The program for this week's American Political History Conference includes many items of note for readers of this blog. Here's a sampling:
DOCUMENTING CRIMINALIZATION, CONFINEMENT, AND RESISTANCE THROUGH HISTORY LAB RESEARCH COLLABORATIONS
- Matt Lassiter, University of Michigan, Director of Policing and Social Justice History Lab and lead author of the website exhibit "Detroit Under Fire: Police Violence, Crime Politics, and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Civil Rights Era"
- Nicole Navarro, University of Michigan, Graduate Supervisor of Policing and Social Justice History Lab and coauthor/mapping consultant of "Detroit Under Fire"
- Alexander Stephens, University of Michigan, Coordinator of U-M Carceral State Project’s “Immigration and the Carceral State” research initiative and community liaison to the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center’s “Know Your Rights” project
- Alex Burnett, University of Michigan, Graduate Coordinator of Prisoner Uprisings in America Lab and coauthor of “Kinross Uprising, Michigan 2016: The Silenced Revolt Over Basic Human Rights in Prison”
Moderator: Natalia Mehlman-Petrzela, The New School
Panelists:
- Logan Sawyer, University of Georgia School of Law, “Government by Originalism: Constitutional Law and Party Politics Inside the Reagan Department of Justice, 1983-1988”
- Devan Lindey, Purdue University, “Experience as Education: The Political Effects of Student Life and Judeo-Christian Education at Grove City College”
- Anne Blaschke, University of Massachusetts—Boston, “Title IX at 50"
PROGRESSIVE ERA POLITICS
Moderator: Bruce Schulman, Boston University
Panelists:
- Kimberly Hamlin, Miami University in Ohio, “How Raising the Age of Sexual Consent in the 1890s Convinced Female Reforms that They Needed the Vote”
- Leslie Lindenauer and H. Howell Williams, Western Connecticut State University, “Workers Built Danbury: Deindustrialized Memory in a Hatting Town”
- Josh Kluever, Binghamton University (SUNY), “Sorry Waldman, We Just Couldn’t Help It: Socialist State Legislators in New York, 1912-1922”
CARCERAL STATE, CARCERAL SOCIETY
Moderator: Elizabeth Hinton, Yale University
Panelists:
- Max Felker-Kantor, Ball State University, “Arresting the Demand for Drugs: DARE and the Politics of Supply and Demand Reduction in the War on Drugs”
- Charlotte Rosen, Northwestern University, “The Wheels of Justice Are Grinding to a Halt: Harris v. Philadelphia and the Dilemma of Mass Imprisonment in the 1990s Law and Order Philadelphia”
- Kenneth S. Alyass, Harvard University, “The People’s War on Drugs: Community Activism, the Carceral State, and the Crack Crisis in 1980s Detroit”
- Michael Z. Dean, UCLA, “The Politics of Decarceration in Ronald Reagan’s California”
ENVISIONING A COMPASSIONATE STATE: LEFT AND LIBERAL CHALLENGES TO
“TOUGH” POLICIES IN THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY UNITED STATES **
Moderator: LaDale Winling, Virginia Tech
Panelists:
- Brooke Depenbusch, Colgate University, “The Lost Promise of General Relief: Activists, Reformers, and the Midcentury Struggle to Expand the Safety Net”
- Emma Amador, University of Connecticut, Storrs, “Demanding Equal Care: Puerto Rican Women Activists, US Colonialism, and the Politics of Social Security in Puerto Rico”
- Amanda Hughett, University of Illinois Springfield, “‘An Honest Day’s Pay for an Honest Day’s Work’: Liberal Lawyers, Incarcerated Activists, and the Remaking of Prison Labor During the 1970s”
RACIAL INNOCENCE AND CARCERAL POWER IN THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY
UNITED STATES
Moderator: Matthew Lassiter, University of Michigan
Panelists:
- Kathleen Frydl, “Corporate Personhood, the ‘Guilty Mind,’ and the 1980s War on Drugs”
- Paul M. Renfro, Florida State University, “Criminalizing CARE: AIDS, the Ryan White CARE Act, and the Politics of Innocence”
- Kirstine Taylor, Ohio University, “Producing Racial Innocence: The Fall of Chain Gangs and the Rise of Prisons in North Carolina"
- Abby Whitaker, Temple University, “‘C is for Colorblindness’: Sesame Street, Race, and the Transformation of Liberalism"
REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS AND POLITICS
Moderator: Gillian Frank, Host of Sexing History Podcast
Panelists:
- Jennifer Holland, University of Oklahoma
- Amrita Chakrabarti Myers, Indiana University
- Mary Ziegler, Florida State University
ROUNDTABLE: CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY IS POLITICAL HISTORY
Moderator: Yvonne Pitts, Purdue University
Panelists:
- H. Robert Baker, Georgia State University
- Jane Manners, Temple University
- Julian Mortenson, University of Michigan
- Joshua Sellers, Arizona State Law School
DEBATES OVER THE REGULATORY STATE
Moderator: Daniel Rowe, Oxford University
Panelists:
- Patrick Andelic, Northumbria University, “Smoke-Free Rooms: The Waxman Committee and the Congressional Campaign against Big Tobacco”
- Jeff Berryhill, Rutgers University, “Condoms, Clean Needles, and Crisis: Conflict over HIV/AIDS Prevention in New York City, 1988-1994”
- Whitney McIntosh, Columbia University, “Reclaiming the Mainstream: The Individualist Feminist Push to Protect Freedom of Choice, 1980-1995”
AUTHOR MEETS CRITICS: DISCUSSION OF WILLIAM NOVAK’S NEW DEMOCRACY: THE CREATION OF THE MODERN AMERICAN STATE
- William Novak, University of Michigan
- Sophia Lee, University of Pennsylvania
- Ajay Mehrotra, ABF/Northwestern University
- James Sparrow, University of Chicago
- Karen Tani, University of Pennsylvania
And there is more! The full program is available here. Some panels are accessible virtually.
-- Karen Tani
