The Exchange

The Journal of Historical Research in Marketing invites submissions for a special issue focused on “Italian Marketing History,” to be guest edited by Jonathan Morris. The call for papers states: Several overarching themes are planned including historical studies of marketing within Italy and the ways in which Italy has been marketed beyond the country’s borders, the emergence of new distribution channels, the adaptation of marketing strategies imported from abroad, the ‘economic miracle’ of the late 1950s and subsequent affluence of the 1960s, the development of new consumer identities amongst women and youth, elite and mass tourism, and  the centuries-long marketing history of the Italian luxury industries such as fashion, furniture, and food. Please see the full call for papers for additional details. The deadline for submissions is August 1, 2013 .

The October 2011 issue of the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era devotes itself to booms and busts in the Gilded Age, particularly the Panic of 1873, which the editor characterizes as perhaps "the least understood major episode in the history of American political economy." For a brief period, all the articles are freely available from the journal's website. Contents include: Scott Reynolds Nelson, "Introduction: Reflecting on History when Markets Tumble" Nicolas Barreyre, "The Politics of Economic Crises: The Panic of 1873, the End of Reconstruction, and the Realignment of American Politics" Scott Reynolds Nelson, "A Financial Crisis in Prints and Cartoons" Jonathan Levy, "The Freaks of Fortune: Moral Responsibility for Booms and Busts in Nineteenth-Century America" Scott Reynolds Nelson, "A Storm of Cheap Goods: New American Commodities and the Panic of 1873" Andrew Zimmerman, "Cotton Booms, Co

The annual Cliometric Society conference in 2012 will be held on the weekend of Friday, May 18 through Sunday, May 20 at Westward Look, Tucson, Arizona, and hosted by the University of Arizona and the National Science Foundation.    The conference is designed to provide extensive discussion of new and innovative research in economic history. The papers selected for presentation and discussion are sent out to all conference participants in advance. All participants are required to read all papers and to attend the entire conference. At least one author must be a member of the Cliometric Society. For membership information contact Michael Haupert .    The deadline to submit a paper proposal or a request to attend the conference is January 18,  2012 . Interdisciplinary proposals and participants are strongly encouraged. Those wishing to present a paper should provide an abstract and a 3-5 page summary of the proposed paper. In choosing papers and participants, the host committee will

A few weeks ago, we mentioned the Echoes blog at Bloomberg.com, which Stephen Mihm of the University of Georgia has retooled to "unearth parallels between past and present, highlighting how the economic crises of our own era are perhaps not as unique as we think." Since its revamping, the blog has published numerous essays by members of the business history community, including: Sean Vanatta , "How the Insurance Industry Tried to Ban Christmas" Leslie Berlin , "When Steve Jobs Was a 'Joker' " Louis Hyman , "How Did World War II End the Great Depression?" Terri Lonier , "The Accident That Started the Breakfast Cereal Business" Jeffrey Fear , "The Long Shadow of German Hyperinflation Roger Horowitz , "Commemorating the Ford Edsel's Historically Bad Launch Among many other contributors familiar to business historians are Regina Lee Blaszczyk, Peter Coclanis, Steve Fraser, Marc Levinson, and Robert E. Wright

The Centre for Business History at Copenhagen Business School is hosting a workshop on January 12-13, 2012, on "The Invention of Choice: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives on Markets, Democracy, and Power." As organizer Stefan Schwarzkopf explains, The aim of the workshop is to problematize the notion of “choice” from various historical and theoretical perspectives. Rather than asking whether or not more (or less) choice per se is either good or bad for citizens and consumers—a perspective that dominates much of the discussion in marketing, consumer psychology, behavioural economics etc.—we want to use this workshop to exchange ideas about the historical, cultural and political circumstances that led to the reification of choice as a social policy aim in its own right.    The full program is available here .    Registration is via email to Stefan Schwarzkopf ; the deadline is January 6, 2012 .

Debtor Nation: The History of America in Red Ink (Princeton University Press, 2011), by Louis Hyman , has been listed as one of Choice's top 25 academic books of the year. Readers can find on-line reviews of the book here and here . Hyman discusses the book in the Chronicle of Higher Education Review and can be heard discussing it with Marshall Poe at "New Books in History." He also contributed a comment to the Page 99 Test . Hyman is currently an assistant professor in the Labor Relations, Law, and History department at the ILR school of Cornell University. In 2008, he won the Business History Conference's Herman Krooss Prize for the best dissertation presented at the BHC annual meeting; his thesis was entitled "Debtor Nation: How Consumer Credit Built Postwar America."

