Proposed Paper Topics

Louisville, Kentucky

November 5 - 8, 2009

I am seeking co-panelists, a chair, and commentator on a session titled “The State of Freedom is the State of Self-Reliance” for the 2009 SHA Meeting in Louisville, Kentucky. Panel Description: Recent scholarship has emphasized internal conflict and internal diversity within the African American population, which reduced the likelihood for kinship, community, and nationalism. This session examines the emancipation and post-emancipation strategies of African Americans to create community. I am particularly interested in exploring the paradigm of community and the various concepts of community. In answering the question, how did the Reconstruction process inform the way in which African Americans created community? This session examines the labor, kinship, political aspirations, social development and community organization of African Americans in both a rural and urban context. My paper is titled “African American Self-Segregation and the Creation of Oppositional Community in Low Country, Georgia. It raises fundamental questions concerning African American freedom and the myriad ways they sought to achieve autonomy, power, and self-governance. Please email an abstract and CV as soon as possible.

I am seeking panelists, including commentators and/or a chairperson, whose work would complement two confirmed papers on the subject of surviving slavery in the Antebellum South. The key question this panel, provisionally entitled "Reconsidering Resistance: Agency, Survival and African American Enslavement," seeks to address is the extent to which the historiographical foregrounding of resistance has tended to place excessive emphasis on the concept of freedom as a primary motivator for enslaved behavior. This is not to suggest that freedom would not have been a significant dream, but rather to propose that for most enslaved men and women day to day life was surely occupied by more pressing matters, particularly avoiding being separated from one's loved ones by sale, or indeed even by freedom if such freedom came with the requirement that one left the state or were to be colonized. The aim, therefore, is to present a series of papers which offer alternative understandings of how the enslaved survived slavery without, necessarily, resisting it, at least if we are to understand resistance as an oppositional strategy which has the ultimate aim of either disrupting or ending enslavement.

Ben Schiller
Ph.D.

I am seeking a panelist for a proposed session at the 2009 SHA on the topic of Southerners who sought to interpret the South for the rest of the nation, particularly in the century following the Civil War. The session explores how white Southerners attempted to reintegrate their region into the national consciousness by translating and promoting the South throughout the country, from glorifying its past to highlighting its future, from noting its exceptional character to emphasizing its quintessential American-ness. The panel already includes a proposed paper on Thomas Dixon as a promoter of a distinct version of southern life and a proposed paper on the New York Southern Society as a venue for expatriate Southerners intent on translating their heritage to a new audience. If you are interested, please email me a 150-word topic proposal and a brief CV as soon as possible.

Sam Schaffer
Ph.D. Candidate

We are looking for a third panelist and commentator/chair for a panel on civil rights advocacy and activism prior to 1909. Sarah Silkey's paper--"The Same Rights and Privileges as Any American Citizen"--examines the trans-Atlantic component of Ida Wells-Barnett's anti-lynching crusade. My paper--"The Lost Promise of Collaboration"--examines Booker T. Washington's & W.E.B. Du Bois's (failed) collaborative effort to fight railroad segregation through the courts.

R. Volney Riser
Ph.D.