Call for Papers for PAHA's 77th Annual Meeting in New York, Due by 15 April 2019

PAHA’s 77th Annual Meeting will be held in New York as part of the 134th yearly meeting of the American Historical Association from January 3–6, 2020.


This year AHA announced no theme for the incoming conference. As explained in the general CFP:


Next year, as every year, the program committee will welcome all proposals and not consider relevance to a theme. For the first time since 2003, no historian will needlessly try to package a proposal to appear to fit a theme. Let a hundred flowers bloom.


https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/october-2018/no-theme-for-the-2020-annual-meeting


Having in mind this encouragement to let a hundred flowers bloom as an invitation to embrace the richness of ideas and proposals that may come from our colleagues, we would like to nevertheless suggest that the incoming PAHA conference reflect on the three most recent anniversaries, the 100th anniversary of Poland regaining independence, the centennial of Polish women gaining voting rights, and PAHA’s 75th anniversary.

We celebrated all three anniversaries only last year, and, we hope, that all three can keep pushing us to reflect on our past, the past failures and accomplishments, but also the path that we may embark upon in the future. We hence propose that the conference offers a chance to reflect on what it means to be Polish and Polish-American and how the past can guide our discussions on these question in the changing landscape of the 21st century.


We invite scholars who study the Polish-American communities or the greater Polish diaspora as well as those who deal with migration, ethnic, and regional studies and would like to join discussions related (but not limited) to the following topics:


• Polish-Americans and the restoration of Poland’s independence, 1918
• Polish-Americans and their contribution to the civic, institutional, and political life of the U.S.
• Intersections of ethnicity, class, gender, and race
• The changing understanding of the ethnic heritage
• Identity politics and the role of migrations in the past and contemporary world
• Immigration to the USA and state building in Poland and in the United States
• Transatlantic migrations to the Americas and state building in Poland and migrant communities in North and South America
• Heritage, legacy, and a new understanding of the role that ethnicities play in the modern world
• Polish Americans vs. other ethnic groups in a comparative perspective on both American continents and in Europe
• Responses to Polish transatlantic migrations in Europe, also in a comparative perspective


We invite proposals for sessions as well as individual papers related to all aspects of the Polish-American experience (in history, sociology, literature, art, music, etc.) on both American continents. We are committed to putting together well-researched and argued proposals in panels consisting of 3 participants. For the first time, PAHA is trying to implement commentators for each (or almost each) session.


Individual participants should include the following information when submitting a proposal:
- Paper title(s) and short abstracts (of no more than 300 words)
- Biographical paragraph (up to 250 words)
- Please indicate if you are willing to serve as a chair and/or a discussant for a session
- Also, note if you need A/V.


Session organizers should include the following information when submitting a panel proposal and session organizers:
- Paper/Session abstract(s) (up to 300/500 words)
- E-mail address for each participant
- Biographical paragraph (up to 250 words) for each participant
- Chair and commentator for the session
- Also, note if you need A/V.


Please be advised that it is not always possible for PAHA to provide A/V equipment for all sessions due to the high mandatory rental fee from AHA. Most likely we will try to gather all presentations that require A/V equipment in one day. It is therefore important for the presenters to indicate their need for A/V when submitting their proposal.


All presenters are encouraged to consider submission of their papers for publication in PAHA's peer-reviewed journal, Polish American Studies:
http://polishamericanstudies.org/text/13/polish-american-studies.html.


The deadline for submissions is April 15, 2019. Abstracts for papers and panel proposals are now being accepted and should be submitted to Anna Muller at anmuller@umich.edu.