2024 CHUS Annual Meeting at AHA Call for Proposals
Dr. Qiong Zhang, CHUS Conference Coordinator (zhangq@wfu.edu)
This is a call for session proposals for the CHUS program at the 2024 AHA, which will be held in San Francisco on Jan. 4- 7, 2024.
The CHUS board is seeking proposals of FULLY ORGANIZED roundtables or paper panels for the 2024 AHA. CHUS will be offering two kinds of sponsorships at the conference:
1. Co-sponsorship of a session with the AHA program committee.
2. Solo CHUS sponsorship of a session.
What are the differences between these two types of sponsorship and their respective submission methods and membership requirements?
1. If you would like to propose a panel or roundtable as a session co-sponsored by CHUS and AHA, please submit your proposal to me for a pre-vetting and endorsement by the CHUS Board no later than Friday February 10. If your session receives the endorsement from CHUS, you, as the session organizer, will be responsible for submitting your session proposal directly to the AHA program committee at its website — https://www.historians.org/proposals — by the official AHA deadline of Wednesday February 15, 2023. While filling the AHA online session proposal submission form, please indicate that your session will be co-sponsored by CHUS; there is a line near the top of the proposal form asking for this information. Doing so would greatly facilitate the AHA acceptance of your proposal, as the committee will know that there is already a substantial audience for your session.
Membership requirements for AHA-CHUS co-sponsored sessions:
A. AHA membership: An AHA-CHUS co-sponsored session is considered a regular AHA session for all administrative purposes. The regular AHA membership requirements apply in this case, namely, all participants in an AHA session (chairs/discussants included) who are US-based historians must carry an active AHA membership. International scholars and US-based scholars whose professional fields are not in the discipline of history are exempted from this requirement.
B. CHUS membership: For CHUS to co-sponsor a session with the AHA, besides considering the proposed session’s intellectual merit, CHUS also requires that the majority of its speakers who are historians be CHUS members at the time of the proposal submission. “Speakers” here refers to either roundtable participants or paper presenters. Speakers from outside the discipline of history andthe session’s chair and discussant need NOT be CHUS members. CHUS charges no conference fees to non-CHUS members participating in an AHA-CHUS jointly sponsored session.
2. If you wish to propose a paper or roundtable session with a solo CHUS sponsorship, please submit your proposals to me no later than Sunday April 23. Your proposed session will be primarily vetted by the CHUS Board and secondarily by the AHA program committee. If accepted, your session will appear in the programs of AHA Affiliated Societies, listed under Chinese Historians in the United States (CHUS). While the space allocated for displaying your session information will be limited (allowing for listing only the title of your session, titles of individual papers, and name of presenters, plus around 90 words for your session description), we will insert a weblink in your session abstract which will lead the online AHA program users to reach the full description of your session (including your full session abstract and individual paper abstracts) on our CHUS-AHA conference program page at the CHUS website. (This website http://www.chinesehistorians.org/ is currently going through reconstruction and should be available soon.)
Membership requirements:
A. Active AHA membership is NOT required for participants of sessions sponsored by CHUS alone;
B. CHUS membership: please see the relevant entry under the detailed instructions for sessions seeking CHUS’ solo sponsorship below.
Detailed instructions on how to prepare and submit your proposal:
To prepare your session proposal for CHUS and AHA co-sponsorship, please consult the information in the AHA Call for Proposals at https://www.historians.org/proposals.
Below are instructions pertaining to sessions proposed for CHUS’ solo sponsorship only:
1. Session Format: Proposed sessions can follow either of two formats:
1) a paper panel, consisting of three or four presenters, a chair, and a discussant. Sessions with four presenters may choose to go without a discussant. Please note that a presenter can also chair a session in which s/he presents but not serve as its discussant; and the two service roles (as chair and discussant) can be played by the same individual.
2) a roundtable with a chair and 3-6 participants.
For both formats: If a person chairs a paper session in which s/he presents a paper or chairs a roundtable in which s/he is also a participant, s/he may chair and/or serve as discussant in another CHUS session. Except for extenuating circumstances, the same individual should not play ONLY service roles in more than one session.
2. Themes and Composition of proposed sessions: Session topics may concern any fields of historical scholarship, historiography, and pedagogy. Interdisciplinary topics with a solid historical component are also welcome. We encourage session organizers to consider inviting a mix of participants at different stages of their career, especially our student members.
3. Active membership or conference fee: In general, active CHUS membership is required of all paper presenters or roundtable participants in a session with solo CHUS sponsorship, but non-members are also very welcome to participate in such sessions provided that they pay a conference fee of $40 to CHUS to help it cover expenses paid to the AHA for the use of the conference room and other associated AHA services and to the hosting hotels for A/V rentals. This fee will be waived for non-member student participants and for all individuals in such sessions who are on service roles only (as chairs and/or discussants). (Please note that this CHUS conference fee of $40 charged to non-member, non-student speakers — paper presenters or roundtable participants — is in addition to the conference registration fee charged by the AHA to everyone participating in a session taking place at the AHA meetings, regardless of who sponsors the session.
4. What to include on your session proposal:
1) Name and contact information of the session organizer
2) The title of the proposed session
3) A short session abstract of up to 90 words
4) A longer (200-300 word) session abstract
5) For paper panels: please also provide the titles and names of presenters of individual papers and a 200-300-word abstract for each paper
6) Names, current institutional affiliations (if none, please use “independent scholar”), and email addresses of all individuals on the session, including chair, discussant, and all roundtable participants or paper presenters.
It is paramount that our panelists uphold the academic integrity and professional standards of CHUS. Please be reminded that CHUS does not have the technical resources to hold a session via teleconferencing at the AHA, so only individuals who are able to participate in the AHA onsite should be included on a proposed session. Once a panel has been accepted into our AHA program, all individuals, members and non-members alike, who participate in it as panelists, discussants, or chairs must fulfill their obligations as stated in the proposal and attend the conference. In the event that an illness or other emergencies prevents a panel participant from attending the meeting, the absentee must inform their panel organizers and the CHUS conference coordinator (Qiong Zhang zhangq@wfu.edu) of their situations at the earliest possible time and make arrangements for a co-panelist or some other conference participant to deliver papers or comments or chairing a panel on their behalf. Failure to do so will result in a 3-year suspension from CHUS-organized AHA panels.
We regret that we will not be able to accept individual paper proposals. However, if you wish to present a paper and are looking for co-panelists, please let us know, and we would be happy to circulate your “call for co-panelists” using CHUS group emails and our social media outlets.