From the McNeil Center for Early American Studies:
Traces of Early America
An Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference
Hosted by the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, University of Pennsylvania
September 26 to 28, 2013
Scholars encounter early America through its traces, the vestiges and fragments left behind. And in reconstructing the fleeting and ephemeral, scholars also attempt to trace early American encounters. This conference will bring together graduate students from a wide variety of disciplines to explore the various meanings of traces—as material objects, cultural representations, and academic practices. Papers might consider how people deliberately and unwittingly left traces as they moved through space and time; what traces or remnants of the past get privileged while others are marginalized or occluded; how written, visual, and other texts are both material objects and traces of lives and experiences; and where we look for the traces of different communities and conflicts in early America. More generally, papers might address tracing as a method of historical inquiry, one that both uncovers and constitutes objects and archives, as well as the methodological traces that have reconfigured early American studies, such as Atlantic history, diaspora studies, hemispheric studies, and circum-Caribbean and Latin American studies.
We welcome applicants from a wide variety of disciplines—among them history, literature, gender studies, ethnic studies, anthropology, archeology, geography, art history, material culture, religious studies, and political science—whose work deals with the histories and cultures of North American and the Atlantic world before 1850. Applicants should email their proposals to mceas.traces.2013@gmail.com by March 15, 2013. Proposals should include an abstract of no more than 250 words along with a one-page c.v. Paper presentations should be no more than 20 minutes. Limited financial support is available for participants’ travel expenses. Decisions will be announced by May 15, 2013.
Any conference-related questions can be directed to: mceas.traces.2013@gmail.com.