The International Joseph A. Schumpeter Society will hold its next biennial conference at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, on July 2-5, 2012. The theme of the meeting will be "Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Competitive Processes in Complex Economic Systems." According to the call for papers: Although the Conference is open to submissions in all areas of evolutionary economics, the Scientific Committee would like to encourage submissions in six priority areas: Evolutionary perspectives on the causes and consequences of high economic growth in Asian economies The role of energy and other natural resources in economic evolution Understanding and achieving environmental sustainability using evolutionary economic analysis The role of intellectual property in driving innovation in the new media Long waves, finance and global crises Productivity growth and structural change All paper proposals and abstracts must be submitted on-line thro

The Z. Taylor Vinson Collection at the Hagley Library is one of the largest public collections of automotive trade catalogs and ephemera in the world. The collection covers the history of transportation with a primary focus on the automobile industry from 1891 to the present. The physical collection numbers approximately 67,000 items (700 cubic feet). The collection is currently being processed and will not open for research until 2014. In the meantime, Hagley has created this digital collection to serve as a preview. Interested researchers can also learn about updates to the collection at the Hagley's blog related to the Vinson Collection, which features short articles and full-text examples of items so far digitized.

Marshall Plan poster, 1950 The German Historical Institute (GHI) in Washington, D.C., with funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, has launched a new website on the topic TransatlanticPerspectives: Europe in the Eyes of European Immigrants to the United States,1930-1980 . The website is an outlet for a four-year research project that explores the role of European migrants in transatlantic exchange processes during the mid-twentieth century. The project focuses on migrant professionals involved in business, consumer culture, urban development, and the social sciences. By adapting their European professional heritage to their work in the United States and by translating American innovations to the context of their European homelands, these migrants acted as conduits for social and intellectual transfer. In addition to biographical information about individual migrants and their transatlantic careers, the site provides links to mass media articles th

The SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) Historical Society has just posted a new on-line gallery, "Chasing the Devil around the Stump: The SEC and the Courts," curated by Kurt Hohenstein of Winona State University. As the exhibit introduction explains, After the stock market crash of 1929, as the regulation of securities became more complex with the passage of the Securities Acts of the New Deal, the newly-established U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission began to interpret the laws, create and implement rules, and develop legal strategies to regulate the securities industry. . . . The story of the development of securities law necessarily involves the written decisions of the courts, but to focus on merely those decisions . . . ignores much of the story. The context of the case and the decision, the manner by which a case came to be heard by a court, the strategic decisions made by the SEC General Counsel’s Office and appellate legal counsel, the personality o

Over at Publick Occurrences , the Common-Place blog, Joseph M. Adelman has written the first two in what he promises will be a series of posts on the history and current problems of the U.S. Postal Service. The first comments on “The Decline and Fall of the U.S. Postal Service,” and the second considers “The Post Office as a State-Business Hybrid.”    Adelman (Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University, 2010) is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Program in Early American Economy and Society at the Library Company of Philadelphia, where he is working on a book project tentatively titled “Revolutionary Networks: The Business of Printing and the Production of American Politics, 1763-1789,” a systematic study of the communications infrastructure that framed political debate during the American Revolution. From February to July 2012, he will be an NEH Fellow at the American Antiquarian Society .   His article, “‘A Constitutional Conveyance of Intelligence, Public and Private’: The Post

Registration and accommodations booking are now open for the World Economic History Congress (WEHC), to be held in Stellenbosch, South Africa, on July 9-13, 2012. The main WEHC page has links to everything one might want to know, including travel, cultural and tourist information, and various deadlines and schedules. In addition, the list of accepted sessions has been posted, as well as links to calls for papers issued by session convenors.    There is also still time for Ph.D. students and junior postdoctoral researchers who would like to participate in the poster session to submit their abstracts—the deadline is March 1, 2012 . Full information about the submission procedures for poster presenters is available on the "Call for Posters" section of the WEHC site.

