News

The Albert Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest at Villanova University is funding five grants of up to $5000 this year related to the theme of "Cities in Historical Perspective." 

The Center will fund up to 5 projects that creatively engage with the broad range of questions, concerns, policies and practices raised by the study of the role of cities in history, and how historical study can further public understanding of the present moment.

This theme could encompass any number of historical topics, connecting subject matter or data points across time and space. Examples might include the effects of urbanization on notions of community in a given country, or the effects of urbanization on ecology in a given region; cities as warzones across the Cold War; the impact of immigration; political culture; caste, class, race, and gender in the history of a city or compared notions in different cities. This is by no means an exhaustive list, merely examples about the flexibility inherent in the theme. What is most important is historical focus and methodology.

Each grantee will receive up to $5,000 depending on scope, size and need.

The Lepage Center sponsors an annual public grant program that supports individuals and institutions pursuing historical projects in the public interest. The Center seeks to inspire a wide range of submissions from a diverse pool of applicants that are original and imaginative in content and form. Examples of the types of projects include a series of blog posts, a series of podcast conversations, digital and in-person exhibits, an oral history project, an initiative with a local newspaper to write a series of op-eds, a mapping project, a digital timeline, a crowd-sourced syllabus, an educational workshop, a multimedia resource, a collaboration with local activists, and other creative ideas.

Applications are due to the Lepage Center by 11:59 p.m. EST on September 25, 2023. Applications should be emailed as a single attachment (PDF) to lepage@villanova.edu and should not exceed 15 pages.

Applications must include:

A title

A project abstract (250 words)

A project description, purpose, and its contribution to history in the public interest (1-2 pages)

A plan of execution, including deliverables, partners, and expected outcomes (1-2 pages)

A proposed budget (1 page)

Resumes of principal participants (the total of resumes not to exceed 10 pages)

Further details here: https://www1.villanova.edu/content/university/liberal-arts-sciences/scholarship/centers/lepage-center/grants-outreach/proposals.html

Arline Custer Memorial Award, presented by the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference

DEADLINE:  July 31, 2023

The Arline Custer Memorial Award is presented by the MARAC Arline Custer Memorial Award Committee.  This award honors the memory of Arline Custer (1909-1975), MARAC member and editor of the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections.

Eligibility

The Arline Custer Memorial Award recognizes the best books and articles written or compiled by individuals and institutions in the MARAC region – the District of Columbia, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia.

Works under consideration include, but are not limited to: monographs, popular narratives, reference works and exhibition catalogs using archival sources.

Individuals or institutions may submit up to two works published between July 1, 2022 and June 30, 2023.

Evaluation

Works must be relevant to the general public as well as the archival community. They also should be original and well researched using available sources. In addition, they should be clearly presented, well written and organized. Visual materials, if used, should be appropriate to the text.

Compiled works or works with multiple authors—such as edited volumes, co-authored works, or journals—will be reviewed in their entirety. Portions of a multiple-author work that do not meet award requirements may impact the submission’s final scoring.

Preference will be given to works by archivists.

Award

Up to three awards may be given, with a maximum value of $200.00 for books and $100.00 for articles. The 2023 award(s) may be announced at a fall 2023 MARAC business meeting or shared with MARAC members via another means.

Electronic Submission Instructions

Electronic submissions are preferred. Please send a PDF of the entirety of the work along with a PDF of a letter of nomination to the Senior Co-Chair of the Arline Custer Memorial Award Committee:

Tyler Stump

Archivist

Pennsylvania State Archives

Email: tystump@pa.gov  

Physical Submission Instructions

Please send two physical copies of each submission with a letter of nomination to the Senior Co-Chair of the Arline Custer Memorial Award Committee. Please email the Sr. Co-Chair to request the mailing address.

Email: tystump@pa.gov

Entries must be received by July 31, 2023

 

For additional information about this award and a list of previous award winners, see the Arline Custer Memorial Award site: http://www.marac.info/arline-custer-memorial-award

Please see the link below to the full program for Sound, Language &The Making of Urban Space, August 24 and 25, 2023. 

Conference Program

SACRPH Virtual Roundtable: Teaching Urban, Planning, and Architectural History in a Professional School

Monday, May 8, 2023, 12:00 p.m. - 1:30 p.m. EDT

On Zoom; please click here to register to receive the link

Historians of cities and the built environment are often trained, and can be found teaching in, humanities departments such as history or art history. Equally often, however, they teach students pursuing a range of professional degrees—from city planning to architecture, public policy, education, and public health (among others). In this roundtable, a range of scholars who teach history in professional schools will reflect upon their experiences. In particular, they will consider the routes to arriving at such faculty positions, pedagogical decisions they have made in the classroom, the impact of a professional school setting upon their own research, and take-aways beyond the professional school classroom alone. Please join us if you are interested in learning more and joining the conversation!

Speakers:

Merlin Chowkwanyun, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University

Claire Dunning, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland

Ansley Erickson, Teachers College, Columbia University

Matthew Lasner, Architecture Division, California College of the Arts

Katie Marages, College of Environment + Design, University of Georgia

Moderator:

Francesca Russello Ammon, Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania

Mediapolis: A Journal of Cities and Culture is organizing a dossier on “Media and Urban Automobility” for their September 2023 issue. 

Mediapolis is an interdisciplinary online journal that publishes scholarship from a range of academic fields addressing the complex and mutually constitutive relationship between media and the city. 

For a full description and submission details, see here. 

Deadline: June 1, 2023

The Virginia Museum of History & Culture’s (VMCH) inaugural public history symposium will take place on November 4, 2024. We welcome presentations, panels, and posters from public and academic historians alike that address the theme of “discovery” in Virginia history.

