We serve as co-chairs of the Race/Ethnicity section for the Social Science History Association (SSHA). The meeting is scheduled to take place in Chicago, November 21-24, 2013. Our theme this year is "Organizing Powers."

Our main goal is to structure sessions so that they explicitly draw on an interdisciplinary group of scholars who hail from different institutions. The deadline for submission of abstracts is February 15th, 2013. Note, all SSHA requires at this point is an abstract. You can find more information at: http://www.ssha.org/, including the Call for Papers.

We are hoping to put together a number of sessions related to the conference site and date that were discussed at the planning meeting:

· Commemorating 150 Years Since the Emancipation Proclamation: Legal Abolition vs. Black Emancipation

o Post-Emancipation Politics and Imperatives

o Race and the Low: Have Legal Remedies Produced Racial Emancipation

· Revisiting the work of W.E.B. Du Bois (50 Years Since His Death)

· The Great Migration: Racial Movements and Migrations in the Past and Present

· Racial Politics – Obama, Electoral Politics, and Black Politicians

· 50 Years Since the March on Washington: Where is The Civil Rights Movement Now?

· Community Organizing or Organizing on College campuses

· Immigrant Rights Movements and the DREAMers

· The Chicago Teachers Strike or Activism Around Racial Inequality in Education

· Latino Chicago

· Continuities and Transformation of Racial Systems Across Time

· The Role of Borders: Race and Transnationality

· Decolonial/Post-Colonial Race Theory

· Race and Natural resources: Land, Water, Air and Environmental Racism

· Roundtable: Studying Race Across National Contexts

We are also looking for people to volunteer to be a critic for the following Author Meets Critics sessions:

· Three Worlds of Relief: Race, Immigration, and the American Welfare State from the Progressive Era to the New Deal, Cybelle Fox

· Chinese Chicago: Race Transnational Migration and Community Since 1870, Huping Ling

You are welcome to submit papers regarding any of these topics, or on a topic relating to your own research. If you would be interested in putting together an entire session, let us know and we would be happy to provide you with details as to how to do this. Feel free to forward this call widely, particularly to graduate students (there is funding available for graduate students to travel to the conference which can be found at http://www.ssha.org/grants).

We are also looking for another network representative for the Race/Ethnicity Network to aid in the organizing and planning each year. In order maintain the interdisciplinary nature of the organization, anyone from a discipline other than Sociology is invited to email either of the organizers with your interests. If you would like more information about the duties and responsibilities for this position, please do not hesitate to contact wither of us.

Finally, please feel free to check our Facebook page, which you can find by searching for "Race/Ethnicity Network - Social Science History Association” or by following the link: https://www.facebook.com/pages/RaceEthnicity-Network-Social-Science-History-Association/113130038802365

If you have any questions at all, please don’t hesitate to contact us via email: mfweiner@holycross.edu or e-onasch@u.northwestern.edu.

Sincerely,
Melissa F. Weiner
Liz Onasch