OAH Presidential Address: On Social Amnesia and Neutrality as Public Performance

This past weekend Patty Limerick, Faculty Director and Chair of the Board of the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado, delivered the presidential address at the OAH 2015 annual meeting. Her address, "Historians as Public Intellectuals: A Cost-Benefit Analysis, Seen from the Interior" considered how historians can help society avoid amnesia.

To revive the profession and its place in American culture, Limerick encouraged members of the Organization of American Historians to think less about professors and the academy and more about the story, or stories, that bring life to their work. Limerick used herself as an example of a historian who lived the kind transition she is encouraging: moving from an early career scholar focused on speaking to her field (with monographs like Legacy of Conquest) to a historian who speaks to a larger public audience about the importance of historical context (writing briefs for Congress, hosting public events and forums through the Center of the American West, and applying historical methods to endeavors other writing books).  In both kinds of efforts, Limerick sees her role as supplying historical perspective in order to better understand and shape the future. Rather than detract from her role or status as a scholar, Limerick argues that her work engaging the public brings greater credibility to her scholarship and enhances her purpose as a historian.

Limerick's speech is well timed as as the April 2015 issue of Perspectives on History also considers the current state of the profession. Perspectives provide a roundtable on a related concern: "History as a Book Discipline. It's worth reading after watching the entire presidential address, which can be found here courtesy of History News Network. 

Meet Me in St. Louis

Daniel Schwen, "St. Louis on the Mississippi River by night," January 27, 2008.

 The 2015 meeting of the Organization of American Historians is coming up this weekend: April 16-19.  (The program can be found here.) The theme is this year is "Taboos" with panels that promise to discuss "what historians miss when we avoid topics that have come to be regarded as taboo."

Readers of Religion in the American West will not be disappointed. Here's a brief round up of panels that may be of interest.

Thursday, April 16, 12:00-1:30PM
Citizenship, Nationhood, and Power in Indian Country

Constitutional Law and History or Constitutional Law in History

Friday, April 17 9:00-10:30AM
The Civil War Era and the American West: Unifying Concepts for Scholars, Students, and Museum Goers

Tradition and Taboo in Asian American History

Writing U.S. History: The View from Mexico

Friday, April 17 10:50AM-12:20PM
New Directions in Asian American History

Indigenous Perceptions of Nineteenth Century Treaty Making

Friday, April 17 1:50PM-3:20PM
State of the Field: 19th Century Indigenous and American Indian History

Challenges of Indigenous Women’s and Gender History


Saturday, April 18, 9:00AM-10:30AM
Looking North and West: New Directions in the Study of Free African Americans

The Limits of Freedom: Labor, Violence, and Coercion in the American West
 
Saturday, April 18, 10:50AM-12:20PM 

Rediscovering the Lost World of Midwestern History

Sex, Religion, and the Outlaw Teachers: Taboo Topics in the History of American Education

Saturday, April 18, 1:50PM-3:20PM
Indigenous Rights and Resistance in Alaska (Twentieth Century)

Memorializing Massacres in the American West
Radical Political HIstories of the Midwest


Saturday, April 18, 5:15PM
Presidential Address: Historians as Public Intellectuals: A Cost-Benefit Analysis, Seen from the Interior

In addition to the panels, St. Louis includes plenty of opportunity for research. According to St. Louis Public Radio, the Missouri History Museum holds the largest collection of Native American artifacts outside the Native American Museum in Washington, D.C. Nancy Kranzberg's "St. Louis is Rich With Art Collections of the American West" gives other suggestions for research as well, like Washington University's Kemper Art Museum and the St. Louis Art Museum (which has the memorable url slam.org).

OAH Workshop: Diversity in the American West

CALL FOR PROPOSALS
January 5 - February 27, 2015

NEW 2015 SUMMER REGIONAL WORKSHOP
Glendale, California
July 17 - July 19, 2015

The Organization of American Historians is pleased to announce a Call for Proposals for its new Summer 2015 Regional Workshop.

The 3-day workshop, titled Diversity in the American West, will be held on the campus of Glendale Community College, located ten miles north of downtown Los Angeles, from Friday, July 17 through Sunday, July 19, 2015.

The Program Committee invites proposals from college faculty (from both two-year and four-year institutions); high school faculty, including AP History instructors; historical researchers and writers; librarians: museum curators; public historians; advanced graduate students; and other educational professionals.

The purpose of this workshop is to offer history educators a meaningful opportunity to learn more about the diverse people, places, and historical themes of the American West. Some questions to consider include the following: What are the major trends in contemporary research and historiography of the American West, particularly as they relate to the theme of diversity? What strategies can be used to engage students and the general public in the history of the American West? How might instructors build and enhance their teaching of American History survey courses to include the history of the American West?


Submissions will be accepted between January 5, 2015 and February 27, 2015.

For further information and submission instructions please click here.

REMINDER: Many Things Are Due Today (or Soon)!

Hi everyone -- your friendly blog editors here, just reminding you that proposals are due to the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians today.  To see the calls and get more details, go to our AHA blog post here and our OAH blog post here.  Also, proposals are due for the American Society of Church History on March 15, a month from today.  To see the call for papers, go to our blog post here or just click on over to the call on the ASCH website.  Happy Wednesday!

Organization of American Historians Call for Papers

On Monday, we promised a link to the AAR CFP, as well as instructions for submitting through the online system. Unfortunately, that information will not be available until Monday, 1/23. We will provide a link for you then! In the meantime, there is another conference that readers of this blog might be interested in. The 2013 OAH meeting will be held in San Francisco, and the theme is "Entangled Histories." For those of you that are historians of religion in the American West might find rich metaphors in thinking about entanglement. This conference also encourages panels on teaching, including panels that are collaborations between public historians, public school teachers, as well as graduate students and faculty members. The deadline is February 15.

Entangled Histories: Connections, Crossings, and Constraints in U.S. History

Hilton San Francisco
San Francisco, California
April 11-14, 2013

The theme for the 2013 OAH Annual Meeting will be “Entangled Histories: Connections, Crossings, and Constraints in U.S. History.” The history of the United States is one of entanglement: trans-Atlantic, trans-Pacific, and cross-border interactions; conflicts and collaborations based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality, and class; intersections and crossings at all scales from the global to the intimate. The theme for the 2013 conference seeks to examine and complicate a broad range of “entanglements” in U.S. history, paying attention to both the possibilities as well as the limitations of these interactions. OAH will begin accepting proposals for the 2013 meeting on October 1, 2011.

The 2013 Organization of American Historians Program Committee seeks a wide-ranging program that will cover the full chronological sweep of the American past, from pre-Columbian years to the twenty-first century, and the rich thematic diversity that has come to characterize contemporary American history writing and teaching. The program aims to include those teaching at universities, colleges, community colleges, and secondary schools, public historians, and independent scholars.

The program committee invites the submission of panels and presentations that deal with these and other issues and themes in American history. We welcome teaching sessions, particularly those involving the audience as active participants or those that reflect collaborative partnerships among teachers, historians, and history educators at all levels. We urge presenters to continue the ongoing transition from simply reading papers to more actively “teaching” the topic of their sessions. Roundtables and workshops offer an excellent format for this. We prefer to receive proposals for complete sessions, but will consider individual paper proposals as well.

The program should reflect the full diversity of the OAH membership in the United States and abroad. Wherever possible, proposals should include presenters of different genders and different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Panels should also represent a range of historians (public and academic) and history professionals, wherever they are employed and at varying levels of seniority in the profession. We encourage more senior historians in particular, to present their own research. We welcome debate on challenging and controversial issues.

Registration and Membership Requirements

All participants are required to register for the Annual Meeting. Participants who specialize in American history and support themselves as American historians are also required to be members of the OAH. Participants representing other disciplines do not have to be members.

Repeat Participation

OAH policy prohibits individuals from participating in two consecutive annual meetings in the same role and limits individuals to appearing only once on the program in a given year. If you have questions about this policy, please email the OAH meetings department.

Submission Procedure

Please download proposal system instructions before beginning your submission. Complete session proposals most often include a chair, participants, and, if applicable, one or two commentators (chairs may double as commentators, and commentators may be omitted in order for the audience to serve in that role). Session membership should be limited by the need to include substantial time for audience questions and comments.

All proposals must include the following information:

• a complete mailing address, e-mail address, phone number, and affiliation for each participant
• an abstract of no more than 500 words for the session as a whole
• a prospectus of no more than 250 words for each presentation; and
• a vita of no more than 500 words for each participant

Submission Deadline

The deadline for proposals is Wednesday, February 15, 2012.

2013 OAH Annual Meeting Program Committee

Thomas A. Guglielmo, George Washington University, Cochair
Erika Lee, University of Minnesota, Cochair
Matthew Countryman, University of Michigan
Donald Fixico, Arizona State University
David Igler, University of California, Irvine
Kelly Lytle Hernández, University of California, Los Angeles
Joe W. Trotter, Carnegie Mellon University
Kariann Akemi Yokota, Yale University