Also, I intend to “tweet” details from each session I attend.  You can follow my feed here and see all of the archived tweets about the AHA (using the designated hashtag of #AHA2010) at TwapperKeeper. If you’d like to meetup during the conference happenings, please drop a comment here or send an email to remyjATucidotedu.

Thursday
3:00 PM-5:00 PM

• Misbehaving Women: Sex Radicals and Nonconformists Who Made U.S. History

• Is Google Good for History?

• Connecting the American West: Constructing American-Pacific, Borderlands, and Cascadian Imaginaries

• Rethinking American Disability Movement History

Friday
9:30 AM-11:30 AM

• Multiple and Intimate Wests: Conquest in the Everyday Lives of Southwestern Women

• Humanities in the Digital Age, Part 1: Humanities in the Digital Age, Part 1: Digital Poster Session

2:30 PM-4:30 PM

• Polynesian Experimental Canoe Voyaging and Revival

Saturday
9:00 AM-11:00 AM

• The Art of the Article: Advice on Publishing in Journals in the Twenty-First Century

11:30 AM-1:30 PM

• Becoming Helen Keller: Perspectives and Experiences Integrating Disability into U.S. Survey, Higher Education, and Secondary School Coursework

• Collaborative Historical Research and Funding

2:30 PM-4:30 PM

• Reclaiming the Disabled Subject in Historical Research and Representation

• Four New England Towns Turn Forty: A Portrait of the New Social History in Middle Age

8:00 PM-10:00 PM

• Marriage on Trial: Historians and Lawyers in Same-Sex Marriage Cases

Sunday
8:30 AM-10:30 AM

• Mormonism and National Politics

• Thinking about Race, Sexuality, and Marriage: A Roundtable on Peggy Pascoe’s What Comes Naturally

• Americanists Reconsider the Pacific

11:00 AM-1:00 PM

• Americans’ Pacific in the Age of Melville: Labor, Race, Slavery

• Whither the History of the Emotions?

The Past’s Digital Presence: Database, Archive, and Knowledge Work in the Humanities
February 19-20
Yale University

Full Conference Program Available Here

How is digital technology changing methods of scholarly research with pre-digital sources in the humanities? If the “medium is the message,” then how does the message change when primary sources are translated into digital media? What kinds of new research opportunities do databases unlock and what do they make obsolete? What is the future of the rare book and manuscript library and its use? What biases are inherent in the widespread use of digitized material? How can we correct for them? Amidst numerous benefits in accessibility, cost, and convenience, what concerns have been overlooked? Graduate students from around the globe will address how databases and other digital technologies are making an impact on our research in the humanities during this interdisciplinary symposium.

Keynote Speaker: Peter Stallybrass, Walter H. and Leonore C. Annenberg Professor in the Humanities, University of Pennsylvania

Colloquium Speaker: Jacqueline Goldsby, Associate Professor, University of Chicago

Closing Roundtable:
Rolena Adorno, Reuben Post Halleck Professor of Spanish, Yale University
Edward Ayers, President, University of Richmond
Willard McCarty, Professor of Humanities Computing, King’s College London
George Miles, Curator, Western Americana Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

For the latest updates on conference happenings, follow PDP2010 on twitter.

1) Travel money: Yes, the reality is in the current economic climate, many of our universities have very little, if any, money allotted for conference travel.  Everyone from my UC Irvine cohort paid for the PCB-AHA out of their own pocket, opting for the cheapest of travel options (train or discount flights because few of us have cars that work well enough to travel the desert in mid-summer) and then sleeping two to a bed to offset the pricey conference hotel rooms.  The most frugal of us also brought along homemade sandwiches to defray meal expenses.

2) Banquet registration:  None of my fellow grad students were able to afford the banquet options at the conference.  Perhaps a system to ‘sponsor a grad student’ at the banquets would be helpful, as I suspect that many of us lost networking opportunities by not being able to attend. I could imagine a scenario where a senior-level faculty member would not only pay for the meal of a grad student, but also take said student under their wing at the meal and introduce him/her to other faculty members in their field.

3) Facilitating pre-conference collaboration for carpooling & room-sharing: A listserv or FaceBook group for grad students looking to share costs for travel to a conference would not only make the conference less pricey for student attendees, but could also foster other pre-conference collaborations, which leads me to point #4…

4) Fostering informal  ‘unconference’-style student forums:  One thing that I’ve learned from my work on the MHpodcast is that there are numerous graduate student concerns that could be benefit from cross-campus conversations.  This booklet from the AHA is one attempt at addressing the needs of graduate students.  However, facilitating focus groups at conferences would be even more helpful than a pamphlet in addressing specific grad student concerns.  This could be organized in an ‘un-conference’ manner either by having students form interest groups prior to the conference through FaceBook or via an informal brainstorming session at the beginning of the conference.  With either method, grads could propose groups based on their subfields of history or on topics related to the graduate experience (such as applying for external funding, using Zotero, dissertation writing, balancing parenting with academia, etc).  Conference organizers could support the topic groups by setting aside a room for group meetings–perhaps a lounge or a room with a roundtable setting. These meetings would also fit nicely into mealtimes, so if a grad student discount could be arranged at the hotel restaurant or bar, that would be helpful (in my experience, the high cost of eating at the hotel venue typically prevents students from doing so).

In compiling this list, I should say that none of these suggestions are, in any way, meant as a critique of my PCB-AHA experience. This conference has the well-deserved reputation of being an accessible and friendly venue for graduate student participation. I am certainly grateful for the support and collegiality that I experienced while presenting my paper and attending various conference sessions and I’m already looking forward to next year’s event.

Scholarly society meetings have a routine. Even without looking at the program, you know what to expect. The attractions of camaraderie, connection with colleagues, and a smattering of provocative new papers outweigh the formality of panels and predictable plenary sessions. Last week’s biennial meeting of the SAHS defied old stereotypes and exceeded conventional expectations. The constellation of individuals, institutional presence, and publications showcased innovative scholarship, new initiatives, provocative thinking, and commitment to making historical research relevant in both public and academic contexts.

SAHS President Jane Carruthers pours libations for the ancestors at the first conference dinner. Clive Glaser looks on.

Formal remarks and casual conversations emphasized the symbolic and practical importance of renaming the group the Southern African Historical Society, signaling ongoing attempts to re-situate South Africa in the region—and by implication in the wider world.

The meeting, hosted by UNISA in Pretoria, ended a week ago, and my agenda since then has been crammed with new research, lots of meetings, and learning to navigate Johannesburg. And yet, I’m still thinking about this meeting, and how inspirational it was. I was motivated by coming into contact with energy, dynamism and renewed commitment to studying a wide range of issues that illuminate the Southern African past.

Although I encountered familiar faces, this was not the SAHS meeting of years past. There were many new participants: post-graduate students working at honors, masters, and PhD levels in Southern Africa, the UK, and the US. There were also presenters from Zimbabwe, Botswana, the UK, Canada, and the US, as well as more South Africans of color—students and faculty—than I remember from previous years.

It’s impossible to summarize the contents of a full program that ran three parallel panels per session; one person will always miss more papers than one can take in. But given conversations that I heard in several specialized panels, it seems that the plenary roundtable on “Interrogating the Archive: Problems and Possibilities,” resonated across thematic, spatial, and temporal boundaries, prompting conversations that will continue beyond the conference, into new research and new popular/political initiatives. At least one can hope.

The people of Southern Africa are creating change faster than many observers can register the ongoing transformations and digest their importance. Consequently, ensuring the preservation of records, cataloging what’s available, and securing transparent access for scholars and members of the public remains incredibly important, as is ongoing discussion of the multiplicity and centrality of “archives” to public life.

To that end, the on-line Archives Platform launched by Harriet Deacon on server space at the University of Cape Town should prove invaluable for local heritage activists, scholars in the region, and scholars from further afield who are interested in aspects of African studies and/or the changing terrain of digital scholarship. If you’d like to subscribe to the Archives Platform newsletter, contact harriet at conjunction dot co dot za.

It was also heartening to see a plenary session devoted to Zotero. The possibilities of ground-up collaborations to create shared catalogs of archival records, digital resources, and essential reading lists bodes well for current students and scholars alike. It seems a particularly rich field for current graduate students, who can create intellectual collaborations regardless of location and without the need for travel to bridge the distance between the main training locations in South Africa, the UK, and the US.

Jane Carruthers re-instituted the practice of a presidential address; she used the opportunity to encourage academic historians to take a more active role in public debates about heritage and history in Southern Africa, saying, “History does not have sole rights on the past.” She also reflected on historiographical turning points—a clear reminder that we’re empowered to make our own histogriographical moments, and current political fluidity offers ample opportunities.

Keynote speaker William Beinart provoked conference delegates to think beyond the nationalist narratives that have predominated in South African history, drawing upon the practices of African history, social history, and environmental history to craft new narratives “from the ground up.”

Incoming SAHS President Julie Parle addresses the Society at the closing session.

Given the enthusiasm of conference delegates, the dedication to the profession and the Society in evidence among the new slate of officers and executive committee members, and an enlarged editorial team ready to make the most of the South African Historical Journal’s new on-line presence through Taylor & Francis, we all have a lot to look forward to during the two years until the next SAHS meeting.

This being my first AHA, I’ll be at many of the talks aimed at graduate students.  Also, I’ll be attending sessions that focus on writing and disability.  I’m told that anxiety levels can be pretty high here for those of us trying to make a good impression.  However, even as I’m trying to put my best foot forward, I’m reminding myself that this business of history-making should be fun, too.  So if you’ve got any speicifc advice for an AHA newbie–let me know!

The Promise and Pitfalls of Writing for Readers beyond the Academy
Friday, January 2, 2009: 3:30 PM-5:30 PM
Nassau Suite B (Hilton New York)

Chair:
Martha Hodes, New York University
Commentators:
Lewis H. Lapham, Lapham’s Quarterly and Jennifer Schuessler, New York Times
Deborah E. Harkness (The Jewel House), University of Southern California
Saidiya Hartman (Lose Your Mother: A Journey along the Atlantic Slave Route), Columbia University
Stephen A. Mihm (A Nation of Counterfeiters), University of Georgia

The Pleasures of the Imagination
Friday, January 2, 2009: 8:30 PM-10:30 PM
Trianon Ballroom (Hilton New York)

Chair:
Gabrielle Spiegel, Johns Hopkins University
Panelists:
Linda Colley, Princeton University
Natalie Zemon Davis, University of Toronto
John Demos, Yale University
Jane Kamensky, Brandeis University
Jill Lepore, Harvard University
Robert A. Rosenstone, California Institute of Technology
Jonathan D. Spence, Yale University

Oh….and grad students might want to check out the panel session where I’m speaking, too.