The 20th Century Working Group is seeking papers for discussion for our first reading session. The group’s first meeting is scheduled for late September, 2013. A final date, time, and location will be announced at the end of August.

Our first session begins a standing, critical conversation among doctoral students about our respective research, our scholarly interests, and our broader orientation, as historians, toward contemporary political and social questions.

In the interest of encouraging participation and building the organization, we are casting a wide net. Here are the guidelines for submissions:

• We are seeking papers on a broad array of topics–anything that could be considered part of the “long twentieth century,” from the late 19th century to the present.

• We are seeking papers that focus on the social, broadly defined, with an eye to the economic, political, and cultural transformations of the “modern” era.

• There are no regional, national, or linguistic constraints on the subject; we welcome local study of anywhere, in the same way we encourage submissions that cross borders. Full disclosure: The membership of our network currently centers on students of modern U.S. history. We welcome and encourage membership and contributions from all other specialties centered on the “long twentieth century.”

• The paper should be a work in progress–that is, part of an ongoing research project, a chapter of a larger work, or a piece of scholarship aimed at developing a larger project.

• The paper should be 20-30 pages of text (roughly 10,000 words) or shorter.

 

TO SUBMIT: Please send an abstract of 2-3 paragraphs, along with a brief description of yourself and your research interests and objectives. Please send these submissions (just the absract for now, not the paper itself) as a word-compatible attachment to: 20thcentpapers@gmail.com

 

Members receiving abstracts for the first session include: Michelle Chen (History, Graduate Center of the City University of New York); Lindsey Dayton (History, Columbia University); Joel Feingold (History, Graduate Center of the City University of New York); Nick Juravich (History, Columbia University); Micki Kaufman (History, Graduate Center of the City University of New York).

 

Our plan is collect submissions, sort through them prior to the first meeting, and come up with a peer-led discussion / workshop format that will allow readers to exchange ideas, criticism, and general inquiries in a relaxed but rigorous conversational setting.

 

If you are interested in being a reader, as opposed to a presenter, please write 20thcentpapers@gmail.com indicating your interest and we’ll inform you of the scheduling details when they are finalized.

 

If you’re interested in helping to plan our work or if you’d like to join the group, please come to our final planning meeting:

 

Friday, August 30

3pm

Graduate Center, Room 5114

365 Fifth Avenue and 34th Street

 

This is an open-invitation meeting, to be followed by a celebration of the completion of the group’s planning phase. Please forward this call far and wide!