Shattered Spaces: Piecing Together Narratives of Crisis and Change
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As we approach the centenary of the First World War, which fueled a maelstrom of death and destruction on unprecedented scales, we may be inclined to consider the Great War a historical watershed that shattered countless physical and ideological spaces. War, genocide, economic collapse, and natural disasters can all be called shattering forces that catalyze crisis and change.

The Concordia University Graduate History Students’ Association is pleased to announce the 17th annual History in the Making Conference. This year’s theme, "Shattered Spaces: Piecing Together Narratives of Crisis and Change", will investigate the ways that victims of crises have reconciled, reconstructed, or parted with ruptured spaces. These spaces can be physical, through the shattering of populations, institutions, and landscapes, or metaphorical, through the shattering of ethnic, religious, gendered, and ideological spaces. How, then, have political, economic, social, and natural forces brought about crisis and change? By following the trajectory of crisis and change, how might these rupturing experiences be historicized and incorporated into the larger discourse of the shattered space?

We welcome presentation topics that explore a variety of issues:

Shattered (physical) spaces:
|War, zones of conflict, contentious borderlands, urbanization, natural disasters.|

Shattered (social, political, and economic) spaces:
|Genocide, coup d’états and regime changes, economic collapse, revolution, social movements, immigration/emigration.|

Shattered (ideological) spaces:
|Ethnic, religious, gender and sexual identity; memory, stories and oral testimony.|

Shattered (transnational) spaces:
|The environment, disease, inventions and innovations, media and communication.|

We encourage perspectives across all historical disciplines and time periods, as well as cross-disciplinary approaches such as museum studies, art history, and medicine.

Candidates must submit a brief biographical sketch (max. 150 words) and a paper abstract (max. 250 words) no later than January 9th, 2012. Successful applicants will be invited to present their papers by January 23rd via e-mail. Please send submissions to the Graduate History Students’ Association [GHSA] at ghsa.concordia@gmail.com

A select number of conference papers will be published in the spring 2012
issue of our peer-reviewed History in the Making journal.