16-19 November 1995 - Chicago, IL
The Social Science History Association will hold its 20th Annual
Conference 16-19 November 1995 at the Palmer House in Chicago, Illinois.
This year, as in the past, the conference will attract historians,
economists, sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists,
geographers, and other social scientists. Graduate students are
encouraged to attend and a number are participating as panelists.
The program of the 20th anniversary conference of the SSHA promises to
be a full one. SSHA regulars will recognize the general format, but the
Program Committee also expects that they will find something new in
each of the traditional components. For those attending for the first time,
the Chicago meeting should be a good introduction to the diversity of the
organization.
This year's program will have approximately 155 panels and roundtables,
involving upwards of 600 participants. There will be a total of 10 session
times, with 2 on both Thursday and Sunday, and three sessions on Friday
and Saturday. The conference will begin with the 1:30 Thursday session
and conclude after the second Sunday session at 12:45. Also, the number
of scheduled network meeting times has been increased from two to three
to accommodate those with multiple network interests.
On Friday night, there will be a Presidential Reception that, to celebrate
the Chicago location, will include a jazz band. The Women's Breakfast on
Saturday morning will feature a panel of past SSHA presidents discussing
the history of the organization. At Saturday noontime there will be a
luncheon (rather than a picnic format that has been used for the past
several years). The luncheon will feature the Presidential Address and
some general reflections on the SSHA's twenty-year effort to create
working relationships between history and the social sciences. The
Indiana Conference Bureau and Program Chairs are exploring the interest
of participants, as they register, in touring Chicago's architectural
monuments and other cultural features of the Windy City. For those
interested in film, there be an evening session entitled "Story-Telling in
Labor History: The Uprising of 1934."
SSHA's efforts to link history and the (other) social sciences will be
reflected in Presidential Sessions featuring subjects that cut across
disciplinary lines and involving many colleagues from outside the United
States. The following sessions are scheduled:
-Regions
-Sociology and History - History of Sociology
-The Elias Paradigm and Social Science History
-Borderlands
-Transitions Revisited
-Historian as Ethnographer/Ethnographer as Historian
The Roundtable - by now an important variant of the SSHA program
session - will also be well represented at the Chicago meeting with the
following subjects: Donald McCloskey and the Rhetoric of Social Science
History; A Comparative Look at Gender and Public Policy in the 20th
Century; Europe and the United States; The Applicability of Biblical Law to
a Pluralistic State; On-Line Networks as Research Tools; Voeglin on
Society and Religion; Gender and Nationalism; Reassessing Women's
Political Choices in the Early 20th Century; Gender, Race, Class, Culture,
and Politics: Where Do We Go From Here?; The 1994 Elections in
Retrospect: A Roundtable Discussion of Walter Dean Burnham's Theses on
the 1994 Elections; Aliens and Dissenters: Federal Suppression of
Radicals, 1903-1933; New Directions in Economic History; Political
Correctness, Multiculturalism, and Business History: Perspectives on the
Future of the Field; Strategies, Alliances, and Agendas: New Perspectives
on Working Class Politics in the Interwar Years.
As in earlier meetings, Book Sessions will offer critiques and
explications of one or several important recent works in social science
history, together (at times) with responses from the author(s): Kathryn
Kish Sklar, _Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work: The Rise of Women's
Political Culture, 1830-1900_; Paul Bourke and Donald A. DeBats,
_Washington County: Politics and Community in Antebellum America_; Ira
Katznelson, _Marxism and the City_ (Oxford: Claredon Press, 1992); David
R. Mayhew, _Divided We Govern: Party Control, Law Making and
Investigation, 1946-1990_; Water Usage and the Rural Environment: Three
New Studies; Naomi Lamoreaux, _Insider Lending, Banks, Personal
Connections, and Economic Development in Industrial New England_.
For the past several years SSHA has featured Poster Exhibits. These
exhibits permit authors to display information about their research
project on an easel and to interact with conference participants. A "meet
the author" session for each poster is also scheduled. Although there have
been no requests for poster sessions as of May, this opportunity remains
available. Any interested parties should contact the program chairs.
Regular Panels, involving two to four papers and discussion by both
commentator and audience, as usual will be the mainstay of the program.
Those who need audio-visual or computer equipment should contact the
Program Committee about those needs.
SESSION TITLES
POLITICS: Apportionment, Districting, and Politics in U.S. History; Popular
Politics in Comparative Perspective; Beyond Social Control; The Game of
Politics in Chicago; Politics and U.S. Economic Development in the 20th
Century; Historical Geography of American Elections: 20th Century
Longitudinal Perspectives; Examining the Second Party System: American
Politics in the 19th Century; The United States and the World, 1878-1925;
Reflections on Twenty Years of Political History in the SSHA;
Intellectuals, Politics, and Public Identities in Europe, 1870-1940; Group
Identity and Political Change in Cross Cultural Contexts; Is Social Class
Declining in Politics?; Historical Geography of American Elections: 19th
and 20th Century Perspectives; Networking in Cyberspace: H-Pol and the
Politics Network.*
*"SSHA News," Summer 1995, No. 10.
***********************
William T. Hull
H-Pol Editorial Assistant
Arizona State University
Department of History
Tempe, AZ 85287-2501
(602)965-5778
Hull@asu.edu