CFP: UCI's History Graduate Student Association Conference: Currents of Change: Past, Present, and Public

Currents of Change: Past, Present, and Public

Annual UC Irvine History Graduate Student Association Conference

Thursday-Friday, April 8-9, 2021

Online via Zoom Webinars

Across the humanities and social sciences (and indeed, beyond) we are constantly encountering, examining, or advocating for change. Whether its impacts are global or local, revolutionary or fractional, generative or destructive, change often drives the direction of historically grounded research and community outreach. As we navigate new digital spaces in the wake of the global COVID-19 pandemic, how has this recent turn to the digital has fundamentally changed our personal, professional, political, social, and environmental relationships? What does remote learning signify for our students, our peers, and our scholarship? How is this current digital age ushering in new ways of thinking, being, connecting, and sharing our expertise both within and beyond the academy?  

The History Graduate Student Association (HGSA) at the University of California, Irvine, invites graduate students—both from inside and outside of UCI, historians and non-historians alike—to think critically about these questions. We encourage submissions that address the changes and continuities in our respective disciplines, and consider how we communicate historical inquiries before broad, diverse, and/or public audiences. 

Interested applicants should submit a 250-word abstract by Friday, February 12, 2021 via this Google Form (http://bit.ly/35gj5GM). We accept the following session types: 

Panels. A collection of short research presentations, usually consisting of 3-4 participants. Panel submissions that include a scholar to serve as the panel commenter are encouraged, but not required. If submitting a panel, please have one member of the group submit the entire panel.

Roundtables. For those interested in more informal and conversational presentations, roundtables are centered around a topic/theme, rather than individual research. Roundtable submissions that include a scholar to serve as the commenter are encouraged, but not required. If submitting a roundtable, please have one member of the group submit the entire roundtable.

Individual Submissions. We also welcome submissions of individual abstracts. These papers will be arranged into panels by the program committee.

Keynote Speaker: Jessica Marie Johnson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Johns Hopkins University. Johnson is a historian of Atlantic slavery and the Atlantic African diaspora. She is the author of Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World (University of Pennsylvania Press, August 2020). As a historian, Johnson researches black diasporic freedom struggles from slavery to emancipation. As a digital humanist, Johnson explores ways digital and social media disseminate and create historical narratives, in particular, comparative histories of slavery and people of African descent. Her work has appeared in Slavery & Abolition, The Black Scholar, Meridians: Feminism, Race and Transnationalism, American Quarterly, Social Text, The Journal of African American History, Debates in the Digital Humanities, Forum Journal, Bitch Magazine, Black Perspectives (AAIHS), Somatosphere and Post-Colonial Digital Humanities (DHPoco).

Applicants will be notified by March 1, 2021. If accepted, conference papers must be circulated to their respective faculty moderators by March 31, 2021. For any questions, contact: ucihgsa@gmail.com