2012 Mid-America Conference on History
Call for Papers
The Thirty-Fourth Annual Mid-America Conference on History will be held September 20-22, 2012 in Springfield, Missouri. Paper and session proposals on all fields and phases of history, including overview sessions and graduate student papers, will be considered. Proposals should include a paragraph about the content of each paper. The deadline for proposals is May 15, 2012. Contact: Worth Robert Miller, Department of History, Missouri State University, Springfield, MO 65897 or BobMiller@Missouristate.edu. For more information visit the History Department website.
In 1977, the department of history at Missouri State University established the Mid-America Conference on History. Professor James N. Giglio was its originator and its first coordinator. The intent of the conference was to accommodate historians who could not afford the expense of national meetings while providing opportunities for social interaction rarely found at national meetings.
Features of the conference
From the beginning, the Mid-America Conference has drawn attention nationally even though the bulk of the attendees are from the Midwest. The conference has drawn historians in all stages of their careers. Doctoral students, university faculty, and independent scholars have all shared their scholarship with colleagues from other institutions and the public at the conference. Indeed, many close friendships have been made at the Mid-America, which has contributed to the large number of returnees.
The Mid-America Conference is also one of the few regional conferences accepting papers and sessions in all areas. Recent conferences, for example, have included presentations on topics as diverse as the justification of polygamy in Anabaptist Munster, the industrial espionage activities of the Pinkerton Detective Agency in the early 20th century, and a panel on academic publishing designed to help graduate students and junior faculty refine their papers into publishable manuscripts.
Over the years, some of the nation’s leading historians have been featured at the Mid-America Conference on History, including Stephen Ambrose, John Blassingame, James MacGregor Burns, Eugene Genovese, Susan Hartmann, William Leuchtenburg, James McPherson, and Ann Firor Scott.
Sponsoring universities
The first institution to join Missouri State University in hosting the Mid-America Conference on History was the University of Kansas in 1980. Soon afterward, Oklahoma State University and the University of Arkansas also joined the consortium. The University of Memphis, University of Arkansas-Little Rock, and Washburn University/Kansas State Historical Society/Kansas Wesleyian University have also hosted the conference. Today, Missouri State University, Oklahoma State University, University of Arkansas, and University of Oklahoma are permanent hosts, and the conference rotates between these institutions annually.