CFP: Conference: “Biography Again: A New Look at History’s Oldest Discipline”

CFP: Conference: “Biography Again: A New Look at History’s Oldest Discipline”

Date: 8-9 April 2016

Venue: State University of New York at Fredonia

Submission Deadline for Proposals: 14 December 2015

Biography has been a field of historical research for as long as history has existed as a discipline. The rise of social history in the 1960s threatened to discredit biography as a serious academic discipline as it shifted attention away from “great men” toward large social groups. But biography is now enjoying a resurgence; from cultural history to the history of science and even to social history, new approaches are reasserting the relevance of life stories to our understanding of the past.
Conference organizers invite paper proposals and panel proposals in all areas of historical biography and in related fields, including (but not limited to) literary biography, documentary film, family history, genealogy, pedagogy, and historiography.

Proposals should include:
• Name;
• Institutional affiliation;
• Email address;
• Title of the proposed paper;
• Abstract of the proposed paper(s) (between 200-250 words)

Registration Fee: $40 (including Friday dinner) or $20 (not including Friday dinner).

Contacts: Please submit proposals and/or direct inquiries to the conference organizers, John.Staples@fredonia.edu or Jennifer.Hildebrand@fredonia.edu.