USAbroad – Journal of American History and Politics: Announcements

The Role of Public History Within and Outside the United States: Critical Reflections

Wed, 27 Mar 2024 19:32:11 +0100

The Role of Public History Within and Outside the United States: Critical Reflections

Deadline: 5 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 21^st 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 different countries. For this reason, the call also welcomes contributions that explore the challenges and possibilities of engaging with US history outside the US, as well as articles that question the methodological and epistemological foundation of public history as a discipline per se vis-à-vis US history.

USAbroad invites public history or public history-related contributions investigating US compelling past(s), heritage, memories and socio-economic fractures. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the field, which benefits from the integration of various research areas and communication methods, contributions may draw from, but are not limited to, the following research areas related to American history:

- Foreign relations (e.g. soft diplomacy actions);

- Postcolonial studies;

- Intellectual history (e.g. international circulation of ideas);

- Global history;

- Cultural studies (e.g. culture wars, Lost Cause);

- Ethnic studies; (e.g. migrant communities, transnational connections)

- Economic politics;

- Media and game studies (e.g. the impact of American products over communities at home and abroad);

- Military history (e.g. historical reenactments, war cemeteries)

- Urban studies;

- Heritage interpretation in museums, libraries, parks, rural or urban settings, etc.;

- Teaching and education (e.g. historical anniversary);

- Memory studies (e.g. analysis and practices over monuments; memories of trauma in communities or families)

Please submit your abstract (500 words max) and your CV (2 pages max) to usabroad@unibo.it by May 5, 2024. Successful applicants will be notified by May 15, 2024, at the latest.

The selection of abstracts will be based on a range of criteria including scientific originality, clarity of the proposal submitted, use of primary sources and adherence to the themes of the call for papers. Please highlight in the abstract whether your contribution will offer a scholarly analysis of public history, explore a specific case study/practice of public history, or it will do both. Abstracts that do not clearly address these criteria will not be considered for publication.

Please note that, if your application is successful, you will need to submit a full 7000-word article by August 31, 2024.

More info can be found at http://usabroad.unibo.it/

The United States in the Anthropocene

Thu, 03 Nov 2022 15:32:35 +0100

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 impact that American policies and actions have had on the development of the current global economy and the international regime is only paralleled by the equally disproportionate, although much less debated, role that Washington has had in the anthropization of the world's environment, the commodification of natural resources, and degradation of land, water, and air.

The 2024 issue of USAbroad will be dedicated to the study of the complex relationship between the United States and the global environment. The aim will be to look at American history and politics through an environmental lens and reframe Washington's upward trajectory as a world power in the context of the Anthropocene. This means examining how US actions have induced environmental change and, equally important, how the landscape’s natural features and raw materials, in general, have influenced, if not determined, Americans’ choices at the local, national, and international levels. As environmental history is also the history of humankind and their political relationships, the issue will aim at understanding how the United States and its inhabitants have impacted and been impacted by the global environment.

How did the availability (or lack thereof) of specific raw materials have, for example, driven the establishment and expansion of cities and communities, forms of governance, paths of economic development, and trade routes? In the 18th and 19th centuries, settler colonialism started profoundly impacting the region’s ecosystems and inhabitants through practices such as plantation agriculture, cattle ranching, and mining. By the turn of the 20th century, extractive policies and exploitative cultures began to fuel industries and business models that transformed national and foreign landscapes through corporations (like, for example, United Fruit Company, Monsanto, Exxon, and DuPont) operating globally. Furthermore, from the 1940s on, the effects of the US overwhelming economic power have been compounded by those of its military-industrial predominance, whose practical manifestations during the Cold War and beyond left a trail of toxic contamination and material destruction.

In the last few decades, scholars have worked tirelessly towards the “greening” of humanities and social sciences. The result is a growing body of scholarship unpacking the complex relationship between culture, politics, and the environment, also for what concerns the United States – a “superpower by nature.” The next issue of USAbroad aims to join the conversation and add to the quickly expanding field of environmental (American) studies, welcoming interdisciplinary, transnational, economic and labor, urban and rural perspectives. It also intends to add a specific environmental element, or angle, to the consolidating historical approach that looks at the place of the US in the world – or, better, at the US as a country fully embedded in the global tapestry of people, states, and, more recently, natural actors (like germs, plants, animals, rivers, and oceans, among others). Indeed, to truly disentangle the multifaceted relationship between Washington and the rest of the Earth – to truly study the “US in the world” – one cannot but include the non-human portion of the globe, de facto moving towards an exploration of the “US in the planet.”

What causes environmental degradation at local, national, and global scales? And how do these scales relate to one another? What has the creation of the US as a modern nation – and empire – and its irresistible projection of power meant for the global environment? How have Americans perceived the use and exploitation or, conversely, the conservation and restoration of natural resources at home and abroad? How has the use of specific environmental resources contributed to restructuring human and social geographies and landscapes? What narratives have been adopted to explain environmental outcomes? More broadly, how does the environment figure in the study of American history and politics – and what can the study of American history and politics tell us about Anthropocene?

