate in water in Paris’ suburbs: from a water quality parameter to performance indicator"
Boyao Zhang, University of Toronto
"Counting to Ten on the Abacus: The International System of Units and the Algorist Revolution of Commercial Arithmetic in 20th-Century China"
Session e: Making Global Management, In and Out of the Classroom
Ocean State Suite B (fl. 2)
Chair: Roger Horowitz, Hagley Museum and Library and University of Delaware
Discussant: Kwelina Thompson, Harvard Business School
Rolv Petter Amdam, BI Norwegian Business School
"Making Managers in Asia. India and the Philippines in a Geopolitical Context, 1950s-1970s"
Maxwell Greenberg, University of Wisconsin, Madison
""Making Our Youth Safe for Democracy": Junior Achievement and the Future of American Enterprise, 1916-1945"
Andrea Lluch, CONICET and Universidad de los Andes
"Management Development and ILO Technical Assistance in the Cold War Era in Latin America"
Session f: Financial Networks of Globalization and Deglobalization
Ocean State Suite C (fl. 2)
Chair: Mary Bridges, Johns Hopkins University
Discussant: Aldo Musacchio, Brandeis University
Nicholas Wong, Northumbria University , and Emily Buchnea, Northumbria University
"Examining network-enabled responses to deglobalisation "
Jamieson Gordon Myles, University of Oxford
"Elastic Infrastructure: Payments and Credit in Twentieth Century Global Correspondent Banking"
Session g: Mobilizing Industries during World War II
Narragansett Bayview Room (fl. 17)
Chair: Liane Hewitt, Centre for History & Economics, Paris
Discussant: David Foord, University of New Brunswick
Alex Field, Santa Clara University
"The U.S. Rubber Famine during World War II"
Tsz Ho Wong, University of Edinburgh
"The Mobilisation of Civilian Capital in the Wartime Japanese Empire"
Richard Hoffman, Salisbury University
"Serving the Nation’s Interests in WW II: The Phillips Packing Company’s Contributions to Military Rations"
Session h: Grappling with Disruption in Late-20th Century Commodity Markets
L'Apogee B (fl. 17)
Chair: Stefano Tijerina, Maine Business School
Discussant: Ryan Haddad, Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute
Samuel Beroud, Ronald Reagan Institute
"From rivals to partners? The IMF and commercial banks’ role in petrodollar recycling, 1971-1985"
Grace Easterly, University of Connecticut
"“Chokepoint for Freedom”: The Reagan Administration’s Persian Gulf Policy during the Tanker War"
Christian Ruth, Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute
"What We Eat and Why: Buying and Selling Old Foods of the Future"

