2022 HOTCUS Postgraduate and Early Career Conference

Poverty and (In)Equality in U.S. History

This year’s HOTCUS annual postgraduate and early career conference will be a one-day event on Saturday 15^th October 2022 held at the University of Leicester. This conference will highlight the intersections between poverty and other facets of 20th century US history, such as; work and work relations, government support and programs, racialisation, the healthcare system and socioeconomic inequalities. Throughout the 20th Century, state initiatives  attempted on various levels to reduce the socioeconomic inequality that existed throughout the US, for instance  the growth of government programs that either aimed to tackle the gross unemployment levels or the changes that had occurred within the healthcare system.

This hybrid conference will allow attendees to join in person at the University of Leicester or online through Microsoft Teams. The panels feature a mix of pre-circulated and live papers. The keynote lecture will be delivered by Dr Ellie Armon Azoulay (Newcastle University)  in person at the University of Leicester.

To attend in-person, please register through this link.

To attend digitally through Microsoft Teams, please register through this link.

The provisional programme for the conference is as follows:

10:00 – 10:30: Conference Registration

Tea & Coffee

10:30 – 11:30 Panel 1: The shifting identity of southern inequality and poverty

Chair: Dr Miguel Hernandez (Aberystwyth University)

Nick Greenwood (University of Sussex) Regional inequalities and regional conservatisms in the United States, 1945-1965

Ellen Morgan (University of Leicester): “Either you find a way to oppose the evil, or the evil becomes part of you”: Anne Braden, Communism and the Civil Rights Movement – Pre-circulated paper

11:30 – 12:30 Lunch Break

12:30 – 13:30 – Developmental Roundtable: Fellowship and Applications

Chair: Elizabeth Rees (University of Oxford)

Dr Elizabeth Evans, University of Newcastle
Sarah Thomson, University of Edinburgh

14:00 – 14:15 – Break

14:15 – 15:30 : Panel 2: Inequality and Government Policy

Chair: TBC

Daniel Coleman (Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge): The Evaporation of Inheritance Tax From Free Market Social Policy 1942-1962 – Pre-circulated paper.

Alexander Riggs (Nottingham University): “Nobody will be safe from my fairness”: Ideas of Inequality and Meritocracy in Mayor Harold Washington’s Chicago, 1983-87 – Pre-circulated paper.

Allison McKibben (Birbeck College, University of London): ‘A Matter of Dignity: Intersections of Poverty, Race, and Colonialism in the Violence Against Women Act

15:30– 15:45 Refreshments

15:45– 17:00: Keynote: Dr Ellie Armon Azoulay (Newcastle University)

Impoverished, not poor: the role of music collecting in the American South

17:00 – 18:00 Wine Reception