New York Almanack

History, Natural History & the Arts

CFP: Farmingdale State College ‘Borders’ Conference

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The intriguing concept of borders involves discussions of identity, nationality, ethnicity, hybridity, and community. The Liberal Arts and Sciences Department at Farmingdale State College/ SUNY announces a one-day interdisciplinary conference exploring the nature of borders on October 16, 2010 on its campus.

Organizers are especially interested in papers exploring “self” and the “other,” imagined geographic communities, the ways in which border communities police, shun, or integrate “outsider” influences, cultural creolisms, the borders between scientific facts and science fiction, the boundaries between literary fiction and memoir, the fluid political, economic, and cultural borders in the contemporary world, technology’s role in building up or tearing down borders, and in presentations which focus on the voices of those living in these liminal spaces.

They are also interested in the ongoing dissolution of institutional and structural borders in academia. The natural sciences and mathematics now merge at “fuzzy borders,” while the humanities and social sciences are merging through the proliferation of interdisciplinary programs. The borders surrounding higher education itself are being impacted by the changing role of higher education in society. Who defines our borders?

These are just some of the areas that we hope the conference will address.
To participate send a 500 word abstract or proposal by May 3, 2010 to: Dr. Tony Giffone
giffonaj@farmingdale.edu

John Brown Symposium, Reenactment, Memorial

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A tremendous slate of events has been planned for the Lake Placid-North Eba area to commemorate the life and death of abolitionist John Brown. Dubbed the “John Brown Coming Home Commemoration,” held from November 4th to December 8th, 2009, the series of events will examine John Brown’s impact on the country leading up to the civil war, the use of violence, and on the ongoing efforts to end slavery and human rights abuses in this country and worldwide; and reenactments of his cortege home, body lying in state at the Essex County Courthouse, burial at his farm, and the memorial service. [Read more…] about John Brown Symposium, Reenactment, Memorial

New York And The American Jewish Experience

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The Milstein Conference on New York And The American Jewish Experience is a one day public conference celebrating history of Jewish life in New York, achievements of Jewish communal organizations, treasures of Jewish archives. Morning Sessions feature presentation on Jewish organizational archives and a roundtable discussion by Jewish agency leaders. Afternoon focuses on papers by scholars on a wide range of political, social and cultural issues and the evening session features a discussion by New York area archivists to discuss the rich resources found in New York and how to preserve them for the future.

Funded by the Milstein Family Foundation and the Howard and Abby Milstein Foundation. Organized by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in partnership with the 92nd Street Y, the Educational Alliance, F·E·G·S Health and Human Service System, NYANA and Surprise Lake Camp. Archival repositories participating: Archives of American Jewish Committee, Hadassah, HIAS, JDC, Yeshiva University and YIVO. DATE: Monday, November 2, 2009. 9:30 to 7:30 pm. Place: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 15 West 16th Street, NY.

Full details about the conference are available at www.yivo.org

ADVANCE REGISTRATON REQUIRED: RSVP: milsteinconference@yivo.cjh.org or call 212-294-6157.

Cities in Revolt: The Dutch-American Atlantic Conference

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Deutsches Haus at Columbia University (420 W. 116th St., New York City) will be the location for “Cities in Revolt: The Dutch-American Atlantic, ca. 1650-1815,” a conference on the relationships between the Netherlands and (mostly North) America in the long eighteenth century, that will take place November 13th and 14th, 2009. The main conference goals are 1) to create a scholarly discussion about Dutch-American interconnections in the eighteenth century and 2) help the general public gain a fuller picture of an understudied period in Dutch-American relations. Most of the conference will consist of panels of three presenters each, a comment, and time for discussion at the end.

The conference speakers and schedule is below, but more info about the conference is also available here.

