The Graduate Program in American Studies and the Rutgers American Studies Student Association at Rutgers-Newark invite proposals for panels, papers, roundtable discussions, workshops and multimedia presentations that illuminate the theme of “Public Scholarship and American Studies,” a conference to be held on the Rutgers-Newark campus on April 10, 2010 from 10am to 4pm.

FREE REGISTRATION. Please use the online REGISTRATION FORM on our site: http://rutgerspublicscholarship.org/form.html

All are welcome to attend, whether or not you will be making a presentation. Lunch and refreshments will be provided free of charge.

All submissions are due by Sunday, October 28, 2009. Please use the SUBMISSION FORM on our website: http://rutgerspublicscholarship.org/services.html

The Rutgers-Newark campus is conveniently located within a 10-minute walk of the Newark Penn Station and is easily accessible via public transportation.

Our conference will present and analyze public scholarship in light of multiple questions and perspectives. What is public scholarship? What is the place of the public in public scholarship? Who gets to speak as a scholar? What are the relationships among public scholarship and performance, artistic production and political activism? What are the local, metropolitan, national and transnational dynamics of public scholarship? How can local institutions, from museums to libraries to community organizations to houses of worship, become centers of public scholarship? How does the Web offer new venues and understandings of public scholarship?

What distinguishes public scholarship produced in the spirit of American Studies? What special challenges emerge when public scholarship engages contemporary issues or the distant past? How does public scholarship relate to the many fields that contribute to American Studies, such as history, the arts, literature, ethnic studies, women’s studies, gender studies, African American studies, performance studies, Asian Studies, Latino/a Studies, queer studies, jazz studies, folklore, social sciences, cultural studies, political science, urban studies and oral history? How do these fields influence our understanding of public scholarship and American Studies? “Public Scholarship and American Studies” will embrace topics and questions that arise from local, national and transnational experiences. How do contemporary questions shape public scholarship? How do inheritances from the past influence public scholarship today? What is the role of public scholarship in sharply polarized public debates? What is its role in issues where there seems to be a consensus?

The conference also seeks to explore critical issues that particularly influence public scholarship. What are the tensions among commemoration, documentation, and analysis in public scholarship? How do funding sources influence museum exhibits? Who owns history? Is censorship a threat to public scholarship? What happens when cultural or historical tourism becomes part of economic development strategies?

We welcome presentations from all who share our interest in public scholarship, American culture and American Studies, such as professors, graduate students, independent scholars, artists, museum curators, librarians, archivists, educators, multimedia producers, and documentarians.

Whatever the format of your proposed session, we will give preference to fully organized sessions that do not require the addition of moderators, commentators or presenters.