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cfp - Winds of Change: Global Connections across Space, Time, and Nature (ASEH, Chicago, March 29 - April 2, 2017)

call for papers - Chicago conference

Winds of Change: Global Connections across Space, Time, and Nature

Introduction: The ASEH invites proposals for its 2017 annual conference, which will convene March 2017 in Chicago, Illinois. Located along the shores of Lake Michigan and the banks of the Chicago River, this gateway city linked eastern markets, western hinterlands, and commodified nature. Between 1830 and 1870, the development of ship harbors and railroads, the construction of grain elevators, stockyards, and meat packing companies, and the creation of the Chicago Board of Trade transformed a frontier outpost into the nation’s preeminent commodities marketplace. Even the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 proved transformative. Following the fire, innovations in skyscraper construction and the emergence of the Prairie School of architectural and landscape design made Chicago one of the nation’s premier built environments. Chicago celebrated its rise from the ashes with the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, which introduced the City Beautiful Movement to urban planning. The city also engendered a nascent environmental justice movement, when Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr established Hull House, where female reformers, such as Dr. Alice Hamilton, conducted some of the earliest studies documenting the disproportionate public health threats borne by immigrant neighborhoods. And it is home to President Barack Obama, who has endeavored to address global climate change and its threats to the environment and world political stability. Chicago thus evokes many of the interdisciplinary themes of environmental history, including increasing globalization, with all of its implications for the natural world.

For this reason, the theme of Chicago’s conference will be "Winds of Change: Global Connections across Space, Time, and Nature." We seek panel and roundtable proposals that engage creatively with this theme, including studies of local environments within a global or transnational context; the connections between metropoles and hinterlands; the production of and trade in commodities; the nexus of climate change, environmental justice, and migration; and the possibilities for sustainability, resilience, and renewal. The program committee also seeks to further discussions that make interdisciplinary and geographical connections in new ways.

 

Guidelines: The Program Committee welcomes teaching sessions, non-traditional formats, and sessions that encourage active audience participation. It encourages panels that include historians at different career stages and different types of institutions (academic and public) and that are gender and racially diverse. We strongly prefer to receive complete session proposals, although we will endeavor to construct sessions from proposals for individual presentations. Sessions will be scheduled for 1.5 hours. It is ASEH policy to allow at least 30 minutes for discussion in every session. No single presentation should exceed 15 minutes, and each roundtable presentation should be less than ten minutes since roundtables are designed to maximize discussion. Commentators are allowed but not required. Please note that individuals can propose to present or comment on only one panel, roundtable, or poster session in addition to chairing a second session. Deadline for Submissions: July 8, 2016

The online submission system will be available on this website in April 2016, after ASEH’s Seattle conference. If you have any questions, please contact: Marsha Weisiger, University of Oregon, Program Committee Chair, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or Lisa Mighetto, ASEH Director, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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