CFP: 2017 Meeting of the Organization of American Historians

The Organization of American Historians (OAH) invites submissions for its 2017 meeting, to be held in New Orleans, April 6-9, 2017. Proposals will be accepted between December 7, 2015 and  January 23, 2016. Here's the call:

Circulation, the theme of the 2017 OAH Annual Meeting, is everywhere evident in the historical record. Ideas, goods, information, laborers, water, currency, disease, highways, and much more, circulate. Circulation suggests movement, but also connection between points and places. It suggests movement that gives definition. From the scale of the human body to the scale of the global, from the material to the ideological, circulation characterizes many of the subjects historians study, whether migrations, pilgrimages, economies, networks, ideas, culture, conflicts, plagues or demography. Circulations link, but also separate; they populate and depopulate; and they transport and return.

The program committee seeks proposals addressing the theme of circulation in history. We are eager to consider economic, intellectual, demographic, political, legal, technological, military, environmental, cultural, industrial and scientific modes and patterns of circulation and their roles in shaping people, societies, natural environments, institutions and polities. What are important patterns of circulation over time? How have they been reproduced and modified, or not? What enables and what constrains circulation? Are there currents of circulation that transcend local social and political formations? Conversely, are there specific modes of circulation called into being by the nation-state, capitalism, institutionalized racism, revolution, or industrialization? Did modernity produce new currents in circulation? What kinds of circulation have been critical inside American societies, cultures, institutions, environments and polities, and what kinds have created, destroyed or changed external connections and relationships?

We seek a program that embraces the full chronological sweep of the American past, from the pre-Columbian era to the twenty-first century, and the rich thematic diversity that has come to characterize contemporary history writing and teaching. The program aims to include those teaching at universities, colleges, community colleges, and secondary schools, public historians, curators, archeologists and independent scholars. We welcome teaching sessions, particularly those that involve the audience as active participants, or those that reflect collaborative partnerships among teachers, historians, and history educators at all levels. We urge presenters to continue the ongoing transition from simply reading papers to more actively "teaching" the topic of their sessions. We prefer to receive proposals for complete sessions, but will consider individual paper proposals as well.

The program will reflect the full diversity of the OAH membership in the United States and abroad. Wherever possible, proposals should include presenters of different genders and different racial and ethnic backgrounds. The program should also represent a variety of public and academic historians and history professionals, wherever they are employed and at varying levels of seniority in the profession. We encourage senior historians to present their own research. We welcome debate on challenging and controversial issues.

More information is available here.