Call for Papers
43rd Annual Warren Susman Graduate Conference
March 26th, 2021
Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey
Proposals due: January 25th, 2021
Email: susmanconf@history.rutgers.edu
"Quarantine" has become an agonizingly familiar concept for all of us over the past year. We invite our applicants to use their experiences of quarantine to reflect on themes of control, connectivity, and community. From the geopolitics of “Divide and Rule” to the social politics of “A Room of One’s Own,” strategies of quarantine have shaped the making and telling of history. The 43rd Annual Warren Susman Graduate Conference welcomes papers from graduate students in history and other disciplines, at all levels, who would like to engage in a shared exploration of these topics.
We welcome proposals that explore any time period or geographical location, related, but by no means limited, to the following themes:
- Relationships and transitions between public and private, individual and collective
- Social divisions of race, class, gender, and sexuality
- Isolations and silences produced by the archive and historiography
- Sovereignty, governance, and conquest
- Discourses of responsibility and protection
- Community and individual resistance to state control and surveillance
- Internment and incarceration
- Constructs of contagion
Abstracts of up to 300 words with a working title, as well as a one-page curriculum vitae, should be sent by January 25th, 2021 to susmanconf@history.rutgers.edu. Selected participants will be notified of their acceptance by mid-February. Once accepted, conference papers will be due March 14th, 2021. The conference will be held online with 10-15-minute lectures followed by Q&A.
The keynote address will be given by Jennifer Brier (PhD, Rutgers, 2002), Professor of Gender & Women’s Studies and History at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Dr. Brier’s work focuses on the intersection between gender, race, and sexuality, with special interest in the history of HIV/AIDS. Her first book is titled Infectious Ideas: U.S. Political Response to the AIDS Crisis (University of North Carolina Press, 2009).
Please direct proposal submissions as well as any questions to susmanconf@history.rutgers.edu