CfA: Histories of Migration - Transatlantic and Global Perspectives

The Pacific Office of the German Historical Institute Washington at UC Berkeley is soliciting proposals for papers to be presented at the Eighth Annual Young Scholars Forum: Histories of Migration, which will be held at UC Berkeley on October 21–22, 2024. We seek contributions from postdoctoral scholars, recent PhDs, and advanced doctoral candidates in the humanities or social sciences.
The 2024 Forum focuses on the intersection of migration and gender and sexuality studies. Exploring gender relations, modes of intimacy, and sexual diversity is crucial to a nuanced analysis of both the causes and consequences of migration and of mobility regimes and practices. Starting from an understanding of gender and of sexuality as constructed within multiple intersecting power relations (including class, age, race, ethnicity, and geopolitical location), we welcome theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions dealing with interconnections between gender studies, sexuality studies, and migration studies. Whereas sociologists and geographers began charting this important territory in the 2000s, historians and researchers in the humanities have lagged behind. As a result, historical approaches to these interconnected subjects are still few and far between. The Forum will explore the potential of gender-based analyses and queer historical perspectives on migration experiences; representations of femininity and masculinity constructed by actors themselves and by receiving societies; heteronormativity and how it shaped migrant histories; labor migration and gendered labor markets; sex work and migration; (im)migrant families, motherhood, and fatherhood; migration and gender-based violence; the mobility of transgender people; the shifting regimes of intimacy in the places people left, traversed, and settled; and other related questions.

The Forum approaches its annual theme from a trans-epochal and transregional perspective. We seek to link current developments to both the past and the present. We encourage applications from junior scholars in history, gender studies, sexuality studies, the social sciences, political sciences, anthropology, as well as area studies, ethnic studies, and other related fields. Contributions in other media, such as film and photography, will be considered as well. Papers will be pre-circulated to allow for maximum discussion time with peers and invited senior scholars. The workshop language will be English. The Forum will be hosted by Isabel Richter (GHI Pacific Office Berkeley, contact email: richter@ghi-dc.org) and Benno Gammerl (European University Institute Florence).

Selected participants might have the opportunity to extend their stay in Berkeley (by up to two weeks) through the California Archive Research Award (CARA). CARA funds can be used for research in various libraries and archival collections in the San Francisco Bay Area. These include, for example, the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley, the Hoover Archives at Stanford University, the National Archives in San Bruno, the James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center at the San Francisco Public Library, and the Bay Area Lesbian Archives in Oakland.

Please indicate in the online application form if you would like to be considered for the CARA grant. We will award the additional funding to up to two applicants. Please upload a brief CV and a proposal of no more than 750 words by March 15, 2023, to our online portal: https://app.smartsheet.eu/b/form/f2d33a417b63443591ab4cefedbbc818.

Please contact Heike Friedman (friedman@ghi-dc.org) if you have problems submitting your information. Applicants will be informed of the outcome in April.