Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
June 13-14, 2019
This two-day conference of the Society for the History of Recent Social Science (HISRESS) will bring together researchers working on the history of post-World War II social science. It will provide a forum for the latest research on the cross-disciplinary history of the post-war social sciences, including but not limited to anthropology, economics, psychology, political science, and sociology as well as related fields like area studies, communication studies, history, international relations, law, and linguistics. We are especially eager to receive submissions that treat themes, topics, and events that span the history of individual disciplines.
The conference aims to build upon the recent emergence of work and conversation on cross-disciplinary themes in the postwar history of the social sciences. While large parts of history of social science scholarship still focus on the 19th and early 20th centuries and are attuned to the histories of individual disciplines, there is also a larger interest now in the developments spanning the social sciences in the early, late, and post-Cold War periods. Though each of the major social science fields has a community of disciplinary historians, research explicitly concerned with cross-disciplinary topics remains comparatively rare. The purpose of the conference is to further encourage fruitful cross-disciplinary conversations of recent years.
Submissions are welcome in areas including, but not restricted to
* The interchange of social science concepts and figures among the academy and wider intellectual and popular spheres
* Comparative institutional histories of departments and programs
* Border disputes and boundary work between disciplines as well as academic cultures
* Themes and concepts developed in the history and sociology of natural and physical science, reconceptualized for the social science context
* Professional and applied training programs and schools, and the quasi-disciplinary fields (like business administration) that typically housed them
* The role of social science in post-colonial state-building governance
* Social science adaptations to the changing media landscape
* The role and prominence of disciplinary memory in a comparative context
The two-day conference will be organized as a series of one-hour, single-paper sessions attended by all participants. Ample time will be set aside for intellectual exchange between presenters and attendees, as all participants are expected to read pre-circulated papers in advance.
Proposals should contain no more than 1000 words, indicating the originality of the paper. The deadline for receipt of abstracts is February 8, 2019. Final notification will be given in early March 2019 after proposals have been reviewed. Completed papers will be expected by May 14, 2019.
The organizing committee consists of Jamie Cohen-Cole (George Washington University), Philippe Fontaine (École normale supérieure Paris-Saclay), Jeff Pooley (Muhlenberg College), and Susanne Schmidt (Freie Universität Berlin).
All proposals and requests for information should be sent to: hisress2019@gmail.com
