Taking the Past Into the Future: An Unconference Towards Innovation in Historical Studies

CALL FOR PROPOSALS
University of St Andrews, 4th-7th August 2015

How do you think historians can achieve greater impact? Do you think Open Access policies work as well as they could? Can communications technology open up new forums of debate and collaboration in academia? If you could improve one thing in the historical profession today - what would it be, and how would you do it?

Taking the Past Into the Future is intended to provide postgraduate researchers with the opportunity to proactively engage with the issues that will shape the academic careers of the future. Participants will be encouraged to experiment with radical ideas that are usually left unvoiced, before considering how positive change may be effected within real-world limitations.

We would like to invite postgraduate historians of any period to propose 'position papers' on any area of potential innovation within historical studies. These could include responses to current matters of academic policy, or completely new ideas. You could propose a model for a 'virtual conference', discuss the economics of funding historical research, argue for a PhD-by-historical-documentary: the (blue) sky is the limit.

Proposals should be no longer than 500 words and should answer the following questions:

* What is your proposed idea or innovation?
* What does it seek to improve (e.g: levels of engagement with history, career progression issues for
young researchers, quality of collaboration between different groups of historians)?
* In an ideal world, how would this innovation be implemented?
* How might the idea need to be adapted to work in the real world?

As an ‘unconference’, Taking the Past Into the Future will be a participant-driven meeting which emphasizes the importance of peer-to-peer discussion and collaboration in a supportive setting. It will be residential and small-scale. Participants will circulate their full position papers (2,000-3,000 words) in advance of the meeting. During the unconference the papers will be discussed and written up into proceedings which will be made freely available, deposited in institutional repositories, and shared with relevant policy-makers.

There will be a registration fee of £20, with generous sponsorship allowing a considerable subsidy, with accommodation for three nights and food provided. The unconference will be held in Hayston House, a Georgian farmhouse near St Andrews, and will be self-catered, with participants cooking together to allow further time for informal conversation and community-building.

The deadline for proposals is Friday 29th March. Please send proposals, and any questions, to unconference.past.future@gmail.com

For further information please see www.pastfuture.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk

Call for Papers: Firearms and Freedom: The Relevance of the Second Amendment in the Twenty-First Century

Herblock, “The Gunfather,” October 26,
1992.  Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Location: London, England
Date: June 11 2015
Deadline:  February 16 2015.

The Second Amendment is arguably the most controversial part of the American Constitution. Europeans discuss the issue often but the unique place of firearms to US history and culture is widely misunderstood. We hope to go beyond the usual presentation of the issue, exploring the roots of the modern discussion and placing it in the broader contexts of American history, politics and culture. We attempt to answer questions in relation to the Second Amendment. Why was it considered important enough to include in the Constitution? How was it interpreted in the nineteenth and early 20th centuries? How does it affect women and minority groups historically and today? Why do so many Americans sustain faith in the freedom to bear arms? Why does the discussion now appear as an un-bridgeable cultural divide?

Hosted at the British Library conference centre by the Eccles Centre and UCL Institute of the Americas, this one-day conference will be an interdisciplinary examination of the Amendment and its relationship with the concept of American freedom. We invite submissions of paper proposals, which should include a 300-word abstract and a brief CV.  Possible topics might include the National Rifle Association, the Black Panther Party, “gun culture”, the relationship of guns with American minorities, the role of women in relation to firearms, and the history of the Second Amendment, but we will consider papers on other related issues. We seek to explore the issue in as balanced a way as possible. All participants will be expected to make their conference contributions available to be considered for publication.

Please direct your paper proposals, confirmations of attendance, and any questions about the one-day conference to either:

Kevin.yuill@sunderland.ac.uk
joe.street@northumbria.ac.uk