Go to the Urban History Association Meeting Next Year!

Karen Johnson

The call for papers for the annual meeting of the Urban History Association recently went out.  Readers of the blog, there’s room at the UHA for religion in urban and suburban history.  In fact, I think that there should be more crossover between American religious history and urban/suburban history.  Let’s make that happen.  See the call below:

The Urban History Association Program Committee seeks submissions for sessions on all aspects of urban, suburban, and metropolitan history. We welcome proposals for panels, roundtable discussions, and individual papers. We are also receptive to alternative session formats that foster audience participation in the proceedings.

The Program Committee is pleased to announce that Loyola University Chicago will serve as the local host for the October 2016 conference.

The conference theme – The Working Urban – highlights the importance of labor and of historians’ working definitions of “urban history.” We therefore encourage submissions that explore the scales at which historians work (i.e. local, national, regional) as well as those that interrogate the racial and gendered aspects of work in relation to the built environment. “Working” also refers to workshops.  For the first time ever, the UHA conference will include professional workshops built specifically around interpreting primary sources and exploring problems of evidence in the field. Innovative workshop ideas are especially encouraged.

Successful panel and paper proposals need not adhere strictly to the conference theme. For instance, being fifty years removed from the 1960s and a century from the Progressive Era, the program committee will also pay special attention to panels marking the anniversaries of events that profoundly impacted cities, including the opening of Margaret Sanger’s first birth control clinic in 1916, the Watts uprising in Los Angeles, the Clean Water Restoration Act of 1966, the Model Cities Program, Martin Luther King’s Chicago campaign, the Supreme Court’s Miranda decision, the founding of the Black Panther Party, and more.

In recognition of urban history’s considerable breadth, we also seek contributions that make global comparisons and explore metropolitan politics in Latin America, Europe, Asia, Australia, the Middle East, and Africa. Sessions on ancient and pre-modern as well as modern periods are welcome.
We prefer complete panels but individual papers will be considered. Please designate a single person to serve as a contact for all complete panels. For traditional panels, include a brief explanation of the overall theme, a one-page abstract of each paper, and a one- or two-page c.v. for each participant. Roundtable proposals should also designate a contact person and submit a one-page theme synopsis and a one- or two-page c.v. for each presenter. Proposals involving alternative formats should include a brief description of how the session will be structured. All those submitting individual papers should include a one-page abstract and a one- or two-page c.v. E-mail submissions by March 1, 2016 to N. D. B. Connolly at [email protected] and Donna Jean Murch at [email protected]. Submissions should be included in attachments as Word or PDF documents.

Graduate student submissions are especially encouraged. The UHA can assist select graduate students by reimbursing transportation costs to the conference. The association will also organize workshops especially for graduate students writing dissertations in urban and suburban history. Students who wish to participate in a workshop should apply with a two to four page letter of interest by March 1, 2016 to UHA Executive Director Timothy Neary at [email protected].

If you’re curious about panels addressing religion from the 2014 conference, go here, if you want to see my conference recap from last year’s conference, go here.  Tim Neary, the executive director, is a historian who has worked on Catholicism in Chicago.  If you’re interested in putting together a panel, please let me know!

A Group Blog on American Religious History and Culture