The Boston University American Political History Institute will hold its fourth annual graduate student history conference to take place Saturday, March 24 and Sunday, March 25, 2012. For this year’s conference, we seek to examine the role media has played in American history. We welcome papers that utilize new methodologies and approaches to investigate different media forms and their relationship with domestic or international politics, cultural changes, economic conditions, technology and social movements. How do interdisciplinary approaches to history reinterpret changes in media? How do emerging technologies influence the media economy? What factors influence media bias, and how has it changed throughout American history?

This year’s keynote speaker, Julian Zelizer, is the author of Taxing America: Wilbur D. Mills, Congress, and the State, 1945-1975; On Capitol Hill: The Struggle to Reform Congress and its Consequences, 1948-2000; Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security—From World War II to the War on Terrorism; the Jimmy Carter volume in the American Presidents Series and co-authored Conservatives in Power: The Reagan Years, 1981-1989. He is the editor of The American Congress: The Building of Democracy and the co-editor of Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s; The Democratic Experiment: New Directions in American Political History and The Presidency of George W. Bush: A First Historical Assessment. Next year his book, Governing America: The Revival of Political History, will be published. Zelizer is a well-known commentator in the national and international media.

In addition, distinguished faculty will serve as commentators for each panel. Please see http://www.bu.edu/history/APHI/News.html and visit the link to Graduate Conference in American Political History for more information.