Concurrent Sessions 4, 2:45pm - 4:15pm

Session a: Roundtable: Synergies between Business History and Accounting History Research
Capital Ballroom (fl. 2)
Chair: Yvette Lazdowski, University of New Hampshire
William Black, University of North Georgia
Richard Vangermeersch, Emeritus, University of Rhode Island
Richard Baker, Adelphi University
Kelly Kilcrease, University of New Hampshire
Yvette Lazdowski, University of New Hampshire
Session b: Rethinking Capitalism in Times of Transition
Biltmore Ballroom (fl. 17)
Chair: Shaun Nichols, Boise State University
Discussant: Rowena Olegario, University of Oxford
Walter Friedman, Harvard Business School
"Freeman Hunt, the Merchant’s Magazine, and a Belief in Commerce as Civilization"
Richard John, Columbia University
"“Daniel Bell, Anti-Monopoly, and the Coming of Post-Industrial Society”"
Kwelina Thompson, Harvard Business School
"“David Rockefeller, Free Enterprise, and the Reform of Capitalism Abroad”"
Session c: Social Activism in Investing and Finance
Summit (fl. 18)
Chair: Geoffrey Jones, Harvard Business School
Discussant: Kenneth Lipartito, Florida International University
Eric John Abrahamson, Vantage Point History and Johns Hopkins University
"From Shareholder Activists to ESG: the Ford Foundation’s Role in the Birth of Sustainable Investing "
Stefano Rumi, University of Pennsylvania, and Daniel Wadhwani, University of Southern California
"Reinventing Social Impact: The Evolution of Socially Oriented Finance in Modern America"
Thomas Buckley, University of Sussex, and Chay Brooks, Sheffield University
"Building Global Networks of Philanthropy: The International Activities of the Wellcome Trust, 1950-1994"
Session d: Making Place, Making Race in US History
Summit C (fl. 18)
Chair: Susie Pak, St. John's University
Discussant: Paige Glotzer, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Kendra Boyd, Rutgers University, Camden
"Recovering Black Bottom: Using GIS to Recreate Detroit’s Historic Black Business Community"
Pamela Popielarz, University of Illinois, Chicago
"Racialized and Gendered Business Practices: Comparing the Building Efforts of Clubs and Fraternal Orders at the Turn of the Twentieth Century"
Keith Hollingsworth, Morehouse College
"Entrepreneurial Empowerment and Entanglements: A Historical Analysis of the Black Community-Business Relationship"
Session e: On the Move: Agents, Experts and Intermediaries Abroad
Ocean State Suite A (fl. 2)
Chair: Stephen Mihm, University of Georgia
Discussant: Justin Simard, Michigan State University College of Law
Tracy Barrett, North Dakota State University
"Nested Hierarchies: Money, Markets, & Murder on an African Frontier"
Dimitrios Stergiopoulos, University of California, San Diego
"From Istanbul to Athens: The Transnational Movement of Homme d’Affaires in the Second Half of the 19th Century"
Veronique Pouillard, University of Oslo, and Kristin Ranestad, University of Oslo
"Traveling for knowledge: the missions abroad of employees of the mining industries of Belgian Congo and Chile (1905-1960s)"
Session f: Financial Regulation v. the Public
Ocean State Suite B (fl. 2)
Chair: Joanna Grisinger, Northwestern University
Discussant: Grace Ballor, Bocconi University
Charlotte Robertson, Harvard Business School
