USAbroad – Journal of American History and Politics: Announcements
type: channel
description: USAbroad – Journal of American History and Politics – ISSN 2611-2752 is the first Italian academic journal entirely dedicated to the study of U.S. history and politics. It is published annually by an editorial board of early-career scholars based in Italy and across Europe. Its goal is to offer an occasion to publish innovative and ground-breaking academic research to Italian and international postgraduate and early-career researchers.
language: en-US
items: Playing Politics: Sport, Power and Conflict in US History
items: U.S. Capitalism Beyond the New History of Capitalism
items: The Role of Public History Within and Outside the United States: Critical Reflections
items: The United States in the Anthropocene
items: Call for Abstracts. For bell hooks (1952-2021): "White-Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy" and "Feminism is for Everybody" in U.S. History, Politics, and Culture
items: Social Change and Political Representation in the Long Cycles of American History
items: New Call for Papers – Gender and Empowerment in American History and Politics
items: New Call for Submissions – 2020
items: Call for Papers – A Nation Divided: Conflict in US History and Politics
items: New Call for Submissions – 2019
items: Call for proposals – Rewinding Global America: Nationalism and Contested Power
items: USAbroad - Submissions

Playing Politics: Sport, Power and Conflict in US History
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description: Over the past decades, sport has emerged as a significant field of inquiry within U.S. history and political studies. From the nineteenth century to the present, sporting practices, institutions, and spectacles have played a crucial role in shaping political identities, social hierarchies, and forms of governance in the United States and elsewhere. Sport has functioned as a site for the construction of nationalism and citizenship, the projection of U.S. power abroad, and the mediation of conflicts between the state and civil society. Scholars have increasingly highlighted that sport has never been a politically neutral or purely recreational domain. Historians such as David K. Wiggins, Patrick Miller, Rob Ruck, and Amy Bass have highlighted the centrality of sport in the making and contestation of racial order. Feminist and scholars of gender, including Susan Cahn and Jaime Schultz, have examined sport as a key terrain in the regulation of bodies, the production of gender norms, and the politicization of women’s participation in public life. Labor and economic historians have increasingly analyzed sport as a workplace and as an industry, focusing on athlete labor, unionization, and the commodification of performance, thereby linking sports history to broader debates on capitalism, class relations, and state regulation. These historiographical developments acquire renewed urgency in the current conjuncture. The United States is about to host two of the most visible global sporting events: the 2026 FIFA World Cup, organized jointly with Canada and Mexico, and the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Los Angeles. These forthcoming sports mega-events have already sparked public debates over different issues that echo long-standing historical dynamics linking sport to state power, the economy, and international projection. As in earlier moments of U.S history - such as the 1904 St. Louis Olympics, the 1932 and 1984 Los Angeles Games, or all the Cold War-era politicized i…
creator: USAbroad – Journal of American History and Politics
date: 2026-01-27

U.S. Capitalism Beyond the New History of Capitalism
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description: Extended Deadline: March 1st, 2025. In the past two decades, the New History of Capitalism (NHOC) has been one of the most important innovations in U.S. historiography. Especially in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, this research field produced a vast literature that, focusing in particular on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, has allowed to highlight the centrality of slavery in U.S. economic development, the industrial character of slave labor in Southern plantations, the establishment of global networks of commodities exchange, the role of the State in fostering development, in channeling growth and in regulating markets, as well as the role of finance in accelerating accumulation. However, while carefully detailing the emergence of capitalism as an institutional, judicial and financial order, this historiography has often tended to downplay the role of class and social conflicts. Some critics argued that the NHOC has failed to account for the way in which the capitalist order was challenged, shaped and constantly reshaped by the struggles of those subjects who fought not to be dominated by capital’s command. In this respect, the NHOC has often presented a history of capital (and of capitalists) detached from the power relations that structured it as a broader economic and social order. Accordingly, with its focus on commodities, exchange networks and finance rather than on the organization of labor (with the crucial exception of slavery), it often risked treating capitalism as a system of circulation rather than as a mode of production and social reproduction. According to others the NHOC has not offered a materialist interpretation of U.S. capitalism, remaining strongly influenced by the methods of cultural history. Another common criticism is that the NHOC has ignored previous historiographies, particularly Marxist historiography and the Black radical tradition. Furthermore, others argued for the need to bridge economic and political history …
creator: USAbroad – Journal of American History and Politics
date: 2024-12-14