The International Maritime Economic History Association will hold its sixth conference in Ghent, Belgium, on July 2-6, 2012, at Het Pand, a historic dominican monastery. The emphasis will be on the international, transnational, and global character of maritime history, with special attention to the relation between maritime and global history. The preliminary program has now been posted. The keynote speaker will be Patrick Manning of the University of Pittsburgh. The program ranges widely over all aspects of maritime economic history, but business historians may find the following sessions of particular interest: "Nordic Shipping after 1960" (4) "French Shipping and Trade before the Revolution" (8) "Nordic Shipping from a Long-Term Perspective" (12) "Transnational Trade Networks around the Globe, 1600-1815" (15) "Maritime (In)security: Manuals, Insurances and Shipwrecks" (32) "Commercial and Political Dimensions of Shi

 Earlier this month, the American Antiquarian Society (AAS) held a conference with the title, "Before Madison Avenue: Advertising in Early America." Now the Library Company of Philadelphia , in conjunction with the LCP's Visual Culture Program and the AAS's Center for Historic Visual Culture (CHAViC), has announced a similar meeting, also called "Before Madison Avenue: Advertising in Early America," to be held March 15-16, 2012. The conference program is now available. As the organizers explain: From newspaper agate print to trade cards to broadsides to posters, ads were everywhere in early America, helping to support the rise of entire sectors of the publishing industry and introducing Americans to the ever-expanding world of goods and services that the growing nation offered. But what were the aesthetics, conventions, norms, and business practices of advertising in early America? How did individuals and businesses make sense of the constantly chan

The Library Company of Philadelphia will host a conference on June 7-8, 2012, to investigate the topic “Capitalism by Gaslight: The Shadow Economies of Nineteenth-Century America.” As the call for papers explains:     There were many ways in which Americans earned a living through economic transactions beyond the spheres of “legitimate” commerce. Entrepreneurs of this sort included everyone from prostitutes and card sharps to confidence men, mock auctioneers, pickpockets, fences of stolen goods, and many others. Although these shadow economies may have unfolded “off the books,” they were anything but marginal. Instead, they were crucially important parts of the mainstream economy, bound up in the development of commercial and industrial capitalism in nineteenth-century America. The shadow economy’s successful entrepreneurs—women, people of color, and children among them—had to be even more creative, flexible, and adaptive than “respectable” counterparts. The practices, networks

Readers in or near New York City will be interested in the Columbia University Business History Forum 's November 29 meeting, which will be a symposium on Capitalism Takes Command: The Social Transformation of Nineteenth-Century America (Chicago, 2011 [but out in January 2012]), edited by Michael Zakim and Gary J. Kornblith.    The symposium will meet from 6:30 to 8:00 pm, in Room 523, Butler Library, Columbia University, and will be followed by a reception. The meeting, which is open to the public, is sponsored by the Columbia Rare Book and Manuscript Library; the Herbert H. Lehman Center for American  History; and the History Department at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College.    Capitalism Takes Command presents original histories of the commercialization of farming, the creation of a national mortgage market, the collateralization of slaves, the invention of office systems, and more—an inventory of means by which capitalism became America's new r

The Economic History Society has posted the preliminary program for its 2012 meeting, which will be held at St. Catherine's College at the University of Oxford on March 30-April 1, 2012. In addition to two sessions (IV.F and V.B) specifically labelled "business history," the program contains many topics of interest to both business and economic historians. The 2012 Tawney Lecture will be delivered by Professor Sir Roderick Floud of Gresham College.     Registration information and other details will be posted on the EHS conference site as they become available.

The Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Delaware, and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania present will host a conference on “Historicizing Routines” on November 1-2, 2012. The organizers “invite empirical and historically focused papers that explore the development, devolution, destruction, and re-creation of routines in twentieth-century organizations and bounded communities.” Herewith the complete call for papers:     Routines are central to much human behavior, both within organizations and more broadly, because they facilitate the navigation of complex social, economic, and ecological environments. Too often, however, they are simplistically equated with stasis and adaptation, and unfairly counter-posed to innovation or transformation. In reality, routines can be dynamic, as the organizations and individuals that follow them encounter and respond to new situations or conditions that dis

The European Business History Association will hold its next meeting jointly with the Business History Society of Japan on August 30-September 1, 2012, at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. The theme of the meeting is "Business Enterprises and the Tensions between Local and Global." Over several centuries companies have pursued their business strategies on several dimensions, from the local to the global. This can be seen in the recruitment of personnel, their procurement, their financing, their R & D, their production or services, and their relations with consumers, social forces, intellectuals, public authorities, education and research systems. However, the process of adapting to these multiple dimensions is not straightforward, even for large and experienced multinationals, and often results in tensions between global and local. . . . comparisons between regions and countries, branches of industry, single enterprises, and, of co

