American History & Cultures Workshop
The University of Chicago | Department of History
About the Workshop
The American History & Cultures Workshop–formerly the U.S. History & Culture Workshop–meets at least bimonthly, serving as a space for attendees to critically engage with a variety of projects on pre- and post-1900 U.S. & Atlantic History and its diversity of cultures. As coordinators, we are committed to providing constructive and supportive feedback on works-in-progress and aspire to build collegiality across different disciplines and subfields.
While most presenters are graduate students from the Department of History, we also welcome participation from outside students and faculty, and we are inclusive of projects which are methodologically distinct from History with the aim of strengthening academic rigor and broadening historical perspectives through wider engagement with a plurality of disciplinary and subfield specialties. This brings interdisciplinary methods and theoretical frameworks to bear on diverse historical questions and problems, while remaining mindful of their legal and sociocultural resonances in the present-day. Further, we wish to facilitate engagement and feedback between early-, mid-, and late-career scholars so that graduate students may have more opportunities for professionalization and develop skillsets which make them become more successful job candidates.
The American History & Cultures Workshop departs slightly from the traditional format of discussants and presenters in favor of more fluid mediated roundtable conversations, which encourages all attendees to participate regardless of academic rank. Finally, our workshop is distinctive because it focuses on themes and topics in North American history, serving as the primary home for the University of Chicago’s Americanists.
Attend the Workshop
Schedule of Events
Autumn Quarter Lineup
“Corporate Proxies: Class Organizing, Law, and Corporate Power in Deleware & the U.S. until the New Deal”
“Subversive Schools: The Chicago Police Department Red Squad & Surveillance of Black Students, 1967-1974”
Invited Talk, Sponsored by the Scherer Center: “The Liberal Invention of Photography”
“The Growth of Prison Law in the United States, 1960-1981”
Winter Quarter Lineup
Invited Talk, Sponsored by the Scherer Center: TBD
“The International Workingmen’s Association in the United States”
“The World’s Landfill is Empty: Imperial County, Garbage & the Market in Crisis California, 1980-2020”
Invited Talk, Sponsored by the Scherer Center: TBD
Joint Session w/ EATRH: “Pig Building: The Construction of Price Floors for Pork in the U.S. & China”
Spring Quarter Lineup
“Black Citizenship in the Texas-Mexico Borderlands, 1821-1865”
Graduate Student Workshop
Graduate Student Workshop
“Junior’s Post-Ludlow Pivot: The Rockefellers’ Transition from Violence to Human Relations, 1913-1926”
Invited Talk, Sponsored by the Scherer Center: TBD
Graduate Student Workshop
Submit a Proposal
We are currently accepting submissions! To submit a proposal, please email the workshop coordinators with a brief abstract, bio, and preferred quarter in which to present.
Contact Coordinators
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