The Role of Public History Within and Outside the United States: Critical Reflections
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description: The Role of Public History Within and Outside the United States: Critical Reflections Deadline: 20 May 2024 Since its establishment as an academic research field in the U.S. in the late 1970s, public history has grown significantly, serving as a vital tool for examining contemporary issues, community memories, and conflicts at both scholarly and practical levels. In the 21st century, the field has become a prominent platform for “making history with the public(s)”, moving beyond the confines of academia. Despite its popularity, comprehensively defining public history without oversimplification remains challenging. Indeed, in addition to the audience’s centrality and its dual identity as both a scholarly research field and a practice, public history encompasses a variety of methodologies to (co-)investigate peoples’ cultures, memories, and histories. Furthermore, there is a multiplicity of media and organizations through which public history projects can be shared, ranging from participatory initiatives to studies addressing complex topics of public interest. Moreover, recent internationalization processes have added another layer to the epistemological framework of public history. As James B. Gardener and Paula Hamilton noted in the introduction to the Oxford Handbook of Public History in 2017, “Given that both the state and the nation have been central to the development of public history, we ask what we can learn if we engage with the local context within a wider international frame”. With this call, we aim to investigate the discipline of public history from our unique perspective as a journal focused on American Studies from outside North America. USAbroad seeks to engage with studies and practices of public history concerning US history and politics, whether originating in the United States or elsewhere. As each public history project is influenced by its location, we are interested in comparing studies and practices regarding US politics and history across dif…
creator: USAbroad – Journal of American History and Politics
date: 2024-03-27

The United States in the Anthropocene
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description: The United States in the Anthropocene University of Bologna, Forlì Campus, 8-9 June 2023 USAbroad invites submissions for a two-day workshop and its 2024 issue. Authors of the selected abstracts will participate in the workshop and have their articles automatically considered for the 2024 issue of the journal. To favor the event’s attendance, all the selected participants will receive a travel and accommodation grant. More details on the logistics of the event, submission deadlines and grants can be found at https://usabroad.unibo.it/. No country has left a bigger mark in the advent of the Anthropocene than the United States. If we accept the argument of many scientists and scholars that the Earth has entered a new phase in its history, a period in which human activity can be seen as directly and significantly modifying the planet's climate and ecosystems, then the US is undoubtedly at the very heart of this transformation. Americans account for less than five percent of the world’s population today, but as a nation, they consume almost 20 percent of the world's total energy and make up more than 20 percent of the global GDP. The US has the largest economy and the largest military on Earth. It is the world's first oil producer and consumer and the largest generator of hazardous waste and plastic. These are the results of longstanding trends that propelled the US to world power – the signs of a longstanding material and symbolic hegemony that exemplify the country's imprint on the planet. Literally and figuratively, the US has been the country pressing the gas pedal of the “Great Acceleration,” the unprecedented and rapid increase in the growth rate of a wide range of human activities registered since the mid-20th century – a phenomenon that has profoundly transformed Earth’s ecosystems and biophysical processes, furthering existential threats such as ocean acidification, deforestation, desertification, and biodiversity deterioration. The massively disproportionate i…
creator: USAbroad – Journal of American History and Politics
date: 2022-11-03

