The Graduate History Association of the University of Massachusetts Amherst invites proposals for its annual interdisciplinary conference. This year’s conference is entitled “Putting History to Work,” and will take place on March 4-5, 2016.
The Graduate History Association is pleased to announce that the Graduate History Conference will be held in conjunction with a History Communicators workshop exploring effective history communication across disciplines, sponsored by the UMass Department of History. A public panel discussion with Jim Grossman, Executive Director of the American Historical Association, and other featured guests, will take place on Friday, March 4th. GHA conference presenters are invited to attend and will be ensured a place at a networking dinner that evening with workshop participants. You will have the opportunity to speak with Jason Steinhauer, The John W. Kluge Center in the Library of Congress; Lonnie G. Bunch, Founding Director, National Museum of African American History and Culture; Rebecca Onion, UMass Writer in Residence, Slate.com history writer, The Vault blog; Jamia Wilson, Executive Director, Women, Action & the Media; John Dichtl, President & CEO, AASLH; Yoni Applebaum, Senior Editor for Politics at The Atlantic; Cathy Stanton, Senior Lecturer, Tufts University, Editor of History@Work; and many more, including academic professionals, journalists, science and technology writers, bloggers, fiction and non-fiction authors, and public intellectuals.
This conference invites submissions that investigate how we make history work for diverse communities. The theme of the conference, Putting History to Work, is meant to be a playful, ambiguous approach to a wide variety of questions confronting historians in today’s globalized society. Some questions that might elaborate on this theme, but which will not limit the scope of presentations: How do we make history work for social justice, for social movements? How do historians help social movements draw on histories of their antecedents? How does history work for public policy? What work does history do outside of the academy? Alternately, what is the history of work? How have histories of work changed? This conference is open to submissions from research in any historical period or geographic location. There will be cash prizes given to the best papers. Prize amounts and number of awards to be determined.
We welcome submissions from graduate students of History, Public History, African-American Studies, English, Comparative Literature, Medieval Studies, Anthropology, Political Science, Journalism and other disciplines relevant to competing approaches to history and today’s society. The following are just a few examples of possible presentation fields and subjects, although we will gladly receive others:
Communication, Public History, Oral History, African Diaspora, Gender and Sexuality, Popular Culture, Social Movements, Im(migration), Labor History, Science/Technology
Graduate students interested in participating in this conference should submit a one-page paper proposal, resume or CV, and a brief two to three sentence biography (.doc, .docx or .pdf format) for consideration by February 8, 2016. Accepted submissions may provide a full version of the presentation paper by February 19, 2016, so that the papers may be judged for the conference prize(s). In your proposal please include a paper title, abstract, and very brief statement indicating your discipline and areas of geographic, chronological, and thematic focus, as well as any presentation A/V needs. We also welcome proposed panels, which should include a brief description of the panel along with individual paper proposals.
Please e-mail materials to ghapage@history.umass.edu & cscruggs@history.umass.edu. Accepted applicants will be notified on a rolling basis.
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