PLANNING WORKSHOP: CONNECTED HISTORIES OF FREEDOM IN THE LONG 20th CENTURY

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Through this day-long planning workshop, participants will organize and discuss the

implementation of a conference tentatively planned for Spring 2019 focused on the histories of

emancipatory projects in the long 20th century. We are current accepting applications for

participation in the workshop. Relevant points of research for the conference include: the

unprecedented rise of national and anti-imperial movements across colonized spaces, the

worldwide emergence of communist, socialist and labour movements, the growth of women’s

movements, movements to secure civil and political rights for minorities and people of color, and

later international human rights movements.

This workshop seeks to bring together graduate students working on these themes using

the transnational lens. We see these histories as connected, mutually constitutive and dialoguing

with each other. In this workshop, we seek to challenge older geographies, specifically inviting

projects who rethink new ways to connect the history of the global south to that of the Europe and

North America. In this way we are taking our cue from the new imperial historiography which

seeks to bring colony/metropole in the same analytic framework. But we are equally interested in

emphasizing lateral connections within and across Asia, Latin America, Africa, the Caribbean. We

are also interested in reimagining the global and debating the analytic strength and limitations of

paradigms such as the global south/global north, metropole/colony and discussing the possibilities

of alternatives.

Possible themes for discussion may include:

1) Intellectual genealogies of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary ideas and their

transmission across space and time

2) Nodes, Networks and Hubs of Transnational/Trans imperial Activism

3) Gender and Internationalism/Gendering Internationalism

4) Nationalism and its alternatives: Pan-Arabism, Pan-Asian, Pan-Americanism, Pan-

Africanism

5) Transnational histories of the right/counter-revolutionary/conservatism

6) Histories of repression and policing

7) Social and Urban Histories of Internationalism

8) Mapping International Connections: Prospects and possibilities from Digital Humanities

The workshop will be divided into two sessions: The first, “Thinking the Transnational,” will

discuss methodologies, research questions and research agendas. Particularly we aim to discuss

lacunas in current literature. In the second session, “Writing the Transnational” we work through

the problems of writing transnational histories, discuss strategies of organizing and think about the

possibilities of conversing with other disciplines and fields. These will be followed by a final agenda

setting meeting to lay the blue print for a future conference.

We invite graduate students to submit 300 word proposals, marked for either of the two panels.

We particularly invite dissertation prospectuses, works in progress and early drafts. Please submit

your proposals to yale.ghconf.2018@gmail.com with the subject line ‘Planning Workshop 2018’ by

January 29th 2018. The organizers will contribute towards transportation costs and will provide

accomodation for a night if needed. Partcipants are encourgaed to seek financial support from

their home institutions as well.