Call for Abstracts. For bell hooks (1952-2021): "White-Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy" and "Feminism is for Everybody" in U.S. History, Politics, and Culture
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description: Call for Abstracts USAbroad: Journal of American History and Politics Deadline: May 23, 2022 For bell hooks (1952-2021): "White-Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy" and "Feminism is for Everybody" in U.S. History, Politics, and Culture bell hooks, born Gloria Jean Watkins in the rural and segregated South of the 1950s, rose to become one of the most influential scholars of feminism, cultural studies, and pedagogy in the United States. Through her life and work, she reclaimed the "margin" as an "inclusive space" of "radical openness" where one can decide to "locate oneself" and from where to wage their struggle. A space of "creativity and power" that now, after she passed away, is even more imperative to explore, not only to study her thought but also to shed new light on American history, politics, and culture from the racist and patriarchal foundation of American democracy through the watershed of the 1960s and 1970s up to the present. The dense pages of historical reconstruction and theoretical discussion bell hooks devoted to the African American and the women's movements provide an invaluable source for reconsidering the history, historiography, and theory of social movements from the 1960s to the present, along with the trajectory of Black studies, gender studies, and cultural studies from their origins to their academic institutionalization, in light of the "interlocking systems" of oppression that she defined as a "white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy." The next issue of USAbroad aims to acknowledge and celebrate the importance and impact of bell hooks' transgressive interdisciplinarity, which challenges the boundaries of academic disciplines and those of the cultural marketplace to present a "feminism for everybody," accessible beyond academic and corporate languages. We invite proposals that address the myriad themes of her intellectual output: from gender to sex and sexuality, from sexism to the construction of masculinity, from racism to the representati…
creator: USAbroad – Journal of American History and Politics
date: 2022-02-28

Social Change and Political Representation in the Long Cycles of American History
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description: In an op-ed article published in the “New York Times” in January 2021, opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg wondered whether Joe Biden’s Presidency would be the first post-Reagan Presidency. According to a theory that divides American political history into cycles or “political times” (Skowronek, 2008), long-term political regimes in the United States are based on shared beliefs that change through time after exhausting their strength. In this theoretical approach, presidents can either shape their action to “reconstruct” a political order or be “preemptive” of a new one. Thus, American political history can be partitioned into the eras of Federalist nationalism (1789-1800), Jeffersonian democracy (1800-1828), Jacksonian democracy (1828-1860), Republican nationalism (1860-1932), New Deal liberalism (1932-1980), and the Reagan era (1980-present). Each of these phases has relied on the empowerment of a coalition of political and social groups defined by race, ethnicity and gender, ideology, political and scientific culture, economic status and professionalism, even geographical distribution of their components. Several aspects concur to the idea that a new phase is in sight: seismic demographic and economic changes, realignments in the country’s political map, cultural clashes over the racial, gender and class makeup of the country and the rising popularity of some measures in antithesis with Reagan’s small-government mantra (such as a minimum-wage rise and the strengthening of some forms of public healthcare). What can we learn on the next chapter of American history by looking back at past developments and conflicts in US society, culture, and politics? The fifth issue of USAbroad invites to reflect on the “long cycles” of American history from a broad historical perspective. We are interested in analyses that detail the historical reasons and actors that drove change in political cycles across time; explorations of the social, cultural and economic features of, and …
creator: USAbroad – Journal of American History and Politics
date: 2021-03-14

