Thursday
3 Dec2021 AASLH Call for Proposals
After much thought and consideration, AASLH has decided to do a hybrid onsite/virtual meeting in 2020. This gives you two opportunities to present a session or workshop to your colleagues. The onsite meeting will be in Little Rock, AR, on September 22-25. The virtual meeting date has not been announced but will be in September or October. AASLH is now accepting proposals for all session formats and workshops. Proposals for the onsite, online, or both conferences are due December 18. All proposals should address this year’s theme. https://aaslh.org/2021annualmeeting
The Theme: Doing History/Doing Justice
What do we owe to one another? This question sits at the heart of the concept of justice, a notion so central to our society that we find it in centuries-old founding documents as well as in current headlines and protest signs. In this extraordinary era, marked by profound reckoning with our complicated past, history institutions are uniquely positioned to engage in doing justice—to public understandings of our past, and as active agents in the world today.
The work of history institutions is justice work. Historic sites, museums, and archives help bring complexity and nuance to questions of right and wrong. Our work helps establish relevant facts, provides access to evidence, and weigh competing claims for rights, freedoms, access, ownership, and duty to one another. We raise a range of perspectives and challenge ourselves and our audiences to evaluate and reconcile conflicting views. Far beyond matters of laws and courts alone, the call to uphold justice asks us to think about the meanings of belonging, fairness, responsibility, and equality; to acknowledge and redress historical wrongs and dismantle harmful myths; and to consider the impact of our actions today on the future of our world.
Doing Justice TO, AS, and IN History
This meeting will take an active orientation—how do history organizations and practitioners DO justice? We will look at how we do our work and how people are impacted by our work, unpacking the notion of “justice” in all its dimensions. The program committee seeks proposals that follow a three-part framework: doing justice TO history, AS history, and IN history.
- Doing justice TO history can mean revealing formerly hidden stories, creating new access to historical resources, reframing narratives, or recentering overlooked historical players.
- Doing Justice AS history means taking on the topic of justice as a focus, through explorations of law, court processes, fights for equality and civil rights, and social justice.
- Doing Justice IN history means recognizing our organizations as historical actors in their own right, playing roles in unfolding events.
Now is the time for you to share your thoughts on this important topic! Deadline for session proposals is December 18. Learn more about submitting a session and how to submit online below.