Winter Symposium 2027
Perspectives on the History of American Education
Call for Papers
American education has been understood for decades as a key element in the development of domestic and international policy, and historians of the United States have analysed many aspects of the field. Education factors in everything from federally-mandated public education post-emancipation, Progressive era initiatives and immigration policies of the early twentieth century, the GI Bill’s impact on campus expansion and social mobility from the late 1940s well into the 1960s, the Brown and Brown II decisions, and the rise of mass incarceration as part of the school-to-prison pipeline.
While the study of American educational history, especially that of higher education, is a well-established field in the U.S., until recently it has been a significantly smaller area in the UK. There has been an increase over the last several years in the number of historians working in the area of education and American history in the UK, making the collaboration between these scholars timely. Drs Rebecca Stone (Warwick) and Kate Ballantyne (Liverpool John Moores University) are co-organising the 2027 HOTCUS Winter Symposium to provide discussion of these subjects.
The symposium will take place over one day, on Friday, 19 February 2027, at the University of Warwick, co-sponsored between Warwick and Liverpool John Moores University’s Centre for Modern and Contemporary History. Individual paper proposals, three-person panel proposals, and roundtables on specific issues are equally welcomed, for example:
- The social, political, and cultural histories of US education
- Aspects of education more broadly (e.g. textbooks, student experience, teaching, alternative pathways, extra-curricular education)
- Any level of education (e.g. primary, secondary, higher education)
- Foreign policy and/or international connections with American education
- School policing and mass incarceration
- Free speech and activism within education
- Any time period of modern American history is welcome
Submission Note: We strongly encourage panels that include a mix of participants from across the career spectrum (i.e., from postgraduate to professor). Historically, women have been underrepresented at HOTCUS events. As positive action under the Equality Act 2010, we seek to encourage the increased participation of women by asking conference participants not to submit all-male panels.
To submit an individual paper, please send a brief CV (no more than two pages) and a 200-300-word abstract of the proposed paper. Panel proposals should contain a 200-300-word abstract for each paper and a brief CV (no more than two pages) for each participant. Please submit your proposals and CVs to events.hotcus@gmail.com no later than 1 November 2026.
Previous Winter Symposiums
2026: The American Nation in the Twentieth Century: The Declaration of Independence at 250 (University of Liverpool, 27 February 2026)
2025: The United States and World War II: Impacts and Legacies at Home and Abroad (University of Gloucestershire, 21 February 2025)
2024: The uses and abuses of ‘neoliberalism’ in modern US history (University College London, 16 February 2024)
2023: 1963: A Watershed Year? (Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford, 24 February 2023)
2022: The Manhattan Project Turns 80: Reflections on the Nuclear Age (Liverpool John Moores University, 12 March 2022)
2020: Food, Health, and Welfare in U.S. History (Keele University, 22 February 2020)
2019: “Nuclear States”: Science, Technology, and American Society in the Atomic Age (University of Lincoln, 16 February 2019)
2018: The State of the State: What is American Political History Now? (University of Nottingham, 17 February 2018)
2017: War and Conflict in Twentieth-Century American Society and Culture (Eccles Centre for American Studies, British Library, 18 February 2017)
2016: “Ordinary People”: Grassroots Organizing and Protest Movements in Twentieth Century America (University of Dundee, 13 February 2016)
2015: Memory and History in the Twentieth-Century United States (Canterbury Christ Church University, 21 February 2015)
2014: Dixie’s Great War: The American South and World War I (Portsmouth University, 28 February 2014)
2013: Religion and Politics in the United States (King’s College London, 22 February 2013)
2012: Punishment in the American Century (University of Southampton, 3 February 2012)
2011: Immigration and the Federal Government (University of Sunderland, 25 February 2011)
2010: American Music and Popular Culture (University of Reading, 4 March 2010)
2009: Beyond Otherness: The Politics of Sexuality in the Twentieth Century United States (University of Sheffield, 27 February 2009)