"Free Incorporation and its Discontents: State, Society, and the Corporation in France, 1852-1886"
Robert Yee, University of Oxford
"Economic Diplomacy and Banking Policy in Allied-Occupied Germany, 1945–1955"
Sean Vanatta, University of Glasgow and WIFPR
"The Board does not Know of Any Specific Cases of Discrimination”: How Consumer Protection Trumped Antidiscrimination within the U.S. Bank Supervisory Agencies, 1965-1977"
Session g: Economic Transformations: How Diverse Business Actors Reshaped Britain’s Economy between 1860 and 1920
Ocean State Suite C (fl. 2)
Chair: Lucy Newton, Henley Business School
Discussant: John Handel, University of Virginia
Linda Perriton, University of Stirling, and Graeme Acheson, University of Strathclyde
"The consuming city: women and their businesses in late Victorian Glasgow"
Michael Aldous, Queen's University Belfast, and Robin Adams, Queen's University Belfast
"The Economic Consequences of the War: The transformational effects of the Great War on the British corporate elite"
Marrisa Joseph, Henley Business School
"From Public Patronage to Private Enterprise: Copyright and the Professionalisation of Authorship in Victorian Britain"
Session h: Geopolitical Anxiety and Global Trade
Narragansett Bayview Room (fl. 17)
Chair: Amanda Ciafone, University of Illinois Urbana, Champagne
Discussant: Jordan Howell, University of Manitoba
David L. Stebenne, Ohio State University
"The Problem of Economic Nationalism in the Mid-20th Century United States, 1929-1968"
Ji Soo Hong, Brown University
"American Machinery for the Soviet “Synthetica”: Synthetic Materials and U.S.-USSR Business Relations, 1958-1964"
David Shorten, Harvard Business School
"International Bankers, Postwar Settlement, and the Progressive Party of 1924 "
Session i: Strategic and Material Uses of Business History
L'Apogee B (fl. 17)
Chair: Jiemin Tina Wei, Harvard University
Discussant: Ellan Spero, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Shannon Younger, University of Arkansas
"Concoctions of the Past: New Venture Use of History"
Anders Sjoman, Centre for Business History in Stockholm
"Preserving business history as a business itself – in the public interest"
Camilla Ferri, Ca' Foscari University of Venice
"The Matter of Matter of the Past: Unveiling Temporal Materiality in Organization Studies"

Emerging Scholars Ice Cream Social (ALL invited!), 4:15pm - 5:15pm

Balcony (fl. 2)

Generously sponsored by the Brown University Department of History

Plenary Session, 5:15pm - 7:00pm

Session a: Krooss Dissertation Prize
Capital Ballroom (fl. 2)
Chair: Thomas Buckley, University of Sussex
Discussant: The Audience
Jordan Howell, Harvard University
"Imperial Crucible: Alcoa and the Transimperial History of American Capitalism, 1888-1953"
Liane Hewitt, Princeton University
"Monopoly Menace: The Rise and Fall of 'Cartel Capitalism' in Western Europe, 1918-1957"
Ellen Nye, Yale University
"Empires of Obligation: Law, Money, and Debt between England and the Ottoman Empire, 1670-1720"
Manuel Alejandro Bautista-González, Columbia University
"Gold and Silver Chains. The New Orleans Specie Market under International Bimetallism, 1839-1861"

BHC After Dark, 9:30pm - 11:30pm

Balcony (fl. 2)

Informal reception with refreshments and light snacks. 

Generously sponsored by Rowena Olegario and Charles Wilson.

