Program

The Program Committee for the 2026 annual meeting of the Pennsylvania Historical Association is excited to share program highlights for our upcoming conference, “Revolutionary Legacies in the Mid-Atlantic.” This meeting will explore the complex history of freedom, power, and dissent in Pennsylvania from the colonial period to the present, with particular attention paid to ideas contained in the Declaration of Independence. We convene in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania from October 22-24, 2026.

The Opening Plenary on Thursday evening, October 22, 2026, features Katherin Faull, PhD, the vice president of the Institute for Moravian History and World Heritage at Moravian University. During her hourlong talk, Dr. Faull will discuss the Lehigh Valley’s Moravian history and its place across the centuries as a center of tourism and world heritage.

On Friday, October 23, 2026, Daniel Richter, PhD, will serve as the Luncheon Speaker. An award-winning author and the Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of American History Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Richter will discuss his revised and expanded edition of Native Americans and Pennsylvania, out this summer with Temple University Press.

To conclude the Friday program, we’ll gather at our Annual Banquet for an address by John Garrison Marks, PhD, author of Black Freedom in the Age of Slavery and co-editor of Race and Nation in the Age of Emancipations; who serves as director of the Public History Research Lab for the American Association of State and Local History (AASLH). He will discuss his latest work, Thy Will Be Done: George Washington’s Legacy of Slavery and the Fight for American Memory. This book addresses “how generations of Americans have remembered, forgotten, and fought over George Washington’s involvement with slavery.”

The full program will be available before the fall semester, this September. Please check back soon for details.

Dr. Jay Donis, Program Chair

jdonis@thiel.edu