With the submission deadline standing at about one month away, consider what follows a personal fishing expedition for participants and panel ideas in relation to the upcoming 2011 USIH Conference. Here are two preliminary panel proposals:
(1) Intellectual Reactions to the Sixties (working title)
A version of this panel (under different guises) has appeared at each of our last three events. In this proposed iteration, I want to focus on liberal reactions to the Sixties. By this I mean liberals who remained liberals, but had strong reactions to the social, cultural, and intellectual movements that arose during the decade of “tumult and change.” Perhaps a better title would be “Transitions, Reactions, and Conversions: Liberal Intellectual Responses to the Sixties.”
(2) Anti-Intellectualism in America (working title)
This could go two ways. First, it could be a theory panel. I could expand on thoughts I’ve developed since my 2008 USIH paper (including “agnotology,” comments on Jacoby’s book on American Unreason, etc.). But we could also go in an empirical direction: instances of anti-intellectualism, broadly conceived, in U.S. history from the colonial period to the present. This would require a kind of meta/theoretical commentator.
Anyone want to join me for either? Leave a comment or write me at timothy.n.lacy-at-gmail.com. – TL
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