Event Details

End: February 1, 2024
Contact: uwmhgsa@gmail.com

The History Graduate Student Association at

the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

The 3^rd Annual Michael Gordon Memorial History Graduate Conference

Lessons Learned: Using History in Times of Crisis

March 29-30, 2024

We honor Dr. Michael Gordon’s memory by calling for papers for the Third Annual Gordon Memorial History Graduate Conference. This year’s theme is Lessons Learned: Using History in Times of Crisis. The role of the historian is to help make sense of the past and inform the present and future. How we understand the past is subject to different interpretations, theories, and methodologies that shape how we understand the field of history. However, in times of crisis, we can learn how to best tell those stories, but also how people adapted in times of crisis. We call for proposals and research that address times of crisis and how we can use history to understand the past. How we make sense of, and what constitutes a crisis differs for each scholar. With this theme we hope to explore times of crisis and how our scholarship can grapple with the past and what we can learn from it. Crisis can be loosely defined, but what is most important is what we can learn from the past and how we interpret the past. Papers can address any period, place, country, research method, scholarly field of research, person, event, etc. We encourage submissions of all fields to apply for this conference that broadens greater understanding of how historians and scholars remember and use the past.

We welcome paper submissions, creative presentations, poster presentations, full panels, public history projects, digital projects and a lightning round for works in progress. To apply, please submit a 300 word abstract for your paper, project, panel or lightning round. Submissions will close February 1, 2024. As of now, the conference will be hosted at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee campus. However, this is subject to change, as the university, as well as the nation, continue to navigate through COVID-19 conditions, restrictions, and CDC guidelines.  Since we are broadly accepting submissions from a variety of disciplines, several modes of presentations, and some variation from the themes, the relevance of the submission to those themes will be based on the project’s content. Abstracts can be sent to uwmhgsa@gmail.com or this form.

Dr. Michael Gordon earned a bachelor’s degree from Northwestern and a Ph.D. from the University of Rochester. Before joining UWM's department of history in 1987, Dr. Gordon worked as an oral historian and archivists at the Wisconsin Historical Society. He published articles on labor and public history. His book, The Orange Riots: Irish Political Violence in New York City, 1870 and 1871, was published by Cornell University Press in 1993. He retired in 2011. During his time at UWM, Dr. Gordon helped prepare students for careers in public institutions, historical agencies and other professions. Dr. Gordon passed away on October 5, 2020.