CfP: Historians without Borders: Writing Histories of International Organizations
Leiden University – 22-23 March 2018
Program
This
workshop is organized by the ERC project ‘Rethinking Disability’. It is
intended to bring together early-career researchers from different
fields working on international organizations, to discuss methodological
challenges together with peers and established scholars. A combination
of a master class, keynote lectures, and roundtable discussions aims at
providing an informal and interactive setting for the exchange of ideas
and perspectives. Confirmed speakers include:
- Davide Rodogno (The Graduate Institute, Geneva)
- Corinne Pernet (University of Geneva)
- Kiran Patel (Maastricht University)
Call for abstracts
Ever
since the paradigm of ‘globalization’ has found its way into the field
of history, ways of writing histories beyond borders have proliferated.
Today, historians no longer need to justify enlarging their geographical
scope beyond the national, but it can nonetheless be a daunting task to
decide on how to do this. While we are going beyond borders, the choice
for a translocal, transnational, transregional or global history still
reveals our preference for a certain scale. Methodologically, our
toolbox now offers us concepts such as comparisons, transfers,
connections, entanglements and circulations. As different approaches
focus on different concepts, choosing one approach often entails a
rejection of other possible approaches. Transnational historians will
distance themselves from comparative history; global history, as any
global historian will tell you, is not the same as world history. The
further we seem to get in advancing the call for breaking with our
‘methodological nationalism’, the more we seem to split up into
different subfields, where fruitful dialogue becomes increasingly
difficult. The purpose of this workshop is to open up this dialogue, to
see what specific advantages different approaches can offer and how they
can be best put to use.
In order to do this, the workshop will
focus on the history of international organizations (IOs), as they are
“extremely stimulating heuristic objects for historians of globalism in
that they represent a true laboratory of the accords and tensions at
work between the international, national, and local scenes and frames of
reference” (Kott, 2011, p. 449). Therefore, writing their history
automatically compels us to think about methodologies of doing ‘history
beyond borders’. Although they automatically force historians to think
about international connections, it is equally important to consider the
continuing role of local or national scales within international
organizations. Research objects in this regard can encompass both the
main intergovernmental organizations (IOs) – such as the League of
Nations, the UN or the NATO – and the vast field of International
Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs), spanning a diverse range of
causes from the environment (Greenpeace), over human rights (Amnesty
International), to humanitarianism (Médecins sans frontières).
For
this workshop, we are looking for original contributions on the history
of IOs and INGOs, based on empirical research, but with explicit
methodological reflections on transnational, global, comparative, etc.
approaches. Questions raised can include (but are not limited to):
- What specific advantages do different approaches bring to the history of international organizations?
- Are these approaches mutually exclusive, or do we need to combine different perspectives and concepts?
- What are some of the methodological challenges in writing the history of international organizations, in terms of analyzing connections, entanglements, comparisons, etc.?
- What are some of the practical challenges in writing the history of international organizations, in terms of mobility, language barriers, cultural sensitivity, etc.?
- How can we deal with the fact that levels can be used both as analytical concepts (used by the historian) and as historical concepts (used by the historical actors)?
- How can we deal with different uses of terms like international, national, local, e.g. as level, geographical or spatial unit or loyalty of a historical actor?
- How can we deal with the (hidden) hierarchy of terms or levels like global, national, etc.?
The
workshop will offer a combination of a master class, keynote lectures,
and roundtable discussions. It will start on 22 March in the afternoon,
with a master class by Davide Rodogno (The Graduate Institute, Geneva),
followed by a keynote lecture by Corinne Pernet (University of Geneva).
The second day (23 March) will consist of roundtable sessions, where
participants present their research and enter into discussion. Senior
researchers will chair these sessions and Kiran Patel (Maastricht
University) will deliver a closing keynote.
Submission of abstracts
Please send an abstract of max. 500 words and a short CV to the following email address: rethinkingdisability@hum.leidenuniv.nl
by 13 November 2017. Questions to the organizers can be sent using the
same address. Authors will be notified regarding the acceptance of their
contribution by 20 November. Invited participants will be expected to
submit a short draft version of a more substantial paper two weeks prior
to the event, which will be circulated among all other participants.
Participants who are accepted to present their paper are also
automatically accepted to participate in the master class. If you are
unable or do not wish to attend the master class, kindly indicate this
in your application.
Organization
The workshop is initiated and hosted by the research team of the ERC project ‘Rethinking Disability:
the Global Impact of the International Year of Disabled Persons (1981)
in Historical Perspective’, based in the Institute for History at Leiden
University. It is supported by the Huizinga Institute, the national Dutch research network for Cultural History.
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