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.

CFP Roundup 11.20.2013

2014 Phi Alpha Theta Alabama Regional Conference

When? April 5, 2014.

Where? Auburn, Alabama.

Deadline: February 15, 2014.

Auburn University is pleased to announce a call for papers for the annual Phi Alpha Theta (PAT) Alabama Regional Meeting, to be held April 5, 2014.The Alabama Regional Meeting provides undergraduate and graduate students of history an excellent opportunity to present their research in a supportive and professional environment.

The AU PAT Organizing Committee encourages all regional chapter advisors to disseminate the attached call for papers to both undergraduate and graduate students. Proposalsare not confined to any specific region or time period and may include – but are not confined to – topics of race, gender, culture, religion, identity, and the history of technology. Proposals may concern preliminary findings for research being conducted during Spring Term 2014 as well as research completed in earlier terms. Non-members of Phi Alpha Theta are also encouraged to submit proposals.

Individual paper proposals should include an abstract of the presentation of no more than 250 words. Students should submit their proposals to their Phi Alpha Theta chapter advisor by February 15, 2014. Faculty advisors are then requested to forward the proposals electronically (in MS Word format) to Jacob Clawson, jsc0017@tigermail.auburn.edu.

While student papers will be accepted based on the submitted abstract, the final paper and additional registration fee of $15 (checks made payable to the order to Phi Alpha Theta) should be sent to Jacob Clawson at the address listed above at least two weeks before the conference, i.e., March 22, 2014. Presentations should be no more than 15 minutes long (7-8 typed pages).

For further inquiries, please contact Alex McLure at the following email address: mam0024@tigermail.auburn.edu.

Recap: “This Terrible War: Marking the 150th Anniversary of the American Civil War,” The Center for Civil War Research

As the calendar inched closer to the ides of October, I found the semester grind having its (usual) effects. I am in my last year of coursework, and while I love learning, the seminars I am currently enrolled in are more labor intensive than I imagined. The annual meeting of the Southern Historical Association (this year in St. Louis), usually marks the first major break during fall semester, but seems far off.

Being a graduate student often presents a lonely existence; weekly – if not daily – reminders about your current course load, or perhaps the looming spectre of the dissertation prove hard to ignore. Even if you maintain a schedule that allows for minor breaks within the week, the responsibilities of the semester eventually catch up. In short, sometimes you need more of a jolt than simply another cup of coffee. My solution: heading to a conference! Luckily, there was conference (relatively) close at Ole Miss. So I rounded up some other grad students, hopped in a car, and road tripped to Oxford.

CFP Roundup 9.18.2013

Below are a number of recent Calls for Papers:

5th Annual LSU History Graduate Conference
 
When? March 21-22, 2014.
Where?  Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Deadline: December 1, 2013.

We invite submissions for panels or individual papers from graduate students at all levels of study. Proposals may cover all fields and approaches of historical scholarship and span all chronological and geographical boundaries…The keynote speaker is Edward L. Ayers, President and Professor of History at the University of Richmond and author of Vengeance & Justice: Crime and Punishment in the Nineteenth-Century American South and What Caused the Civil War? Reflections on the South and Southern History.

 

Think Before You Count: Reflections on Trotti's recent article in the JAH

Being that the school year is still young and that the work is usually weighted towards the end of the semester, I actually had time to prop up my feet at the office and enjoy reading an article in the most recent edition of the Journal of American History that I got in the mail today. (I can already hear my professors lecturing me on how I'm supposed to use the free time I have now to get ahead on all the work that that will be due in December, even though they know damn well they did the exact sort thing when they were in grad school.) Of particular interest to me was Michael Ayers Trotti's article, "What Counts: Trends in Racial Violence in the Postbellum South." Trotti's piece is germane to most graduate students, regardless of their specialty, because it wrestles with the methodological pitfalls surrounding quantitative history. Trotti highlights the great difficulty inherent in quantitative historical analysis, especially when said analysis that has moral implications related to some of the darkest chapters in American history. (A quick disclaimer: this blog post is by no means intended to be an exhaustive summary of the article, but only notes some of the key points that I felt like particularly mattered to grad students.)

