In an age when global conflicts dominate the news, it is important for scholars to examine the ways in which individuals, groups, states, and nations approach these struggles. The human response is as varied as are the types of dissension and adaptation. This conference aims to explore the myriad results of these clashes, both historical and modern, and the ways in which conflict and resolution are remembered and (re)presented.

The HGSA invites paper proposals from graduate and advanced undergraduate students. We especially encourage paper submissions dealing with gender, race and ethnicity, military and international affairs, the North American West (in particular the Great Plains), religion, environment, colonialism/post-colonialism, and historical memory. Paper proposals should include a one-page abstract and a one-to-two-page curriculum vitae. Full panel proposals will also be accepted. Panel proposals should include a one-page description of the panel itself, as well as one-page abstracts for each paper (maximum of four) and a current c.v. for each panel participant. Be sure to indicate any audio-visual needs required for presentations. All proposals should be emailed to HGSA@unlnotes.unl.edu no later than December 15, 2005. Awards will be given for the best undergraduate and graduate papers.

The conference is named for James A. Rawley, professor of history at the University of Nebraska from 1954-1988, received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1949. He is the author of numerous works, including Edwin D. Morgan: Merchant in Politics 1811-1883 (1968), Race and Politics: “Bleeding Kansas and the Coming of the Civil War (1969), The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A History (1982), and Secession: The Disruption of the American Republic, 1844-1861 (1990). Dr. Rawley has been the recipient of many honors and awards. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Society of American Historians and in 1991 received the Pound-Howard Distinguished Career Award from the University of Nebraska. Dr. Rawley remains active as the Carl Adolph Happold professor emeritus of history at UNL.

The keynote address will be given by Dr. Stephanie M.H. Camp, associate professor of history at the University of Washington and the author of Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South (2004). Dr. Camp has also written many articles and reviews for publications including the Journal of Southern History, Slavery and Abolition, and is the co-editor of New Studies in American Slavery. Her numerous academic honors and awards include the Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship (2000-2001); Associate Fellow, Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition (2001); and the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (1998). In 1997 Dr. Camp received the Huggins-Quarles Dissertation Award from the Organization of American Historians, and was named an Andrew W. Mellon Predoctoral Fellow at the Virginia Historical Society and a Minority Scholar in Residence at Vassar College.