CFP Roundup 3.26.2014

The Great War, A Hundred Years On: Origins, Lessons, and Legacies of the first World War

• When? November 6-8, 2014.
• Where? Georgia Gwinnett College, Lawrenceville GA.
• Deadline: April 28, 2014.

The sponsoring organizations at Georgia Gwinnett College (GGC) invite papers from scholars examining topics related to the Great War.  As the conference is commemorating the outbreak of World War I in 1914, papers exploring its origins will form one point of focus for the conference.  But the organizers also envision panels investigating other major topics that fit within the wider theme of the lessons and legacies of the Great War broadly construed, including—but not limited to—collective memory and memory politics, gender and minority experiences, trauma and “brutalization,” cultural approaches to the war and its representation, and the broader impact of the conflict on the non-Western world.  Presentations dealing with approaches to teaching the Great War in the classroom are also greatly encouraged.  The committee will consider proposals for individual papers or entire panels (3-4 papers) that will be peer-reviewed by an interdisciplinary group of scholars interested in these questions.  The organizers plan to undertake the publication of selected papers in either a scholarly journal or in book form after the conference.

"THE SLAVE HAS SPOKEN FOR HIMSELF": The Slave Narrative as Historiographical Lens

[Editor's Note 1: As one certainly has noticed, in the previous months there has been a regrettable slowdown in the content provided by the site. Time management in and of itself is worthy of its own post, but needless to say, the busyness of our final semesters of coursework have diverted attention from posting on the website. Hopefully it has been some consolation to everyone that our Twitter account has remained relatively up-to-date.]

[Editor's Note 2: In lieu of the exciting news that 12 Years a Slave, the film adaptation of Solomon Northrup's 1853 slave narrative, won the Oscar for the Best Picture of the Year, I'd like to offer a suggestion as to how these rich resources - a number of which can be found at UNC's Documenting the South database - maybe be used for historiographical purposes.] 

William L. Sheppard, "The First Cotton Gin," 19th cent.

Peter Wood once admitted to anxiety regarding his source base when he began his research on slavery in colonial South Carolina. Bracing himself for the possibility that what was necessary for his work may “scarcely” exist, Wood instead discovered that slave voices proved “more than ample” through myriad primary sources.[1] Often, studying slavery requires a large mount of reading in the lines, such as utilizing the records of the Royal African Company to illuminate the morbid nature of the Middle Passage for saltwater slaves and examining probate records to gauge the economic optimism owners viewed the reproductive capabilities of their female human property.[2] Most valuable to historians, though, are the narratives left by escaped or emancipated former slaves who detailed their experiences whilst in the throes of the peculiar institution. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how a close reading of a slave narrative – in this case, the narrative of James Williams – can act as a historiographical lens to recent scholarship on American slavery.