PANEL SEARCH (AHA): "Utopias of Scale at the Turn of the Twentieth Century"

Michelle Tiedje Discussion

This is a call for 1-2 panelists and suggestions for a chair for a paper session at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association (AHA) in Denver, Colorado, January 5-8, 2017.

Ruth Levitas defines utopia as “the expression of the desire for a better way of being.” Lyman Tower Sargent calls utopianism “social dreaming.” Literary utopias, utopian communities, and “attempts to project new spatial totalities” into the aesthetics of urban environments are each forms of utopian activity created and utilized at the turn of the twentieth century as people searched for new communities, economic systems, reform strategies, and ways of belonging.

The theme for this year’s gathering of the American Historical Association asks members to consider the theme: “Historical Scale: Linking Levels of Experience.” This panel will bring together scholars whose research examines connections between or across utopian communities created during the late-nineteenth and/or early-twentieth century. Papers may explore local, regional, national, or transnational connections between communities or reform ideologies, but strict adherence to the conference theme is not required.

Two panelists are already confirmed for this panel. Paper one examines a sample of communal experiments established in the United States, Mexico, and Paraguay as utopian projects situated within the context of political and social reform work already underway at the fin de siècle. Paper two examines the socialist Brotherhood of Co-operative Commonwealth’s (BCC) efforts to organize Creole of color, Cuban, and ethnic white workers in an attempt to bridge New Orleans’s fractured interracial labor movement.

This session title and abstract will be modified in collaboration with co-panelists, to incorporate the work of each panelist and better reflect the ways each paper contributes to the overall theme. This panel proposal will also be submitted to SHGAPE for consideration as one of the organization’s sponsored panels at the AHA, potentially doubling the panel’s chances of acceptance.

The session proposal is due on February 15, 2016, therefore interested panelists should submit a paper title, 300-word abstract, and a 250-word biographical statement as soon as possible. Please direct submissions to Michelle Tiedje at mtiedje@huskers.unl.edu. All proposals will be acknowledged.

Please also feel free to share this call with any potentially interested parties.