With the proliferation of online lectures, working groups and all manner of events, we at the JHI Blog thought it would be a good idea to consolidate news and opportunities relevant to our colleagues working in intellectual history. We will publish these roundups of public lectures, conferences, calls for papers, working groups and new journal issues every other Saturday.
We encourage our readers to send us information and updates about any news or events that fits within this scope. You can use this form to let us know about something you’d like us to publicize.
Webinar: “Native Nations and Anglo-American Law”
Moderator: Michael Leroy Oberg (SUNY-Geneseo)
Panel: Daniel Mandell (Truman State University); Craig Yirush (University of California, Los Angeles); Zachary Conn (Yale University); Julia Lewandoski (California State University, San Marcos)
Native nations have always held an ambiguous status in Anglo-American law. This roundtable brings together junior and senior scholars researching how indigenous groups sought to maintain their autonomy and resources during the critical 19th century in North America, and will consider broad questions in the evolving status of Native communities. This moderated roundtable discussion will include presentations by each panelists, followed by a discussion of broader questions in the evolving status of Native communities and the conflicts between indigenous sovereignty and the claims of democracy in the US and Canada. Audience questions and discussion of these issues will also be a significant part of the session.
American Historical Association Colloquium.
January 5, 2021, 5:00 pm (Eastern Time – US and Canada). Register.
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Lecture: “Slow History”
Introduction: Jacqueline Jones (AHA president-elect, University of Texas at Austin)
Speaker: Mary Lindemann (AHA president, University of Miami)
All historians realize how much COVID-19 has interfered with our scholarship and teaching. Everything has slowed down, from preparing for classes, to doing research, to completing the simplest tasks of everyday life. Yet in the upheaval we are currently experiencing, and as we struggle to remain productive, perhaps we should also seize the opportunity to think more deeply about the “doing” of history and to isolate what really matters in research, writing, and instruction. Scholars in other disciplines have been doing so for several years and some have even issued manifestos like the one advocating “slow science.” Should we follow their lead? “Is going slow good for historians as well?”
American Historical Association Presidential Address.
Wednesday, January 6, 2021, 7:00 pm (Eastern Time – US and Canada). Register.
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Lecture: “U.S. Education and the Pandemic: Literary and Cultural Insights”
Amy Mohr (LMU/Amerika-Institut)
This lecture series will put the current COVID-19 pandemic in historical perspective by looking at past outbreaks of such devastating diseases as the bubonic plague, cholera, polio, HIV/AIDS, and others. Faculty of the Amerika-Institut and guest speakers will scrutinize the public health system of the United States, the impact of and the debates surrounding the politics of vaccinations, the social and cultural significance of quarantines and the unequal distribution of pain and death.
Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (RCC)
Thursday, January 7, 2021, 4:15–5:45 pm (Central European Time). Register.
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Lecture: “New Directions in the History of Education AHA Colloquium 2021”
Chair: Margaret O’Mara (University of Washington)
Panel: Emily J. Levine (Stanford University); Ian McNeely (University of Oregon); Adam Nelson (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
After years of relative neglect historians are training fresh eyes on the history of education. What is to be gained by this recent inquiry? How does bringing the history of knowledge institutions in line with general trends in historiography alter our understanding of 19th and 20th century US and European history? Join scholars in early colonial and post-war US history, and European cultural and intellectual history of the 19th and 20th centuries to interrogate this new educational “turn” and its meanings for the field of history.
American Historical Association Colloquium.
Friday, January 8, 2021, 1:00 pm (Eastern Time – US and Canada). Register.
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Call for Papers: “Force of Myth: Authority, Illusion, and Critique in Modern Imaginaries.” Read Call for Papers here.
Conference dates: Monday–Wednesday, June 7–9, 2021.
This will be an online-only event, held over Zoom on three consecutive days, 3–4 hours per day.
Keynote Speakers Chiara Bottici (New School of Social Research); Bernard Harcourt (Columbia University); Pini Ifergan (Bar-Ilan University; The Spinoza Center, The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute).
Deadline: Sunday, January 31, 2021. Info and submissions at: forceofmyth2021@gmail.com
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Seminar: “Water Over the Dam: The Destruction of Colonial New England’s River Fisheries”
Zachary Bennett (Norwich University)
Matthew McKenzie (University of Connecticut)
River restoration projects across North America are dismantling dams to restore the legendary fish runs of the past. People incorrectly point to the industrial revolution as the culprit. This paper will show that fish disappeared from most of southern New England’s rivers one hundred years before that. The destruction of New England’s fish runs triggered a cascade of economic and environmental changes that shaped legal and political culture during the Revolution and early republic.
Registered participants will receive the paper for this session the day before the seminar by email.
Massachusetts Historical Society. Environmental History Seminar.
January 12, 2021, 5:15pm – 6:30pm (Eastern Time, US and Canada). Register.
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Lecture: “Never Waste a Good Crisis? Presidential Crisis Management from the Great Depression to the Coronavirus Pandemic”
Andreas Etges (LMU/Amerika-Institut)
This lecture series will put the current COVID-19 pandemic in historical perspective by looking at past outbreaks of such devastating diseases as the bubonic plague, cholera, polio, HIV/AIDS, and others. Faculty of the Amerika-Institut and guest speakers will scrutinize the public health system of the United States, the impact of and the debates surrounding the politics of vaccinations, the social and cultural significance of quarantines and the unequal distribution of pain and death.
Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society
January 14, 2021, 10:00am (Eastern Time, US and Canada). Register.
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Lecture: “Fugitivity”
Chair: Stephanie E. Smallwood (University of Washington, Seattle)
Panel: Stephen Best (University of California, Berkeley); Kellie Carter Jackson (Wellesley College); Viola Franziska Müller (Utrecht University); Matthew Pinsker (Dickinson College); Edward B. Rugemer (Yale University); Stephanie Smallwood
Scholars have recently identified fugitivity as central problem in the history of slavery. This roundtable seeks to bring together some of the leading thinkers about the history of fugitivity for a discussion of the historical and historiographical stakes that it entails.
American Historical Association
January 14, 2021, 02:00pm (Eastern Time, US and Canada). Register.
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Lecture: “Epistemic Decolonisation: what, why, how?”
Veli Mitova
Chaired by Zinhle Mncube (University of Johannesburg/University of Cambridge)
The decolonisation of knowledge is finally – and happily – becoming a hot topic in anglophone philosophy. But what exactly is epistemic decolonisation? why should we engage in it? and how should we go about it? In this talk, I draw on African thinkers to construct a roadmap of the terrain along these three axes for theorising epistemic decolonisation, and to argue that some answers to the what, why, and how questions are better than others.
Series organisers: Zinhle Mncube (University of Johannesburg/University of Cambridge); Azita Chellappoo (Ruhr-University Bochum); Katherine Furman (University of Liverpool); Dominic Berry (London School of Economics/University of Birmingham)
January 15, 2021, 16:00 SAST (14:00 GMT). Register.
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Lecture: “City and countryside: the infrastructure of water in colonial Bangalore”
Aditya Ramesh (University of Manchester)
This open lecture is part of Oslo Metropolitan University South Asia Seminar Series (Chapter 1: India). The theme for Oslo Metropolitan University South Asia Seminar Series is Perceptions of Environment.
Oslo Metropolitan University
January 15, 2021, 4:00pm to 5:30pm (Central European Standard Time). Register.
Featured Image: Jean-Marc Côté, 1899. France in 2000 year (XXI century). France, paper card . Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
