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.

Bloggin' the Bookshelf: David Hall's "Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Beliefs in Early New England"

Editor's Note: This is a new series started with the aim of reviewing older works that are either directly linked with prelim reading lists or dissertation research. Of course, we invite any reader to contribute content about works valuable to their own research, regardless of period or topic.

Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgement:
Popular Religious Beliefs in
Early New England (1989)

In Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment, David D. Hall has reexamined the spiritual community of colonial New England, arguing for the existence of a popular religion that is both rooted in and supported by culture. Hall’s approach is novel, arguing that religion acted as “a mode of literacy” (18), and this prevailing connection between faith and literacy dominates this seminal work.

For Hall, the faith that emerges in New England cannot be simply explained as a product of cultural transmission. A variety of reasons are noted for colonial distinctiveness: the utility and persistence of folk belief, the spatial relationship between minister and congregation, the separate nature of church and state, the relative lack of appeal for ‘radical’ (i.e. Quaker, Baptist) faiths, the accommodative nature of magic and religion (paying homage to Keith Thomas’ 1971 seminal work), and the prominence of literacy. Popular culture represents something unique, facilitating an environment that was at once strictly demarcated, but flexible enough to include “countervailing practices and motifs” (245).

CFP Roundup 7.31.2013

Below are a number of recent Calls for Papers:

"Emotions in History" - Ceræ: an Australasian Journal of Medieval and Early 

Modern Studies

• Deadline: October 31, 2013

Emotions drive individual actions and effect broader social change. The way they are felt, expressed and performed evolves over time, and in exploring the way these emotions were experienced in their historical context, we can both gain a better understanding of how past societies understood their experience, and how this has influenced the way we experience emotions today...We are particularly interested in submissions which engage with the growing field of the digital humanities, and are happy to work with authors to accommodate any requirements involving multimedia or alternative formatting. We also encourage submissions from authors working on emotions in performance and material culture. All submissions will be peer-reviewed by qualified experts in the field.

CFP Roundup 7.16.2013

Below are a number of recent Calls for Papers:

80th Annual Meeting of the Southern Historical Association

• When? November 13-16, 2014
• Where? Atlanta, Georgia
• Deadline: September 15, 2013

The Program Committee for 2014, chaired by Laura Edwards, Duke University, invites proposals on all topics related to the history of the American South from its pre-colonial era to today...According to SHA policy, no one who appeared on the previous two programs, those at Mobile and St. Louis, can be part of the program in Atlanta...All proposals for the 2014 program must be submitted online.

History: Science, Humanity, or Something Else?

While no one would confuse Momma Goldberg’s of Auburn as a wellspring of erudition, it was there, last night, while consuming drink and breaking bread (or, rather, cheap nachos) with the graduate cohort that I had a bit of inspiration for my first post to this blog.  The issue was one that I think dogs most historians:  is history a science, or is it one of the humanities?  This type of existential question is one that I think is important for us, as professionals, to consider.  After our conversation, it was brought to my attention that Ken Owen has written on this matter at The Junto in reaction to Eric Herschthal’s piece comparing popular history and popular science for Slate.  While I agree with the general thrust of Owen’s argument, on the question of history’s relationship to the sciences, I would like to suggest that the relationship might not be as cut and dry as Owen seems to suggest.  Specifically, history – or, academic history - is scientific, even if it is not considered one of the sciences in the sense that chemistry or biology is. 

Thoughts on Bernath's recent JSH article

It being a relatively mild, overcast, and dreary day in Durham, I woke up this morning and poured a cup of coffee and picked up the most recent edition of the Journal of Southern History. I went right for Michael Bernath's article, "The Confederacy as a Moment of Possibility," mostly because the title looked startlingly provocative. In the piece, Bernath revisits the argument that many powerful southerners, including Jefferson Davis, viewed formation of the Confederacy as a profoundly conservative revolution - the purging of the cancerous northern influences. It is well known that despite these conservative intentions, the necessities of war pushed the CSA to become more powerful and centralized. The ultimate defeat of the Confederacy led to radical changes that few southerners could have foreseen in the heady days of secession. But, as Bernath reminds us, many viewed the creation of a new southern nation and the resulting war as an opportunity to push new reforms that were, for a variety of reasons, unimaginable under the old Union. He uses the example of three reform initiatives: expansion of women's education, slavery reform, and reactionary antidemocratic activism. Bernath's article is thoughtful and convincing, and I want to take a moment to both add to his argument, but also to take issue with some of his assertions. 

Edmund Morgan, 1916-2013

Today is a sad day: at around noon I found out that Edmund Morgan, the dean of early American history, passed away. 

I have struggled to try and figure out how to describe how much Dr. Morgan has meant to me. One skill that I always admired about him was his ability to simply explain the complexities inherent in the historical actors he wrote about (John Winthrop and Ezra Stiles to name a few). With that in mind, I'm going to (attempt) to write as Ed did, clearly and passionately. 

RECAP: ARC Biennial Sourcing Emotions Conference

Winthrop Hall, University of Western Australia

Last week, the Australian Research Council held its Biennial Sourcing Emotions conference at the University of Western Australia. I was fortunate enough to have a paper selected for presentation at the conference, and jumped at this unique opportunity to connect with academics involved in the study of emotions in the Middle Ages and early modern Europe. The ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions provides an institutional sanctuary – and I don’t think “sanctuary” is a dramatic term, many scholars iterated their gratitude towards the ARC in bringing them together and “out of isolation” as one plenary speaker noted – for this still-nascent field that is absent from the American university system, buoyed by a $24 million grant from the Australian government, the largest grant bestowed to the humanities in the history of Australia.

My goal here is to provide a short recap of the conference. Since the conference followed a parallel-session format, I am unable to comment on a number of the panels. As an upfront disclaimer, I admit that I was drawn to panels that included emotions in the New World, the colonization of Australia, Anglo-Aboriginal interactions in early Australia, and reading emotions in early modern English literature.

How Bibliocentric was Early America?

Earlier this month, Mark Noll provided perhaps the most provocative argument of the 3rd Biennial Conference on Religion and American Culture when he claimed that the America of 1740-1820 was a "creation of the Bible," bolstered by the Protestant non-establishment. He went further, arguing that public use of scripture is always political in the United States. When pressed to elucidate further, most notably by John Corrigan's question of how Noll's understanding of the period in question differed from previous arguments made by Jon Butler, Noll stood his ground (Charlie McCrary penned a fantastic summation of the conference on the Junto; for a tweet by tweet timeline, see this Storify). 

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.