Seventeenth-Century Histories, Eighteenth-Century Memories
Nov 13, 9:30-11:30
Chair: Karen Kupperman (NYU)

– Virginie Adane (EHESS): The Evolution of a New Netherland Narrative:
The Penelope Stout Story, 17th-19th Centuries

– Paul Finkelman (Albany Law): Jews and Other Minorities in New
Netherland and Early New York: The Beginning of Religious Freedom in
America

– Martine van Ittersum (U. Dundee): Filial Piety versus Republican
Liberty? The Cornets de Groot Family in Rotterdam and the Legacy of
Hugo Grotius, 1748-1798

Comment: Evan Haefeli (Columbia)

American Political Events in Dutch Atlantic Perspective
Nov 13, 1:30-3:30
Chair: Hans Krabbendam (Roosevelt Study Ctr.)

– Michiel van Groesen (U. A’dam): New Netherland vs. New York:
Contested Representations of a Colony, 1664-1673

– Megan Lindsay (Yale): Leislerian and Anti-Leislerian Political
Ideologies in an Atlantic Context

– Benjamin L. Carp (Tufts): Did Dutch Smugglers Provoke the Boston Tea
Party?

Comment: Ned Landsman (Stony Brook)

Keynote Address
Nov 13, 4:00-5:30
Jonathan Israel (Institute for Advanced Study):

The Dutch Cities, Radical Enlightenment and the ‘General Revolution,’
1776-1790

Reception to follow in honor of the publication of Four-Centuries of
Dutch-American Relations (SUNY Press)

War, Trade and Politics in the Dutch-American Atlantic
Nov 14, 10:00-12:00
Chair: Herb Sloan (Barnard)

– Christian Koot (Towson): Looking Beyond Sugar: Dutch Trade,
Barbados, and the Making of the English Empire

– Thomas Truxes (Trinity College): Dutch-Irish Cooperation in the Mid-
Eighteenth-Century Wartime Atlantic

– Victor Enthoven (Netherlands Defense Academy / Free U. A’dam): St.
Eustatius: The Rise and Fall of an Emporium

Comment: Jaap Jacobs

Dutch and American Republicanisms
Nov 14, 1:30-3:30
Chair: Evan Haefeli (Columbia)

– Wyger Velema (U. A’dam): The Reception of Classical Sources in Dutch
and American Republicanism

– Arthur Weststeijn (European U. Inst.): The American Fortunes of the
Dutch Republican Model: De la Court, Oglethorpe and Madison

– Joris Oddens (U. A’dam): No Extended Sphere: Gerhard Dumbar and the
Batavian Understanding of the American Constitution

Comment: Andrew Shankman (Rutgers-Camden)

Travelers and Friends in the Age of Revolution
Nov 14, 4:00-6:00

– Annie Jourdan (U. A’dam): Théophile Cazenove, Jacques-Pierre
Brissot, and Joel Barlow: Three Transatlantic Actors in a
Revolutionary Era

– Nathan Perl-Rosenthal (Columbia): Revolutionary Epistolarity: J.D.
van der Capellen and Samuel Adams

– Joost Rosendaal (Nijmegen): A Dutch Revolutionary Refugee in the
United States: Francis Adrien van der Kemp and his Circle

Comment: Cathy Matson (U. Delaware / PEAES)

NYS Conference on Preserving Historic Barns

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The New York State Barn Coalition and Historic Ithaca will present the 12th Annual Conference on the Preservation of Historic Barns on October 24. This conference, open to anyone with an interest in historic barns and their preservation, will be held at Ithaca Foreign Car Service, 501 West State Street. Built in 2006, this new timber frame building houses an auto shop in the heart of downtown Ithaca. For his contribution of this extraordinary building to the downtown streetscape, owner Dave Brumsted is the recipient of a 2007 Pride of Ownership award from the City of Ithaca.

A copy of the conference agenda is online via pdf. Late registration deadline is 12pm tomorrow October 22; the cost for the conference is $40. Contact Kristen Olson at (607)273-6633 to confirm that space is still available.

New Perspectives on African American History and Culture

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The Fourth Annual New Perspectives on African American History and Culture Conference will be held at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill on February 26-27, 2010. Presented by the Triangle African American History Colloquium, the Conference Committee invites proposals for single papers or complete session panels from faculty and graduate students related to power and place in African American history across a range of time periods and areas. The Conference seeks to address the question: “How does location enhance, circumscribe, or otherwise shape power and power relations among individuals, groups, or organizations?” Location can be broadly defined as geography or status and could include specific communal, imperial, colonial, or national contexts.

