The NACBS Blog

Here is the NACBS Program Draft in Word and PDF:

NACBS Program Draft 2012 (Word)

NACBS Program Draft 2012 (PDF)

The North American Conference on British Studies is seeking a new editorial team for the Journal of British Studies, including a new general editor or co-editors, and a new book review editor or co-editors. The current editors' term ends in summer 2014, and the Association hopes to select new editors a year earlier to facilitate the transition process.  Editors are appointed to a five-year term.  Those interested in applying should contact Professor Cynthia Herrup of the University of Southern California History Department (herrup@usc.edu). The application deadline for both positions is November 30, 2012.

The Journal of British Studies, published four times a year, is the premier journal in the field, with a very high ISI citation impact rating. Starting in January2013, the journal will be published by Cambridge University Press.

Interested parties should be aware that the editorship and the book review editorship (both open to a team) are not related. Applicants should specify which of these positions interests them.  Editorial subventions provide funding for editorial assistants for each of the two positions, but applicants will require a commitment of support from their home institutions.  The current editorial teams are happy to answer questions about their duties.  You can contact Brian Cowan (brian.cowan2@mcgill.ca) or Elizabeth Elbourne (elizabeth.elbourne@mcgill.ca) about the journal editors’ responsibilities and Amy Froide (froide@umbc.edu) or Gail Savage (glsavage@smcm.edu) about the book review editors’ responsibilities.  Questions and inquiries can also be directed to the NACBS president, Dane Kennedy (dkennedy@gwu.edu), or vice president/president-elect, Keith Wrightson (keith.wrightson@yale.edu).

PBS stations across the country are looking for speakers as they hold December events to promote the third season of Downton Abbey on MASTERPIECE.
Downton Abbey won last year’s Primetime Emmy® award for “Outstanding Miniseries” and just received another 16 Emmy nominations for its second season. New episodes begin January 6, 2013 and, as this third season opens, the characters are in 1920 and the context has moved from the Edwardian Era to the Interwar years.
Are you able to speak to this time in British history? Would you be interested in educating an audience about the lifestyles and social changes occurring in the worlds of both the British aristocracy as well as the mainstream population?
If so, please contact gay_mohrbacher@wgbh.org who is coordinating a centralized speakers bureau for PBS stations across the country to access. You may also reach Gay at #617/300-5308.  Please send along your CV and a photo of yourself and indicate topics(s) you would enjoy sharing. Please know there is no guarantee that individual PBS stations can do more than provide an honorarium.

Dear NACBS Members and Friends,

I'm writing to let you know that the North American Conference on British Studies and History Working Papers (http://www.historyworkingpapers.org) will once again team up to help NACBS conference participants and panels pre-circulate their papers. Already, we have a few panels planning to participate, and we invite you to submit your papers as well.

As you probably know, Tim Hitchcock and I are working together on a digital space that we are calling History Working Papers (HWP). HWP is an online space for scholars to share works-in-progress with their peers. After uploading a conference paper, essay, or article manuscript to the HWP website, authors can invite others to read their work and make comments in the margins. As more people respond, writers get more feedback. But, unlike traditional comments done on paper, HWP allows commenters and authors to interact with each other. They can read each other's marginalia and engage in dialogue about it. In fact, entire threaded discussions can take place in the margins.

NACBS has allowed us to offer HWP to conference panels and participants this year. I am writing to encourage you to take advantage of the system. Not only will it be able to help you generate some pre-conference buzz for your panels, but it is a tool to help you create more informative and useful panels. Here is a short summary of what you can expect from HWP:

HWP will allow you and the people on your NACBS panel to post your conference papers online (either individually or as a whole panel) several weeks before the conference begins. By posting papers ahead of time, HWPP gives conference chairs, panelists, and participants the ability to experiment with alternative approaches to your panels. While panels and individuals can simply use HWP to pre-circulate papers and hold a traditional conference panel, you have the opportunity to be creative and do much more. By integrating an online conversation both before and after the conference, you will find that your panels are much more dynamic.

Here are some ideas on how you can take advantage of HWPP:

1. The most effective way to use HWP is as a whole panel. Chairs should round up participants' papers several weeks before the conference begins and send them to Jason M. Kelly at jaskelly@iupui.edu. Within days, they will be posted to HWPP under the heading for your panel.

2. Chairs should encourage the commentator and one or two other peers to read the papers and put their comments in the margins. They might also consider sending out an announcement about the pre-circulated drafts to H-Albion or NACBS's Facebook page in order get others to read and comment as well. Remember, whether a participant or a peer, it is important for you to ask people to comment. You will be surprised at how many people are willing to participate.

3. Having a panel pre-meeting is a great way to meet each other and discuss some of your papers' ideas. Chairs, commentators, and panelists can meet using Skype, Google+, Adobe Connect or any number of other video conferencing tools.

4. Chairs might consider an alternative format for their NACBS panel. There are a number of format options, from PechaKucha to five-minute papers to short poster sessions. We encourage you to keep talks to a shorter length in order to allow more time for group discussion. Doing this is very effective, and you may be surprised at the improved dynamic and the rich outcomes that emerge. At a recent NACBS panel, for example, the chairs adopted a modified PechaKucha model. Even though there were ten speakers, there was still enough time for an exciting one-hour discussion.

