Dissecting Dissent: Explorations in Conflict, Culture and History The 20th Annual Milton Plesur Graduate History Conference April 2nd, 2011

The Graduate History Association of the University at Buffalo is happy to announce the 20th Annual Milton Plesur Graduate History Conference, to be held on April 2nd, 2011 at the Center for Tomorrow. This international conference is specifically designed as a venue in which graduate students from the US and Canada can share their current research with fellow students and faculty members in a number of fields. In the past, the Plesur Conference has hosted student papers from a variety of disciplines, including History, American Studies, English, Comparative Literature, Classics, Global Gender Studies, and African-American Studies.

We are pleased to announce that our keynote speaker will be Dr. Jelani Cobb, associate professor of history at Spelman College. He specializes in post-Civil War African American history, 20th century American politics and the history of the Cold War. He is a recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright and Ford Foundations. His published works include To The Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic (NYU Press 2007) which was a finalist for the National Award for Arts Writing. His collection The Devil & Dave Chappelle and Other Essays (Thunder’s Mouth Press) was also published in 2007. He is editor of The Essential Harold Cruse: A Reader, which was listed as a 2002 Notable Book of The Year by Black Issues Book Review. Dr. Cobb has two forthcoming books: In Our Lifetimes: Barack Obama and the New Black America and a scholarly monograph titled Antidote to Revolution: African American Anticommunism and the Struggle for Civil Rights, 1931-1957.

Dr. Cobb’s work straddles the lines between history and cultural criticism, scholarship and popular culture, the reserve of the academy and the passion of political engagement. This call for papers is similarly flexible. We are seeking papers dealing with conflict and culture from a range of different disciplines, time periods, geographic locations, and theoretical approaches. While papers on all topics will be considered, we are especially interested in work that examines the interplay of culture and conflict along these lines:

- Class
- Race
- The Nation/The State
- Gender
- Political ideologies
- Ethnic identities
- The Arts and Activism

Send your proposal, including a 250 word abstract (with title), curriculum vitae or brief academic biography, contact information, and audiovisual needs, if any, to cdeager@buffalo.edu. Deadline for submission is February 1st, 2011.