Presentations can relate to either:

1. historic discoveries made in Virginia or by Virginians

2. research that represents pioneering storytelling in Virginia history

Our symposium is an opportunity for historians to share their work in a supportive, public-centric environment that values accessibility and engaging storytelling. The VMHC looks forward to welcoming you to share new perspectives on the unparalleled history of Virginia.

For full detail on the event and submitting a proposal, see here. 

Deadline: April 14, 2023 

Chicago’s 2023 Mayoral Race: Reclaiming Harold Washington’s Multiracial Coalition

MON MAR 27, 5:30 pm CDT

This will be online via Zoom and will feature Gordon Mantler, who has a new book titled The Multiracial Promise: Harold Washington’s Chicago and the Democratic Struggle in Reagan’s America, along with Jakobi Williams (IU), author of From the Bullet to the Ballot: The Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party and Racial Coalition Politics in Chicago, and Lilia Fernández, discussing Chicago's multiracial coalitional history and the upcoming election. Democracy Now! co-host Juan Gonzalez will be moderating.

This event is co-hosted by UIC's History Department and the Great Cities Institute. They ask that you register in advance here to get the Zoom link: https://greatcities.uic.edu/event/reclaiming-harold-washingtons-multiracial-coalition/

The European Association for Urban History (EAUH) invites session proposals for its sixteenth international interdisciplinary conference, which will take place from 4 to 7 September 2024 in Ostrava (Czech Republic) and follows the successful EAUH 2022 conference in Antwerp.

The main theme is Cities at the Boundaries, but the conference will be also open to other topics and research aspects in the field of urban history.

The Call for Sessions runs from January 5 to March 15, 2023. You can register at https://eauh2024ostrava.osu.eu/call-for-sessions/ where you can find the form and registration instructions.

All further information is available on the website https://eauh2024ostrava.osu.eu/.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact eauh2024@osu.cz.

 

ABOUT THE CONFERENCE:

MOSEC 2023 or Modernization by the State and its Ecological Consequences Conference 2023 is an interdisciplinary online conference for the environmentally focused humanities and social sciences, organized by the Center for Economic and Social History, University of Ostrava, Czechia. MOSEC 2023 aims to explore, discuss and disseminate new cross-disciplinary scientific knowledge about the global environmental crisis with a particular focus on the role of the state and state institutions.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:

BART ELMORE, Associate professor of Environmental History at the Ohio State University. Author of the praised Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism and Seed Money: Monsanto’s Past and Our Food Future. Recipient of the Dan David Prize in 2022. 

ZSUZSA GILLE, Professor of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Prize winning author of the highly influential From the Cult of Waste to the Trash Heap of History most recently co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Waste Studies.

ANNUAL CONFERENCE THEME: “THE STATE AND PLANETARY BOUNDARIES”

Anthropogenic forces have reduced ecosystem resilience by decreasing biodiversity, altering the physico-chemical environment via climate change, pollution, and land clearance. Today, the global environmental crisis is the single most important challenge humanity faces. Regarding sustainable development, the sovereign nation-state has been the most important actor and stakeholder. Essential part of state sovereignty is the ownership of resources, which often have been sources of conflict and violence, as well as ecological degradation.

Critics of the modern state pointed out that the ecological impact of bureaucratic regimes has been substantially contributing to the worsening of the global environmental crisis. Modern states organized their societies according to the technocratic principles of “high modernism” and have failed to take local knowledge into account thus amplifying the forces of ecological homogenization and uniformity.

In 2023, the Center for Economic and Social History at the University of Ostrava cordially invites contributions from all social sciences and humanities disciplines as well as adjacent scientific fields to explore, discuss and disseminate new cross-disciplinary scientific knowledge about the global environmental crisis with a particular focus on the role of the state and state institutions.

MOSEC 2023 welcomes papers with all geographical-, and thematic focuses.

Recommended themes, however include to explore and reflect on the role of the state with regard to climate change, biodiversity loss, resource-, and energy scarcity, toxic emissions, environmental diseases, marine pollution, urban congestion, and sustainability from the perspective of human values, stories, qualitative reasoning, case studies, and traditional-, and sensory knowledge.

Individual paper proposals should consist of 300-word abstracts accompanied with brief, approximately 50-word long bios of the contributor.  

Complete panel proposals consisting of three to four papers should consist of a 500-word panel-abstracts which include the overall themes of the panel and papers presented as well as brief, approximately 50-word long bios of all contributors.

Roundtables, posters and unconventional formats are also welcome. For details please contact organizers.

All proposals should be sent by 31 March 2023 to organizers at cesh@osu.cz

REGISTRATION INFORMATION FOR ACCEPTED PRESENTATIONS:

50 EUR/ 1250 CZK (regular registration fee*)

40 EUR/ 1000 CZK (discounted registration fee**)

90 EUR/ 2250 CZK (solidarity registration fee***)

Free participation (limited availability****)

*Full registration fee: participants with income above 1,000 euros a month

**Discounted registration fee: available for participants with income below 1,000 euros a month

*** Solidarity registration fee: participants with income above 3,000 euros a month. Paying a solidarity fee enables the participation of another scholar from the Global South and Ukraine (recommended to scholars based in United States, Canada, UK, Norway, Iceland, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as selected EU countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Sweden.)

****Free participation: University of Ostrava employees and students, limited number of selected participants from war zones and the Global South. 

The UHA is seeking a secretary to serve approximately 1-2 hours per week between May and September and 2-3 hours between October and April for a term of 5 years. Among the secretary's responsibilities are circulating announcements and reminders for scheduled meetings and maintaining the UHA meeting calendar. The secretary also takes minutes and ensures all meeting minutes are formatted, stored, and distributed in compliance with best practices and legal requirements for non-profits. If you are interested, have questions, or would like to make a recommendation, contact Ally Moralez amoralez@urbanhistory.org