New Call for Papers – Gender and Empowerment in American History and Politics
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description: Deadline extended On August 26, 2020, the United States will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, which extended the franchise to American women. After the narrow defeat of Hillary Clinton in 2016 and the significant increase of women elected in Congress during the 2018 mid-term elections, in November 2020 Americans will choose their President between two white men. The current Presidential campaign, already started with the Democratic primaries, has made evident one crucial fact: despite the century passed from the first vote of American women, political equality is far from being achieved. Starting from this premise, the fourth issue of USAbroad seeks to reflect on how gender interacted and still interacts with political discourse and practice at large. This means exploring not only how gender has influenced political participation and mobilization but also how gender issues have shaped and have been shaped by the society that underpins common political norms and institutions. The stated goal is to investigate the complex and multi-faceted link between gender and empowerment in American history and politics. We seek to understand how straight women as well as members of the LGBTQ+ community have defined empowerment in terms of policy and outcomes, and what approaches have devised to reach autonomy and self-determination in American society broadly defined; how underprivileged people across the entire gender spectrum have found their voice and gained agency through their gender identity and experiences or despite them; and how traditionally disempowered groups have organized their gendered interests and needs through social movements, associations, unions, parties, and institutions. We are also interested in analyses that use intersectionality as a framework, thus looking at the interplay of gender and race, class, religion, and social background in shaping individuals' and groups' activism and empowerment process. The editors encou…
creator: USAbroad – Journal of American History and Politics
date: 2020-03-19

New Call for Submissions – 2020
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description: The USAbroad Editorial Committee is pleased to announce that our call for submissions of articles is now open. USAbroad is the first Italian academic journal published annually by an editorial board of early- career scholars and entirely dedicated to the study of U.S. history and politics. The journal sets out to offer the occasion to international postgraduates and early career scholars to publish innovative and ground-breaking academic research. We invite articles, written in English, that investigate any aspects of U.S. history and politics: social, economic and intellectual developments, relations of gender, race and class, foreign policy, international relations, history of policies and institutions. The journal pays specific attention to recent historiographical trends, in particular global, transatlantic and Atlantic history, and to multidisciplinary approaches which successfully intermingle history with social and political sciences. Please visit our website to submit your article. You will need to register as an Author and follow our five step procedure. Please make sure you follow the Author guidelines and read our Editorial Policies. Once submitted, your article will undergo a double-blind peer review process with external reviewers. If accepted, you article will be included in the third issue of the journal which has just been published: https://usabroad.unibo.it/issue/view/839. You have time until April 2020 to submit your article, and we ensure that — if accepted — the article will be out before September 2020. Please do not hesitate to get in touch with the Editorial Committee (at usabroad@unibo.it) if you have any questions.
creator: USAbroad – Journal of American History and Politics
date: 2020-03-06

Call for Papers – A Nation Divided: Conflict in US History and Politics
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description: The financial and economic crisis that started in 2008 represented a decisive moment in the recent past, leading to the resurfacing and, to some extent, the redefinition of a multiplicity of dormant and deep-­seated conflicts: from social movements such as Occupy Wall Street to workers’ movements such as fight4fifteen, from Black Lives Matter to a new white backlash. Within the United States, these conflicts led to a crisis of political and national identities, with the re­emergence of nationalism and nativism, progressivism and socialism. In the international context, conflicts have characterized relations between states, not in the traditional form of war, but as clashes over economic and financial policies, the management of contemporary crises, such as the migration crisis or the environmental one, and at a more general level on the role of nation­ states facing a crisis of the international order. These trends continued during Trump’s Presidency. Both on the international and on the domestic front, the last two years have been characterized by an exceptional level of political, social, institutional and cultural conflict. Not by chance, a series of grassroots movements that have developed to advance their vision of the state and society, such as the new wave of the feminist movement or the mobilization against climate change, has grown and thrived in response to Trump’s actions. The emergence of different forms of social, political and economic conflict in times of crisis is certainly not a new phenomenon. These trends have already emerged in the past centuries, not only in the United States but also elsewhere. Starting from these premises, the third issue of USAbroad seeks to reflect on the complex and multifaceted notion of conflict and its role in promoting political, economic, social and cultural change. The goal is to understand how conflict has manifested itself and shaped American society, economy, and politics over time, but also how it has influenced r…
creator: USAbroad – Journal of American History and Politics
date: 2019-04-09

