The program for the annual meeting in 2001 will be informed by the opportunities of its location in Los Angeles and the longstanding commitment of Kenneth T. Jackson to engage audiences beyond the academy. The program committee especially encourages proposals, whether in the form of individual papers or complete sessions, that reflect a broad appreciation of the work of history.

Sessions will be organized in multiple formats (the program committee is open to, and indeed encourages the submission of innovative proposals): We envision a series of provocative (even unbounded) sessions, a handful of which will be designated as plenary. Focused on questions about enlarging our audiences, particularly useful will be submissions that assess the links American historians are forging with colleagues in commerce, government, historical museums, the internet, journalism, and the mass media. The following list provides examples.

• Writing about America in serious, popular nonfiction.
• History in film.
• Our bookstores (independents, chains, and on-line).
• The historical narratives our children learn.
• History museums and the challenges of the cultural marketplace.
• Historical memory and personal memoirs
• Southern California as history.
• Redefining how, and why, the news is reported and received.
• During and after the American Century.
• On-line history in classrooms and exhibitions
• Our textbooks, and classrooms, reconceptualized.
• Re-drafting American history to include our newest immigrants.
• Attaining tenure and promotion in the on-line electronic era.

The program committee welcomes imaginatively conceived proposals which are representative of history as it is communicated in exhibitions, scholarship, and teaching.

Field-based sessions, drawing upon the distinctive cultural resources of metropolitan Los Angles, will be featured on the program.

In keeping with recent program practice this year's committee encourages formats that promote discussion and participation. It welcomes roundtables and debates with up to five panelists, as well as "poster sessions," in addition to the traditional format of papers and commentators.

All proposals must identify their format, specify all participants and indicate the role of each person. All proposals must include five collated copies of the following information:

• title page copied from the model including a complete mailing address, phone number, and affiliation for each participant
• abstract of no more than 500 words (not required for single paper proposals)
• prospectus for each paper of no more than 250 words
• single-page vitae for each participant.

Proposals sent with less than five collated copies will be returned.

Although we encourage proposals for entire sessions, we will energetically seek to find a place on the program for outstanding individual papers. We also welcome volunteers to act as chairs or commentators as assigned by the Program Committee: send your vita and a letter of interest directly to the OAH Office.

Participation in Consecutive Annual Meetings
The program committee discourages participation as a paper presenter in consecutive annual meetings. The 2001 program committee will try to avoid placing a presenter from the 2000 Annual Meeting program as a presenter on the 2001 program. A person may serve as chair or commentator one year and a presenter the other.

Affirmative Action and Membership Requirements
By OAH policy, the program committee actively seeks to avoid gender-segregated sessions; the committee urges proposers of sessions to include members of both sexes whenever possible.

The committee likewise will work to follow the OAH policy and guidelines of having the program as a whole, and individual sessions to extent possible, represent the full diversity of the OAH membership. We strongly urge proposers of sessions to include ethnic and racial minorities, as well as junior academics, independent scholars, public historians, and American historians from outside the U.S., whenever possible. The OAH executive board has set aside a small sum of money to subsidize travel to the annual meeting for minority graduate students appearing on the program.

All participants must register for the meeting. Participants specializing in American history and who support themselves as American historians are also required to be members of the OAH. Participants representing other disciplines do not have to be members.

2001 Program Committee

Michael H. Ebner, Lake Forest College, Chair
Carol O'Connor, Utah State University, Co-chair
Lillie Johnson Edwards, Drew University
Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, Smith College
Russell Lewis, Chicago Historical Society
Robert J. McMahon, University of Florida
Kevin Starr, State Librarian of California
David Vigilante, National Center for History in the Schools

(Neither faxes nor electronic mail will be accepted.)All proposals must be postmarked no later than January 12, 2000 and sent to: