Friday and Saturday, 25-26 February, 2011

Call for Papers

We are pleased to announce the Second Annual Graduate Conference, hosted by the Graduate History Society, at the University of Rochester. This year’s theme is “Failures, Losers, and Tragic Downfalls,” and we invite proposals from all disciplines that encourage us to assess issues surrounding past events, movements, individuals, or ideas (to name four major categories) which did not carry out their stated or implied goals. The focus is broadly construed: issues of causation, definition, and legacy in “failed” historical phenomena would be excellent discussion topics, as would analysis of the “mechanics” of failure, or especially the construction of discourses of failure.

Our keynote speaker for this year’s conference is Scott Sandage, Associate Professor of History at Carnegie Mellon University. He is most famous as the author of the critically acclaimed Born Losers: A History of Failure in America (Harvard, 2005), of which book playwright Arthur Miller said, “This is a bright light on a buried strain in the evolution of the United States.” Professor Sandage is currently working on a study entitled, Half-Breed Creek: A Tall Tale of Race on the Frontier, 1804-1941.

The conference will consist of sessions on Friday and Saturday, February 25 and 26, 2011. We invite graduate students to submit abstracts of approximately 250 words, as well as contact information (affiliation, email, and address). The deadline for submitting proposals is November 15, 2010.

For more information and to submit a proposal, please visit the conference web page at: