The 45th annual meeting of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic will convene in Philadelphia from 18 to 21 July 2024.

This year marks the 250^th anniversary of the meeting of the First Continental Congress at Carpenter’s Hall in Philadelphia. The Program Committee would like to mark this moment—before the semiquincentennial—as an opportunity to analyze the contingency of 1774 and other turning points in early American history.

The Program Committee invites proposals for sessions and papers exploring all aspects of the history and culture of an expansive early American republic, its transnational connections, and Native nations.

We particularly encourage submissions that:

• Analyze unrest, protest, and forms of dissent
• Explore competing notions of sovereignty
• Examine meanings of rights and representation
• Investigate multiple American republics
• Feature interdisciplinary methods and wide-ranging sources
• Speak to the importance of archives
• Address key historiographical questions and/or pressing contemporary issues
  • Reflect the diversity of the past and expand narratives of the early American republic to highlight Indigenous, Black, queer, and global histories
  • Focus on pedagogy, the historical profession, or public history, including digital humanities and other alternative methodologies

• Take nontraditional forms, such as centering audience participation, sharing pre-circulated papers, or assessing the state of a given field

SHEAR is committed to inclusion and diversity and encourages panels that feature members of groups who have been historically underrepresented within the organization. Potential panelists should seek gendered, racial, institutional, interpretive, and career diversity, and each panel proposal should include a statement about how the panel furthers SHEAR’s commitment to diversity. Individual proposals will be considered, but the Program Committee prioritizes proposals for complete panels including a chair and commentator. The committee will consider proposals for traditional panels (3-4 papers plus chair and comment), roundtables (4-5 presenters plus chair/moderator), or other creative formats. In select cases, the committee may choose to alter or rearrange proposed panels and participants. Refer to the guidance available at https://www.shear.org/proposal-guidelines/ as you prepare your proposal.

All submissions should be filed as a single document (Word doc preferred), labeled with the first initial and surname of the contact person (e.g., “SmithJ2024”). All proposals must include:

• Panel title, one-paragraph description of panel topic, and one-paragraph panel diversity statement
• Email addresses and institutional affiliations (if applicable) for all participants
• Title and 100-word abstract for each paper
• One-page curriculum vitae for each participant, including chairs and commentators
• Indication of any needs for ADA accommodation
• Indication of any audio-visual requests (please request onlyif A/V is essential to a presentation)

 The deadline for submission is December 1, 2023. Please submit your proposals by email at SHEAR2024@outlook.com with “SHEAR 2024” in the subject line.

Honor Sachs, University of Colorado, Boulder, co-chair

Christina Snyder, The Pennsylvania State University, co-chair

Zara Anishanslin, University of Delaware

Ashley Cataldo, American Antiquarian Society

Alexander Chaparro-Silva, University of Texas at Austin

Samuel Davis, Texas Christian University

Angela Diaz, Utah State University

Michael Dickinson, Virginia Commonwealth University

Elizabeth Ellis, Princeton University

Jesse Gant, University of Madison-Wisconsin

Katherine Grandjean, Wellesley College

Scott Heerman, University of Miami

Hidetaka Hirota, University of California – Berkeley

Katherine Johnston, Montana State University

Kariann Akemi Yokota, University of Colorado, Denver