Calls for Papers

Researching New York Conference Call For Papers

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Researching NY ConferenceThe organizers of Researching New York 2013 invite proposals for presentations on any aspect of New York State history from any time period and from any perspective. The conference will take place on November 14 and 15 on the University at Albany campus, Albany, New York.

This annual conference brings together historians, archivists, public historians, graduate students, teachers, documentarians, and multimedia producers, to share their work on New York State history. Especially encouraged are submissions that reflect on the long and complicated history of religion in New York, including the intersections of religion and church history with the secular, civic, and public life of its citizens. Read more →

CFP: 17th Century Identity and the Middle Colonies

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New-France_2_6_Map-of-New-Belgium-or-New-NetherlandPaper and panel proposals are invited for a conference on “From Conquest to Identity: New Jersey and the Middle Colonies in the Seventeenth Century,” to be co-sponsored by the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, the New Jersey
Historical Commission, and Kean University and to be held in Trenton, New Jersey, on March 27–29, 2014.

Confirmed participants include Charles Gehring, Evan Haefeli, Ned C. Landsman, Robert C. Ritchie, and the members of the program committee: Wayne Bodle, Stanley N. Katz, Christian Koot, Maxine N. Lurie, Jonathan Mercantini, Daniel K. Richter, and Cynthia Van Zandt. Read more →

CFP: Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums Conference

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MAAM_logoboxThe Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums (MAAM) is now accepting submissions for session proposals for the fall 2013 Annual Meeting.  This year’s meeting, themed Back to the Future: Where Do We Go From Here?, will be held in Washington DC, October 20 &#8211 22, 2013.

The Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums, represents museum professionals, organizations, institutions and museum service providers, in a forum to enhance the image of museums and educate individuals on an array of field specific study and programs. The MAAM annual meeting is an important gathering providing an opportunity to share and exchange ideas. Read more →

CFP: 2013 Conference on New York State History

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Proposals are now being sought for the 2013 Conference on New York State History to be held at the New York State Historical Association in Cooperstown on June 6-8, 2013. Presentations may consider any aspect of New York State’s History.

To mark the Civil War sesquicentennial, the organizing committee is also soliciting proposals for one set of sessions that will examine aspects of the New York City draft riots of July 1863. Guidelines and proposal forms are available at www.nysha.org/cnysh . Read more →

CFP: Sugar and Beyond Conference Planned

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The John Carter Brown Library seeks proposals for a conference entitled “Sugar and Beyond,” to be held on October 25-26, 2013, and in conjunction with the Library’s Fall 2013 exhibition on sugar in the early modern period, especially its bibliographical and visual legacies. The centrality of sugar to the development of the Atlantic world is now well known.

Sugar was the ‘green gold’ that planters across the Americas staked their fortunes on, and it was the commodity that became linked in bittersweet fashion to the rise of the Atlantic slave trade. Producing unprecedented quantities of sugar through their enforced labor, Africans on plantations helped transform life not only in the colonies but also in Europe, where consumers incorporated the luxury commodity into their everyday rituals and routines.

“Sugar and Beyond” seeks to evaluate the current state of scholarship on sugar, as well as to move beyond it by considering related or alternative consumer cultures and economies. Given its importance, sugar as a topic still pervades scholarship on the Americas and has been treated in many recent works about the Caribbean, Brazil, and other regions. This conference thus aims to serve as an occasion where new directions in the study of sugar can be assessed.

At the same time, the connection of sugar to such broader topics as the plantation system, slavery and abolition, consumption and production, food, commodity exchange, natural history, and ecology has pointed the way to related but distinct areas of inquiry. Although sugar was one of the most profitable crops of the tropical Americas, it was not the only plant being cultivated.

Furthermore, although the plantation system dominated the lives of African and other enslaved peoples, they focused much of their efforts at resistance around the search for ways to mitigate or escape the regime of sugar planting. The organizers thus welcome scholars from all disciplines and national traditions interested in exploring both the power and limits of sugar in the early Atlantic world.

Topics that papers might consider include but are not limited to the following:

&#8211The development of sugar in comparative context
&#8211The rise of sugar and new conceptions of aesthetics, taste, and cultural refinement
&#8211Atlantic cultures of consumption
&#8211Coffee, cacao, and other non-sugar crops and commodities
&#8211Natural history and related genres of colonial description and promotion
&#8211Imperial botany and scientific programs of agricultural expansion and experimentation
&#8211Alternative ecologies to the sugar plantation
&#8211Plant transfer and cultivation by indigenous and African agents
&#8211Provision grounds and informal marketing
&#8211Economies of subsistence, survival, and resistance
&#8211Reimagining the Caribbean archive beyond sugar: new texts and methodological approaches

In order to be considered for the program, send a paper proposal of 500 words and CV to [email protected]. The deadline for submitting proposals is December 15, 2012.

The conference organizers include Christopher P. Iannini (Rutgers), Julie Chun Kim (Fordham), K. Dian Kriz (Brown).

Photo: Havemeyers & Elder’s, later Domino, sugar refinery in New York City in the 1880s. Photo courtesy wgpa.org.

Underground Railroad Conference Call for Proposals

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For more than ten years a group of community volunteers has been convening an Annual Underground Railroad Public History Conference sponsored by Underground Railroad History Project of the Capital Region (URHPCR).

The theme of this year’s conference will be, “Milestones to Freedom: Emancipation Proclamation, Harriet Tubman, and the March on Washington &#8211 a Legacy and a Future.&#8221  The year 2013 is the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, the 100th anniversary of the death of Harriet Tubman and the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington. These, and other key anniversary events, are milestones along the road to achieving Martin Luther King’s vision articulated in his “I Have a Dream” speech.

This 12th annual conference on the Underground Railroad seeks to connect the Underground Railroad, these key events and present day struggles for freedom and justice. Toward this end the committee solicits proposals that elaborate, analyze and articulate these stories, connections within them and their relationship to the present.

Proposals are invited that address reinterpretations, teaching, new research, and that illustrate how such research can be used to celebrate the story historically and contemporarily, as well as other proposals related to the Underground Railroad in the past and its relationship with us today.

This year conference will be held April 12-14, 2013 at Russell Sage College in Troy and Albany, NY. Details are available at www.UndergroundRailroadHistory.org or by calling 518-432-4432.

Fall Archives and Activism Symposium in NYC

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On October 12, the Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York and the New School Archives and Special Collections will be co-sponsoring Archives and Activism, a symposium exploring the burgeoning relationship between archives/archivists and social and political activist movements. Proposals for individual papers and group panels to be presented at the symposium are currently being accepted. See the official CFP below:

Archives and Activism: Call for Papers

“The rebellion of the archivist against his normal role is not, as so many scholars fear, the politicizing of a neutral craft, but the humanizing of an inevitably political craft.&#8221
&#8211 Howard Zinn &#8220Secrecy, Archives, and the Public Interest,&#8221 Vol. II, No. 2 (1977) of Midwestern Archivist.

The boundaries between &#8220archivist&#8221 and &#8220activist&#8221 have become increasingly porous, rendering ready distinctions between archivists (traditionally restricted to the preservation of records, maintaining accountability, and making critical information available to the communities they serve) and activists (who, with greater frequency, look to archives or adopt elements of archival practice as a means of documenting their struggles) virtually unsustainable. In the past year, archivists and citizen activists collaborated to document the Occupy Wall Street movement, and archivists committed to open government worked with the New York City Council to advocate for keeping the Municipal Archives as an independent city agency. While the apparent convergence of archival and activist worlds may appear a timely and relevant topic, these distinct communities often deliberate their roles separately with little dialogue.

The Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York and the New School Archives and Special Collections are sponsoring a symposium to bring together a diverse group of archivists, activists, students, and theorists with the aim of facilitating discussion of their respective concerns. Among its proposed topics, the symposium will address potential roles that archivists may engage in as activists, as well as how archivists can assume a greater role in documenting and contributing toward social and political change.

Possible areas of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

-Archivists documenting the work of activists and activist movements
-Activists confronting traditional archival practice
-Possible models for an emergent “activist archives”
-Methodologies for more comprehensively documenting activism
-Archivist and activist collaborations
-Community-led archives and repositories operating outside of the archival
establishment
-Archives as sites of knowledge (re)production and in(ter)vention
-Relational paradigms for mapping the interplay of power, justice, and archives
-Critical pedagogy in the reference encounter
-Interrogating preconceptions and misunderstandings that obscure common goals

Date: Friday, October 12, 2012

Location: Theresa Lang Community and Student Center, The New School

All individual presentations will be 20 minutes long (10 page paper).
Submissions must include a title, name of author and institutional affiliation (if applicable), abstract (250 words max), and indication of technological requirements.
Individual papers or entire panel proposals accepted.

Deadline for Proposals: Proposals should be emailed to [email protected] by August 1, 2012.

Researching NY: Science, Technology, Environment

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The organizers of the Researching New York Conference invite proposals for panels, papers, workshops, roundtables, exhibits, and documentary and multimedia presentations on any aspect of New York State history —in any time period and from any perspective. The conference will be held at the University at Albany on November 15-16, 2012. This annual conference brings together historians, archivists, graduate students, public historians, documentarians, and multimedia producers, to share their work on New York State history.

