William and Mary Quarterly-EMSI Workshop:

“Grounded Histories: Land, Landscape, and Environment in Early North
America"

Call for Proposals

Deadline: October 15, 2009


The Omohundro Institute and the University of Southern California-Huntington Library Early Modern Studies Institute are pleased to announce the fifth in a series of William and Mary Quarterly-EMSI workshops designed to identify and encourage new trends in understanding the history and culture of early North America.

Participants will attend a two-day meeting at the Huntington Library and USC (May 28-29, 2010) to discuss a precirculated chapter-length portion of their current work in progress along with the work of other participants,
as well as directions that might be taken in writing the history of early North America. Subsequently, the convener will write an essay elaborating on the issues raised in the workshop for publication in the William and
Mary Quarterly. The convener of this year's workshop is Karen Halttunen of the University of Southern California. In recent years, the critique of nation-state history has led early American historians to push the
boundaries of their field in ever-widening spatial directions, from the Atlantic world toward imperial,   continental, and hemispheric frameworks. At the same time, closer scholarly attention to land, landscape, and environment-the ground beneath the feet of colonists and native Americans-has remained relatively marginal to the field. This workshop will focus on grounded histories of land, landscape, and environment in early North America, with special attention to the interdependence of natural and human histories. We invite the  participation of scholars from such fields as environmental history and ethnography, cultural geography and archaeology, literature and art history. Possible topics include agriculture and resource extraction, climate and natural disasters, landscape formation and land "improvement," place naming and cartography, intellectual pursuits of natural history and indigenous knowledge, naturewriting and landscape representations, and aesthetic, religious, and philosophical ideas about land and nature. Central premises shaping allthe papers should be the interdependence of human histories and naturalhistories in early North America and the importance of placing a moregrounded understanding of land, landscape, and environment at the center of early American history.
Proposals for workshop presentations should include a brief abstract (250words) describing the applicant's current research project, an equallybrief discussion of the particular methodological or historiographical issues they are engaging (which will be circulated to all participants along with the chapter or essay), and a short c.v. The organizers especially encourage proposals from midcareer scholars.
 
Proposals may be submitted online at the conference Web site http://oieahc.wm.edu/conferences/workshops/cfp/index.cfm

or by email attachment to Kelly Crawford (kscraw@wm.edu)
by October 15, 2009.
All submissions will be acknowledged by email.
Questions may be directed to Christopher Grasso, Editor, William and Mary
Quarterly, at cdgras@wm.edu.

The workshop will cover travel and lodging costs for participants.