Editor's Note
The S-USIH welcomes your proposals for its 2026 conference, to be held November 12-14, 2026 on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. Panel and roundtable submissions are due on May 1, 2026 (single paper submissions due April 15). You can find the Call for Papers here.
A postcard (1910) of the WHS Reading Room (it retains much of this charm today!) (Source: Wisconsin Historical Society Digital Archives).
This year’s theme, “Intellectual Historians’ Toolkits: Methods, Theories, Practices,” is meant to approach the annual S-USIH conference from a slightly different angle. How do scholars conceive of their work as intellectual history? Is there any agreement about the unique contributions of intellectual history? What are the shared methods of the “blooming, buzzing” variety we see in the field today? We anticipate that this theme will draw those who see themselves as intellectual historians and those who appreciate the insights intellectual history offers into the past.
Some of the potential topics to address include: defining intellectual history; the ways intellectual history is used in allied fields including economics, religious studies, and political theory; methods including conceptual history, commodity history, and environmental history and their overlap with intellectual history; intellectual history as social criticism; and historians’ own research and writing practices. Panels might examine a historical subject (such as racial capitalism) from a variety of intellectual history approaches, or they might address a timely topic (such as the challenge of public facing scholarship) from the unique vantage point of intellectual history.
Please use the comments section below to connect with colleagues and construct panels. Please reach out to the conference chairs, Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhgan ([email protected]) and Daniel G. Hummel ([email protected],) with any questions. We hope to see you in Madison!
2 Thoughts on this Post
S-USIH Comment Policy
We ask that those who participate in the discussions generated in the Comments section do so with the same decorum as they would in any other academic setting or context. Since the USIH bloggers write under our real names, we would prefer that our commenters also identify themselves by their real name. As our primary goal is to stimulate and engage in fruitful and productive discussion, ad hominem attacks (personal or professional), unnecessary insults, and/or mean-spiritedness have no place in the USIH Blog’s Comments section. Therefore, we reserve the right to remove any comments that contain any of the above and/or are not intended to further the discussion of the topic of the post. We welcome suggestions for corrections to any of our posts. As the official blog of the Society of US Intellectual History, we hope to foster a diverse community of scholars and readers who engage with one another in discussions of US intellectual history, broadly understood.
Hello all,
My name is Brendan Culhane, and I’m an MA student at SUNY Brockport looking to put together a panel for this upcoming SUSIH conference. I would like to present my work on a paper I’m currently researching that chronicles the development of grassroots socialist and working class institutions of culture and education in Rochester, NY. In terms of potential panel ideas, the paper deals with the intersection of political theory and intellectual history (Marxist political theory, in this case) and local history as a lens of viewing national history, just to name a couple. In regards to primary sources and how that can connect to the methodologies used by other scholars, this paper uses educational materials, music, as well as physical culture in its study.
If any of this sounds of interest or related to a potential panel idea or your own work, please don’t hesitate to reach out. You can reach me at [email protected]
I’m interested in approaches to the founding of the United States in the 250th anniversary year. My research focuses on original uses of the phrase “pursuit of happiness” and the way that phrase has changed over time. The sesquicentennial provides a lens opportunity for intellectual historians in a time when we seem to have drifted far from the original founding principles that have kept our American experiment alive… for now. Feel free to contact me if you are working on a related subject. My research email is [email protected].