5. Remember, that when the conference is over, HWP will still be available. We encourage you to continue using it as you revise your papers for submission to journals.
The History Working Papers Project is quite an exciting system, as I am sure you will notice. Please visit the site and have a look around (http://www.historyworkingpapers.org). Watch the videos, read the papers, and make comments. There are already papers online so that you can see what papers and comments look like. Be sure to send us any questions you have about the site.

I do hope that you consider using the system for your panel this year. I think it will be a great addition to the NACBS and the way scholars in the humanities approach conference panels and scholarship more generally.

Best wishes,
Jason
-- Jason M. Kelly PhD, FSA
Director, IUPUI Arts and Humanities Institute
Associate Professor of British History, IUPUI

IUPUI Arts and Humanities Institute
Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
755 W. Michigan Street UL 1140D
Indianapolis, IN 46202-5195

telephone: 317.274.1689
fax: 317.274.1024
email: jaskelly@iupui.edu

Register now for the NORTH AMERICAN CONFERENCE ON BRITISH STUDIES, MONTREAL, QUEBEC , NOVEMBER 9-11, 2012  http://bit.ly/cK2PNx

Proposals (no more than 500 words) by Oct. 15, 2012 (e-mail submissions only, in Word format):

Professor Tyson Stolte, Chair, NVSA Program Committee (tmstolte@nmsu.edu).

Please note: all submissions to NVSA are evaluated anonymously. Successful proposals will stay within the 500-word limit and make a compelling case for the talk and its relation to the conference topic.

Please do not send complete papers, and do not include your name on the proposal.

Please include your name, institutional and email addresses, and proposal title in a cover letter. Papers should take 15 minutes (20 minutes maximum) so as to provide ample time for discussion.

For information about NVSA membership and travel grants, please visit the NVSA website at http://nvsa.org/

CALL FOR PAPERS: PCCBS ANNUAL MEETING, March 8-10, 2013
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

The Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies (PCCBS) invites paper and panel proposals for its fortieth annual meeting, to be held at the Faculty Club at the University of California, Berkeley, March 8-10, 2013.

The PCCBS invites papers representing all fields of British Studies -- broadly defined to include those who study the United Kingdom, its component parts and nationalities, as well as Britain's imperial cultures. We welcome proposals from scholars and doctoral candidates in a wide range of disciplines across the humanities, social sciences, and the arts, including History, Literature, Political Science, Philosophy, Religion, Gender Studies, Cultural Studies, Theater Studies, and Art History.

Proposals for individual papers, partial panels, or complete panels are all welcome, although complete panel proposals are preferred. We encourage the submission of proposals dealing with interdisciplinary topics, as well as panels on new pedagogies and technologies associated with British Studies.

The deadline for submission of proposals/panels is NOVEMBER 15, 2012. Proposals should include a 200-words abstract for each paper plus a 1-page c.v. for each participant. Those submitting full or partial panel proposals should include a brief description of the panel plus a 1-page c.v. for the panel chair as well as for its commentator. Please place the panel proposal, its constituent paper proposals, and all vitae in one file, making certain that your contact information, especially e-mail addresses, are correct and current. Proposals should be submitted via e-mail attachment by Nov. 15, 2012, to:

Professor Michelle Tusan, PCCBS Program Chair
Department of History, University of Nevada-Las Vegas
michelle.tusan@unlv.edu

Cambridge University Press has announced that it will publish Journal of British Studies on behalf of the North American Conference on British Studies from January 2013   

Cambridge University Press is delighted to announce that it will begin publishing the Journal of British Studies (JBS) in 2013. The official publication of the North American Conference on British Studies (NACBS), the JBS has positioned itself over fifty years as one of the critical resources for scholars of British culture from the Middle Ages to the present. The JBS now partners with Cambridge, forging a joint commitment to foster the best in scholarship and offer the best in publishing services to an international community of researchers.

Journal of British Studies will continue to combine peer-reviewed original research papers and book reviews by renowned international scholars, using both established and emerging approaches to present their ideas on British society, history, politics, law, literature, art, economics, and sociology. The journal will be available in print and electronic formats.  Volumes 1 through 50 will be included in the Cambridge Journals Digital Archive, as will the complete archive of Albion, a complementary journal formerly published by the NACBS.

"We are delighted to partner with Cambridge University Press to publish the Journal of British Studies. Our mission is to provide scholarship on Britain and its past that is of the highest quality and reaches the widest possible audience, and we know that Cambridge shares that dedication. We look forward to a long and fruitful relationship," said Dane Kennedy, President, North American Conference on British Studies.

"We are privileged to have been entrusted with the future of the Journal of British Studies and we look forward to working with the dedicated editorial team to bring the journal to a broad global audience", said Simon Ross, Managing Director, Cambridge Journals. "We can offerJournal of British Studies a bright future as part of one of the world’s leading academic journals lists, extending the best in platform technology to all NACBS members and subscribers."

Journal of British Studies will be hosted on Cambridge’s cutting-edge electronic platform, Cambridge Journals Online, which will provide increased usability, functionality, and many new features to enhance and optimize article usage.

For more information, please visit the Journal’s website:
journals.cambridge.org/JBritStud

Publicity Contact: Daniel Pearce, Commissioning Editor, HSS Journals –dpearce@cambridge.org

If you currently receive Cambridge Journals through a consortium or site-license agreement, please contact your usual sales representative or consortia administrator. Customers in theAmericas contact usjournals@cambridge.org, customers in the Rest of the World contactjournals@cambridge.org