Greetings, USIH colleagues, old and new! We welcome your proposals for our 2021 conference, to be held October 38-30 in midtown Nashville, Tennessee. Submissions are due on 15 April 2020, and you can find our Call for Papers here.
Our theme is “The Public and the Private,” and we interpret that broadly. Your proposals may focus on science, culture, politics, race, religion, gender, government, society, education—covering ALL time periods and events in U.S. history. We are glad to consider submissions that address any aspect, period, or problem from the history of American thought. Our meeting is meant to be a rich and diverse forum for those working in the realm of intellectual history.
Please use the comments, below, to connect with colleagues and construct panels. See you in Nashville!
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Hi all, looking to form a panel on private and public religious expression in 20th Century America. My personal topic is a still existent upsate NY radical catholic worker rural community founded in the 60s that cared for indigent men with drug issues. I’ll be looking at the community through the life of one of its founders, a laywoman who dealt with and alcohol issues in her family. I have one possible panelist, so anyone interested in chairing or being a panelist on the topic of 2oth century religion, utopian/intentional communities, the Sixties or any of the above, please drop me a line. [email protected].
Hi everyone, I’m looking to form a panel on sexuality/gender issues in relation to what is deemed public or private. My paper will examine how concerns around the fidelity of servicemen’s wives during WW2 moved adultery from being understood as largely a private (if still moral and potential community) concern to a public concern in which broader social stability and national vitality was at stake. I’d be open to any papers that might intersect with these themes or issues. If interested, please email me at [email protected]
Just wanted to let everyone know that this panel is full. Thanks for your ideas and proposals!
New to this forum but seeing if there is interest in forming a panel concentrated on democratic and anti-democratic thought in American history, or political thought more generally. I’m interested in how “public selves” (our identity as voters and political participants) have spilled over into the private–Robert Talisse wrote an excellent book recently titled “Overdoing Democracy” where he argues that political oversaturation means we can’t agree on anything and that we need to “put democracy in its place” if we want democracy to actually work. My own project will focus on anti-democratic American thought since the Civil War, focusing on thinkers like William Graham Sumner, H.L. Mencken, etc, framing a counter-democratic tradition that should be more relevant than ever as seemingly everything is a “threat to our democracy” in the last few years. If interested, please email me at [email protected]
Hello,
I have material I can present on three different areas. All are related to American Jewish history, so would definitely work on a panel on American Jewish history, but could also work with panel topic as well.
First idea is on American Zionist women intellectuals at the beginning of the 20th century. That could work well with panels on women intellectuals, American ethnic nationalism, progressive era.
Second, I recently wrote a paper on Isaac Leeser and slavery. Leeser (1806-1868) was born in Germany but immigrated to America at 17. He became the leading American Jewish traditionalist and was based in Philly, where he led a synagogue and also operated a popular Jewish newspaper, “The Occident,” that circulated across the Atlantic world. He was also sympathetic to slavery, having spent his first five years in the US living with his uncle in Richmond, VA. That would be the subject of the paper. This could go well with panels on slavery, on 19th century American religion, on discourse through the Atlantic world.
Third, I wrote a paper on the Richmond Jewish community and the Lost Cause in the 1950s and 1960s. Could go well with panels on Southern intellectuals, on the Lost Cause, on historical memory and commemoration.
Email me at [email protected] if you think you have material that can work with these topics. Thanks.
David
USIH 2021 Conference Panel Interest
I’m late to the game, but exploring panel options for this conference. I just completed my dissertation this past Spring semester and am learning about the world of conferences, journals, panels, etc.
My dissertation topic was William Jennings Bryan’s use of rights-based argumentation in support of various topics and causes during his career. As such, the general conference theme of public and private is interesting related to Bryan because he was almost entirely public, and seldom divulged his inner thoughts and feelings. There are a couple of clues, however. He was a white supremacist, as were so many in the early twentieth century. Yet he had a period of introspection about ten years before his death in 1925. He also supported Jewish friends and the Jewish culture as a whole when they were maligned during the release of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Bryan’s general support for minorities (blacks and Jews) while harboring private misgivings with respect to racism form an interesting paradoxical narrative.
Please respond if you have a panel that I might join. [email protected].