News & Events

Tabernacles in the Wilderness discusses the work of the United States Christian Commission (USCC), a civilian relief agency established by northern evangelical Protestants to minister to Union troops during the American Civil War. USCC workers saw in the Civil War not only a wrathful judgment from God for the sins of the nation but an unparalleled opportunity to save the souls of US citizens and perfect the nation. Thus, the workers set about proselytizing and distributing material aid to Union soldiers with undaunted and righteous zeal.

American democracy is at an inflection point. With voting rights challenged, election results undermined, and even the US Capitol violently attacked, many Americans feel powerless to save their nation’s democratic institutions from the forces dismantling them. Yet, as founders like Benjamin Franklin knew from the start, the health of America’s democracy depends on the actions its citizens are willing to take to preserve it. 

The essays in this pathbreaking collection consider the significance of varied early American fragmentary genres and practices—from diaries and poetry, to almanacs and commonplace books, to sermons and lists, to Indigenous ruins and other material shards and fragments—often overlooked by critics in a scholarly privileging of the “whole.”

The contributors to Situation Critical argue for the continued importance of critique to early American studies, pushing back against both reductivist neo-empiricism and so-called postcritique.

Call for Papers The 51st AAAS conference will take place from October 17-19, 2024, at the University College of Teacher Education Vorarlberg, Austria. It will explore “Education, the Arts, and American Studies.” Teachers and scholars interested in presenting a paper are asked to submit their proposals until May 31, 2024.

The Society for the History of Women in the Americas (SHAW) welcomes proposals for its annual conference. This year's conference will take place at the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford on Friday 5th July and will focus on the theme of history from the margins. We encourage proposals for papers, panels or roundtables that engage with the researching, writing, archiving and teaching of untold histories of women and gender non-conforming people in the Americas.