CALL FOR PAPERS: 5th Annual Boston University Graduate Student Political History Conference

The Sixties at Fifty

March 22-23, 2013

The Boston University American Political History Institute welcomes submissions for its fifth annual graduate student conference. For this year’s conference, we seek new perspectives on the 1960s. Most scholars who have examined this era lived through it, but the passage of time exempts our generation of historians, born after the decade ended, from the attachments of personal experience. If nothing else, we are forced to study the 60s from an external vantage point. Hence, we are especially interested in papers that challenge orthodox interpretations of history or shed new light on previously overlooked phenomena.

There are no chronological restrictions on submissions--we encourage students to submit papers concerning developments before 1960 or after 1970, provided they relate to the 1960s broadly conceived. Examinations of such issues as the Cold War, civil rights, student activism, radicalism, anti-radicalism, liberalism, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights, and other topics generally associated with or relevant to the 1960s will be considered as long as the author can connect them to the 60s era.

The most outstanding submission will receive the APHI Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Prize, which includes a $1,000 cash award. All presenters must be current graduate students, and distinguished faculty will serve as commentators for each panel.

A keynote address will be delivered by Doug Rossinow, Professor of History and Chair of the History Department at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, Minnesota. Professor Rossinow has written extensively about the 1960s, including in his books The Politics of Authenticity: Liberalism, Christianity, and the New Left in America (1998) and Visions of Progress: Liberalism and the Left in America (2007). Please visit the conference website at http://www.bu.edu/history/gradconference for more information and updates.

Individual paper or panel proposals should be submitted in the form of a 300-500 word abstract by Monday, January 14, 2013. Please include a one-page C.V. along with your proposal, and send via email to gphconference4@yahoo.com.