Nature, science, and technology are reflected in the fabric of the State’s economy, public policy, and culture—and in the lives of its citizens. Environmental forces and human histories have long been intertwined. Among many concerns, policymakers today consider the implications of energy, light rail and nanotech research, while their predecessors sought to develop the economy of the state with infrastructure projects like the Erie Canal, the New York State Thruway, agricultural experiment stations, housing projects, and much more. For 2012, the organizers especially encourage submissions that call attention to transformations of the New York state landscape, while exploring historic ways of knowing and understanding the environment and the broader social, cultural, and political implications of technological and environmental transformations.

The proposal deadline is July 1, 2012. Complete panels, workshops, media presentations, or sessions are preferred- partial panels and individual submissions will be considered. For complete sessions please submit a one-page abstract of the complete session and a one-page abstract and curriculum vita for each individual participant. For individual submissions, submit a one-page abstract and one-page curriculum vita. Submissions must include name, address, telephone number, and e-mail address. Submit electronically to [email protected]. All proposals must detail any anticipated audiovisual needs or time constraints at the time of submission.

The organizers also seek commentators for panels. Please indicate your interest by contacting us at [email protected], noting your area of expertise and including a one-page vita.

CFP: 12th Mohican / Algonquian Peoples Seminar

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The Native American Institute of the Hudson River Valley and The New York State Museum are inviting papers or other presentation to be given at the 12th Mohican/Algonquian Peoples Seminar held at the NYS Museum in Albany on September 15, 2012. Topics can be any aspect of Northeastern Native American culture from prehistory to present. Presentations are allotted 20 minutes speaking time.

Interested parties are encouraged to submit a one page abstract that includes a brief biographical sketch and notes any special scheduling and/or equipment needs. For presentations other than traditional papers, please describe content and media that will be used to make the presentation. Deadline for abstract submission is June 1, 2012.
 
The Selection Committee, made up of Board members, will notify presenters no later than June 10, 2012. The final paper should meet common publication standards. The paper should be foot noted &#8220author-date&#8221 style- sources are cited in the text in parentheses by author’s last name and date, with a reference to a list of books or sources at the end of the paper. Also, a disc containing the article, bibliography, illustrations (referred to as figure 1, figure 2 etc.) and captions for the illustrations should be submitted to the Board at the Seminar.

Send abstracts to:

Native American Institute of the Hudson River Valley (NAIHRV)
c/o Mariann Mantzouris
223 Elliot Rd.
East Greenbush, NY 12061
Email : [email protected]
Telephone: 518-369-8116

New Netherland: Hendricks Award Submissions

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The Annual Hendricks Award is given to the best book or book-length manuscript relating to any aspect of the Dutch colonial experience in North America until the American Revolution. The Award carries a prize of $5,000 as well as a framed print of a painting by Len Tantillo entitled Fort Orange and the Patroon’s House. The prize-winner, chosen by a five-member panel of scholars, is selected in May or June. The Award is given at a ceremony in conjunction with the annual New Netherland Seminar, held in September. Reasonable travel expenses will be reimbursed.

Two categories of submissions will be considered in alternate years:

(1) recently completed dissertations and unpublished book-length manuscripts (2012), and (2) recently published books (2013). If there is no suitable winner in the designated category in any particular year, submissions from the alternate category will be considered. In addition, submissions from the previous year will be reconsidered for the Award.

Criteria: Entries must be based on research completed or published within two years prior to submission. Manuscripts may deal with any aspect of the Dutch colonial experience as defined above. Biographies of individuals whose careers illuminate aspects of the history of New Netherland and its aftermath are eligible, as are manuscripts dealing with literature and the arts, provided that the methodology is historical. Co-authored books are eligible, but edited collections of articles are not, nor are works of fiction or works of article length. An entry may be a self-nomination, an outside nomination, or in response to invitations to submit from Hendricks Award readers.

Submissions will be judged on their contribution to the scholarly understanding of the Dutch colonial experience in North America and the quality of their research and writing.

Three copies of a published book or three clear, readable photocopies of the manuscript must be submitted on or before March 15, with a letter of intent to enter the contest. Copies cannot be returned. Alternatively, submissions may be in pdf format.

Address entries to:

The Annual Hendricks Award Committee
New Netherland Institute
Cultural Education Center, Room 10D45
Albany, NY 12230

Send PDF submissions to [email protected] use &#8216-Hendricks award’ in the subject line.