The graduate students of Yale University’s Program in History of Science and Medicine invite submissions for a conference titled “Critical Histories and Activist Futures: Science, Medicine,and Racial Violence,” on Feb. 24-25, 2017.
This conference will focus on issues of science and racial violence as objects of historical study, and will consider lingering inequalities and injustices within history as a discipline. We further hope to share strategies for deploying academic scholarship as activism and explore tactics for building alliances with communities of activists outside the academy.
We call for submissions that address three broad themes:
1. History of Science and Medicine as a platform for change in the larger world: what can academics do to effect change, and how can scholars build equitable and productive relationships with outside communities?
2. Social justice and racial violence itself as an object of academic study
3. Issues of social justice, inequality, and violence within History of Science and Medicine as a discipline
We are looking for submissions that address any of these topics. We are interested in traditional academic papers, as well as discussions of activist work, artistic projects, archival and museum initiatives, and other presentations that address the themes of science, medicine and racial violence in some way. We are particularly interested in hearing from individuals who have made activism a crucial part of their scholarly work. The conference committee will group presentations into panels on related themes. Rather than a series of discrete presentations, though, we envision structuring this conference as a series of panel conversations between participants. We want to encourage dialogue, partnerships, and idea sharing that will continue after the conference is over.
Participants should submit a brief (300 words max.) proposal to historysciencejustice@gmail.com no later than November 15, 2016. The conference committee will review all proposals and respond to all submissions by December 15, 2016. Please circulate to anyone you think would be interested.