Southwestern Collection

Calls for Papers

The Houston History Association is seeking papers for the inaugural Houston History Conference, to be held October 29, 2011, at the Hilton-University of Houston Hotel and Conference Center. The conference will be held in conjunction with the city's official 175th anniversary celebration, "Milestones and Arrivals: 175 Years of Coming to Houston." Houston, throughout its history, has been a city of immigrants, whether individuals, groups, businesses, corporations, or institutions. Why is this so? What is it about Houston that attracted and continues to attract this influx of people? How has this continuing migration helped build Houston into an internationally prominent city? What are the significant milestones in this growth? The program committee invites the submission of panels and presentations that deal with these and other issues and themes in Houston's 175-year history.

To accommodate panel introductions and audience questions, each complete session is limited to 75 minutes. Each presentation in three-paper sessions should not exceed twenty minutes (about ten typewritten pages) and in two-paper sessions each should be limited to twenty-five minutes (about twelve pages). All participants must preregister for the conference, and all session proposals must including the following components:

Contact information (Mailing address, e-mail address, phone number, and affiliation (or hometown for lay historians) for each participant.

Proposals: An abstract of no more than 500 words for the session as a whole, including names of presenters, chair and/or commentators. Individuals are welcome to submit a proposal for a single paper rather than a complete session. Although single papers are often difficult to combine into plausible sessions, the planning committee will make every effort to include such proposals in the program.

Presentations: A prospectus of no more than 250 words for each presentation and titles for each paper.

A vita of no more than 500 words for each participant.

Proposals should be submitted electronically to the Houston History Association's email: info@houstonhistoryassociation.org. Proposals also will be accepted by U.S. Mail. Please send to: Houston History Association, P.O. Box 25086, Houston, Texas 77265-5086. The deadline for proposals is Thursday, June 30, 2011. Papers may be considered for potential publication in Houston History Magazine, a publication of the University of Houston Center for Public History.

The boundaries of the American West are malleable and have changed over time. Less a unified entity than a collection of regions, the places we now call the West have gone by many names: Indian country, New Spain, Louisiana, Deseret, and Mexico, to mention a few identifiers that imply sovereignty as well as location.

The West has been contested ground, but there is more to the West than national sovereignty. Natives, explorers, conquerors, colonizers, sojourners, and settlers, all brought their own overlapping senses of order and community to the West. Each of these groups set out to establish boundaries of one sort or another. All of them failed to a greater or lesser degree. This is one of western history's ironies: yesterday's border crossers mark boundaries to impede tomorrow's newcomers. Yet westerners old and new somehow became native to the place while making their own histories on the ground that they claimed. That process continues. How shall we interpret this continuously evolving West?

Historians are invited to re-examine the history of an American West that is being made anew in our own time for the 2012 Western History Association meeting in Denver. The nature of borders—whether political, cultural, or other—as well as the places that they enclose are fitting subjects for consideration.

When submitting an entire session or panel, include a brief abstract that outlines the purpose of the session and designate one participant as the contact person. Each paper proposal, whether individual or part of a session, should include a one paragraph abstract and a one-page curriculum vita, including address, phone, and e-mail address for each participant. Indicate equipment needs, if any. The committee assumes that all listed individuals have agreed to participate.

E-mail each submission, with supporting materials, as a single document (PDF) to...