To mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, HOTCUS, in collaboration with the History Department at the University of Liverpool, invites proposals for papers and panels that explore how nation, citizenship, and freedom were redefined in the United States across the twentieth century. The ideals proclaimed in 1776 – liberty, equality, and self-government – remain central to American political culture but have been continually tested by social, political, and global transformations. The twentieth century provides a vital context for tracing how these principles have been reimagined to invoke, revise, and resist the nation’s founding promise.

The symposium’s keynote speaker will be Dr Emma Stone Mackinnon, Assistant Professor of Modern Political Thought at the University of Cambridge, whose forthcoming book traces the contested legacies of the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen in mid-twentieth century debates about race and empire.

We invite individual paper and panel contributions that consider how Americans have drawn upon the founding text to articulate new understandings of belonging, sovereignty, and democracy, and how these debates have shaped the historical imagination in or about the United States.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Race, citizenship and the unfinished work of emancipation
• Immigration, exclusion, and the boundaries of belonging
• Nationalism in wartime: mobilization and dissent
• Gender and in/dependence: woman suffrage, feminism, and work
• Indigenous resistance and claims to sovereignty
• America and empire: the projection of American ideals abroad
• Commemoration, pedagogy, and the historical uses of 1776
• Sovereignty, democracy, and the state
• The Declaration in political rhetoric, constitutional argument, and historiography
• American exceptionalism and global meanings of independence

Papers may address particular events, individuals, movements, or interpretive traditions that illuminate how the Declaration’s ideals were reworked within twentieth-century American history. We especially welcome proposals that situate these themes within broader historiographical debates on nationalism, liberalism, and the state.

Paper submissions should include a brief (250 word) paper abstract and a one-page CV in a single document. Panels should be collated and include a brief overview as well as the individual abstracts and CVs.

Submissions should be sent to events.hotcus@gmail.com by  January 10, 2026.