Historical scholarship underwent a transformative period between 1963 and 1975. Spurred by problems with existing scholarship, the political vitriol of the Cold War, and burgeoning social movements, historians, anthropologists, and even mathematicians began approaching world history in experimental waves. In so doing, they developed the language, styles, and paradigms in global history that we take for granted today. Nearly half a century later, the energetic, groundbreaking spirit of this first modern ‘wave’ of global historians remains at the heart of the discipline, even if the specific organization of their concepts have since come under scholarly scrutiny and criticism. From insightful thinkers as William McNeil, Fernand Braudel, Immanuel Wallerstein, Alfred Crosby, Sidney Mintz, Natalie Zemon Davis, Kenneth Clark, and Jacob Bronowski, history became more than a selective study of the Western nation-state. Their scholarship contextualized, critiqued, and questioned existing narratives; significantly broadened history’s scope to incorporate anthropological, scientific, and geographic insights; analyzed networks and pushed boundaries. Their intended audience, too, radically expanded out of the Ivory Tower, into the living rooms of millions of families.

This two-day interdisciplinary conference will examine these groundbreaking figures and their research. Through an engaged, retrospective approach, we intend to answer important questions about this first wave’s continuing impact and legacy. While our panels are centered on these eight scholars, individual papers can be about any aspect or effect of their work, can contextualize, clarify, and even critique. We welcome a diversity of approaches. Through collaborations with the Princeton University Art Museum and the new Center for Digital Humanities, we will exhibit a host of visual artifacts and end with a roundtable discussing new methods that continue the vision of these early historians. Following the conference, we hope to publish selected papers in an anthology. We therefore invite proposals from scholars across disciplines and at all stages in their careers. Innovative approaches and interdisciplinarity will be our primary criteria in choosing, and we are particularly encouraging papers that engage with art history, digital humanities, and transnational history.

Abstract Submission Deadline: March 30, 2015

Please submit a 350-500 word abstract with title, author contact information, and presentation description to globalhistoryconference@gmail.com