Topics of exploration on power and place in the black historical experience might include: migration patterns across time and place, comparative models of Afro-Caribbean and North American slave resistance, rural and urban manifestations of black religion, gender and power in African American communities, modes of education in black-operated schools, the role of regionalism in black music, sexuality and power in black popular culture, urban black political ideology, transnational struggles for civil/labor rights, and black power on the international stage. Papers on a variety of other related topics that adhere to the conference theme are welcome.

Deadline: The deadline for proposals is Friday, November 13, 2009. Respond via email to rhfergus@email.unc.edu with your name, institution, title, email address, proposed paper title, a 150 word abstract, and curriculum vitae. Please put “Conference Proposal” in your subject line. The conference paper itself should have a historical focus and be a maximum of ten pages in length, not including endnotes and/or bibliography. Presentations will be limited to twenty minutes, inclusive of any time needed for audio-visual setup. Eligibility: Faculty and graduate students.

Contact Information:

Robert H. Ferguson
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of History
University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill
rhfergus@email.unc.edu

Photo: April 1943. Washington, D.C. “Pin boy at a bowling alley.” Nitrate negative by Esther Bubley for the Office of War Information.

Symposium: Early Transportation in The Mohawk Valley

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The 2009 Western Frontier Symposium, “Moving Frontiers: Early Transportation in the Mohawk Valley,” will be held this weekend, October 17 – 18, 2009, at Fulton Montgomery Community College in Johnstown. This year’s symposium will explore the ways that transportation changed the culture, economy and social life in the Mohawk Valley from 1700 to 1890. As turnpikes, canals and railroads made it easier to move people and goods, New York¹s colonial frontier became the central corridor into America’s midlands.

The events keynote speaker will be Daniel Larkin, noted author of books on railroad and canal engineering, and editor of Erie Canal: New York’s Gift to The Nation. He will talk about the central role of Mohawk Valley transportation and technologies in shaping the New York State we know today.

Other symposium scholars will present fascinating insights into various aspects of the region’s transportation history – from native American trails and early canals, through the glory days of the Erie Canal and into the railroad age and the first bicycle craze.

Participants can learn about early roads, the businesses that served merchants and travelers, and the impact of these movements on the Palatine and Dutch settlements of the Mohawk Valley and then spend a day at historic sites throughout the region, viewing special exhibits related to transportation history and discussing specific topics with additional speakers in the field.

All presentations are free and open to the public, thanks to the generosity of the New York Council for the Humanities a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities

Tickets for Special Events & Packages are available for a fee. (Pre-registration required.)

The event is sponsored by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, Fulton-Montgomery Community College, NYS Archives Partnership Trust, Mohawk Valley Heritage Corridor Commission, Arkell Museum at Canajoharie, Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor & related Mohawk Valley historic sites

For additional details visit the website: www.oldfortjohnson.org/symposium.html

CFP: Berkshire Conference of Women Historians

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The Berkshire Conference of Women Historians is holding its next conference at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst on June 9-12, 2011. 2011 marks the 15th Berkshire Conference on Women’s History and the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, which was first celebrated in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland and is now honored by more than sixty countries around the globe. The choice of “Generations” reflects this transnational intellectual, political, and organizational heritage as well as a desire to explore related questions such as:

* How have women’s generative experiences – from production and reproduction to creativity and alliance building – varied across time and space? How have these been appropriated and represented by contemporaries and scholars alike?

* What are the politics of “generation”? Who is encouraged? Who is condemned or discouraged? How has this changed over time?

* Is a global perspective compatible with generational (in the genealogical sense) approaches to the past that tend to reinscribe national/regional/racial boundaries?

* What challenges do historians of women, gender, and sexuality face as these fields and their practitioners mature?

