[Here's the call for next year's conference on rights at San Francisco State University.]
San Francisco State University hosts a conference every year in September exploring the question and place of rights in history, politics, and society. In 2012 the conference will be held on September 13 and 14.
The year 2012 marks the sesquicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. To mark this milestone, we welcome papers on the topic of emancipation, reflections on the legacy of the Civil War, question of the role/nature of the state, the racialized consequences of the war, but also emancipation broadly defined, including claims to freedom involving civil liberties; disability rights; labor and economic rights; feminism and antiracism; immigration; environmental justice; access to healthcare; the prison industrial complex; sexual orientation; the stateless; and human rights.
Our goal is to bring together a wide variety of people from a range of academic, activist, legal, and community spaces to examine the place of rights in American society and in the broader global political community. To that end, we welcome participation from historians, both senior and junior scholars, graduate students, community advocates, archivists, and lawyers. We invite panels, or round tables. Though we prefer complete panels, we will consider individual papers. We also welcome workshops with pre-circulated papers, or sessions in which panelists assess the state of debate on a topic. All submissions will be peer reviewed by our program committee.
The deadline for submission of panels, consisting of an abstract of 1000 words for panel and workshop proposals and a one-page CV for each participant, is February 15, 2012. We must have an email address for all participants. Send your proposals to Christopher Waldrep, Department of History, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, California 94132 or via email to cwaldrep@sfsu.edu
