WESTERN SOCIETY FOR FRENCH HISTORY
CALL FOR PAPERS FOR 2011 CONFERENCE

The Thirty-Ninth Annual WSFH conference will be held in Portland, Oregon, November 10-12, 2011. The conference is co-sponsored by Portland State University, Reed College, and Washington State University Vancouver.

The conference will be held in the “timeless beauty” of the historic Benson hotel in downtown Portland, Oregon: http://www.bensonhotel.com/.  A limited number of rooms have been reserved at the rates of $119-$129. To reserve a rooom on-line, visit: http://www.coastpromos.com/ule. Portland, Oregon, located at the confluence of the Columbia and Willamette Rivers, is renowned for its creative culture (film, music, cuisine and visual arts), political and community engagement, commitment to environmental sustainability and, of course, rainy climate. This fertile region is also celebrated for its fine restaurants, strong coffee, microbreweries and wineries; the pinot grape has taken root and produces award-winning varietals. For more information on Portland, see: http://www.grist.org/article/2011-02-23-your-guide-to-a-great-green-weekend-in-portland.

In keeping with Portland’s ethos, the theme of the 2011 meeting is “Environment, Sustainability and France.” Our guest speakers will be: Geneviève Massard-Guilbaud (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales) author of Histoire de la pollution industrielle en France, 1789-1914 (Paris, Éditions de l’EHESS, 2010) and Neil Safier (University of British Columbia) author of Measuring the New World: Enlightenment Science and South America (Chicago, 2008).

Panels may address any topic of interest to our scholarly community, including the theme, but the program committee especially encourages panels that address issues and topics of significance to French history across a wide chronological span, from medieval to contemporary periods. 

The WSFH encourages interdisciplinary scholarship and the participation of advanced graduate students by awarding prizes for outstanding papers presented at the conference in the following areas: 

• the best interdisciplinary paper;
• the best paper presented by a graduate student on French history after 1800;  
• the best paper presented by a graduate student on the history of France and / or connections between France and the wider world before 1800.

All conference participants must be WSFH members in good standing at the time of the conference.

A prelimary version of the program is available here.