The fifty-first annual meeting of the Missouri Conference on History, co-sponsored by the Missouri State University Department of History and The State Historical Society of Missouri, will be held April 16-17, 2009 at the University Plaza Hotel and Convention Center in Springfield.

Kerby Miller, Curators’ Professor of History at the University of Missouri-Columbia, will be the keynote speaker. His address will be “Irish” and “Scotch-Irish” in Ireland and America: Only “Two Traditions”? Professor Miller is the author of two prize-winning books on Irish-American history. Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America was the recipient of the Merle Curti Award from the Organization of American Historians and the Theodore Saloutos Award from the Immigration History Society, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History. Irish Immigrants in the Land of Canaan: Letters and Memoirs from Colonial and Revolutionary America, 1675-1815 was awarded the James S. Donnelly Prize from the American Conference on Irish Studies. His newest book, published this month, is Ireland and Irish America: Culture, Class, and Transatlantic Migration.

Proposals for conference sessions and papers are welcome on any historical topic or era. The conference is particularly interested in proposals for complete sessions, including panelists, chair, and commentator. Anyone wishing to organize a session or present a paper should submit a one-page abstract and a one-page curriculum vita by e-mail to:

Stephen McIntyre
Department of History, Missouri State University
StephenMcIntyre@MissouriState.edu

The deadline for submission of proposals is October 1, 2008.

For the first time, the Missouri Conference on History will present a $250 prize for the best graduate student paper presented at the conference. Graduate students who wish to be considered for the prize should submit an electronic version of the completed paper of between 3,000 and 4,000 words to:

Gary R. Kremer
The State Historical Society of Missouri
KremerG@umsystem.edu
The deadline for submission of papers for prize consideration is February 1, 2009.