We welcome papers that offer multidisciplinary and cross-cutting research examining the relationship between the US and the global environment. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

- Settler colonialism, land management, industrial growth, domestic and working conditions;

- Early and modern environmentalism, conservationism and preservationism;

- The environment and US militarism, war, and empire;

- Extractive and exploitative practices, petromodernity/petroleum culture;

- Nuclear America and the environment;

- Environmental science and technology and US power;

- US political economy, capitalism and commodification of the environment and its resources;

- Environmental law and the institutionalization of environmental regulations and policies, both at home and abroad (domestic and international regimes of environmental protection);

- Water management, sanitation, and waste/discard studies;

- Pollution and environmental health;

- US political ecology, the Anthropocene, and the Plantationocene;

- Climate change and migrations from, to and within the United States;

- Social and labor movements and environmental issues, environmental justice, indigenous environmental movements, ecofeminism and queer sustainability;

- The environment and US regional identities (US West, South, Appalachia, Great Plains, etc.);

- The evolution of American idea(s) of the environment;

- History of environmental movements and their relationship with the government;

- The securitization of climate change and environmental issues, also in reference to NATO's role in this process.

Proposals must be sent by December 11, 2022, at usabroad@unibo.it. Please include a 300-word presentation of the paper (specifying the title, subject, originality, method, and sources) and a short CV (one page maximum).

Selected papers will be announced by January 22, 2023. The deadline to submit papers for pre-circulation will be May 17, 2023.

Call for Abstracts. For bell hooks (1952-2021): "White-Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy" and "Feminism is for Everybody" in U.S. History, Politics, and Culture

Mon, 28 Feb 2022 12:51:35 +0100

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 representation of blackness, from the house as a site of resistance to women's labor, from the university teaching to education in general. These and other issues can be considered in bell hooks' intellectual production or examined in the writings of other authors who were influential to her work, have engaged with or were inspired by her ideas. We also welcome proposals investigating relevant political and historical junctions that were part of hooks’ analysis or can be reinterpreted through her writings. Submissions can therefore explore a wide range of fields, theories, topics, and perspectives that characterized hooks' life and work and that today shape her legacy, including but not limited to:

- Feminist histories of American democracy;

- Abolitionist movement and modern slavery;

- Critical historiography;

- Feminist theory, gender theory and queer theory;

- Methodology of cultural studies;

- Art, cinema, and music;

- Black literary criticism;

- Educational and pedagogical theories and practices;

- Public discourse and debate;

- Political subjectivity and positionality;

- Autofiction and memoir.

Click here to read and download the long version of the call: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P7p4ykwLZzL5U6QEUN50f2cZNTKLBHV-M9kfkw4i2j0/edit?usp=sharing

Applicants are asked to submit an abstract of approximately 500 words, along with a résumé including their main publications, by May 23, 2022. Please send your proposal by email to:
usabroad@unibo.it
Applicants will be notified regarding submission status by May 30, 2022. Please note that a final version of the accepted essay (maximum 7,000 words) must be submitted by September 4, 2022.

More info can be found at: http://usabroad.unibo.it/

Social Change and Political Representation in the Long Cycles of American History

Sun, 14 Mar 2021 16:27:03 +0100

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 transformations along, one or more phases of U.S. history; research that focus on presidential policy and shifts in political and scientific culture in the progressive and conservative spheres; critiques and counter-narratives to the “cycle” thesis in American political history.

Contributions may include but are not limited to:

Theoretical perspectives on political orders, party-system and party realignments in the United States
Social and economic, racial and gender perspectives on American political history
Immigration, race and party representation in the United States
The role and agendas of American Presidents in creating, restructuring or affirming political and social realignments
Regional shifts in party coalitions and local case-studies
Social and Political activism and party coalitions
Ideology, political and scientific culture and party realignments
International Relations, external shocks and economic and political change
Transnational and comparative perspectives on “cycles” in political history
Critiques and counternarratives to the “cycle” thesis

Applicants are asked to submit an abstract of approximately 500 words, along with a résumé including their main publications, by April 23, 2021. Please send your proposal by email to: usabroad@unibo.it Applicants will be notified regarding the status of the submission by May 3, 2021. The selection of abstracts will be based on a range of criteria including: scientific originality (how does the proposed paper differs from existing literature in the field), use of primary sources (on what sources is the paper based) and adherence to the themes of the call for papers. Abstracts that do not clearly address these three criteria will not be considered for publication. Please note that a final version of the accepted essay must be submitted by August 23, 2021.

More info can be found at http://usabroad.unibo.it/

You can also download the Call for Papers in PDF

New Call for Papers – Gender and Empowerment in American History and Politics

Thu, 19 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0100

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 encourage and look forward to receiving papers offering historical and / or political analysis, in the American context, of:

Women and LGBTQ+ peoples' political representation and participation;
Women and LGBTQ+ people and political parties;
Women and LGBTQ+ people's in grass-roots politics, associationism, social movements and working-class struggles;
Suffrage movements;
First Ladies' political and social activism;
Women and LGBTQ+ people in cultural diplomacy;
Women and LGBTQ+ people in foreign policy and international affairs;
Women and LGBTQ+ people and leadership;
Women's and LGBTQ+ people's agency in the economic system;
Women's and LGBTQ+ people's role in families and local communities;
Domesticity and women's and LGBTQ+ people's cultural agency;
Welfare system and its interaction with women and LGBTQ+ people;
Women and LGBTQ+ people and the political communication system and propaganda;
Women and LGBTQ+ people and media in general;
The intersection of class, race, religion and sexuality in the empowerment process of women and LGBTQ+ people;
Comparative analysis of the topics mentioned above.

