The Seminar is accepting proposals for papers and demonstrations on all aspects of popular celebrations and festivities in New England and continguous portions of New York State and Canada, 1500 to the present. The conference will focus on a wide range of ritualized observances, spectacles, and protests that involved crowds as participants or spectators, or commemorations of these observances in historical memory.

These events include patriotic processions and parades; commencements; agricultural fairs; family and ethnic celebrations; dances; powwows; religious revivals; faternal organizations; weddings, wakes, and funerals; declarations of peace; battle victories; and fasts and thanksgivings. Other events include public executions; strikes; openings; state visits; Negro election days; antislavery marches; and historical reenactments. Commemorative dates include kings' and queens' birthdays, the Fourth of July, Fifth of November nights, Christmas; Halloween, Washington's birthday, old home days, founders' days, and town centennials.

The conference will also consider that languages of celebration, such as drinking customs, toasts, fireworks, customes, tableaux vivants, musical compositions, painted transparencies, memorial portraits and prints, and panoramic view of battles.

Preference will be given to proposals that offer interpretations based on primary sources. The Seminar welcomes proposals form authors, academic and museum scholars, curators, collectors, and the general public.

"New England Celebrates: Spectacle, Commemoration, and Festivity" will take place at Deerfield, Massachusetts, on the weekend of 24-25 June 2000.

To submit a paper proposal for this conference, please send a one-page description and a one-page vita or biography to Peter Benes at the address below.

E-mail proposals sent as attachments are encouraged.