Conferences

Great Lakes Underwater Event Adds Speakers

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New York Sea Grant, the Oswego Maritime Foundation, and the Great Lakes Seaway Trail have added to the March 6 Great Lakes Underwater conference program at SUNY Oswego. The added presentations for the 9am to 3pm event at the SUNY Oswego Campus Center in Oswego, NY, include:

· Dr. Henry Spang and “Building the OMF Ontario &#8211 “a floating maritime classroom”
· Skip Couch and the “Lost Fleet of the 1000 Islands,”
· James Sears and four New York State Divers Association “Two-Tank Tips,” and
· Brian Prince of S.O.S. &#8211 the Save Ontario Shipwrecks program preserving Ontario Canada’s maritime heritage.

Oswego Maritime Foundation (OMF) Director of Education through Involvement Dr. Henry Spang will talk about the volunteer effort that is completing the construction of the OMF Ontario. Spang says, “The OMF Ontario will be dedicated to public service and is designed to educate the public about our Great Lakes maritime history, heritage, resources and ecology by hands-on involvement in the experience of sailing this fabulous re-creation from our sailing era.”

Spang says the 85-foot-long schooner will be the only ship of its kind of US registry on Lake Ontario when shipboard classes begin in two years. The last schooner built in Oswego, NY, launched 131 years ago.

Raymond I. “Skip” Couch’s ancestors include Connecticut shipbuilders that settled in Clayton, NY, and a Great Lakes Seaway Trail Rock Island Lighthouse keeper. A Clayton Diving Club founding member, Couch participated in an underwater survey for iron cannons believed abandoned by the British before the War of 1812 near Carleton Island in 2009. Couch, co-author of the Diver’s Guide to the Upper St. Lawrence River, says, “At Great Lakes Underwater, divers and maritime history buffs will hear fascinating details about the more than three dozen ships stranded or lost to natural disaster or human error in the Narrows of the Thousand Islands.”

James Sears of the New York State Divers Association will share four destinations where divers can easily dive on two different shipwrecks. Two of the sites are in the St. Lawrence River with one each in Lake Ontario and Lake Champlain.

The keynote presentation of the 2010 Great Lakes Underwater is deep wreck explorer Jim Kennard’s presentation on the “Discovery of the HMS Ontario,” a British warship that sank in Lake Ontario in 1780 during the American Revolution. Kennard, who might easily be called the “Great Lakes Seaway Trail’s Jacques Cousteau,” will share a video and the exciting story of how he and diving partner Dan Scoville located this “Holy Grail” of diving. Kennard’s 200-plus discoveries have been featured in such publications as National Geographic and Sea Technology.

Brian Prince, president of S.O.S. – Save Ontario Shipwrecks, will highlight Canadian efforts to preserve Ontario’s shipwrecks and maritime heritage. The nonprofit organization conduct underwater archaeology and side scan surveys, collects oral histories, maintains an historical archives, offers diver training, and installs maritime-theme interpretive signage.

New York Sea Grant Coastal Recreation and Tourism Specialist and conference co-organizer Dave White, says, “Great Lakes Underwater provides divers and non-divers who enjoy maritime heritage with a fabulous day of discoveries with speakers who offer an inside look at our history and fascinating details of shipwrecks, the underwater landscape, and the technology now used to explore the underwater landscape.”

Great Lakes Underwater 2010 will be held in the high-tech SUNY Oswego Campus Center Auditorium. Registration for Great Lakes Underwater is $25 ($20 for students) payable to Cornell University and includes the program, buffet lunch, and refreshments. For more information, contact New York Sea Grant, SUNY Oswego, Oswego, NY 13126, 315-312-3042, www.oswegomaritime.org/glu.html.

Photo: Oswego Maritime Foundation’s Ontario undertest sail.

Oldest Shipwreck Highlight of Great Lakes Underwater Event

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The discovery of the Great Lakes’ oldest confirmed shipwreck – a British warship used in the American Revolution &#8211 is the keynote presentation for the March 6, 2010 Great Lakes Underwater conference at SUNY Oswego, Oswego, NY. Underwater explorer Jim Kennard, who might be called the “Great Lakes Jacques Cousteau,” will share the story of how he and diving partner Dan Scoville located the HMS Ontario.

Kennard and Scoville found the sloop-of-war in 500 feet of water May 2008. She was on her way from Fort Niagara in Youngstown, NY, to Oswego and Fort Haldimand on Carleton Island in the St. Lawrence during the Revolutionary War when she sunk in a gale on October 31, 1780. The ship is considered property of the British Admiralty and is to be left undisturbed as a war grave site.

Those attending the Great Lakes Underwater event hosted by New York Sea Grant and the Oswego Maritime Foundation will see a video of the fascinating 229-year-old, 80-foot-long, 22-gun ship and hear the details of her discovery using deep-water sonar scanning. The video images will reveal how well the deep, cool Great Lakes’ water of Lake Ontario preserved her two crow’s nests, carved bow, quarter galleries, anchors and upright masts.

Conference co-organizer David G. White, a coastal recreation and tourism specialist with New York Sea Grant, Oswego, says, “With Jim Kennard as keynote speaker, the 2010 Great Lakes Underwater promises to be a fascinating day of the tales of shipwreck discovery. We are pleased to add our name alongside National Geographic, Sea Technology and others who have recognized the depth and scope of his exploration into the waters of New York.”

In just the past six years, Kennard has discovered 12 historic and rare shipwrecks in Lake Ontario. In his 40-year career, he counts more than 200 discoveries total exploring in Lake Champlain, the Finger Lakes, and the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.

Great Lakes Underwater 2010 will be held in the high-tech SUNY Oswego Campus Center Auditorium. Registration for Great Lakes Underwater is $25 ($20 for students) payable to Cornell University and includes the program, buffet lunch, and refreshments.

For more information, contact New York Sea Grant, SUNY Oswego, Oswego, NY 13126, 315-312-3042, www.oswegomaritime.org/glu.html.

Photo: One of two crow’s nests on the HMS Ontario- courtesy Jim Kennard and Dan Scoville.

Univ of Rochester to Hold Race and Gender Conference

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The University of Rochester has announced a two-day conference on April 16 and 17, 2010 to celebrate the launching of a new book series by the University of Rochester Press, &#8220Gender and Race in American History.&#8221 The Conference is free and open to the public. The conference organizers include Carol Faulkner (of Syracuse University), Alison M. Parker (of The College at Brockport, SUNY), and Victoria Wolcott (of the University of Rochester).

Featured Speakers will include:

Deborah Gray White (Rutgers University), &#8220What Women Want: The Racial Paradoxes of Post-Modernity.&#8221

Michelle Mitchell (New York University), title TBA

Meredith Clark-Wiltz, Ph.D. Candidate, History Department, Ohio State University, &#8220Persecuting Black Men, Gendering Jury Service: The Interplay between Race and Gender in the NAACP Jury Service Cases of the 1930s.&#8221

Kendra Taira Field, Assistant Professor, U.C. Riverside, &#8220&#8216-You mean Grandma Brown. Grandpa Brown didn’t have no land.’ Race, Gender, and An Intruder of Color in Indian Territory.&#8221

Rashauna Johnson, Ph.D. Candidate, History Department, NYU, &#8220&#8216-Laissez les bon temps rouler!’ and Other Concealments: Households, Taverns, and Irregular Intimacies in Antebellum New Orleans.&#8221

Michelle Kuhl, Assistant Professor of History, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, &#8220Countable Bodies, Uncountable Crimes: Sexual Assault and the Anti-Lynching Movement.&#8221

Vivian May, Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, Syracuse University, &#8220Historicizing intersectionality as Theory and Method: Returning to the Work of Anna Julia Cooper.&#8221

Helene Quanquin, Associate Professor, University of Paris 3-Sorbonne Nouvelle, &#8220&#8216-There are Two Great Oceans’: The Slavery Metaphor in the Antebellum Women’s Rights Movement as &#8216-redescription’ of Race and Gender.&#8221

For more information visit:
http://www.rochester.edu/College/humanities/projects/index.php?history&events

Call For Papers: NYS Association of European Historians

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The New York State Association of European Historians (NYSAEH) is currently seeking proposals for presentations and volunteers to chair sessions at this year’s annual conference to be held at Siena College, in Louudonville (near Albany), NY September 24-25, 2010. The conference will feature a keynote address by Lara Frader, Professor of History at Northeastern University and Senior Associate at the Minda de Gunzberg Center for European Studies at Harvard University. Among her many publications are Peasants and Protest: Agricultural Workers, Politics and Unions in the Aude, 1850-1914 (1991) and Breadwinners and Citizens: Gender in the Making of the French Social Model (2008).

Proposals for papers and/or panels should be submitted by April 30, 2010 to:

James Valone
Canisius College
2001 Main Street
Buffalo NY 14208

[email protected]

Atlantic World Literacies: Before and After Contact

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Atlantic World Literacies: Before and After Contact will be a an international, interdisciplinary conference sponsored by the Atlantic World Research Network, October 7-9, 2010 at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s Elliott University Center. Featured Speakers will include
Laurent DuBois (Professor of French and History, Duke University), Susan Manning (Professor of English, University of Edinburgh), Peter Mark (Professor of Art History and African-American Studies, Wesleyan University), and Julio Ortega (Professor of Hispanic Studies, Brown University). Read more →

The Boston Area Seminar in Early American History

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The Boston Area Seminar in Early American History invites proposals for sessions in its 2010-2011 series. Since 1989, the Seminar has been held at the Massachusetts Historical Society. Programs take place on the first Thursday evening of most months between September and May. The Seminar’s steering committee welcomes suggestions for papers dealing with all aspects of American history and culture from the era of first contact to the Civil War. Programs are not confined to Massachusetts topics, nor are they limited to the research of historians.

Each session focuses on the discussion of a pre-circulated paper. The essayist and an assigned commentator will each have an opportunity for remarks before the discussion is opened to the floor. Papers must be available for circulation electronically and by mail at least a month before the date of the seminar.

The seminar’s steering committee would like to fill two or three sessions through this call for papers. If you wish to be considered for a slot, send your CV and a one-page precis of your paper by March 15 to Conrad E. Wright, Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02215, or to [email protected].

In your proposal, indicate when your paper will be available for distribution. If there are special scheduling conditions, such as a planned trip to Boston or an extended period when you cannot make a presentation, indicate in your proposal.

Conference: Preservation in New York – The Next Generation

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The New York City Historic Districts Council has announced the Sixteenth Annual Preservation Conference, “Preservation in New York: The Next Generation” which will examine the future of preservation in New York City as a movement, both in terms of the types of buildings we should be preserving and the audiences we must engage in order to be successful. What will be the landmarks for the next generation and who will be fighting to preserve them?

The conference which runs March 5-7, 2010, will be preceded by an Opening Night Reception on Friday, March 5th. The Sunday following the Conference will feature a series of walking tours of historic areas throughout New York City. Participants can register online.

March 5: Opening Night Reception

This year the Opening Reception will be held in the LGBT Community Center, housed in an historic 19th-century school. As with last year’s event, in addition to refreshments and good preservation-minded conversation, this festive kick-off event will feature presentations on proposed historic districts and preservation campaigns across the city.

Friday, March 5, 6:00pm, at The LGBT Community Center, 208 West 13th Street between Seventh and Greenwich Avenues. Tickets for this event are $35/person, $30 for Friends of HDC, seniors and students. Reservations required. Please call (212) 614-9107 or visit our website.

March 6: “The Next Generation” Conference Panels

This year’s Conference Panels will bring together a distinguished group of preservationists, educators, community activists and non-profit leaders from New York City’s five boroughs to present their views in a series of panel discussions: “New Landmarks: Modern, Vernacular and Cultural Sites” and “New Audiences: Identifying and Partnering with Diverse Populations” and a keynote address delivered by Fran Leadon, architect, professor, and co-author of the forthcoming AIA Guide to New York City, Fifth Edition.

Saturday, March 6, 8:30am-4:30pm, at St. Francis College, 180 Remsen Street between Court and Clinton Streets, Brooklyn. Full day admission is $45/person, $35/person for Friends of HDC and seniors. Fee also includes continental breakfast, box lunch, and afternoon snack. Entrance fee will be waved for students with valid university ID (meals are not included). For reservations, please call (212) 614-9107 or visit our website.

March 7: Walking Tours

The final day of HDC’s Preservation Conference features six walking tours of neighborhoods throughout New York City:

The Grand Concourse: Ain’t It Grand!

A Walk Through Norwegian Brooklyn: Lapskaus Boulevard

Chelsea and Lamartine Place: A Cultural History

Modern in Midtown: Landmarks of the Recent Past

Parkchester: A City Within a City

West End Avenue: Way Out West

Space is limited, so reserve early. Meeting times and locations will be provided upon registration.

