This panel will address the role of gambling, from games of skill and luck to lotteries, in the Americas during the 17th and 18th centuries. While often outlawed or curtailed, gaming and wagering were a mainstay of colonial life. Building on the work of scholars such as Timothy Breen on Virginia and Thomas Kavanagh on France, the papers will examine gambling as a way of looking at social roles (gender, race, and class), laws, economics, and politics. Papers can take a variety of approaches, including (but not exclusive to) an examination of a particular game and its rules, a more contextual study of the places of play or a particular group of players, or an examination of intellectual and cultural role of gaming. Papers that take a comparative approach, either within colonial holdings or between (for example) French and British colonies, are particularly welcome.

Email submissions of proposal and short cv, by Friday, September 19, 2008.