Chicago, January 8-11, 2026
Dear CHUS Members:
The American Historical Association (AHA) has opened its Call for Proposals for the 2026 Annual Meeting, which will take place in Chicago from January 8 to 11, 2026. You can find details on the AHA website: AHA Call for Proposals. We warmly invite you to propose sessions for the 2026 AHA and consider seeking co-sponsorship from CHUS. A session endorsed by CHUS has a higher chance of acceptance by the AHA Program Committee. More importantly, each co-sponsored session helps increase CHUS’s visibility within the broader AHA community.
Clarification of Session Types Sponsored by CHUS: Starting in 2023, CHUS has supported two kinds of sessions at the AHA Annual Meetings:
1) CHUS Co-Sponsored Sessions: These are regular AHA sessions that are proposed to and accepted by the AHA Program Committee. CHUS endorsement and co-sponsorship of such sessions requires active CHUS membership for most participants, and proposals must be previewed and approved by the CHUS Board before submission to AHA. The current call is for proposals for CHUS Co-Sponsored Sessions.
2) CHUS Solo-Sponsored Sessions: These are sessions that are proposed to and vetted by CHUS and included in the AHA annual meeting program under the category of “affiliate programs”. A stricter CHUS active membership requirement applies. A CFP for CHUS Solo-Sponsored Sessions will be issued in February with a deadline in mid-April. In the event that a session proposed as a CHUS Co-sponsored session is rejected by the AHA program committee, it will automatically be under consideration for inclusion into the CHUS affiliate program as a solo-sponsored session.
How to Submit: To apply for CHUS co-sponsorship for your AHA sessions, please submit complete session proposals to both Zhaojin Zeng (zhaojinzengpitt@gmail.com) and Qiong Zhang (zhangq@wfu.edu) by January 25, 2026. The CHUS Committee on Academic Affairs, in consultation with the CHUS Board, will review all proposals and notify organizers of its decisions by February 5, 2026. Organizers of accepted sessions are responsible for submitting their proposals via the AHA proposal portal by February 15, 2026.
Besides meeting all requirements set by the AHA, to ensure that your proposal receives full consideration for CHUS endorsement, please include all items below in your proposal:
1) Session title (up to 20 words)
2) Name, affiliation, email address, and indication of active CHUS membership of the session organizer
3) Session abstract (up to 500 words)
4) Short session abstract for the AHA meeting APP (up to 50 words)
5) Chair (required) and commentator (optional) for the session
6) For paper panels: title and abstract of up to 300 words for each paper presenter; the AHA recommends no more than four presenters in one session
7) For roundtable sessions: please include a description of up to 300 words for each participant in the session stating how or from which perspective(s) this participant will contribute to the discussion, although a “paper title” for the participant contribution is not required. Please note that the AHA proposal portal accepts no more than five participants for a roundtable session.
8) Brief biographical information (up to 250 words), email address, affiliation, and CHUS membership status for each participant.
9) Session organizers please make sure that the entire proposal (including session and paper abstracts) conforms to academic writing standards in terms of spelling, grammar, clarity, and coherence. Please submit all the above information in oneintegratedWord or PDF document.
An important note on CHUS membership requirements: For a session to receive CHUS co-sponsorship at the AHA, the session organizer and 2/3 of the session presenters (paper presenters or roundtable speakers) must be active CHUS members; session chairs and commentators are NOT required to be CHUS members. Indeed, you are encouraged to invite non-CHUS members to serve in such roles to broaden the scope of intellectual dialogue and exchange in such sessions. Sessions with an inherently interdisciplinary and/or transregional focus in which more than one participants are non-historians or work on world areas and themes unrelated to China may also be exempted from the 2/3 membership rule at the discretion of the CAP. Active CHUS membership requirements must be met by January 25, 2026 for the proposal to receive full consideration. For information on membership benefits and how to join CHUS, please see https://www.chinesehistorians.org/membership/
We also kindly ask that session organizers be mindful of the heavy financial costs involved in participating in the AHA meetings. Besides travel and lodging expenses, all participants in the AHA annual meetings, including chairs and commentators, must pay an AHA registration fee, and all US-based historians participating in a session belonging to the AHA’s formal program (including CHUS cosponsored sessions), must also maintain an active AHA membership (which is different from “CHUS membership” stated above). All conference sessions at the 2026 AHA, including all CHUS sessions, take place onsite only; there are no virtual options. Please provide all invitees to your proposed session — presenters/chairs/commentators — with this information about the relevant fees and memberships and include them in your proposed session only after securing their full commitment to onsite participation. We appreciate your effort to help us MINIMIZE NO-SHOWs and ensure that all CHUS co-sponsored sessions, when accepted into the AHA program, will be happening at the annual meetings exactly as proposed.
CHUS Marketplace (a Google Doc) for those looking to organize a session or join one that is being formed:
To facilitate you finding each other, we have set up a Google Doc titled “Marketplace for Interested Organizers of /Participants in CHUS Co-Sponsored Sessions at the 2026 AHA.” Here is the link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xvQKn09UOgvyTHTtJ7ZERiB4zTSxCwB0DaplqMxURoI/edit?usp=sharing
Please direct any inquiries you may have to Zhaojin Zeng (zhaojinzengpitt@gmail.com) and Qiong Zhang (zhangq@wfu.edu).
Thank you very much for your time and kind attention. We wish you all a healthy and productive New Year. Looking forward to hearing from many of you by or before January 25, 2025.
CHUS Committee on Academic Affairs:
Lei Duan, Sam Houston State University
Feng Miao, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Zhaojin Zeng, Texas A&M University – San Antonio
Qiong Zhang, Wake Forest University (Chair)