2010 Meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory

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The 2010 Annual Meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory, will take place at the Lord Elgin Hotel, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, on October 13 &#8211 17, 2010. The American Society for Ethnohistory (ASE) was founded in 1954 to promote the interdisciplinary investigation of the histories of the Native Peoples of the Americas. The ethnohistorical method, as it has come to be known, involves developing histories informed by ethnography, linguistics, archaeology, and ecology.

The theme for the ASE Ottawa 2010 is titled ‘Creating Nations and Building States: Past and Present,’ focusing on indigenous societies and their relations with expanding colonial and modern state structures of Canada, America, and Latin America. This general theme is intended to initiate discussions on the complex and often fractious relations between Native societies and expanding state structures in the Americas from contact onward.

Papers on instances of ethnogenesis, persistence and transformation of identity, culture and social structures over time are especially welcomed. Since the meeting is being held in Canada’s capital during the 125th anniversary of the second Metis provisional government and resistance movement at Batoche, the organizers are encouraging discussions and reflection on alternative models of indigenous nation building, displacement and violence in the interior, and the vast process of native exclusion in the construction of modern states.

The organizers invite proposals that speak to and think creatively about this year’s theme on the formation and transformation of both state and national entities, but they accept other ethnohistorical topics as well. Complete panel proposals with presenters, and chair are preferred, but individual paper proposals are also accepted.

The firm deadline for applications is April 15, 2010. Note the earlier than customary date of the conference as well as the earlier than usual deadline for the submission of proposals and abstracts. Applicants will be notified of the status of their proposals by June 15, 2010.

It is not necessary to register for the conference in order to have a paper or panel accepted. Once papers and panels are accepted, however, participants MUST register as an ASE member by August 1, 2010.

Click here for conference information.

Special Editor’s Session

The Editors and Editorial Board of Ethnohistory invite proposals for an invited Editors’ Session to be held at the 2010 meeting in Ottawa. They are looking for a session proposal that closely mirrors the theme of the conference “Creating Nations and Building States: Past and Present,” which involves representatives from several regions and disciplinary orientations exploring a common theme. The successful session proposal will be published as a special issue of the journal. Completed papers will be due within six months of the meeting. The session should consist of 6-8 papers. In order to for a session to be considered for the Editor’s Session, submit a session proposal, including a session abstract and abstracts of individual papers by the April 15th deadline. Be sure to check the box &#8221For consideration of the Editor’s Session.&#8221 Submissions not accepted for the Editors’ Session will be considered for inclusion in the regular program without prejudice.

Program questions should be directed to:
ASE Program Committee Chair
Professor Jean Francois Belisle
History Department
University of Ottawa
Ottawa, Ontario
Canada K1N 6N5
[email protected]
1-613-562-5800 #1293

Local arrangements questions should be directed to:
ASE Local Arrangements Committee Chair
Professor Nicole St-Onge
History Department
University of Ottawa
Ottawa, Ontario
Canada K1N 6N5
[email protected]
1-613-562-5800 # 1317

North Atlantic Conference on British Studies

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The North Atlantic Conference on British Studies will meet in Baltimore, Maryland, from November 12-14, 2010. The Program Committee of the NACBS welcomes participation by scholars working on all aspects of the British empire and the British world. They invite panel proposals addressing selected themes, methodology, and pedagogy, as well as roundtable discussions of topical and thematic interest, including conversations among authors of recent books. North American scholars, international scholars, and graduate students are all encouraged to submit proposals to the NACBS Program Committee.

Strong preference will be given to complete panel or roundtable proposals that consider a common theme. Panels typically include three papers and a comment- roundtables customarily have four presentations. Individual paper proposals will also be considered in rare cases. Those with single paper submissions are strongly encouraged to search for additional panelists on lists such as H-Albion or at venues such as the NACBS Facebook page.

Applicants may also write to the Program Chair for suggestions ([email protected]).

Committed to ensuring the broadest possible participation of scholars in British Studies, the Program Committee will give priority to those who did not read papers at the 2009 meeting. Panels that include both graduate students and established scholars are encouraged, as are submissions with broad chronological focus and interdisciplinary breadth.

All submissions must be received by March 1, 2010. For details, directions, and online submission, see www.nacbs.org/conference.html or contact Lara Kriegel, Program Chair, at [email protected].

Photo: French Expansion and British Conquests in North America to 1763.

