Competing Kingdoms

Newsletter

No. 1, May 2004

Dear Colleagues,

We have been gratified by the response to our announcement for the conference-workshop "Competing Kingdoms: Women, Mission, Nation, and American Empire, 1812-1938." Twenty scholars attended our planning meeting at the Organization of American Historians in Boston in March, and we have received more than fifty inquiries.

Kathryn Kish Sklar chaired our meeting at the OAH and announced the date and venue of the conference, which will take place from April 27 to 29, 2006 at the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. Kitty explained how the conference organizers had come together at the Center for the Historical Study of Women and Gender at SUNY Binghamton to develop the framework for the conference. She reaffirmed our focus on missionary women and our commitment to an ambitious schedule. Our objective is to prepare in advance for engaged discussion at the conference and timely publication of a cohesive volume of articles after the conference.

As announced in our call for papers, proposals for the conference are due by June 1. Applications should include a two-page (double-spaced) abstract of your proposed paper, a two-page curriculum vitae, and a brief statement of the background you bring to the project. The organizing committee will meet in June to review applications and will announce its decisions on July 1. Some applicants will be invited to submit papers by December 1, 2004; others will be invited to attend the conference and participate in its discussions. In the selection process, we will be looking for proposals that

Engage with the analytical framework of the conference, highlighting one of the main themes while addressing all four themes of women, mission, nation, empire.
Indicate how the paper will contribute to the historical literature on American women and mission.
Describe the sources on which the paper will draw; we hope that studies that focus outside the United States will incorporate foreign-language sources.
Ensure that the scope of the proposal is suitable for eventual presentation in 35 double-spaced pages, footnotes included.

Please submit your proposal by electronic mail as an attachment, preferably in Word, and indicate "Competing Kingdoms Proposal" in the subject line of your e-mail. Please send copies to all members of the organizing committee:

Kathryn Kish Sklar: (kksklar@binghamton.edu)
Rui Kohiyama: (rui@lab.twcu.ac.jp)
Connie Shemo: (cshemo@princeton.edu)
Barbara Reeves-Ellington: (breeves-ellington@siena.edu)

Best,
The organizing committee
Kathryn Kish Sklar, Rui Kohiyama, Connie Shemo, and Barbara Reeves-Ellington

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