Saturday, March 16th

Childcare room, Saturday, 12:00am - Sunday, 12:00am

L’Apogee A (fl. 17)

Room available for parents to use with their children.

Breakfast, 7:00am - 8:30am

Biltmore Ballroom (fl. 17)

Book Exhibit, 7:00am - 4:15pm

L'Apogee Reception Area (fl. 17)

Concurrent Sessions 5, 8:00am - 9:30am

Session a: Time and Technology: Business over the Longue Duree
Capital Ballroom (fl. 2)
Chair: Joris Mercelis, Johns Hopkins University
Discussant: Lukas Rieppel, Brown University
Eric Godelier, Ecole Polytechnique
"Is Fernand Braudel a Business Historian? Contemplating everyday practices and tracing the History of Capitalism and Civilizations over the long term"
Natalya Vinokurova, Lehigh University
"Kodak’s Long Journey: The Role of Technology Substitution Dynamics in Incumbent Failure"
Session b: Regulation from On High and Up Close
Summit (fl. 18)
Chair: Justin Simard, Michigan State University
Discussant: Jared Berkowitz, University of Chicago
Eppa Rixey, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
"All Politics is Local: Civic Action to Evolve State-level Regulatory Constraints"
Alan Loeb, Alan P. Loeb and Associates
"Lousy Historians with Lifetime Appointments: The Case of West Virginia v. EPA"
Bridget Diana, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
"Safety Regulation: For Whom? Antibiotic Regulation in U.S. Poultry Farming (2008-2017)"
Session c: The Difference Directors Make: Governance, Relationships, and Community
Summit C (fl. 18)
Chair: Gaston de los Reyes, Northeastern University
Discussant: Gaston de los Reyes, Northeastern University
Oluwatoyin Dosumu, University of Manchester
"Directors' Experience and the Performance of IPOs in the Rubber Promotion Boom: A Legitimacy Theory Perspective"
Mitch Larson, Independent Scholar, and John Wilson, Northumbria University, and Anna Tilba, Durham University, and Ian Jones, University of York
"‘A passing of the guard’? Governance and strategy in the ‘Big Four’ British clearing banks, 1973-2005"
Valeria Giacomin, Bocconi University, and Matteo Calabrese, Luxembourg University
"Financial Insights about East Sumatran Plantations in Early 1900s Rubber Bubble"
Session d: Race and Corporate Allyship in the US and Among Americans Abroad
Ocean State Suite A (fl. 2)
Chair: Justene Hill Edwards, University of Virginia
Discussant: Jessica Levy, The State University of New York, Purchase
Grace Dutt, University of Manchester
"“Finance Cosmopolitans: Black Mobility, the Travelers Cheque, and European Racism in the Inter War Years.”"
Nicholas Gaffney, United States Naval Academy
"“A Jazz Salute to Freedom: Corporate Allyship and Extending the Reach of the Civil Rights Movement during the Early 1960s”"
Jeremy Goodwin, Cornell University
"Developing Entrepreneurs: Achievement Motivation Training, Race, and the Origins of Modern Entrepreneurship Education"
Session e: Business in the Global Cold War
Ocean State Suite B (fl. 2)
Chair: Naoko Shibusawa, Brown University
Discussant: Stephen Mihm, University of Georgia
Philip Thai, Northeastern University
"Patriotism and Profit: The Red Capitalists of Hong Kong and Macau in the Cold War"
Elizabeth Ingleson, London School of Economics and Political Science
"Convergence not collapse: US-China relations and the end of the Cold War"
Timothy Yang, University of Georgia
"Hunger, Relief, and the Making of the U.S. Regime of Wheat in Post-World War II Japan"
Session f: Social Entrepreneurship, Corporate Philanthropy, and Community Finance
Ocean State Suite C (fl. 2)
Chair: Sean Vanatta, University of Glasgow
Discussant: David Sicilia, University of Maryland, College Park
Louise Karlskov Skyggebjerg, Copenhagen Business School
"Profit for the common good. Revitalizing the local community through high-risk banking practices"
David Smith, Wilfrid Laurier University
"Social Entrepreneurship, Utopianism and early Co-operative Thought in Britain 1820-1855"
Simone Wegge, City University of New York
"Savings Behaviors in a Time of Financial Panics: Evidence from the Depositors of the Emigrant Bank in 1850s New York"
Session g: Highway Economies: Tracing the Dirty Roads of Farm to Shelves
Narragansett Bayview Room (fl. 17)
Chair: Marc Levinson, Independent Scholar
Discussant: Bartow J. Elmore, The Ohio State University
Frankie Barrett, Yale University
"Dollar Stores That Serve: In Search of New Markets and New Missions"
Nathanael Mickelson, University of Georgia
"“Salt of the Earth:” Arkansas Best Freight, River Valley Capitalism, and Making the LTL Industry "
Olivia Paschal, University of Virginia
"Why Did the Chicken Waste Cross the Highway?: The Arkansas Chicken Industry and the Fight over Groundwater Pollution in the 1980s and 1990s "
Session h: Governing the World’s Largest Machine
L'Apogee B (fl. 17)
Chair: Aya Tanaka, Shiga University
Discussant: Benjamin Waterhouse, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Sandeep Vaheesan, Open Markets Institute
"Grassroots Democracies?"
Ben Kodres-O'Brien, Columbia University
"Nuclear Follies? Commercial Nuclear Power in the American South"
Johanna Bozuwa, Climate and Community Project
"Energy and Utility Ownership in Moments of Transition"

