About two dozen graduate students from across the United States will visit UNL to present research and hear from faculty and fellow graduate students in their fields during the ninth annual James A. Rawley Graduate Conference in the Humanities on March 14 and 15.
This year’s theme is “The Impact of Interaction: Exploring Cultural Convergence,” which will examine through presented research the significance of historical encounters between communities, cultures, classes or individuals and will explore the sharing, conflict, exchange of ideas and misunderstandings that these encounters created. The theme was chosen by the History Graduate Students’ Association, the event’s sponsoring organization.
The conference kicks off with a keynote address from Bernadette Andrea, professor of English at the University of Texas at San Antonio. The talk will be 7 p.m. March 14 in the Center for Great Plains Studies, 1155 Q St. On March 15, activities are comprised of eight panel sessions, in which 22 graduate students will present research.
Andrea’s talk is titled “Travelling Bodyes: Theorizing Subaltern Movements into Protoimperialist England.” Andrea’s interests include early modern studies, women’s studies, literary and cultural theory, early modern discourses of empire, and cross cultural exchanges between the West and Islamic world. Her most recent monograph is “English Women Staging Islam 1696-1707.”
The keynote and panel presentations are all open to the public and UNL faculty and students are encouraged to attend. For more information, click here.
The James A. Rawley Conference in the Humanities serves as a way to honor Rawley, professor emeritus of history and to encourage future scholarship in a variety of disciplines. Rawley was a member of the UNL history department from 1964 until 2005. He specialized in the Civil War era and American race relations, and authored numerous books, including “Race and Politics: Bleeding Kansas” and “The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A History.” His efforts and contributions are also memorialized by the Organization of American Historians, which awards its annual Rawley Prize for distinguished scholarship in the field of American race relations.
