The History of Capitalism in the United States

Graduate Student Conference at Harvard University
November 6-8, 2008
Call for Papers

The development of American capitalism has profoundly shaped the 
histories of both the United States and the world. Its study has the 
potential to connect large-scale processes with daily life and to shape 
our understanding of nature, culture and even freedom. All too often, 
however, scholars have divided the history of capitalism into business 
histories, labor histories, and economic histories along with studies of 
the state. This conference is intended as a forum in which to encourage 
dialogue, debate and more inclusive approaches to the writing of the 
history of capitalism in the United States. We hope, in the process, to 
interrogate the conceptual boundaries often employed in research on 
capitalism.

Building on the success of the 2006 conference, we seek papers or panel 
proposals from graduate students whose work will broaden the 
understanding of American capitalism and provide a new prism through 
which to understand U.S. history as a whole. Because we see capitalism 
as both a subject in itself and an analytical framework, we invite 
papers that reflect the variety of topics that are intricately connected 
to capitalism. We particularly welcome papers that utilize transnational 
approaches to reposition the history of capitalism in the United States 
within a global context.

We believe the framework of capitalism can be applied to nearly any 
topic and welcome submissions on subjects related (but not limited) to:

? Industrialization
? Slavery and the slave trade
? Labor and management
? Markets, credit, and finance
? Currencies and commodities
? Entrepreneurship
? Trans- and multinational corporations
? Migration and immigration
? Imperialism and colonialism
? Materialist histories of culture
? Legal structures and the state
? Cultural reverberations of capital

Submit proposals of 500-1000 words to [log in to unmask] by June 1, 
2008.


Caitlin Rosenthal