OAH: Panels of Interest

The Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians starts tomorrow in San Francisco. The program looks terrific. Here are some highlights [UPDATED to reflect reader suggestions]:

Thursday, April 11

Plenary Session: Freedom Struggles 

Chair: Matthew Countryman, University of Michigan 

Clayborne Carson, Stanford University 
Barbara Ransby, University of Illinois at Chicago  
Tera W. Hunter, Princeton University  
Scott Kurashige, University of Michigan

The year 2013 marks the anniversaries of two major events in the history of black freedom struggles—the March on Washington’s fiftieth and the Emancipation Proclamation’s sesquicentennial. Leading scholars will offer brief reflections on the long history of black freedom movements, their significance to United States history more generally, and their relevance for today.

Early Republic Borderlands: Indian Removal, Slavery, and Non-State Actors

Chair: David Waldstreicher, Temple University  

“Fraught with Disastrous Consequences for our Country”: Cherokee Removal and Nullification, 1824–1839, Nancy Morgan, Temple University  

Women at the Crossroads: The Legal and Political Fight to Reverse Indian Removal in Seneca, 1838–1887, Taylor Spence, Yale University 

Reading Hearts, Not Books: Affective Literacy and Public Sentiment in David Walker’s Appeal, Tara Bynum,Towson University  

Commentator: Matthew Dennis, University of Oregon

Friday, April 12

American Legal History [A "State of the Field" panel]

Chair: Michael Willrich, Brandeis University

Daniel Hulsebosch, New York University
Ariela Gross, University of Southern California
Andrew Wender Cohen, Syracuse University
William J. Novak, University of Michigan
Jane Dailey, University of Chicago

From Illegal Aliens to Illegal History: A Roundtable Responds to the Return of the Culture Wars in Arizona

Chair: Lorena Oropeza, University of California, Davis

Lydia Otero, University of Arizona
Miroslava Chavez-Garcia, University of California, Davis
Milo Alvarez, Bard College at Simon’s Rock
Karen Leong, Arizona State University at the Tempe Campus

Age Matters: Chronological Age and the Construction of Race, Gender, and Citizenship
Sponsored by the Committee on the Status of Women in the Historical Profession

Chair: Leslie Paris, University of British Columbia

“Male Citizens Twenty-One Years of Age”: The Intersection of Gender, Race, and Age in Nineteenth-Century Citizenship, Corinne Field, University of Virginia 

Born Dependent: The Children of Gradual Emancipation and the Laws of Poverty, Sarah Levine-Gronningsater, University of Chicago

Statutory Marriage Law and the Gendered Construction of Adulthood in the Nineteenth Century, Nicholas Syrett, University of Northern Colorado

Voting Rights and the Politics of Age in the Age of Aquarius, Rebecca de Schweinitz, Brigham Young University

Commentator: Leslie Paris

New Legal History Perspectives on African Americans, Latina/os, Asian Americans, and Native Americans
Sponsored by the OAH Committee on the Status of ALANA Historians and ALANA Histories

Chair: Charles McClain, University of California, Berkeley
Karen Tani, University of California, Berkeley
Tom I. Romero II, University of Denver
Rick Moss, African American Museum & Library at Oakland

Saturday, April 13

The Capacity to Be Citizens: Mental Competency and Civil Rights in Gilded Age and Progressive America

Chair: Barbara Welke, University of Minnesota  

Powers of Belief: Insanity Allegations and the Regulation of Religion in the Late Nineteenth Century, Kathryn Burns-Howard, Miami University of Ohio  

Leroy Pitzer—Citizen, Voter, Lunatic, Rabia Belt, University of Michigan  

Antecedent to All Other Rights: Legal Capacity and Kentucky Inheritance Disputes in the Gilded Age, Yvonne Pitts, Purdue University

Commentator: Barbara Welke

Race and Law: New Directions in Southern Legal History

Chair: David Lieberman, University of California, Berkeley  

Grand Jury Presentments in Eighteenth-Century South Carolina, Sally Hadden, Western Michigan University  

The Southern Roots of the Reapportionment Revolution, Charles Zelden, Nova Southeastern University

Race, Property Rights, and Negotiated Space in the American South: A Reconsideration of Buchanan v. Warley Patricia Minter, Western Kentucky University

Commentator: Karen Tani, University of California, Berkeley

Film Screening: Criminal Injustice: Death and Politics at Attica

Chair: Heather Thompson, Temple University 

Christine Christopher, Independent Filmmaker 

David Marshall, Independent Filmmaker 

Malcolm Bell, Former New York Special Assistant Attorney General 

Melvin Marshall, Former Attica Inmate

Mass Incarceration: New Directions in the Study of Race and Punishment in Modern American Life

Chair:Kelly Lytle Hernández, University of California, Los Angeles   

Sarah Haley, University of California, Los Angeles 

Donna Murch, Rutgers University 

Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture 

Heather Thompson, Temple University 

Presidential Address: Navigating Segregated Life in America’s Racial Borderhoods
Albert Camarillo, Stanford University
 
Sunday, April 14

Asylum and Sovereignty in the 1970s and 1980s

Chair: Jana Lipman, Tulane University  

Homefront of the Hostage Crisis: The Contested Status of Iranian Students in the US, Yael Schacher, Harvard University  

Implementing Asylum: The 1980 Refugee Act and Immigration Cause Lawyers, Rebecca Hamlin, Grinnell College  

Offshore Refugee Processing and the Origins of the Guantanamo Model, Jeffrey Kahn, University of Chicago  

Commentator: Philip Wolgin, Center for American Progress

Histories of the US State [A "State of the Field" panel]

Chair: William J. Novak, University of Michigan

James Sparrow, University of Chicago
Rachel St. John, Harvard University
Cybelle Fox, University of California, Berkeley  

Commentator: William J. Novak

“What a Tangled Web We Weave”: Ideals and Realities of Religion in the American Nation

Chair: Sarah Barringer Gordon, University of Pennsylvania

The Invention of Religious Freedom as an American Ideal, 1789–1835, Tisa Wenger, Yale University

Reinventing Civil Liberties: The Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Street Provocations, Leah Weinryb Grohsgal, Emory University

“Without Distinction of Creed”: Military Chaplains and Religious Experimentation in the 1930s and 40s, Ronit Stahl, University of Michigan

If you're attending the meeting, don't forget to check the "updates" page on the OAH website. How else would you learn about this new session?

Getting Started with Blogging, Podcasting, and Video Production: A Do-It-Yourself Guide

Saturday, April 13 at 1:45 p.m.

Nic Champaign, OAH’s media specialist will provide an overview of what is needed to start your own blog and how to produce your own podcast and video. In the blogging section, Nic will explain how to start a free blog with a custom domain name or blog with a hosting service and WordPress. The podcast and video section will cover how to produce a podcast and submit it to iTunes, and how to determine the camera that suits your needs and a few ways to edit your video on the Mac.