Given its past and present as a site of trans-national and trans-cultural contact, conflict, and exchange, New Orleans is the ideal location for scholarly explorations of the Global Gulf. As a conceptual model, the Global Gulf invites scholarly inquiry that blurs traditional geographic, temporal, or disciplinary boundaries. While this interdisciplinary conference encourages papers examining the very real historical and contemporary networks linking the people and places of the Gulf Coast, Circum-Caribbean, and wider Atlantic World, it welcomes scholarship rooted in any and all geographic locales and time periods. Papers should address the conference theme of “Mobility.” Topics may include, but are not limited to:
- The movement of peoples, products, and ideas across real and imaginary borders
- The fluidity of culturally constructed identities, such as race, gender, and ethnicity
- The history of transport and movement
- Cultural hybridity and creolization
- Discussions of class and economic mobility
- Notions of ʻchangeʼ in all its forms

We invite individual paper proposals only. Graduate students worldwide are encouraged to submit. Submissions should include a working paper title, an abstract limited to 300 words, and a current one-page CV. The deadline for proposals is November 18, 2011. Presenters will be notified by January 1 of acceptance. Final papers must be submitted to commentators by February 1, 2012. The New Orleans Center for the Gulf South will award several travel honorariums based on the strength of paper proposals.

Please send submissions and questions to the Global Gulf committee at globalgulfconference@gmail.com

Tulane Universityʼs Graduate Student Conference Committee: Liz Skilton, Walter Stern, Rien T. Fertel