Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations

The web-site for the 2009 meeting has been deactivated but is being preserved here for archival purposes.

• Registration
  
• Conference Program
  
• Conference Venue
• Parking and Transportation
• Message Board
• Contact Information
• Book Exhibit
• Potomac Cruise Information
• Childcare Providers
• Information on Visiting the Historic Home and Gardens of George C. Marshall
  
• Shuttle Schedule for Thursday
  
• Shuttle Schedule for Friday
• Shuttle Schedule for Saturday
  

Dear Colleagues:

On behalf of the 2009 SHAFR Program Committee (Carol Anderson, Dirk Bonker, Anne Foster, Amy Greenberg, Naoko Shibusawa and Salim Yaqub), I’d like to invite you to attend this year’s conference, to be held from Thursday, June 25th through Saturday, June 27th at the Fairview Park Marriott in Falls Church, Virginia. Information regarding registration, lodging, transportation, and the Falls Church area can be found above.

This year’s Program Committee issued an especially broad call for papers. Choosing as the conference theme, “The United States in the World/The World in the United States,” it circulated the call for papers on 60 list-servs; SHAFR also published it in the OAH Magazine and in Perspectives. The invitation welcomed scholarship representing SHAFR’s “signature and continuing strengths in diplomatic, strategic, and foreign relations history, particularly in the post-1945 period” as well as panels and papers dealing with “non-state actors and/or pre-1945 histories or those involving histories of gender and race, cultural history, religious history, transnational history and histories of migration and borderlands.”

There was an overwhelming response to this outreach. The program committee received 100 panel proposals plus 41 individual paper applications, representing an increase from previous years of over 50%. In view of SHAFR’s commitment to enhancing its scope, we have expanded the annual meeting from the usual 48 or 54 panels to 82 panels. During most time slots there will be 10 concurrent panels. Presenters will include scholars based in 17 countries outside the United States. Roughly 25% of the participants will be graduate students, many of them first-timers to SHAFR.

The conference opens with its first session of panels at 1:00 p.m. on Thursday, June 25th. Our keynote address, by Amy Goodman, radio journalist and host of Democracy Now, will take place Thursday evening, following a reception that begins at 5:30 PM. The title of her talk is “Independent Media in a Time of War.”  At the Friday luncheon, Frank Costigliola will give his presidential address, entitled “After FDR’s Death: Dangerous Emotions, Divisive Discourses, and the Abandoned Alliance.” The Saturday luncheon speaker is Eric Edelman, a former foreign service officer and Defense Department official who has a Ph.D. in history and who has served as ambassador to Finland and to Turkey. His talk is entitled “Diplomat among Warriors: Reflections on the Foreign Service and the Uses of History.” Our concluding panels will take place from 3:30-5:30 p.m. on Saturday, June 27.

There will be special efforts to reach out to new-comers at the Thursday welcoming reception, the Friday graduate student breakfast, and the Saturday mentoring and networking breakfast. The Friday breakfast includes a workshop on publishing with editors from academic presses. The Saturday breakfast, sponsored by the Women’s Committee and the Membership Committee, will be an informal get-together where new-comers can mingle with veterans over coffee and pastries, network, and get advice on a variety of issues that concern out field and our profession.

For an after-conference social event, the local arrangements committee (Kristin Ahlberg, Meredith Hindley, and Anna Nelson, assisted by Sara Wilson) is booking a dinner cruise on the Potomac on the Cherry Blossom, which will be reserved for SHAFR’s exclusive use. The cruise will travel from Alexandria to Mt. Vernon and back. The cost will be approximately $80 plus the cost of bus transportation. The package will include transportation from the Marriott to the boat, dinner, and transportation back to the Marriott. Because logistics make it too difficult to charge separately for drinks, there will also be an open bar featuring beer, wine, and soft drinks.. For the exact price, please consult the SHAFR website and registration form. SHAFR will subsidize part of the cost to graduate students.

We’re excited about the scope, richness and diversity of this year’s program and hope you’ll be able to join us for SHAFR 2009 in Falls Church.

Best,

Paul Kramer

Program Chair, SHAFR 2009