Registration, 8:00am - 10:00am

L'Apogee Reception Area (fl. 17)

Coffee will be available all day, 8:30am - 6:00pm

Balcony (fl. 2)

Generously sponsored by the Inquire Capitalism Program at the University of Florida

Coffee will be available all day, 8:30am - 6:00pm

L'Apogee Reception Area (fl. 17)

Generously sponsored by the Inquire Capitalism Program at the University of Florida

Concurrent Sessions 6, 9:45am - 11:30am

Session a: Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of David A. Hounshell's From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932
Capital Ballroom (fl. 2)
Chairs: David Kirsch, University of Maryland, and Lee Vinsel, Virginia Tech
Discussant: David A. Hounshell, Carnegie Mellon University
Sandeep Pillai, Bocconi University
"Scaling Production: A Re-Examination of Detroit’s Emergence as the Hub of the American Automobile Industry"
Elizabeth Esch, University of Kansas
""The Place of Race in Mass Production""
Xavier Duran, Universidad de los Andes
"Why did US auto assemblers agglomerate in Detroit? The role of industrial organization of the city and mass production"
Session b: Power, Capital, and Decolonization in Africa
Summit (fl. 18)
Chair: Claire Wrigley, University of California, Berkeley
Discussant: Marlous van Waijenburg, Harvard Business School
Thomas DeBerge, Loyola University Chicago
"The Strategic Cultivation of ‘Localness’: Banks in Rwanda, 1916-2016"
Kondwani Ngoma, University of Gothenburg
"Black Power and White Capital: The Price of Symbolic Compliance and the Crisis of Legitimacy During Decolonisation in Northern Rhodesia, 1961-1964"
Lewis d'Avigdor, Wesleyan University
"Between modernization and neocolonialism: African American Investment in West-Africa before the 'Decade of Development'"
Peter Vale, Pitzer College
"Decolonization and Organizational Transformations: Concessionary Companies in the Wake of Congolese Independence, 1966-1980"
Session c: Narrating Finance and Financial Crisis
Summit C (fl. 18)
Chair: Atiba Pertilla, German Historical Institute
Discussant: Scott Nelson, College of William & Mary
Wyatt Wells, Auburn University Montgomery
"Mr. Morgan's Grand Design"
Per H. Hansen, Copenhagen Business School
"“Fiction In the Archives”? Writing the Early History of the European Financial Crisis of 1931"
Maylis Avaro, University of Pennsylvania
"Averting Money Troubles in late 19th century: Bank of France, Michel Foucault and Judith Butler"
Olga Koulisis, Murray State University
"Vanguard of the Bourgeoisie: Morgan Bankers, Communities of Interest, and Managing Democratic Publics "
Session d: Intellectual Property Rights and Technological Diffusion
Ocean State Suite A (fl. 2)
Chair: Ashton Merck, North Carolina State University
Discussant: Richard Langlois, University of Connecticut
Shigehiro Nishimura, Kansai University
"Foreign Direct Investment and Longevity of Patent Rights in Japan: How has Foreign Technology affected Industrialization?"
Ella Coon, Columbia University
"The Struggle to Bring a Global Assembly Model to Computer Services: Control Data Corporation and Reagan’s Caribbean Basin Initiative "
Takafumi Kurosawa, Kyoto University
"Moore's Law as a 'Belief System': Long-term Dynamics of Global Semiconductor Industry (1950s-2020s) "
Session e: Technology Emergence and Transfer
Ocean State Suite B (fl. 2)
Chair: Albert Churella, Kennesaw State University
Discussant: Bernardo Batiz-Lazo, Northumbria University
Andrew Nelson, University of Oregon
""Don't Stop Believin'": Sustaining Attention for Slow-to-Emerge Technological Practices"
Danielle La Scala, De Montfort University and the Arts and Humanities Research Council
"Double Niners to McEnnedy Burgers: The Transfer of American Supermarket Practice and Innovation into Britain"
Andrew C. Godley, University of Sussex
"Green Entrepreneurship in UK Foods and the emergence of the alternative meat sector: Quorn 1965-2001"
Martin Rotemberg, New York University
"Technological Stickiness: Switching and Entry in the Long Transition from Water to Steam Power"
Session f: The Nature of Enterprise in the 19th Century U.S.
Ocean State Suite C (fl. 2)
Chair: Aaron Van Neste, Harvard University
Discussant: Alexandra Garrett, St. Michael's College
Joseph Yauch, Brandeis University
"Felling Native Forests, Defending Native Sovereignty: Industrial Lumbering Companies and Penobscot People in 19th-Century Northern Maine"
Matthew Titolo, West Virginia University
"A Republic of Contractors: Federal Procurement as Statecraft, 1776-1850"
Derek Shloss, Arizona State University
""Economic Nationalism Without the Protective Tariff: how Albert Gallatin and Gulian Verplanck Reconciled Free Trade and the National Interest""
Laura Clerx, Boston College
""'...Productive of Great Benefit to the Public': Invoking the Public Good in the U.S. Canal Age"
Session g: Energy and Resources as Business Strategy
Narragansett Bayview Room (fl. 17)
Chair: Simone Selva, University of Naples L'Orientale (Italy), Fulbright scholar at Harvard University
Discussant: Noel Maurer, George Washington University, School of Business
Cory Fischer-Hoffman, Lafayette College
"Debates on Foreign Ownership, Development and the Public Interest: A History of the Forfeiture of Bethlehem Steel Corporation’s Latin American Iron Ore Holdings (1938-1975)"
Richard Sicotte, University of Vermont
"Asking for the Impossible: Chile, the United States, and the Post Second World War Disposition of U.S. Government Ammonia Plants"
Maria Padovan, University of Rome Tor Vergata and University Paris City
"How (Not) to Build a Fast Breeder Reactor within Euratom: A French-Italian Perspective (1957-1969)"
Ted Beatty, University of Notre Dame, and Israel García Solares, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
"The International Business of Strategic Materials: Cyanide 1880-1930"
Session h: The Business History of Natural Resources
L'Apogee B (fl. 17)
Chair: Matthew Wormer, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Discussant: Matthew Wormer, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Grace Ballor, Bocconi University
"Ruling the Natural World: The Political Economy of Standards and Natural Resources"
Bryan Kauma, Southwestern University
"Fruit trees do not bring in money Belonging, Indigeneity and the politics of informal indigenous plant nurseries in Hazyview, Mpumalanga, South Africa"
Volodymyr Kulikov, University of Texas, Austin
"Extractive Company Towns"
Espen Storli, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
"The Historical Development of Price-setting Mechanisms for Natural Resources"

