Conferences/Symposia
The Center supports (I) CCHS graduate conferences convened by Breen Fellows, (II) CCHS global graduate exchanges and symposia organized in collaboration with peer institutions abroad, as well as (III) co-sponsored conferences at NU.
I. CCHS Graduate Conferences
The T.H. Breen Graduate Fellows of the Center organize one or two one-day conferences which bring together panels of graduate student papers with an eminent keynote speaker from outside NU and faculty commentators to discuss important topics in history. These workshops are free and open to the public.
2022-2023
“Commercial Networks: Connections, Conflicts, Exchanges”
conference convened by Claire ARNOLD—Friday, June 2, 2023. See Call for Papers here.
Keynote speaker: Professor Sarah PEARSALL (Johns Hopkins U), author of the award-winning Atlantic Families: Lives and Letters in the Later Eighteenth Century (2008) and Polygamy: An Early American History (2019). External commentator: Professor Peter THILLY (U of Mississippi), a historian of China and the opium trade.
2021-2022
- “Global Perspectives on the Prison and Systems of Punishment ” with Prof. Clare ANDERSON (U of Leicester, UK) as keynote speaker, convened by Chernoh BAH—Friday, April 8, 2022
- “When They Became Pests: Human and Nonhuman Species as Vermin in History” with Prof. Susan JONES (University of Minnesota) as keynote speaker, convened by Guangshuo YANG—Friday, April 29, 2022.
2020-2021 conferences (via Zoom) in Spring 2021
- "History of the Self"—Friday, April 16, convened by T.H. Breen Graduate Fellow Ruby DAILY
- "The End of the World as They Knew It: Crisis and Collapse in History"—Friday, May 14, convened by T.H. Breen Graduate Fellow Sian OLSON DOWIS
2019-2020 Conferences: cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic
- “The Politics of Progress: Growth in and throughout History”—convened by T.H. Breen Graduate Fellow Sean HARVEY—Friday, May 1, 2020 with keynote speaker Lily GEISMER (Claremont McKenna College)
- “All in a Day’s Work: Labor in History”—convened by T.H. Breen Graduate Fellow Laura McCOY—Friday, May 22, 2020 with keynote speaker April HAYNES (University of Wisconsin, Madison)
2018-2019 Conferences
- “Walls and Bridges: Migration and Its Histories” (convened by Breen Fellow Aram SARKISIAN) on Friday, April 12 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. with keynote speaker: Erika LEE (University of Minnesota), author of The Making of Asian America: A History (2015), speaking on “A Nation of Xenophobia.” A group from Queen Mary University of London and another from the University of Hong Kong are participating in this conference, as part of our global graduate exchanges with QMUL and HKU.
- “Back to the Future: Visions of Tomorrow in History” (convened by Breen Fellow Kevin BAKER) on Friday, May 3 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. with keynote speaker: W. Patrick McCray (U of California, Santa Barbara), author of The Visioneers: How a Group of Elite Scientists Pursued Space Colonies, Nanotechnology, and a Limitless Future (2013), speaking on “Memories of the Future: Past Visions of Limitless Tomorrows (And Their Relevance Today).”
2017-2018 Conferences
- “Resistance in History: From Transgression to Transformation” (convened by Breen Fellow Bonnie ERNST)--Friday,
APRIL 20.- Keynote speaker: Paul Ortiz (History, U of Florida), author of Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920 (2005) and the forthcoming An African American and Latinx History of the United States (January 2018)
- “Generations in History: Youth, Age, and Metrics of Cultural Change” (convened by Breen Fellow Emily Curtis WALTERS)—Friday,
MAY 11.- Keynote speaker: Sabine Frühstück (Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, U of California Santa Barbara), author of Playing War: Children and the Paradoxes of Modern Militarism in Japan (2017)
Past CCHS conferences range from "Environmental History" (2008), "The Promise and Perils of Biography" and "Emotions as History (2010) to "The Popular and/in History" and "Punishment and Its Discontents" (2017).
II. CCHS Global Graduate exchanges: conferences and symposia
See Global Graduate Exchanges.
III Co-sponsored Conferences
CCHS supports conferences at Northwestern University on appropriate topics. Anyone interested in presenting a proposal should contact the director. In 2018-2019 the Center is co-sponsoring a major international conference on "Writing History Through Children" (Oct. 5-6, 2018).
The Center has co-sponsored numerous conferences, symposia and workshops, from a major international conference on "The Middle East in the 1950s: Historical Perspectives--Israel, the Arab World, and the Great Powers" (April 2010) to the interdisciplinary symposium "Imagining the Public in Colonial India: Print, Polemics and the People" (May 2014) and “Bridges of Memory” documentary film screenings and discussion of historical memory of resistance to colonialism among descendants of African and Native Americans (March 2015). In November 2015 we hosted a very well attended conference on "Denial and Memory: 100 years after the Armenian Genocide." In 2017 the Center supported the Illinois Medieval Association meeting at NU, the Renaissance Society of America convention in Chicago, and "