William and Mary Quarterly-EMSI Workshop:

"Grounded Histories: Land, Landscape, and Environment in Early North
America"

Call for Proposals

Deadline: October 15, 2009

The Omohundro Institute and the University of Southern
California-Huntington Library Early Modern Studies Institute are pleased
to announce the fifth in a series of William and Mary Quarterly-EMSI
workshops designed to identify and encourage new trends in understanding
the history and culture of early North America.

Participants will attend a two-day meeting at the Huntington Library and
USC (May 28-29, 2010) to discuss a precirculated chapter-length portion of
their current work in progress along with the work of other participants,
as well as directions that might be taken in writing the history of early
North America. Subsequently, the convener will write an essay elaborating
on the issues raised in the workshop for publication in the William and
Mary Quarterly. The convener of this year's workshop is Karen Halttunen of
the University of Southern California. In recent years, the critique of
nation-state history has led early American historians to push the
boundaries of their field in ever-widening spatial directions, from the
Atlantic world toward imperial, continental, and hemispheric frameworks.
At the same time, closer scholarly attention to land, landscape, and
environment-the ground beneath the feet of colonists and native
Americans-has remained relatively marginal to the field. This workshop
will focus on grounded histories of land, landscape, and environment in
early North America, with special attention to the interdependence of
natural and human histories. We invite the participation of scholars from
such fields as environmental history and ethnography, cultural geography
and archaeology, literature and art history. Possible topics include
agriculture and resource extraction, climate and natural disasters,
landscape formation and land "improvement," place naming and cartography,
intellectual pursuits of natural history and indigenous knowledge, nature
writing and landscape representations, and aesthetic, religious, and
philosophical ideas about land and nature. Central premises shaping all
the papers should be the interdependence of human histories and natural
histories in early North America and the importance of placing a more
grounded understanding of land, landscape, and environment at the center
of early American history.

Proposals for workshop presentations should include a brief abstract (250
words) describing the applicant's current research project, an equally
brief discussion of the particular methodological or historiographical
issues they are engaging (which will be circulated to all participants
along with the chapter or essay), and a short c.v. The organizers
especially encourage proposals from midcareer scholars.

Proposals may be submitted online at the conference Web site
http://oieahc.wm.edu/conferences/workshops/cfp/index.cfm

or by email attachment to Kelly Crawford (kscrawwm.edu)

by October 15, 2009.

All submissions will be acknowledged by email.
Questions may be directed to Christopher Grasso, Editor, William and Mary
Quarterly, at cdgraswm.edu.

The workshop will cover travel and lodging costs for participants.