Women in Business History Lunch, 11:30am - 1:00pm

Biltmore Ballroom (fl. 17)

Including an informal celebration of and retrospection on the work of Dr. Claudia Goldin, winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Economics

Concurrent Sessions 7, 1:00pm - 2:30pm

Session a: Roundtable: Big Box USA: The Environmental Impact of America's Largest Retail Stores
Capital Ballroom (fl. 2)
Chair: Bartow J. Elmore, Ohio State University
Discussant: The Audience
Bartow J. Elmore, University of Ohio
Johnathan Williams, University of Northern Iowa
Rachel Gross, University of Colorado, Denver
Sherri Sheu, Science History Institute
Aaron Van Neste, Harvard University
Shane Hamilton, University of York
Session b: Restitution and Repair in Business and Business History
Summit (fl. 18)
Chair: Caitlin Rosenthal, University of California, Berkeley
Discussant: Caitlin Rosenthal, University of California, Berkeley
Ian Jones, University of York
"“Having been a slave owner and much dissatisfied in being so”: A microhistory of David Barclay and the sale of the Unity Valley Penn"
Mary Yeager, University of California, Los Angeles
"Business Disinterest in Feminism: Who Pays the Price? "
Elise Berggren, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
"Post-Holocaust Restitution of Businesses: The Unique Opportunities of the Norwegian Case"
Session c: Microhistories of War and Business in the Atlantic World
Summit C (fl. 18)
Chair: Ann Daly, Mississippi State University
Discussant: Mark Peterson, Yale University
Gregory Hargreaves, Hagley Museum & Library
"Doing Business In the Revolutionary Interest: John Ballendine and Eighteenth-Century Capitalism"
Robert Dawson Scott, University of Edinburgh
"Whose public interest? An 18th century banker faces up to regime change"
Jiwon Han, The Graduate Center, City University of New York
"The Fox and the Hedgehog: Abraham Goldsmid and competition for contracting British government loans during the Napoleonic Wars"
Session d: The Business of Organized Labor in the Postwar U.S.
Ocean State Suite A (fl. 2)
Chair: Jessica Levy, The State University of New York at Purchase
Discussant: Melanie Sheehan, Kenyon College
Aaron Freedman, Columbia University
"The Progressive Origins of the Union-Busting Consultant: The Rise and Fall of Nathan Shefferman"
Natalia Shevin, New York University
"The 1960s: 'When the House of Labor Moved Quietly into the Investment Business'"
Angus McLeod, University of Pennsylvania
"Public Relations as Economic Education: Teaching Workers the Fallacy of the Union"
Session e: The Role of Financial Markets and Politics in the Global Oil Trade
Ocean State Suite B (fl. 2)
Chair: Paul Lucier, Independent scholar
Discussant: Sean Patrick Adams, University of Florida
Murat Iplikci, Columbia University
"U.S. Commercial Diplomacy Towards Turkey: Ambassador George C. McGhee’s Role in the Privatization of the Oil Business in the 1950s"
Minseok Jang, SUNY Albany
"An American Oil Company in the British Empire: How Standard Oil Emerged as a Multinational Corporation, 1859-1905"
Simone Selva, University of Naples L'Orientale and Harvard University
"Oil money, corporations, and global financial markets: from the 1960s unregulated money markets to the financial revolution of the 1980s"
Session f: Sewn, Mended, Printed: Textile History as Business History
Ocean State Suite C (fl. 2)
Chair: Paula de la Cruz-Fernández, University of Florida
Discussant: Ellen Hartigan-O'Connor, University of California, Davis
Emily Whitted, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
"Mending Movement: Sailcloth Repair in the New England Maritime World, 1780-1850"
Seth Rockman, Brown University
"Rhode Island “Ready-Made,” Women’s Outwork Sewing, and the Nineteenth-Century Economy of Plantation Provisioning"
Marina Moskowitz, University of Wisconsin, Madison
"Disseminating Design, Controlling Craftsmanship: The Enterprise of the Folly Cove Designers"
Session g: Communities of Professional Expertise
Narragansett Bayview Room (fl. 17)
Chair: Bradford Verter, Winthrop Group
Discussant: Atiba Pertilla, German Historical Institute
Glenn Bugos, Moment LLC
"The Bar Association of San Francisco: Legal professionalization in the public interest, 1872-2022"
Andrew McGee, Smithsonian Institution
"Seventies-Era High Technology Entrepreneur Expertise in the Public Interest: Roy Ash and Nixon-era Conglomerate Approaches to Federal Government Reorganization "
Morten Tinning, CBS
"Techno-skepticism, conservatism, and community in maritime business, 1870-1930"
Session h: Localized Strategies of Small Electronics Businesses in the Americas (1970s-1980s)
L'Apogee B (fl. 17)
Chair: Mols Sauter, University of Maryland
Discussant: Lee Vinsel, Virginia Tech
Sam Schirvar, University of Pennsylvania
"Cherokee Nation Industries and the Turn to Tribal Enterprise During the 1970s"
Verónica Uribe del Águila, University of California, San Diego
"Computers and Reverse-engineering-oriented Businesses in Mexico (1984-1986)"
Fabian Prieto-Ñañez, Virginia Tech
"The Business of Repairing Smuggled Electronics Goods in 1980s Bogota"

