CALL FOR PAPERS

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William and Mary Quarterly-EMSI Workshop:

“Grounded Histories: Land, Landscape, and Environment in Early North America”
Call for Proposals

 

Please note: the deadline has been extended until Friday, October 30, 2009.

 

The Omohundro Institute and the University of Southern California-Huntington Library Early Modern Studies Institute are pleased to announce the fifth in a series of William and Mary Quarterly-EMSI workshops designed to identify and encourage new trends in understanding the history and culture of early North America.

 

Participants will attend a two-day meeting at the Huntington Library and USC (May 28–29, 2010) to discuss a precirculated chapter-length portion of their current work in progress along with the work of other participants, as well as directions that might be taken in writing the history of early North America. Subsequently, the convener will write an essay elaborating on the issues raised in the workshop for publication in the William and Mary Quarterly. The convener of this year’s workshop is Karen Halttunen of the University of Southern California.

 

In recent years, the critique of nation-state history has led early American historians to push the boundaries of their field in ever-widening spatial directions, from the Atlantic world toward imperial, continental, and hemispheric frameworks. At the same time, closer scholarly attention to land, landscape, and environment—the ground beneath the feet of colonists and native Americans—has remained relatively marginal to the field. This workshop will focus on grounded histories of land, landscape, and environment in early North America, with special attention to the interdependence of natural and human histories. We invite the participation of scholars from such fields as environmental history and ethnography, cultural geography and archaeology, literature and art history. Possible topics include agriculture and resource extraction, climate and natural disasters, landscape formation and land “improvement,” place naming and cartography, intellectual pursuits of natural history and indigenous knowledge, nature writing and landscape representations, and aesthetic, religious, and philosophical ideas about land and nature. Central premises shaping all the papers should be the interdependence of human histories and natural histories in early North America and the importance of placing a more grounded understanding of land, landscape, and environment at the center of early American history

 

Proposals for workshop presentations should include a brief abstract (250 words) describing the applicant’s current research project, an equally brief discussion of the particular methodological or historiographical issues they are engaging (which will be circulated to all participants along with the chapter or essay), and a short c.v. The organizers especially encourage proposals from midcareer scholars. Proposals may be submitted online at the conference Web site (http://oieahc.wm.edu/conferences/workshops/cfp/index.cfm) or by email attachment to Kelly Crawford (kscraw@wm.edu) by October 30, 2009. All submissions will be acknowledged by email. Questions may be directed to Christopher Grasso, Editor, William and Mary Quarterly, at cdgras@wm.edu.

 

The workshop will cover travel and lodging costs for participants.

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        PERMANENCE AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT OF THE PACIFIC BASIN 1700-1820

The USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute, The Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West, and the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture invite proposals for papers to be presented at a conference on Permanence and the Built Environment of the Pacific Basin 1700-1820. This meeting, to be held at the University of Southern California on April 17-18, 2009, will bring together scholars who study early modern construction and structures, cityscape, and the diverse landscapes of the western coasts and hinterlands of the Americas, the Pacific Islands, Australia, New Zealand, and East Asian port cities, areas greatly affected in these years by global trade, creolization, indigenous revolts,  the break-up of empires, and natural disasters.

Conference Objectives.  What eighteenth century and early nineteenth century societies bordering the Pacific considered to be permanent architecturally, what they constructed, and how they dealt with the erasure and destruction of their built environment is the focus of the conference.

• Did the veneration of long lasting, fixed-in-place structures increase in this period? Did conflicts between colonizer/creole and indigenous populations influence ideas about the built environment and the permanence of structures?
  

• Did building designed for durability increase during the period? Was the distinction of public versus private buildings important in terms of permanence? What promoted investment in buildings and infrastructure improvements such as roads and how was it affected by objectives of empires and localities as well as by warfare? Did construction innovations spread from one part of the Pacific basin to another, given the limited migration across the ocean? How did the nature and availability of building materials, the introduction of new products and designs, the scarcity or abundance of certain items, and access to skilled and unskilled labor influence construction?

• What role did climate and natural disasters play in remaking the built environment in the early modern period? Did their impact lessen over time or in certain locales by 1820 due to new understandings of natural history and the success of protective responses such as building codes, insurance, fire brigades, and public works projects?

  
Submitting a Proposal
Proposals should be approximately 500 words and submitted electronically, along with a short c.v., to emsi@usc.edu, or in hard copy to Pacific Basin Built Environment Conference, USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute, University of Southern California SOS 153, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0034, by June 30, 2008. The conference committee will entertain proposals from scholars, regardless of discipline, whose research relates to the objectives described above. We hope to have papers that offer a good geographic mix and do not over-represent any region or area. Transpacific treatments are especially encouraged. We also seek a diversity of research designs from a variety of literary, quantitative, architectural, artistic, and archaeological perspectives. Papers will be pre-circulated, requiring authors to finish their presentations several weeks before the conference convenes. Expenses of program participants will be covered. Following the conference, the intent is to publish a volume. Direct further questions to Carole Shammas at shammas@usc.edu or by mail at the Department of History, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0034.
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The Omohundro Institute and the University of Southern California-Huntington Library Early Modern Studies Institute are pleased to announce the fourth in a series of William and Mary Quarterly-EMSI workshops designed to identify and encourage new trends in our understanding of the history and culture of early North America.

Participants will attend a two-day meeting at the Huntington Library (May 21-22, 2009) to discuss both their work and that of other participants, as well as directions that might be taken in writing the history of early North America.  Subsequently, the conveners will write an essay elaborating on the issues raised in the workshop for publication in the William and Mary Quarterly. The conveners of this year’s workshop are Eric Hinderaker, who works on British North America, and Rebecca Horn, a scholar of Spanish America.

The geographic and conceptual boundaries of the field once known as “colonial America” have shifted dramatically in the last decade as scholars have explored new borderlands, pressed into non-English-controlled territories, and made connections with rich scholarship in Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, and Native American contexts.  We invite papers that consider the consequences of this change, and particularly that offer comparisons or identify continuities among different imperial settings. Workshop papers might consider what challenges scholars face in traversing traditional historiographical boundaries (from “Colonial America” to “Colonial Latin America,” for example). What theoretical and conceptual tools best frame this enlarged sphere of imperial competition and colonial development?  What questions are made possible only by thinking across territories, and what subjects of analysis best suit comparative or more broadly contextualized scholarship?  How can scholars generalize the insights of comparative studies?

Participants will pre-circulate draft chapters or articles.  The organizers especially encourage proposals from mid-career scholars.  Proposals should include a brief abstract (250-500 words) describing the applicant’s current research project and a short c.v.  Proposals should be sent by attachment to Kelly Crawford (kscraw@wm.edu) By October 15, 2008. Questions may be directed to Karin Wulf, Book Review Editor, William and Mary Quarterly, at kawulf@wm.edu.

The workshop will cover travel and lodging costs for participants.