Call For Papers: Warring for America, 1803-1818

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A Multidisciplinary Conference on the era of the War of 1812, co-sponsored by The Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, The Huntington Library, the New York University Department of History, and The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress will be held March 31 &#8211 April 1, 2011, at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.


The War of 1812, the first declared war in the history of the United States, erupted in the midst of countervailing forces shaping America in the first decades of the nineteenth century. From the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 to the Seminole War of 1818- from the close of the Atlantic slave trade in 1807 to the founding of the American Colonization Society in 1817- from the resumption of the Napoleonic Wars in 1803 to the second Barbary War in 1815- from New Jerseys revocation of female suffrage in 1807 to Frances Wright’s arrival in America in 1818- from the publication of Tabitha Gilman Tenneys parodic sentimental novel Female Quixotism (1801) to Washington Irving’s Sketch-Book (1819)- from Charles Willson Peales The Exhumation of the Mastodon (1806) to Charles Bird Kings portrait of Secretary of War John C. Calhoun (1818), this understudied era was crowded with events destined to unsettle the so-called revolutionary settlement.

At once postcolonial and neoimperial, the America of 1812 was still in need of definition. The decision to go to war catalyzed a critical era, one too often dismissed as an insignificant interregnum between the world of Jefferson and the world of Jackson. In contrast to the progressive experimentation of the 1780s and 1790s, the years surrounding the War of 1812 can be characterized as a period of narrowing possibilities and sharpening distinctions. Yet, the volatile elements that converged in the war and that emerged, transformed, point to the generative instabilities of the early Republic. This pivotal period merits further scholarly consideration.

The conferences title, Warring for America, 1803-1818, seeks to uncouple the War of 1812 from its stale fixture as the finale of the revolutionary era. Henry Adams contended that many nations have gone to war in pure gayety of heart- but perhaps the United States were first to force themselves into a war they dreaded, in the hope that the war itself might create the spirit they lacked. Historians have largely followed Adamss lead, interpreting the War of 1812 as a second War for Independence, a crisis meant to create the spirit of American nationalism. This conference, conversely, will consider the war as a volitional conflict that resulted from a confluence of many social, cultural, and geopolitical pressures and that had divergent consequences for the future of the extended republic.

Scholars are invited from a wide spectrum of disciplines from history and literature to art history and material culture to consider from new perspectives the struggles among Indians, Britons, Canadians, Euro-Americans, and African Americans throughout the North American continent, the Caribbean, and across the Atlantic Ocean. At issue were conflicting visions for control over territory, meanings of liberty, and distributions of power that came into focus through the upheaval of war. Proposals should address the connections between the new republics underlying tensions and the promulgation, execution, and explanations of the war itself. The organizers encourage submission of proposals for new, original work that is not committed for publication elsewhere, as a volume of essays resulting from the conference is anticipated.

Possible paper or panel topics include:

&#8211Origins of war and consequences of peace
&#8211Citizenship: gender, race, and sovereignty
&#8211Transformations in artistic and literary genres and representations of America
&#8211Postcolonialism, nationalism, imperialism, expansionism, regionalism
&#8211Continental and hemispheric events and repercussions: Shawnee, Creek, and Seminole Wars, Haitian Revolution, Napoleonic Wars and Louisiana, Latin American wars for independence, slave trade, contest for Canada and Mexico
&#8211Fronts of conflict, including the household, frontier, plantation, sea
&#8211Washington, D.C.: from new capital to pillaged city
&#8211Reconfigurations: revitalization to removal, abolition to colonization, Jeffersonianism to American system, First Bank of the U.S. to Second Bank of the U.S., printing to publishing, America as an object of natural history to the U.S. as a subject of history
&#8211Narratives and memories of the war
&#8211The Era of Good Feelings?: political factionalism, sectionalism, racism

Submit a one- to two-page synopsis of your paper proposal and a short-form c.v. no later than January 15, 2010. Submissions must be done electronically, either online at the conference Web site, http://oieahc.wm.edu/conferences/1812/cfp/index.cfm, or by email to the Omohundro Institutes webmaster, Kim Foley, at [email protected]. Include on the c.v. complete contact information (mail, email, and telephone). All submissions will be acknowledged by email. If you do not receive an acknowledgment, please resubmit or contact Kim Foley.

Program Committee: Fredrika J. Teute, Omohundro Institute- Nicole Eustace, New York University- Rob Parkinson, Shepherd University- Carolyn Brown, Library of Congress.

Photo: Battle of Plattsburgh