Fall 2015 MRSEAH Meeting with University of Central Missouri's Micah Alpaugh

The Missouri Regional Seminar on Early American History (MRSEAH) convened for its second fall meeting on October 30, 2015, at Café Napoli in Clayton, MO. Participants discussed “The Sons of Liberty and the Making of Modern Social Movements,” a chapter from University of Central Missouri Assistant Professor of History Micah Alpaugh’s forthcoming book on the interconnected histories of eighteenth-century resistance movements in the United States, Britain, Ireland, and France. The chapter, which can be found here, examines the spread of the Sons of Liberty network during national resistance to the 1765 Stamp Act, arguing that, through correspondence and direct political action, the group created a more inclusive and “fundamentally new kind of protest campaign” whose methods would come to directly influence organizations such as the Wilkes’ Society of Supporters of the Bill of Rights in England, the Irish Volunteer movement for reform and national autonomy, and the Jacobin Club network in France.

Attendees of the October 30 MRSEAH included faculty and graduate students from Washington University, St. Louis University, University of Louisville, University of Missouri, Southeast Missouri State University, Southern Illinois University-Springfield, and Truman State University. Details concerning the first Spring 2016 semester MRSEAH meeting, which will take place on February 19, 2016, in St. Louis, will be provided in the coming weeks.

Micah Alpaugh received his B.A. in History from Northern Arizona University and his Ph.D. in History from University of California-Irvine. After serving as a Visiting Professor of History at Mount Allison University and as a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, he took his current position as Assistant Professor in the History Department at the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg. Prof. Alpaugh’s first book, Non-Violence and the French Revolution: Political Demonstration in Paris, 1787-1795, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2015, and he has published articles in French Historical Studies, European History Quarterly, French History and Journal of Social History, among other places.