Concurrent Sessions 8, 2:45pm - 4:15pm

Session a: Roundtable: The Business of 19th Century Firearms
Capital Ballroom (fl. 2)
Chair: Joseph Slaughter, Wesleyan University
Antwain Hunter, University of North Carolina
Tracy Barnett, University of Georgia
Brennan Rivas, Independent Scholar
Andrew Fagal, Princeton University
Lindsay Schakenbach Regele, Miami University
Session b: AI and Digital Business History
Biltmore Ballroom (fl. 17)
Chair: Pasi Nevalainen, University of Jyväskylä
Discussant: Erik Lakomaa, Stockholm School of Economics
Fabio Gatti, University of Bern
"Trade and Production Effects of the Plague: The Saminiati and Guasconi Bank of Florence (1626-1634)"
Christoffer Friedl, Stockholm School of Economics
"Establishing Rigorous Digital and AI Methodologies for Business History Research"
Louis Hyman, Johns Hopkins University
"Teaching AI and History"
Session c: Markets and Antitrust Before and After Neoliberalism
Summit (fl. 18)
Chair: Richard John, Columbia University
Discussant: Brian Callaci, Open Markets Institute
Laura Phillips-Sawyer, University of Georgia
"Antitrust Law and Democratic Capitalism: What the Historical Meanings of Market Power Reveal about the Antitrust - Democracy Nexus"
Gerald Berk, University of Oregon
"Antitrust After Neoliberalism"
Fernando Chaddad, Cepheid Research, Inc., and David Sicilia, University of Maryland
"When Theory Collided With Financial Markets: The Saga of Paul Samuelson and Commodities Corporation "
Session d: The Role of Community in Global Finance
Summit C (fl. 18)
Chair: Benjamin Hein, Brown University
Discussant: Christoph Nitschke, University of Stuttgart
Antonis Kyparissis, University of Northampton
"The mass “exodus” of British capital from the USA. The historical case of the British Investment Trusts in the aftermath of WWI"
Richard Hawkins, University of Wolverhampton
"Swiss and German American Jewish Financiers and the Mining Industry, 1860-1920"
Pallavi Singh, Queen's University Belfast
"The Role of Community in the Growth of Indian Joint-Stock Banking, 1920 - 1969"
Session e: Financing, Development, and Democracy in Postwar Latin America
Ocean State Suite A (fl. 2)
Chair: Rodolfo Fernandez, University of Connecticut
Discussant: Louise Walker, Northeastern University
Melissa Teixeira , University of Pennsylvania
"Inflation and Popular Investment Strategies in 1980s Brazil: The Case of Telebrás"
Nick Cohen, University of California, Santa Barbara
"Relief or Reduction: Bank Loans, Political Instability, and the Brady Plan, 1987 - 1989"
Fernanda de Oliveira, Geneva Graduate Institute
"Opening the black box of financial negotiations: modeling and making sense of the IMF’s treatment towards Brazil and Argentina, 1956-64"
Session f: Private Interests and the Public Good in the Cradle of Capitalism: The Early Modern in Business History
Ocean State Suite B (fl. 2)
Chair: Harold J. Cook, Brown University
Discussant: Anne McCants, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Anna-Luna Post, University of Cambridge
"Public Interest and Conflict in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Drainage Projects"
Joris van den Tol, Radboud University
"The Anglo-Dutch Atlantic Business Interests: The America Company in the Seventeenth Century"
Ellen Nye, Harvard University
"Merchants and Financial Revolution: Interstate Trade, the Great Recoinage, and Shifting Scales of Money"
Session g: Doing Healthcare in the Public Interest
Ocean State Suite C (fl. 2)
Chair: Christy Chapin, University of Maryland Baltimore County
Discussant: Gavin Benke, Boston University
Robert Bernsee, University of Göttingen
"Pills, profits and the rise of patents: The case of the pharmaceutical industry in West Germany since the 1950s"
Ebru Erginbas, Brown University
"Medicinal Entanglements: Hydrothermal Therapy and Commodification of Groundwaters"
Maki Umemura, Cardiff University
"Convergent aspirations: The emergence of a therapeutics ecosystem in Boston"
Session h: Planes, Ships, and Parcels: The Business of Transportation
Narragansett Bayview Room (fl. 17)
Chair: Mark H. Rose, Florida Atlantic University
Discussant: Shane Hamilton, University of York
Marc Levinson, Independent Scholar
"The Battle for the Doorstep: The Creation of the Parcel Delivery Industry in Postwar America"
Sungshin Cho, Kyoto University
"Independence and Interaction of Segments within an Industry: The Dynamism in Shipping Industry 1990 - 2020"
Hartmut Berghoff, Göttingen University
"Turbulent Growth. On the Volatile History of the Air Cargo Industry since the 1990s"
Session i: Doing Business in the (Non)Indigenous Public Interest
L'Apogee B (fl. 17)
Chair: Franklin Sammons, Washington and Lee University
Discussant: Emilie Connolly, Brandeis University
Heather Menefee, Northwestern University
"Dakota People’s Economic Life under US Occupation, 1858-61"
Josh Althoff, University of Minnesota
"Fiscal Sovereignty: Myaamia Public Interest at the Fort Wayne Indian Agency, 1818-1838"
Zada Ballew, University of Wisconsin, Madison
"A Company of Kin: Pokagon Village and the Business of Tribal Nationalism, 1821-1841"

Coffee Break and Snacks, 4:15pm - 4:30pm

L'Apogee Reception Area (fl. 17)

Generously co-sponsored by the Inquire Capitalism Program at the University of Florida and the Winthrop Group

Coffee Break and Snacks, 4:15pm - 4:30pm

Balcony (fl. 2)

Generously co-sponsored by the Inquire Capitalism Program at the University of Florida and the Winthrop Group

