I am very excited to share the CFP below, regarding an edited collection on Midwestern intellectual history. Please pass it along to all who may be interested!
Mapping Midwestern Minds: Essays on the Intellectual
History of the Midwest
Deadline: July 1, 2017
This collection aims to capture the great energy surrounding the revival of two once-prominent fields of American history—Midwestern history and American intellectual history—and channel this energy into a deep consideration of Midwestern intellectual history. Chapters will, in various ways, yield a thorough examination of “Midwestern minds,” or examine the ways writers and intellectuals have thought about the Midwest as a region, been influenced by the region, or emerged from the region to influence national thought. Possible topics include:
- The thought of particular Midwestern intellectuals, such as Frederick Jackson Turner, Constance Rourke, or Malcolm X
- The significance of ideas or intellectual movements and projects, such as the development of the notion of the “common man,” the emergence of land grant colleges, agrarianism, the Midwestern Moment of literary regionalism, the Golden Age of Indiana Literature, the Chicago Renaissance, or the significance of the Great Migration
- The intellectual history of particular places, such as Chicago, or the Ohio River Valley, the Driftless, the Upper Peninsula, or Ann Arbor and Columbus
- The intellectual impact of the Midwest on non-Midwesterners, such as the scholars at the University of Chicago or the significance of the universities of Wisconsin and Michigan to the New Left
The editors will give particular emphasis to work that elaborates on Midwestern identity, the contours of Midwestern regionalism, the role of the Midwest in shaping an intellectual’s or an intellectual movement’s work, and the stories of intellectuals who emerged out of the Midwest.
To this end, we call for interested scholars to submit a 500-word abstract to Joe Hogan <[email protected]> by July 1, 2017. Please include a brief bio and full CV that lists contact information, including an email address. Authors will be notified if they are successful by September 2017. Several of the authors will be asked to present their work at a special conference focused on Midwestern intellectual history in June 2018. We will expect final versions of chapters (5,000 words, including references) by March 1, 2019. The editors of the volume will be Jon K. Lauck, Paul Murphy, Andrew Seal, Joe Hogan, and Gleaves Whitney. The volume will be published by the oldest publisher of books about Midwestern history, the Wisconsin Historical Society Press.
One Thought on this Post
S-USIH Comment Policy
We ask that those who participate in the discussions generated in the Comments section do so with the same decorum as they would in any other academic setting or context. Since the USIH bloggers write under our real names, we would prefer that our commenters also identify themselves by their real name. As our primary goal is to stimulate and engage in fruitful and productive discussion, ad hominem attacks (personal or professional), unnecessary insults, and/or mean-spiritedness have no place in the USIH Blog’s Comments section. Therefore, we reserve the right to remove any comments that contain any of the above and/or are not intended to further the discussion of the topic of the post. We welcome suggestions for corrections to any of our posts. As the official blog of the Society of US Intellectual History, we hope to foster a diverse community of scholars and readers who engage with one another in discussions of US intellectual history, broadly understood.
Thank you, Andy, for posting the announcement. I hope that these two revitalized fields–intellectual and midwestern history–might have a convergence in this volume. I am struck by how much of my research and reading in liberal humanism has a midwestern locus, particularly on the Madison-Chicago-Ann Arbor axis (not one of evil, in their view, but rational enlightenment). Conservative humanism took energy from the midwest as well. I know Andy is eager to field queries, and I am, too, as well as any of the other co-editors.