21st Annual Graduate History Association Conference
April 18-19, 2025
“Unsettling Institutions“

The Graduate History Association of the University of Massachusetts Amherst invites proposals for its 21st annual Graduate History Conference. This year’s conference is entitled “Unsettling Institutions” and will take place in person at our University of Massachusetts Amherst campus on April 18-19.

This conference – inspired by the UMass History Department’s 2024-25 Feinberg Series, “What Are Universities For?” and the Exhibit Design Practicum on Student Activism UMass graduate course– aims to bring together an interdisciplinary group of graduate students to consider how bedrock institutions have shaped – and continue to shape– societies, cultures, politics, and our collective lived experiences. How, for example, have institutions constrained the lives of particular groups in the past? How have people responded when institutions have stopped serving their intended purpose? We encourage proposals to engage with the question of how we might connect these topics to modern-day issues of social justice, democracy, and community.

We welcome proposals from historians as well as those addressing historical topics in disciplines in the humanities, arts, and social sciences, such as American Studies, Art and Architectural History, Black Studies, Asian Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Latin American Studies, Jewish Studies, Native American and Indigenous Studies, and Women and Gender Studies. Additionally, we welcome a broad array of subject matter, including subaltern studies, labor and working-class history, urban history, carceral studies, social history, transnational history, history of sex and sexuality, memory studies and public history. Applications are open to graduate students at any institution. 

Proposals will be accepted until January 15, 2024 and accepted applicants will be notified in early February. Proposals should be 200-300 words. Submit proposals here.

For questions, please reach out to the GHA at [email protected].