Water and the Making of Place in North America, Graduate Student Conference (October 14-15, 2016)

Julia Grummitt Announcement
Location
United States
Subject Fields
American History / Studies, Environmental History / Studies

Water and the Making of Place in North America

Graduate Student Conference, Program in American Studies, Princeton University October 14-15, 2016

What does America look like from the water? Water shapes places: Its presence, absence, arrival, or departure all affect how people understand, use, alter, and depict the world around them. Our interactions with water include everything from the international to the intimate—from the water beneath ships to the water we drink. We believe that increased attention to water could advance developing scholarship on environment, landscape, and place; on the ways water both defines and evades territorial borders; and on water’s changing status as a natural resource. This conference will explore water's influence on place-making in North America’s history, present, and future.

We invite graduate students working in American Studies, Anthropology, Architecture, Art History, Comparative Literature, English, Geography, History, History of Science, Indigenous Studies, Law, Music, Religion, Sociology, and related fields to submit proposals. We are interested in topics relating water to place and place-making, including (but not limited to) the following:

Indigeneity and indigenous peoples

Race, ethnicity, and migration

Gender and sexuality

Colonialism and imperialism

Home and region; loss of place

Borders and territory

Urban, suburban, and rural spaces

Economy, industry, and power

Beaches, tides, shorelines, and the littoral

Boats, boating, ships, and shipping

Islands

Travel, tourism, and recreation

Marshes, bogs, and estuaries

Charts, maps, and cartography

Lakes, rivers, streams, canals

Words, language, names, and vocabulary

Climate change and natural resources

Artistic and creative depictions

Water’s states (ice, fog, clouds, rain)

Animals and habitat

Please submit a proposal, containing the following information, by July 15, 2016:
- an abstract of no more than 400 words
- a short biographical description
- your contact information 

Contact Information

Send your proposal and any questions to the conference organizers, Julia Grummitt, Kimia Shahi, and Sean Fraga, at PrincetonH20@gmail.com.