Applicants are asked to submit an abstract of approximately 500 words, along with a résumé including their main publications, by ~~April 30~~ May 25. Please send your proposal by email to: usabroad@unibo.it Applicants will be notified regarding the status of the submission by ~~May 18~~ June 15. The selection of abstracts will be based on a range of criteria including: scientific originality (how does the proposed paper differs from existing literature in the field), use of primary sources (on what sources is the paper based) and adherence to the themes of the call for papers. Abstracts that do not clearly address these three criteria will not be considered for publication. Please note that a final version of the accepted essay must be submitted by ~~September 13~~ October 4.

More info can be found at http://usabroad.unibo.it/

You can also download the Call for Papers in PDF

New Call for Submissions – 2020

Fri, 06 Mar 2020 13:07:59 +0100

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.

Call for Papers – A Nation Divided: Conflict in US History and Politics

Tue, 09 Apr 2019 12:54:46 +0200

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 relations between the United States and the rest of the world. USAbroad invites submissions discussing any periods of U.S. history that address the theme of “conflict” in its broader meaning, from political, to social, cultural, racial, and institutional. Understanding conflict as a crucial catalyst of change, we are interested in problems of historical causation, action and reaction, crisis, progress and advancement.

While considering each proposal received, the editors encourage and look forward to receiving papers that sit within the following historiographical trends:

The New History of Capitalism (the new historiographical tendency toward the integration of several histories—and of their methodologies and approaches—such as business and economic history, social and labor history, intellectual history, political and policy history)
Women’s History and Gender Studies (women in the labor movement; old and new feminisms; LGBTQ+ rights and social change; transnational social mobilization; studies on families and on the role of women in politics and workspaces)
Environmental History (climate change and global warming; conflicts over resources; neoenvironmentalism; the history of environmental policies; history of environmentalism; history of environmentalist movements)
International Relations and Conflicts (trade wars; transatlantic crisis; the definition and redefinition of US international role; nationalism and hegemony; relations between the US and Latin America; relations between the US and the Asiatic continent)
Presidential and institutional studies (domestic federal relations, sectional/regional cleavages, conflicts between states and the federal government).

Applicants are asked to submit an abstract of approximately 500 words, along with a résumé including their main publications, by May 19. Please send your proposal by email to: usabroad@unibo.it Applicants will be notified regarding the status of the submission by May 31. The selection of abstracts will be based on a range of criteria including: scientific originality (how does the proposed paper differs from existing literature in the field), use of primary sources (on what sources is the paper based) and adherence to the themes of the call for papers. Abstracts that do not clearly address these three criteria will not be considered for publication. Please note that a final version of the accepted essay must be submitted by September 20.

You can also download the Call for Papers in PDF

New Call for Submissions – 2019

Mon, 19 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0100

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.

Call for proposals – Rewinding Global America: Nationalism and Contested Power

Mon, 12 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0100

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 nationalism has been constantly redefined to serve US foreign policy, and focusing on the gap between its theoretical construction and its practical display and reception overseas.
The other involves reconstructing how American nationalism has been defined and appropriated within the nation by different political and social actors. Throughout time, Americans have appealed to their national principles and used them to support the government as well as to oppose it, both to consolidate American society around specific values and to contest—and even revolutionize—established order, considered from time to time despotic, unjust, or imperialistic. The goal, therefore, is to study how political and social activism combines with nationalism and its multiple imageries.

We encourage the submission of proposals for original research articles related to:

Nationalism and Internationalism in U.S. Foreign Policy
War and Empire in the Process of Nation-Building
Nationalism and Sectionalism in American Political Development
Class, Gender, and Race as Divisive/Inclusive Issues
Nativism and Religion in the American Nationalism
Social Movements Reframing Nation and Nationalism
Cultural and Artistic Representations of Nation and Nationalism
National Reactions to Anti-Americanism
International Appropriations or Contestations of the American socio-economic model

We particularly encourage proposals from Italian PhD students as well as early-career scholars.

Applicants are asked to submit an abstract of approximately 500 words, along with a résumé including their main publications, by ~~April 22~~ May 13. Please send your proposal by email to: usabroad@unibo.it. By ~~May 6~~ May 27, applicants will be notified about the status of the submission. The selection of abstracts will be based on a range of criteria that include: scientific originality (how does your paper differ from existing literature in the field?), use of primary sources (on what sources is the paper based?) and adherence to the themes of the call for papers. Abstracts that do not clearly address these three criteria will not be considered for publication. Please note that a final version of the accepted essay will have to be submitted by ~~August 31~~ September 13.

You can download the Call for Paper in PDF.

USAbroad - Submissions

Tue, 04 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0200

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.