Trotti begins by reminding his readers that the very definition of lynching is itself contested and not always the best yardstick with which to measure the effectiveness of racial terrorism in American history. Definitions and statistical analyses of lynching emerged in the early twentieth century, usually through the work of groups like the NAACP, in order to combat the epidemic of violence. Usually, we think of lynchings as having multiple perpetrators. But Trotti points out that simply determining what counts as a "lynching" for the historian is far from simple and, furthermore, all lynchings were not created equal. Sometimes the murder of a solitary black leader by a white citizen provoked far greater terror than a brutal public lynching. Even still, it is impossible to even grasp at the total number of lynchings that occurred between 1880 and 1920 (what we usually think of as the high-point of racial terrorism in the US). Records are shoddy, testimony is often skewed, and ascertaining whether an event should count in the tally of a "lynching" is far from clear. (If three people watched one white person murder an African American, but didn't actually participate in the killing, how should the historian count it?) Trotti insists that scholars broaden their view beyond lynchings to a more expansive notion of racial terrorism because studies of "lynchings" fail to capture the totality of the situation for many black Americans living in this time period.

Things I wish I had known (or I was glad I knew) my first year in grad school

All across America, it's back to school time. For most students and families, it's a time to buy new backpacks, pencils, and crayons. If you're in a college town (like I am), every time you go to Walmart or Target you see eighteen year-old kids with their parents buying dry erase boards, plastic storage bins, and dorm room refrigerators. And then, there are first year grad students. Many of you, perhaps those who come to a Ph. D. program with an MA in hand (as I did), are generally well-prepared for the workload. Others are blissfully naive about the changes that are about to happen in their lives. Classes start at most universities in the next week or so; if it's your first year of grad school and you don't feel like Billy Madison waiting for the bus yet, then you will before August is over. Indeed, your first few months as a grad student will likely be one of the most stressful times in your entire life and I think most first-year students could benefit from the collective wisdom of their colleagues. With that that in mind, I solicited suggestions on Twitter and while I was disappointed that I didn't get more responses, I have plenty of tips to offer those of you starting this odyssey in the next few weeks.  So here are my tips for a first grad students in history (along with the ones I received from Twitter).

Embargo or EmbargNO?

Yesterday, the AHA caused quite an uproar with a press release regarding the embargoing of completed history PhD dissertations. You can read the whole statement here, but I would like to highlight a number of key quotes: 

Although there is so close a relationship between the dissertation and the book that presses often consider them competitors, the book is the measure of scholarly competence used by tenure committees...History has been and remains a book-based discipline, and the requirement that dissertations be published online poses a tangible threat to the interests and careers of junior scholars in particular.  Many universities award tenure only to those junior faculty who have published a monograph within six years of receiving the PhD.  With the online publication of dissertations, historians will find it increasingly difficult to persuade publishers to make the considerable capital investments necessary to the production of scholarly monographs...

Reactions on Twitter varied (and somehow, Jon Butler made an appearance): 

Welcome to the Graduate Historical Exchange

We conceived this blog while driving south in a white Ford pick-up on Interstate 65 somewhere between Indiana and Alabama. Having just attended the 2013 Religion and American Culture conference in Indianapolis, we had much on our minds as we traveled back home to Auburn. We talked about what we had learned in two days of thoughtful intellectual dialogue, discussed our own research interests, and, above all, reflected on the spirit that we, as historians and graduate students, wanted for our profession. 

As the miles passed and the sun hung ever lower on the western horizon, our ideas became more specific. First of all, we wanted a place where we could use technology to simply talk about our experiences as graduate students. Whether to discuss readings for seminar, our progress studying for exams, or to write about our dissertations, we felt that a blog such as this could be a creative outlet (and maybe even a productive diversion) for those of us toiling away in graduate school. Second of all, we want to engage critically with historiography, theory, and method – three topics that all graduate students wrestle with on daily basis. There are not many resources like this for grad students like us as we wade into deep intellectual waters, usually without a life preserver. So, in part, we envision this corner of cyberspace for graduate students to engage with a friendly audience on big subjects in the field. Finally, and most importantly, we want the Graduate Historical Exchange to be a collaborative endeavor with like-minded graduate students. Graduate school can be a tough time for aspiring academics – as questions abound over the future of higher education and job opportunities become increasingly limited, it’s very easy to become discouraged. Moreover, the day-to-day life of a grad student often feels like taking a monastic oath – it can be a time of loneliness and soul-searching. With our onerous burdens, it’s often hard to think outside of our own institutions or even our own cohort within a department. We envision our list of contributors to be expansive and to bring all of us out of our relative isolation – this is to be an exchange of ideas, reflections, and experiences that we can all learn from. We want to use this blog to develop professionally, establish connections with other emerging scholars, and to cultivate good feelings amongst one another. We want to help each other to become better scholars, better friends, and better professionals. We want to share, to teach, and to reflect. And, above all, we want to listen.

This is a marketplace for ideas, and we encourage contributions. Email us at gradhistoricalexchange@gmail.com if interested in suggesting blog post themes, writing a blog post as a guest, or requesting permission to reprint entire posts.