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The International Committee of Historical Sciences is now planning its  
19th International Congress to be held in Oslo, August 6-13, 2000. The  
American Historical Association's Committee on International Activities  
invites potential American participants to send in proposals according to  
the themes listed below. These should be about two hundred words in length  
and accompanied by a _curriculum vita_. Proposals for whole panels should 
include historians from other countries as well. Individual paper 
proposals, if accepted, will be forwarded to a designated organizer, 
responsible for composing a coherent panel on the specific theme. 
 
BE SURE TO NAME THE THEME FOR WHICH YOU ARE PROPOSING YOUR CONTRIBUTION. 
 
The Congress wishes to encourage communication and debate among historians 
of different countries. To that end, its procedure will be to enhance the 
time for discussion and diminish that of presentation. Specifically, 
participants will be expected to send a half page summary of their thesis 
to other panel participants by January, 2000, and to make their fully 
written papers available for distribution at the beginning of the 
conference. The goal is to engage panelists and audience as much as 
possible. In all, 500 contributions will be chosen; 4,000 people are 
expected to attend. 
 
THEMES 
 
Three major themes will each occupy a full day. I. Perspectives on global 
history: concepts and methodology. A. Is global history possible? B. 
Cultural encounters between continents over the centuries. II. Millennium, 
time and history A. The construction and division of time: periodization 
and chronology. B. Eschatology, millenarian movements and visions of the 
future. III. The uses and mis-uses of history and the responsibility of the 
historian in past times. 
 
Twenty specialized themes will occupy a half day each, some running 
concurrently. 
- The media revolution and historical research. - Memory and collective 
identity. How do societies construct and administer their past? - 
Scientific discoveries: the transmission and reception of scientific 
learning. - The theory and practice of justice: law, norms, deviance. - 
Muslim societies over the centuries. - Religion and gender. - Christian 
missions, modernization, colonization and decolonization. - Generations and 
inter-generational conflicts. - Slavery and other forms of unfree labor. - 
Demography: Bridging family and population; a comparison of societies in 
Asia and Europe. - Regions and regionalisation: subnational and 
transnational entities. - Modes of communication and information from 
Antiquity to the present. - Masculinity as practice and representation. - 
Totalitarianism and dictatorship. - Changing boundaries and definitions of 
work over time and space. - Minority cultures in relation to dominant 
majorities. - Changing approaches to the Pacific world. - Modernity and 
tradition in Latin America. - New developments in environmental history. - 
Political force and mass death in pre-modern and modern societies. 
 
Twenty-five Roundtables will be limited to four people engaged in lively 
debate on the following themes: - The teaching of history: new techniques, 
textbooks, and the place of history in the curriculum. - Orientalist 
historians and the writing of Arab history. - Voyages and exploration in 
the North Atlantic from the Middle Ages to the 17th century. - Encounters 
and confrontations between European and non-European legal and judicial 
systems. - Television news reports as sources for history. - What is a 
human being? Definitions of "the human" over the centuries. - Children and 
war. - Gay and lesbian history. - Family, marriage and property rights. - 
Nobility in comparative perspective. - Underground economies. - Crime and 
criminality: new historical perspectives. - Gender, race, xenophobia and 
nationalism. - Athens and Rome in the culture and construction of Europe. - 
The Baltic area in history. - China and the world in the 18th century. - 
The opening of archives and the history of communism (1990-2000). - 
Propaganda and the images of power. - The Cold War revisited: a 
half-century of historical writing. - Tourism and history. - Visions of 
peace, practices of peace. - Central Europe: unity and diversity. - The 
individual and the notion of private life. - Historical journals between 
"generalist" approach and extreme specialization. 
 
THE DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS IS MARCH 31, 1998. Send to Prof. Renate 
Bridenthal Ph.D. Program in History The Graduate School and University 
Center The City University of New York 33 West 42 Street New York, NY 
10036-8099 
 
Submitted by The AHA Committee on International Historical Activities. 
Renate Bridenthal (Chair), Jeremy Adams, Charles D. Smith, Richard L. 
Kagan, Stefan Tanaka, Sandria B. Freitag, AHA ex officio. 
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