CFP 2019“Institutions and Interactions”Purdue HGSA 8th Biennial Graduate Student ConferenceMarch 2, 2019Purdue UniversityWest Lafayette, Indiana

The History Graduate Student Association (HGSA) at Purdue University welcomes individual paper and panel proposals for its eighth biennial graduate student conference, entitled, “Institutions and Interactions.” Papers from all levels of scholarship including advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and independent scholars will be considered. Whether involving interactions with other peoples or the environment around them, institutions have played a critical role in guiding human behavior. Institutions, formal or informal, purposefully created or organically developed, have shaped political, social, cultural, environmental, and economic interactions. Easily identifiable institutions, such as the apparatus of the “state,” as well as less visible institutions, such as friendship, provide unique opportunities for historical inquiry, by paying close attention to questions of power dynamics and the complex webs surrounding human action. Institutions have played an important role in shaping the contours of interactions between human and nonhuman actors and landscapes across diverse settings. As such, this theme invites a broad array of historical scholarship covering any historical topic in any region or time.

This year, our keynote speaker is Professor Jonathan Levy from the University of Chicago. Professor Levy is the author of Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America as well as numerous contributions to edited volumes on the history of philanthropy. His next book Ages of American Capitalism is a narrative history of economic life in North America from British Settlement to the great recession of 2008.

The HGSA will present the Douglas Hurt Award for best student paper at the luncheon.

Please submit either 1) an individual abstract of 300 words; or 2) a panel proposal including an overview of the panel along with an abstract for each paper.  Each participant must also include a CV.  Send all materials to purdueHGSA@gmail.com no later than Monday, December 3, 2018.