Friday 13 February 2026, 7pm

In 1642, when Charles I raised his standard in Nottingham, he ruled not just England, Ireland, and Scotland, but also “the dominions thereunto belonging”. These distant settlement, most small and new, were drawn into events at home, and the English Atlantic was shaped by the civil wars, regicide, and experiments in new forms of government over the next two decades. Join distinguished Professor and Joyce Appleby Endowed Chair of the America in the World, Carla Pestana, for this insightful talk.

Carla studies the 17th and 18th century Atlantic worlds, especially the English Atlantic; the Caribbean; religion and empire. In 2024-25, she serves as the Director of the Clark Library and the Center for 17th and 18th century studies, the Core Professor at the Clark Library (with Gabriel de Avilez Rocha), and the President of the Association of Caribbean Historians. Carla received her Ph.D. at UCLA in 1987 in early American history. Before joining UCLA’s faculty in 2012, she taught at The Ohio State University, Canterbury University in Christchurch, New Zealand, and Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Professor Pestana has published books on religion and empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, most notably Protestant Empire: Religion and the Making of the British Atlantic World (2009). On the subject of empire, she authored The English Atlantic in an Age of Revolution, 1640-1661 (2004); and The English Conquest of Jamaica: Oliver Cromwell’s Bid for Empire (2017); She is also the co-editor with Sharon V. Salinger of Inequality in Early America (1991), and  a multi-volume collection of primary texts on the early English engagement in the Caribbean, The Early English Caribbean, 1570-1700. Her most recent books are The World of Plymouth Plantation (2020) and, co-edited with Eliga Gould and Paul Mapp, volume 1 of the Cambridge History of America and the World, 1500-1820. Between 2016 and 2018, she blogged for the Huffington Post and her teaching interests range over similar fields to those explored in her publications. From 2018 to 2022, she served as chair of the history department.

Book here: Instances - Palace Theatre, Newark