Call for Chapter Proposals: Edited Anthology of Reconstruction Era Scholarship

Through the generous support of the Sea Islands Institute and in conjunction with the National Endowment for the Humanities summer institute “America’s Reconstruction: The Untold Story,” editors Orville Vernon Burton and J. Brent Morris invite proposals for a peer-reviewed collection of essays to coincide with the sesquicentennial of Reconstruction tentatively titled Reconstruction at 150: Reassessing the Revolutionary “New Birth of Freedom.” The editors seek innovative scholarship that explores new directions in Reconstruction-era scholarship, appraises the current state of the field, reassesses landmark texts, and reveals important yet little-known stories that enrich the Reconstruction narrative while suggesting new ways of thinking about larger themes.

Complete essays (approx. 8-10,000 words, inclusive of footnotes) should be submitted by Feb. 1, 2016.  Possible topics, issues, and approaches are by no means limited to the following:

  • African American participation in formal politics and civil rights activism
  • Agriculture and farming
  • assessments of continuity and change from the antebellum to postbellum eras
  • bridging the gap between the literature of Reconstruction and that of the Civil War
  • bridging the gap between the literature of Reconstruction and that after
  • comparative Reconstruction
  • counterfactual history
  • cultural history of the era
  • environmental perspectives
  • focus on individuals, family history, and generations
  • historical memory and memorializing
  • historiographical issues
  • ideologies of race and civilization
  • impact on American literature
  • labor history, history of work and Reconstruction
  • legal history–amendments, Reconstruction Acts, laws, court decisions–impact and influence
  • mobility and diaspora
  • Native Americans and Reconstruction
  • periodization and chronology
  • photography and art; media depictions and perceptions; popular image, portrayals
  • post-emancipation violence
  • Reconstruction and American exceptionalism
  • Reconstruction and digital history
  • Reconstruction in the non-South
  • Reconstruction of whites, immigrants, Native Americans, Chinese and African Americans
  • religion
  • teaching Reconstruction
  • transnational  history
  • urban Reconstruction
  • wartime Reconstruction
  • women, gender, and the household

Please send proposals by June 15, 2015 to reconstruction150@gmail.com. All proposals should include an abstract of not more than 500 words and a current CV.

About the editors:

Orville Vernon Burton is Creativity Professor of Humanities, Professor of History, Sociology, and Computer Science at Clemson University, and emeritus University Distinguished Teacher/Scholar, University Scholar, and Professor of History, African American Studies, and Sociology at the University of Illinois. He is the author or editor of twenty books, including Penn Center: A History Preserved, The Age of Lincoln, and In My Father’s House Are Many Mansions: Family and Community in Edgefield, South Carolina.

J. Brent Morris is Assistant Professor of History at the University of South Carolina Beaufort and Director of the National Endowment for the Humanities Institute “America’s Reconstruction: The Untold Story.” He is the author of Oberlin, Hotbed of Abolitionism: College, Community, and the Fight for Freedom and Equality in Antebellum America and Yes, Lord, I Know the Road: A History of African Americans and South Carolina 1526-2008, with Documents.