History

Specializations: Early Republic, Civil War, History of Science

Specializations: Antebellum and U.S. Civil War, Slavery in the U.S., History and Philosophy of Science, Early American Republic, Atlantic History

Michael Conlin's research focuses on public memory, sectional identity, and political conflict during the Antebellum Era of U.S. History (1846-1861) as well as the difficulties in repeating experiments, the idea of an experimentum crucis, and the influence of nationalism on scientific practice.

Michael Conlin has published peer-review journal articles on Joseph Priestley's defense of Phlogiston Theory, Pierre-Auguste Adet's Revolutionary Diplomacy and Chemistry {Adet}, the Reception of the Foucault pendulum {pendulum}, and the Smithsonian Abolition Lecture Controversy {Smithsonian}.

Michael Conlin's completed book manuscript "One Nation Divided by Slavery: Remembering the Founders while Marching toward the Civil War" examines how Americans in the two decades before the Civil War remembered their common past, in particular how they explained (or explained away) the presence of slavery during the American Revolution, in the lives of the Founders, and in the early republic. "One Nation Divided by Slavery" is currently under review by an academic press.  Listen to podcasts {3.14.2010_mp3} {7.4.2011_mp3} from Anthony Flinn's radio show "Just a Theory" (KSFC FM 91.1) which discuss parts of "One Nation Divided by Slavery."

Michael Conlin has begun to write the book manuscript "South Carolina versus Massachusetts: Sectional Extremes in a Hegelian Regress to Civil War," which examines how caricatures and stereotypes of Northern Abolitionists and Southern Fire-Eaters - Boston Garrisonians and Palmetto Calhounites -- exacerbated the sectional conflict, by crowding out the middle ground and reducing the other side to its most radical elements.

In addition to being named a Visiting Scholar by the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina, Michael Conlin has won research fellowships from the Virginia Historical Society (Richmond, VA), the Maryland Historical Society (Baltimore, MD), the Filson Historical Society (Louisville, KY), the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History (New York City, NY), the North Caroliniana Society (Chapel Hill, NC), and the Beckman Center for the History of Chemistry (Philadelphia, PA). 

Michael Conlin has presented his research at several scholarly venues, including the Virginia Historical Society (Richmond, VA), the Center for Civil War Research, University of Mississippi (Oxford, MS), the Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies, Graduate Center/CUNY (New York City), the Charles Warren Center for the Study of American History, Harvard University (Cambridge, MA), and the Arnold O. Beckman Center for the History of Chemistry, University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA).

Michael Conlin teaches classes on early U.S. history, slavery, and the history and philosophy of science. His upper-level courses include:

• History 406: Darwin and his Discontents: the Creation-Evolution Controversy

• History 466: Slavery in the United States and its Colonial Antecedents

            • History 472: Early American Republic, 1787-1826

            • History 473: The Jacksonian Era, 1824-1848

            • History 475: Civil War and Reconstruction, 1848-1877

            • History 490 History of Geology, 1786-1978

            • History 534: Graduate Seminar on 19th Century American History

Michael Conlin has won the Century Tel Achievement Award for excellence in teaching at Eastern Washington University and has been named the Most Influential Faculty Member by the Edmund J. Yarwood & Jeffers Chertok Dean's Honor Student on four occasions.