CALL FOR PAPERS
Maine in the Statehood Era (ca. 1780s-1820s) and its Commemoration and Legacy
A volume of scholarly essays to be edited by Richard Judd (McBride Professor of History, emeritus, Univ. of Maine) and Liam Riordan (Professor of History, Univ. of Maine)
To mark the bicentennial of the state of Maine in 2020, the co-editors seek essays on any aspect of Maine history in the broad statehood era (ca. 1780s-1820s) or about the commemoration of statehood and its legacy. We anticipate accepting several papers that were presented at the Maine Statehood and Bicentennial Conference (held May 30-June 1, 2019), but we also seek submissions from those who did not present at (or attend) the conference.
Possible topics include but are not limited to:
- the politics and popular culture of separation from Massachusetts
- Wabanaki people, sovereignty, and the consequences of Maine independence
- French-speakers and their relationship to statehood and the new state
- the unsettled international border and relationships with Canada
- the Maine-Missouri Crisis and the politics of slavery and blackness
- religion in the statehood era
- land use, natural resources, and environmental history
- material culture and visual representations of Maine
- commemoration of statehood and its legacy
- assessments of local history, historical museums, and historic sites
- evaluations of the goals for public history in the twenty-first century
Submission Schedule:
- Nov. 15, 2019 submit a 300-word article proposal (state the scope, argument, and core evidence for your essay) as well as a short CV to riordan@maine.edu
- Dec. 15, 2019 notification from editors
- July 31, 2020 deadline to submit complete accepted essay (length ca. 7,500 words exclusive of notes, captions, and images)
We partly conceptualize this volume as revisiting and updating some of the approaches in Charles E. Clark, James S. Leamon, and Karen Bowden, eds., Maine in the Early Republic: From Revolution to Statehood (1988). As in that collection, we will seek funding to permit numerous illustrations, images, and the graphic presentation of data. Please consider this in making your proposal.
For videos from the Maine Bicentennial Conference in 2019, as well as links to online resources about the Maine statehood process, please visit: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/me200/
Please direct inquiries or submit proposals to Liam Riordan at riordan@maine.edu
