The Past Speaks

CALL FOR PAPERS
“Transformation: State, Nation, and Citizenship in a New Environment”

A conference sponsored by the Avie Bennett Historica Chair in Canadian
History, Department of History, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional
Studies, will be held from October 13-15, 2011 at York University in
Toronto.

DESCRIPTION

Canadian Political History has changed over the last fifteen years. With a
growing research interest in social history and for those who came to be
categorized as “ordinary” people, some have lamented that the study of
“great men” seems to have ended and, as a result, that political history had
disappeared as a field of research. Although these concerns have received
much attention, especially outside of academia, new venues were being
investigated by scholars preoccupied with the study of the state, the
development and implementation of public policies, strategies used by state
components to foster a sense of belonging less centered around ethnicity and
more around civic values, and strategies used by large segments of societal
groups in order to shape policies and state symbols in a way that they would
permit them identify themselves with these new symbols. Concluding that
political history has disappeared is quite premature.

This conference entitled “Transformation: State, Nation, and Citizenship in
a New Environment” will give researchers an opportunity to reveal the
breadth and the level of sophistication that has developed within political
history over the last decade. At the same time, it will reveal the
discipline’s transformation.

The state has been fundamentally transformed and shaped by Keynesianism,
then neoliberalism and now neo-Keynesianism. These transformations also
reflect the fact that the state – a sovereign entity that controls a
well-defined territory recognized by the international community- has seen
its actions, powers and abilities circumscribed by supranational entities,
and regional, continental, and international treaties.

Individuals should submit a title, a 300-word abstract plus a brief
biography or one-page c.v./resume before March 1, 2011.

Please send your proposal to hist2011@yorku.ca

Applicants will be notified of the acceptance of their proposal in April
2011.
Papers accepted for this conference may be requested for subsequent
publication.

CONFERENCE ORGANIZERS

Dimitry Anastakis, Department of History, Trent University
Matthew Hayday, Department of History, University of Guelph
Marcel Martel, Department of History, York University
Jennifer Stephen, Department of History, York University
Will Stos, Department of History, York University