Proposed Paper Topics

New Orleans, Louisiana

October 9 - 12, 2007

Rednecks, Whores, and Deliquents: Southern Deviancy in the Twentieth Century" - a panel proposed for the SHA Meeting in New Orleans, October 9-12, 2008 is looking for a commentator and chair. Colin Chapell of the University of Alabama will present a paper exploring the ways in which newspaper advertisements used Southern rednecks as examples of social, and particularly sexual, degeneracy during the 1970s. Alyssa Honnette of Rice University will talk about identifying and treating female juvenile delinquency in Texas between 1914 and 1930. Prostitution and police corruption in Birmingham, Alabama in the 1940s and 50s will be discussed by Stephanie Chalifoux of the University of Alabama. Any interested persons should email me by 10 September 2007 with their vita.

I am searching for two panelists and a commentator for proposed panel entitled “Children in the First Person: Documents, Material Culture, and the Problem of Evidence in the Study of Young Southerners.” Here’s the panel description: In exploring the lives and experiences of children in the early American South, historians rarely hear from the historical actors themselves. Because young people left few of their own records, scholars depend more often than not on third-party sources—adult sources, in particular—to piece together a picture of childhood and youth in the past. But first-person records do exist: scribbles in school readers, pages in a copybook, letters to relatives, and objects fashioned by small hands to name a few examples. This panel will consider ways in which scholars can locate, interpret, and incorporate evidence produced by minors. How can children’s voices be teased out from sources? How should diaries and other juvenile writings be approached? What does “homework” reveal about the children themselves? What about material culture—things made by girls, boys, and adolescents? The problem of evidence in studying childhood and youth in the early South raises many questions which this panel will explore. Please send me a brief abstract (including title) of your proposed paper and a CV as soon as possible.

Nancy Zey
Sam Houston State University

I am in search of co-panelists, a chair, and a commentator on a session entitled "Race and Class in Louisiana's Ages of Capital and Emancipation." I plan to present a paper entitled "The Laboring Experience of New Orleans' Fruit Handling Dockworkers in Comparative Context," which will situate and analyze New Orleans' post-emancipation urban banana workforce with banana workers and farmers of Central America and the Caribbean. The session's potentially broad geographic and temporal coverage invites scholars from a wide array of U.S. fields (American Revolution and Early National Period, Antebellum, Civil War/Reconstruction, Twentieth Century), regional fields and thematic (the American South, the Caribbean, Louisiana, Latin America, African American, race, imperialism, immigration, white studies, etc.), specialists (agriculture, business, labor, economic historians), and other disciplines (geographers, sociologists, urban studies, area studies, and anthropology). Any suggestions, comments, or responses from other panel organizers are also welcome.

Gary T. Van Cott
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of History
Tulane University
6823 St. Charles Avenue
New Orleans, LA 70118
tel: (504) 865-2568
fax: (504) 862-8739

I am searching for two panelists for a proposed session at the 2008 SHA on the topic of Southerners involved in national politics. My own paper will examine the impact of Josephus Daniels, long-time Raleigh editor and southern Democrat, as Secretary of Navy during the administration of Woodrow Wilson. This paper could dovetail with work on Southerners who serve in the federal government, play a role in national politics, or in some way bring the South to the nation, regardless of era. If you are interested, please email me a 150-word topic proposal and brief CV as soon as possible. Thank you.

Sam Schaffer
Ph.D. Candidate
Yale University

I am looking for a third panelist for a session that explores expanding varieties of student political activism in the twentieth century. I will be presenting a paper on southern students in the 1940’s and 1950’s whose interest in international issues and human rights led to greater commitment to local racial equality. Kelly Morrow, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will present on the “sexual liberation movement” led by college students in the 1960s and 1970’s to develop new ethics of sexual responsibility, encourage acceptance of diverse sexual identities, and promote gender equality. This panel addresses various forms of college student activism that do not fit into the conventional narrative of the sixties “Movement.” It also addresses student struggles for greater academic freedom and resistance to traditional notions of in loco parentis. We seek a third panelist whose work highlights an under-explored aspect of student contributions to the “long civil rights movement.”

If you are interested, please send me a brief CV and an abstract of your proposed paper as soon as possible.

Erica Whittington
Ph.D. Candidate
University of Texas at Austin