47th Annual Meeting of the Social Science History Association Philadelphia, PA, November 11-14, 2021
Submission Deadline: EXTENDED TILL APRIL 16, 2021
“Crisis, Conjunctures, Turning Points: Theory and Method in Turbulent Times”
The current moment calls for collective reflection on the methods of historically-oriented social science research. In particular, with a renewed public interest in historical analogies between present-day authoritarianisms and the 1930s, a resurgence of eugenicist reasoning, a re-engagement with the legacies of slavery and colonialism, and the history of pandemics, a reckoning with history is everywhere. While the 2021 Program Committee seeks individual papers and panel proposals on all aspects of social science history, we are especially seeking papers that reflect on the uses of history in explaining the present.To this end papers may address one or more of the following questions:
How does the past influence or determine the present?
What theoretical and methodological choices are implied in thinking of historical moments as ‘crises’, ‘conjunctures’ and ‘turning points’?
What is the role of agency in creating crisis situations?
Under what conditions and when does human agency create radical alternative pathways at crisis moments?
How do different versions of history enter political debate at critical moments, and to what effect?
What sources of data and tools of investigation might improve the ways in which we seek historically-based explanations of the present?