To engender further, open-ended engagement with these and other issues, the 2011 conference will include workshops dedicated to discussing precirculated papers on questions and problems (epistemological, methodological, substantive) provoked by the notion of “Generations.”

The process for submitting and vetting papers and panels has changed substantially from previous years, so please read the instructions carefully. To encourage transnational discussions, panels will be principally organized along thematic rather than national lines and therefore proposals will be vetted by a transnational group of scholars with expertise in a particular thematic, rather than geographic, field.

All proposals must be directed to ONE of the following subcommittees (listed below) and should be submitted electronically. Please list a second choice for the subcommittee to vet your proposal but do not submit to more than one subcommittee. Instructions for submission will be posted on the Berkshire Conference website (www.berksconference.org) by November 1, 2009.

Preference will be given to discussions of any topic across national boundaries and to work that addresses sexuality, race, and labor in any context, with special consideration for pre-modern (ancient, medieval, early modern) periods. However, unattached papers and proposals that fall within a single nation/region will also be given full consideration.

As a forum dedicated to encouraging innovative, interdisciplinary scholarship and transnational conversation, the Berkshire conference continues to encourage submissions from graduate students, international scholars, independent scholars, filmmakers, and to welcome a variety of disciplinary perspectives.

Paper abstracts should be no longer than 250 words; panel (2-3 papers and a comment), roundtable (3 or more short papers) and workshop (1-2 precirculated papers) proposals should also include a summary abstract of no more than 500 words. Each submission must include the cover form and a short cv for each presenter. If you have questions about the most appropriate subcommittee for your proposal or problems with electronic submission, please direct them to Jennifer Spear (jms25@sfu.ca).

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION: March 1, 2010.

SUBCOMMITTEES:

* Beauty and the Body, Stephanie Camp
* Migrations: Race, Gender and Activism, Annelise Orleck
* Economies, Labors, and Consumption, Tracey Deutsch
* War, Violence, and Terror, Madhavi Kale
* Youth and Aging, Jennifer Spear
* Race in Global Perspective, Marilyn Lake
* Health and Medicine, Julie Livingston
* Sexuality, Kathy Brown
* Religion: Belief, Practice, Communities, Madhavi Kale
* Politics and the State, Margot Canaday

CFP: Conference on New York State History

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The Conference on New York State History will be held in the Ithaca on June 3—5, 2010. The conference is an annual meeting of academic and public historians, librarians and archivists, educators, publishers, and other interested individuals who come together to discuss topics and issues related to the people of New York State in historical perspective and to share information and ideas regarding historical research, programming, and the networking of resources and services. Ten to fifteen presentation sessions, workshops, and a keynote address mean more than fifty individuals take part in the program. The conference is self-sustaining and is organized by a committee of historians from a variety of institutions across the state. [Read more…] about CFP: Conference on New York State History

NYS’s Museums in Conversation: What Inspires You?

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The Upstate History Alliance and the Museum Association of New York are sponsoring “New York State’s Museums in Conversation: What Inspires You?” a three-day conference April 11-13, 2010 at the Albany Marriott, Wolf Road, in Albany. The event organizers seeks discussion proposals that focus on what inspires you about the work of others, be they museums, libraries, nature centers or parks, small or big businesses. What have you seen that’s been so great, so innovative, so enterprising, so adaptable, and so fun that you want to talk about it with your colleagues?

Proposals are welcome from a wide range of institutions and practitioners, within and outside the museum community, to encourage lively discussions that offer new perspectives on museum work and create new connections to each other.

Submitting a Proposal

The deadline for submitting a proposal is November 2, 2009. Proposals must be submitted electronically, as an email attachment to stephanie@upstatehistory.org

Visit www.upstatehistory.org to download the proposal form and for more information. The program committee will review proposals and decisions will be made by mid-November.

If you have any questions or are looking for assistance with developing a proposal, contact UHA Program Coordinator, Stephanie Lehner, at 800.895.1648 stephanie@upstatehistory.org or MANY Director Anne Ackerson at 518.273.3400 info@manyonline.org