The Dublin Seminar Goes to Sea in 2016

Here’s the call for papers at the 41st Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife, which will take place 24-26 June 2016 at Historic Deerfield. The topic is “New England at Sea: Maritime Memory and Material Culture.”

The Seminar is now accepting proposals for papers, presentations, and workshops on the maritime history of New England and adjacent areas of New York and Canada from the seventeenth through the early twentieth century. The topic explores how the region remembered its maritime past.

Proposals are sought for papers on shipbuilding, fishing and whaling, maritime art and literature, the coastal trade, prize-taking and piracy, shore leave, and charitable associations such as seamen’s aid societies. Other subjects might include inland ports and rivers, the global trade, underwater archaeology, maritime ecologies and sustenance, food, speech, work songs, maritime laborers at sea and in shore-side industries, the sea’s appeal to rural people and vacationers, and clothing (sailors’ slops, for example).

The conference is also interested in maritime law, the command structure, and the appeal of maritime life to people of diverse origins such as Cape Verdeans, escaped slaves, and Native Americans. We are also interested in papers on the evolution of maritime heritage, including the histories of maritime museums as well as maritime antiques in New England historical collections.

The Seminar encourages papers that reflect original research, especially those based on primary or underused resources such as material culture, letters and diaries, vital records, federal and state censuses, naturalization records, as well as newspapers, portraits, prints and photographs, business and banking records, recollections, and autobiographies.

The organizing committee plans to choose about seventeen lectures of twenty minutes each, along with related tours and workshops if possible. Selected papers will appear in the Dublin Seminar’s annual Proceedings volume published about eighteen months after the conference. For further information on how to submit a paper proposal, visit the seminar website.

This Dublin Seminar is scheduled for the same weekend as the Omohundro Institute’s 2016 conference, which will take place over four days (23-26 June) in Worcester.