Concurrent Sessions 9, 4:30pm - 6:00pm

Session a: Roundtable: Space, Place, and the History of Capitalism
Capital Ballroom (fl. 2)
Chair: Charles Petersen, Cornell University
Discussant: The Audience
Mary Bridges, Johns Hopkins University
Dylan Gottlieb, Bentley University
Gavin Benke, Boston University
Susie Pak, St. John's University
Mike Glass, Boston College
Session b: Pushing the Boundaries of the Public "Good"
Summit (fl. 18)
Chair: Pamela Laird, University of Colorado, Denver
Discussant: Laura Phillips-Sawyer, University of Georgia
Geoffrey Jones, Harvard Business School
"Not in the Public Interest: Understanding State-embedded Criminal Actors"
Kimberly Kracman, Princeton University
"Imperial-Military Origins of the Large Corporation: How the Department of War Helped Build the First U.S. Railroads"
Chad Pearson, University of North Texas
"Why we must call the Second Ku Klux Klan an Employers’ Association "
Session c: The Business of National Patrimony
Summit C (fl. 18)
Chair: Seth Rockman, Brown University
Discussant: Wendy Woloson, Rutgers University, Camden
Dael Norwood, University of Delaware
"“Making George Washington a Businessman: Origins, Context, and Consequences”"
Whitney Martinko, Villanova University
"Peale’s Museum Company: The Corporation as an Instrument of Preservation"
Connor Kenaston, Randolph College
"The Greatest Story: Commercial Radio and Religion in the American Century"
Session d: The American Family Economy in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
Ocean State Suite A (fl. 2)
Chair: Rachel Van, Cal Poly Pomona
Discussant: Mandy Cooper, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Lindsay Keiter, Penn State Altoona
"“God grant he may succeed, & make good use of his property:” The Circulation of Capital and the Limits of Affection in Elite Antebellum Families"
Colleen Doody, DePaul University
"City of Candy: Contested Female Labor in the Confectionery Industry, 1890-1900"
Joseph Moore, Kennesaw State University
"Keepers of the Family Budget "
Session e: Markets and the State in 20th-Century China
Ocean State Suite B (fl. 2)
Chair: Elizabeth Ingleson, London School of Economics and Political Science
Discussant: Philip Thai, Northeastern University
Ghassan Moazzin, The University of Hong Kong
"Marconi, Telefunken, the Radio Corporation of America and Mitsui – Multinational Companies and Wireless Telegraphy in China, 1912-1937"
Gavin Healy, University of Michigan
"Please Take Over Our Company: China Travel Service in the Era of “New Democracy” (1949-1954)"
Debamanyu Das, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
"State industrial policies, Clean Energy Industry and Critical Minerals: the Case of China"
Session f: Banking Regulation and Policy in the United States
Ocean State Suite C (fl. 2)
Chair: Claire Brennecke, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Discussant: Eric Hilt, Wellesley
Christy Chapin, University of Maryland, Baltimore,County
"The National Banking Acts & Narrowly Defined U.S. Commercial Banks "
Robert Ferguson, University of Georgia, and Nathanael Mickelson, University of Georgia
"Cotton, Credit, and Congress: The Southern Revolution of American Finance During the New Deal"
Conrad Jacober, Johns Hopkins University
"The Southern Road to Financialization: Regional Interstate Banking and the Transformation of American Finance, 1976-1994"
Session g: Commercial Television and the Crises of the 1960s and ’70s
Narragansett Bayview Room (fl. 17)
Chair: Josh Lauer, University of New Hampshire
Discussant: Heidi Tworek, University of British Columbia
Michael Stamm, Michigan State University
"Waves and Radiation: Broadcasting and the Fear of Biological Harm in the Cold War"
Richard Popp, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
"“New York is a Ghost Town”: Broadcast Reception, the Urban Crisis, and the Rise of Cable TV"
Holly Swenson, Northwestern University
"A Funny Problem: The Business of Comedy Television in Australia in the Postimperial Moment"
Session h: Doing Business in Others’ Interest: Wartime Production for Allies, Occupiers, and Colonizers
L'Apogee B (fl. 17)
Chair: Andrew Popp, Copenhagen Business School
Discussant: Kate Epstein, Rutgers University, Camden
Patrick Fridenson, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales
"Working for the enemy: French aircraft companies under the German occupation"
Philip Scranton, Rutgers University
"Capitalist Trucks for Communist Troops: Studebakers Transport the Red Army"
Aparajith Ramnath, Ahmedabad University
"Cars and Planes for Empire and Nation: World War II and Walchand Hirachand’s Industrial Ventures in India"

Book Auction, 6:00pm - 6:15pm

L'Apogee Reception Area (fl. 17)

Presidential Address, 6:20pm - 7:20pm

Biltmore Ballroom (fl. 17)

Reception, 7:30pm - 8:15pm

L'Apogee Reception Area (fl. 17)

Generously co-sponsored by the Hagley Museum and Library and the John Carter Brown Library.

Banquet, 8:15pm - 10:15pm

Biltmore Ballroom (fl. 17)

Thursday, March 21st

Membership Meeting, 10:00am - 11:00am


The 2024 BHC Membership Meeting will be held via Zoom on Thursday, March 21st from 10-11am (Eastern Time, US and Canada). Zoom link will be emailed to the BHC membership two weeks prior.