The call for papers is now open for the HOTCUS Winter Symposium 2025, which will take place at the University of Gloucestershire on Friday 21 February 2025 and reflect on the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II and the significant impact of the war on American life, history, and culture.

If submitting an individual paper proposal, please submit a 250 word abstract plus a short, one page C.V. to [email protected] by Sunday 1 December, 2024. If you are proposing a panel, please submit an abstract for each contribution. If you would like to discuss a possible format for a panel or individual contribution to the conference, please contact the email address above. Interested scholars are invited to share ideas and look for possible panel members via the following online form: Panel Finder.

The organisers are hoping to develop an edited collection or journal special issue with interested presenters, so please do let us know if this is something that interests you when applying to present your work at the conference.

For more information, please see the website: https://hotcus.org.uk/events/winter-symposium/2025-winter-symposium/

HOTCUS will sponsor a panel at the annual meeting of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) in the Washington DC area, 26-28 June 2025.

We are seeking expressions of interest from all HOTCUS members who would like to join this special sponsored panel. We’re particularly keen to hear from those who may not have previously attended a SHAFR conference.

SHAFR is dedicated to the study of the history of the United States in the world. This includes not only foreign relations, diplomacy, statecraft, and strategy, but also the heterogenous approaches to Americans’ relations with the wider world, including global governance, transnational movements, culture, religion, human rights, race, gender, political economy and business, immigration, borderlands, the environment, and imperial formations.

The 2025 SHAFR programme is particularly interested in significant anniversaries such as the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, the 75th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War, the 60th anniversary of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, and the 55th year of Earth Day.

Papers can also address the themes of Belonging/Exclusion, Capitalism, Disease/Health, Environment/Extraction, Genocide, Indigeneity, Labor, Law/Sovereignty, Media/Technology, and Territoriality. Further details available in the SHAFR conference CFP.

The HOTCUS panel will be on the SHAFR 2025 conference programme. If you would like to be considered for the panel, please submit a short paper abstract (c.150 words) and 1-2 page CV to [email protected] by 15th November 2024.

HOTCUS will run an info session for those interested to participate but have questions or are unfamiliar with SHAFR and its annual conference. It will include advice on applying for SHAFR’s graduate and global scholars travel grants. The info session will run online on Friday 18 October at 10am.

We’re excited by this opportunity to promote the variety of work being undertaken by HOTCUS members and showcase HOTCUS to fellow historical organisations.

Any queries can be directed to [email protected]

The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) is looking for graduate student representatives for their Graduate Committee. Prospective students would serve a 2-3 year term and represent the interests of graduate students across a range of organisational matters. If you are interested, please contact Chris Hulshof (University of Wisconsin-Madison) to express your interest [email protected]. If you have any questions about this, you are also very welcome to reach out to me (Elizabeth Ingleson) first, at [email protected].

The Other Disabled President

Kass Biennial Lecture in the History of Medicine

Beth Linker (Penn)

22 October 2024, 5.30-7 pm in the Council Room, King’s Building, King’s College, London

Come join us on 22 October at 5.30 pm for the 2024 Kass Lecture in the History of Medicine featuring Beth Linker (Penn) in a talk titled ‘The Other Disabled President,’ which describes the crippling back pain John F. Kennedy suffered from in his first year as president, a fact largely hidden at the time from public view. After several failed medical interventions, the president finally experienced some relief under the care of Dr. Hans Kraus, an orthopedist and posture-fitness guru. My talk will explore how this chance relationship would go on to inform Cold War notions of physical fitness, and how disabling back pain—and its prevention—rose to national prominence and stoked geopolitical concerns regarding the communist threat to the so-called free world.  

The link for (free) tickets and for the livestream are here: https://buytickets.at/chostm/1413116

Beth Linker is the Samuel H. Preston Endowed Term Professor at the University of Pennsylvania in the Department of the History and Sociology of Science. Her research and teaching interests include the history of science and medicine, disability, health care policy, and gender. She is the author of War’s Waste: Rehabilitation in World War I America (Chicago, 2011) and co-editor of Civil Disabilities: Citizenship, Membership, and Belonging (Penn Press, 2014). Her most recent book, Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America (Princeton University Press, 2024), is a historical consideration of how poor posture became a feared pathology in the United States throughout much of the twentieth century. For this project, Linker received grants from The American Council of Learned Societies, The National Endowment for the Humanities, The National Institutes of Health, and The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. 

The 2025 HOTCUS annual conference will be held at the University of Lancaster, 18-20 June 2025. We are delighted to announce that Professor Andrew Preston (University of Cambridge) will be our keynote speaker. 

A call for papers will be released in December 2024. HOTCUS will be pleased to welcome proposals for individual papers, but particularly encourages interested members to consider developing innovative panels and roundtables, including state of the field discussions, reassessments of key texts, and fora that explore issues in research, career development, and pedagogy. To facilitate early development of proposals, HOTCUS has set up an online form (Google Doc) where potential applicants can share ideas and invite collaboration.

Postgraduate and early career scholars should also save the date for our workshop with Professor Preston, which will take place on June 18, 2025. Full details will be circulated as part of the main CFP, but this is an invaluable opportunity to share a piece of work in progress for discussion and feedback from Professor Preston and other HOTCUS members at the Annual Conference. Postgraduates and early career scholars are welcome to apply to present work at both the main conference and the workshop.