#USIH2020: A Conference Update

Hello, historians! We promised you “Revolution & Reform.” Today, we have something exciting to share with you, a newly reimagined plan for this year’s #USIH2020 meeting.

First off: We know that this is a very challenging time to produce scholarship and to consider making professional plans. On behalf of the entire Program Committee and the S-USIH leadership, we thank you for doing so. Please stay healthy and safe.

Public health guidelines do not make an in-person gathering in Boston feasible this year. But, in the spirit of the Society, we want to give you the opportunity to share your work, connect with colleagues, and gain the professional recognition of conference participation. For many of us, the USIH conference is an annual highlight. We want to keep that experience alive. Over the past few weeks, we’ve been working with the USIH leadership and our Program Committee to make it happen. And then we realized: Why rush through a few packed days online when we can enjoy these rich conversations throughout the year? Scholarly dialogue—and finding ways to widen it—is key for nurturing our research, and for growing the Society as we enter a second decade. So…

In keeping with our theme of “Revolution and Reform,” we have reimagined and expanded the #USIH2020 conference as a school year’s worth of virtual programming, stretching from fall 2020 to spring 2021, with a few events each month spread out over Zoom and our USIH blog. Here’s how our #USIH2020 meeting will work. Every accepted panel has two options: 1) to present via Zoom to the USIH community OR 2) to submit shorter versions of your papers (2500 words or less) for publication right here at our award-winning USIH blog. We’re excited to offer these two professional credit lines—to present or to publish—while drawing in new audiences for your scholarship.

Many of our original events—a keynote address by Danielle Allen (now the 2020 Kluge Prize-winner, huzzah!), a Native American intellectual history plenary, an academic journal showcase, a #HATM (Historians at the Movies) event, and a special workshop on teaching intellectual history—have all found a new home on our virtual platform. Our #USIH2020 meeting will also focus on building bridges between scholars and audiences hailing from diverse institutions. With that in mind, we’re thinking creatively about how to partner with universities, libraries, presses, and cultural organizations in ways that will live long past our conference sessions and side chats. Instead of a cool reusable tote bag, we’ve come up with a different kind of reusable souvenir for #USIH2020 scholars. We’re seizing the chance to use this year’s reinvented meeting format to create teaching resources for you, which will be posted here at our USIH website: how-to guides to download, online lectures to attend, primary source packets to explore, and more.

Finally, a programming note: We will shift our 2022 meeting from Las Vegas to Boston. Many thanks to 2022 Conference Chair Benjamin Alpers for his flexibility! Need a New England intellectual history fix? You can still book tours to see our sights, catch up on Boston’s silver screen highlights, dig into the region’s religious backstory, and visit with past USIH prize winners in our Spotlight/Insight series at the blog.

We will have more news in the weeks to come, and we welcome you to the Society’s new vision for this year’s annual meeting on “Revolution & Reform.” We’re excited to try out this innovative format and make history. We hope you are, too. All ideas welcome!

USIH2020 CONFERENCE COMMITTEE

Emily Conroy-Krutz

Peter Kuryla

Adam McNeil

David Mislin

Benjamin Park

Heather Cox Richardson

Bryn Upton

USIH2020 LOCAL ARRANGEMENTS COMMITTEE

Benjamin Alpers

Andrew Hartman

Jason Herbert

Andrew Klumpp

Whitney Nell Stewart

Benjamin Wright

USIH2020 CONFERENCE CHAIR, Sara Georgini