Connexions: Histories of Race and Sex in North America
Working-Paper Conference, NYU, Fall 2008
Published Anthology to follow

In recent years, scholars have turned to the categories of race and sex as essential rubrics to chart and understand processes of social, cultural and economic change. Interdisciplinary work in critical race and queer studies has been at the forefront of expanding these conceptual frameworks across the disciplines—dislodging static notions of race as science or sex as sexuality—while historians have been more likely to produce studies that examine the categories of race or sex rather than their intersection. Perhaps as a result of the complexity of the categories, or even the vagaries of disciplinary subcategories [e.g. African American History, Asian American History, Latina/o History, Women’s History], historians have not fully analyzed the intersection between race and sexuality. As we consider new focuses on intersectionality and interdisciplinarity that characterize the current state of historical research, it is clear that historians need to develop the historiography on the categories of race and sex that, we believe, will markedly shift American social, economic, and cultural histories most broadly conceived.

In Connexions, we plan to gather new studies that consider race and sex in tandem, thereby dismantling the notion that either category operates as autonomous modifiers. The collection will be organized in what might be called more traditional historical periods: The Colonial and Early Republic, the long 19th century, and the 20th century and beyond. We anticipate work, however, which not only troubles this periodization, but is also located in a broad set of fields: Histories of social movements, of science and medicine, of cultural expressions, of slavery and free labor, of economic formations and of ideological interventions are all anticipated.

To aid in the production of the anthology, we seek contributors interested in attending a working-papers conference at New York University in November 2008. We will organize panels thematically and chronologically to allow participants to engage the process of peer review of each other’s work. We ask that participants prepare papers of approximately 7,500 words [30 pp] for circulation at the conference. Following the conference, participants will expand their essays to approximately 10,000 words for publication.

Please submit a one page abstract and current CV of no more than 3 pages to jennifer.morgan@nyu.edu, michele.mitchell@nyu.edu, and jbrier@uic.edu. Deadline for submission is May 30, 2008. We will notify participants by June 15, 2008. Works-in-progress will be due by October 1, 2008 for distribution to all conference participants by November 1, 2008. The conference will be held in late November of 2008.