“History and the Social Sciences: Taking Stock and Moving Ahead”

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The Social Science History Association returns to The Palmer House Hilton for its 32nd Annual Meeting, 15-18 November 2007, in Chicago, Illinois, USA.

The SSHA is the leading interdisciplinary association for historical research in the US; its members share a common concern for interdisciplinary approaches to historical problems. The organization's long-standing interest in methodology also makes SSHA meetings exciting places to explore new solutions to historical problems. We encourage the participation of graduate students and recent PhDs as well as more-established scholars, from a wide range of disciplines and departments.

The SSHA was founded amidst a burst of intellectual excitement about the possibility of gaining new insights into history by utilizing social scientific approaches and theories. At the same time the organization reflected a rejection of the tendency in many social sciences to privilege the present. Just as a rich palette of new research perspectives was created in history by this movement, a whole new set of possibilities was opened in other social science disciplines.

At the 2007 SSHA meeting in Chicago, a series of sessions will assess how much progress has been made on these fronts in recent years and will identify those areas where the greatest advances have taken place. Those scholarly areas where progress has been most limited will also be identified, and the obstacles to further advances examined in order to plot paths to future development. Some panels will address very broad questions, such as the state of social science history within the contemporary historical profession and the role and status of historical research within individual social science disciplines today. Others will look at more limited areas, such as the state of the social scientific study of gender history. Of interest, too, are the implications of the rise of cultural history for the development of social scientific approaches to history. Panels are encouraged to identify both those forces within or across disciplines that have been slowing progress in social science history and those approaches and studies that show the most promise for overcoming them. As always, in addition to the sessions organized around the special theme, other sessions will deal with the full variety of topics of interest to SSHA members.

The SSHA program is developed through networks of people interested in particular topics or approaches to interdisciplinary history. Paper and session proposals should be submitted to the appropriate SSHA network(s). Current networks, their representatives, and contact information are listed on the reverse side. If you are not certain about which network to send your proposal to, ask the representatives of the network closest to your interests, or ask the program co-chairs, listed below.

President for 2006-2007:

• David Kertzer, Brown University David_Kertzer@brown.edu

Program Committee Co-Chairs for 2007 Conference:

• Mary Gibson, John Jay College, CUNY (History) mgibson@jjay.cuny.edu

• Farley Grubb, University of Delaware (Economics) grubbf@lerner.udel.edu

• Robert Lieberman, Columbia University (Political Science) rcl15@columbia.edu

How to participate in the 2007 SSHA Program

The deadline for submitting papers and sessions for the 2007 conference has passed. To check on the status of a previous submission, login to http://conference.ssha.org. For other inquires, please contact your network rep, or email the Program Committee.

Contributors should take note of the following SSHA rules and traditions:

• Panels should represent more than one discipline and institution.

• Panels that include material from more than one place or time are particularly welcome.

• To maximize the number of participants, individuals may present no more than one paper and participate in no more than two sessions.

• Panels co-sponsored by two or more networks are encouraged.

Also, please remember that all panel submissions must include complete information on all participants (such as names, department, institution, address, phone, and email). In addition, to organize a session, you will need the following information: session title, type of session (papers or roundtable), network affiliation, audio-visual needs, paper titles and brief abstract for each paper. Missing information will make it impossible to complete the online submission process. Proposals for individual papers and complete sessions are due 1 March 2007. Prior discussion with network representatives (listed below) is encouraged but not required. Many networks have their own web page to assist in organizing panels. Notification of acceptance or rejection of proposals may be expected by 1 May 2007. All participants on the 2007 SSHA Program will be required to pre-register for the conference and to join the SSHA (if not already members.)

A list of SSHA Network Representatives is available here

SSHA-Rockefeller Archive Graduate Student Travel Awards
The SSHA-Rockefeller Archive Graduate Student Travel Awards will be given to up to thirty graduate students, based on the quality of their applications. To be eligible, a graduate student paper must be accepted for presentation at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the Social Science History Association and an application for a SSHA-Rockefeller Archive Graduate Student Travel Award submitted by 30 March 2007. Papers with non-student co-authors are not eligible. Application materials will be available in January 2007 at http://ssha.org/call_papers/travel_grant.shtml.