Greetings from the 2027 Program Committee

The Program Committee is excited to announce the call for proposals for our upcoming conference in Richmond, Virginia! This will be the 50th anniversary of the incorporation of ASEH, which offers a fresh chance to consider the history of our field and an opportunity to trailblaze new directions we might take as a community of scholars in the years ahead. The committee chose our theme, “ASEH at 50: Exploring the Roots and Boundaries of a Field,” to emphasize this goal of getting us to look backward as well as forward as we consider how our discipline helps us understand our world.

As we look forward to meeting in Richmond to talk about the roots and boundaries of our craft, it’s worth noting that we’ll be gathering at a geological boundary, the fall line that separates the Coastal Plain from the Piedmont of Virginia. In fact, the James River, which tumbles and rumbles just a few blocks south of our hotel, makes Richmond one of the only major cities in the United States with Class IV rapids in its downtown corridor. And this river connects our past and present. Sixty miles downstream historians and archaeologists study the clashes between the Powhatan Confederacy and English colonists at Jamestown in the 17th century. On the riverfront in Shockoe Bottom, other scholars are trying to develop monuments that thoughtfully reflect the tragedies of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. And further upstream, histories of the Early Republic and the American Civil War blend into histories of deep geological time as the land rises into the Blue Ridge Mountains, a range first formed more than 300 million years ago.

If this will be your first time putting forward a proposal for the conference, we are very excited to read your scholarship. If you’re someone who has been coming for years, know that we are working hard to design fresh opportunities for engagement that sparks new ideas.

Thanks for submitting your proposals. We can’t wait to read them!

On behalf of the full committee,

Co-Chairs Bart Elmore and Caroline Grego