New Call for Submissions – 2019
type: item
description: The USAbroad Editorial Committee is pleased to announce that our call for submissions of articles is now open. USAbroad is the first Italian academic journal published annually by an editorial board of early-career scholars and entirely dedicated to the study of U.S. history and politics. The journal sets out to offer the occasion to international postgraduates and early career scholars to publish innovative and ground-breaking academic research. We invite articles, written in English, that investigate any aspects of U.S. history and politics: social, economic and intellectual developments, relations of gender, race and class, foreign policy, international relations, history of policies and institutions. The journal pays specific attention to recent historiographical trends, in particular global, transatlantic and Atlantic history, and to multidisciplinary approaches which successfully intermingle history with social and political sciences. Please visit our website to submit your article. You will need to register as an Author and follow our five step procedure. Please make sure you follow the Author guidelines and read our Editorial Policies. Once submitted, your article will undergo a double-blind peer review process with external reviewers. If accepted, you article will be included in the second issue of the journal. The issue will be split into two parts, the first originating from a Call for Papers circulated early in 2018 and dedicated to nationalism in the United States (you can access the CFP here), the second with no overarching theme. You have time until April 2019 to submit your article, and we ensure that — if accepted — the article will be out before the end of October 2019. Please do not hesitate to get in touch with the Editorial Committee (at usabroad@unibo.it) if you have any questions. You can also download the Call for Paper in PDF.
creator: USAbroad – Journal of American History and Politics
date: 2018-11-19

Call for proposals – Rewinding Global America: Nationalism and Contested Power
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description: Deadline Extended Nationalism has been a defining feature of American history, politics, and international relations. From the Declaration of Independence and the Four Freedoms of Franklin D. Roosevelt, through the “shining city upon a hill,” the “melting pot,” “affluent society,” and consumerism, the United States has created an exceptional, expansive, and open image of itself as the “global nation” founded on a set of seemingly universal principles. The ways Americans have thought about their nation have been a boundless force for overseas expansion and an irresistible attraction for many outsiders. Despite the success of the global America, however, or possibly because of it, recent but not unprecedented nationalistic trends have contributed to dispute, contest or even reject its very tenets. As the country questions itself on the essential principles of its national character and international leadership, it seems more than appropriate to reflect on the multifaceted notion of nationalism in the United States. The second issue of USAbroad aims to reassess and discuss the composite meaning of American nationalism from the early republic to contemporary developments, by looking at its historical making and re-making, often achieved through exclusionary processes that shifted the boundaries of citizenship and belonging. Our objective is to learn about continuity and change in nationalistic discourses, practices, and policies, avoiding teleological and presentist interpretations. The editors envision two different lines of investigation, which are neither exclusive nor necessarily separated. The first is to analyze American nationalism from a transnational perspective, exploring tensions and contradictions between the international projections of the nation and its insular manifestations; its messianic rhetoric and its selfishness; its self-representation at home and its perception abroad; its ideology and its interest. This means, respectively, looking at how nation…
creator: USAbroad – Journal of American History and Politics
date: 2018-03-12

USAbroad - Submissions
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description: The USAbroad Editorial committee is pleased to announce that the call for submissions of articles is now open! The articles, written in English, should investigate any aspects of U.S. history and politics: social, economic and intellectual developments, relations of gender, race and class, foreign policy, international relations, history of policies and institutions. The journal pays specific attention to recent historiographical trends, in particular global, transatlantic and Atlantic history, and to multidisciplinary approaches which successfully intermingle history with social and political sciences. In order to correctly submit your articles, you have to register as an Author on our website. Once you are logged in, you will be able to submit your article directly within our website by picking out the section “Articles”, that is the section outside the thematic annual call for essays. Once submitted, your article will undergo a double-blind peer review process with external reviewers. We remind you to follow the Author guidelines, where you can find all the information on the journal’s policies regarding formatting, citations, quotations, acronyms etc. Please read also our Editorial Policies.
creator: USAbroad – Journal of American History and Politics
date: 2017-07-04