Radical History Review
-- Call for Papers --
Issue 93 (Fall 2005):

“New Imperialisms”

Radical History Review invites submissions for its Fall 2005 thematic issue on “New Imperialisms.” The “New” in the title refers to new critical and heuristic perspectives on imperialism, imperial encounters, and imperial identities emerging in the past two-and-a-half decades. Among the possible ways of construing “New Imperialism” are, first, the “new world order” post-Cold War and post-9/11 in which a single world power attempts to dictate the terms to a perceived global transnational space. Is this the age of the American empire? Second, is the reassessment of the impact of these developments on the Leninist analysis of imperialism. Third is a new area made particularly productive since the inception of the field of colonial/postcolonial studies. How can transnational perspectives raise new questions and past precedents take us beyond current paradigms of imperialism? Informed by cross-disciplinary methodologies, these new approaches have prompted our rethinking of earlier theoretical paradigms, conceptual delineations, and overall assessments of imperialisms and anti-imperialisms. How is our work as teachers, students, and scholars being reshaped by our relation to new formulations of empire? We are interested in the ways, cross-disciplinary approaches of gender, transnational, and subaltern studies, discourse analyses such as Said’s paradigm of Orientalism, and cultural studies influence these critical investigations. The question of whether nationalism is the only possible opposition to imperialism is posed by the unfulfilled promises and limitations of the nation-state in former colonized/semi-colonized regions of the world, and ongoing ethnic, religious, class, gendered, and territorial conflicts. In the process, such diverse range of analyses has also revealed certain paradigmatic tensions within the field of colonial/postcolonial studies itself. How can we make anti-imperialist discourses less exclusionary?

The editors of this special thematic issue of Radical History Review invite contributions that discuss imperialism in the light of new global formations and reopen the discussion of historical empires from the perspective of race, gender and postcolonial studies. We are also interested in submissions that address the ways in which new conceptualizations of empires impact our role as scholars, teachers and students of imperialisms.

In addition to Feature Articles, the journal also publishes sections on Interventions, Reflections, Historians at Work, Teaching, and (Re)Views, and we highly encourage submissions (related to the special theme of this issue) to these sections. For further information and samples of previously published articles, visit: For additional information and submission guidelines please visit the website below or http://chnm.gmu.edu/rhr /guidelin.htm

or contact via the emails below.

Deadline for submissions is July 1, 2004.

Please note that all submissions must be marked “RHR #93: The New Imperialisms” and electronically submitted to: rhr@igc.org

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