Deadlines are approaching for the Lemelson Center Fellowship Program and Travel to Collections Award Program, which support projects that present creative approaches to the study of invention and innovation in American society.    The programs provide access to the expertise of the Institution's research staff and the vast invention and technology collections of the National Museum of American History (NMAH). The NMAH Archives Center documents both individuals and firms across a range of time periods and subject areas including railroads, musical instruments, television, radio, plastics, and sports equipment. Lemelson Center invites applications covering a broad spectrum of research topics that resonate with its mission to foster a greater understanding of invention and innovation, broadly defined. However, the Center especially encourages project proposals that will illuminate the role of women inventors; inventors with disabilities; inventors from diverse backgrounds; or

The Oxford Journals Doctoral Colloquium in Business History offers a small group of graduate students an opportunity to work intensively on their dissertations with distinguished Business History Conference-affiliated scholars, including at least two BHC officers.     The 2012 Doctoral Colloquium will be held in conjunction with the Business History Conference annual meeting in Philadelphia. This prestigious workshop, sponsored by the BHC and generously funded by Oxford University Press, will take place Wednesday evening, March 28, 2012, and all day Thursday, March 29, 2012. The Colloquium is limited to ten students. Participants will discuss dissertation proposals, relevant literatures and research strategies, and employment opportunities in business history. The Colloquium is intended for doctoral candidates in early and mid-stages of their dissertation projects. To be considered for the Colloquium, applicants must provide: a statement of interest a CV a preliminary or fin

The Securities and Exchange Commission Historical Society has posted a videocast of its recent program, "Silver Screen: How Films Shape Public Perception of Financial Regulation." Moderated by David Lipton of the Columbus School of Law at Catholic University of America, the program features a discussion of the topic by J. Bradley Bennett of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and John Reed Stark of Stroz Friedberg LLC (and formerly chief of the SEC's Office of Internet Enforcement). Particularly useful is the accompanying paper by Loren E. Miller , a Ph.D. candidate in history at American University; after a short introduction , she provides a 35-page listing of relevant movies from "The Good-for-Nothing" in 1914 to "Too Big to Fail" in 2011, with "Image of the Markets, Nature of the Misdeeds, and Role of Regulation in Film" for each entry.

The December 2011 issue of Enterprise & Society is now available on the Oxford University Press website. Full text access requires a subscription (included in BHC membership), but the abstracts or extracts are accessible by all.   Contents include papers from the Krooss Dissertation Session at the 2011 BHC meeting as well as the following articles: Sean Patrick Adams , "How Choice Fueled Panic: Philadelphians, Consumption, and the Panic of 1837" Christopher Jones , "The Carbon-Consuming Home: Residential Markets and Energy Transitions" Neveen Abdelrehim, Josephine Maltby , and Steven Toms , "Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Control: The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, 1933–1951" Stuart W. Leslie , "The Strategy of Structure: Architectural and Managerial Style at Alcoa and Owens-Corning" The 2011 Presidential Address, normally included in this issue, will appear in the March 2012 number.

The German Historical Institute (GHI) in Washington, D.C., has issued a call for papers for a workshop to be held on February 24-25, 2012, on the topic “Globalization of African American Business and Consumer Culture.” Potential topics include, but are not limited to The marketing and selling of African-American culture (e.g. music, film, literature) around the globe African-American consumers and the global economy (e.g. import products) African-American businesses and businesspeople around the world Non-American cultural products (e.g. music, film, literature) and African-American consumers African-American international tourists and international tourists visiting African-American sites African-American consumers and immigrant businesses The international trade in the black freedom struggle's legacy (e.g. The Black Power Mixtape)    Please see the full call for papers for a complete description.    Proposals should include a paper title, a one-page abstract, and a

Stephen Mihm of the University of Georgia has revamped the Echoes blog at Bloomberg.com to focus on historical parallels to modern events in business and economics. As he explains: History doesn’t repeat itself. Sometimes, though, it rhymes. That idea animates our revamped "Echoes" blog, dedicated to the history of economics, business, finance and, above all, capitalism. Our contributors will aim to unearth parallels between past and present, highlighting how the economic crises of our own era are perhaps not as unique as we think. . . . Many of history's best economic stories can’t be reduced to numbers and charts. They're dramatic tales of hubris, innovation, brilliance and luck—of people caught in the grips of forces that they don't fully comprehend. We'll be trying to tell those stories here.    Commentary will be offered by business and economic historians, including co-contributors Philip Scranton of Rutgers University and John B. Taylor of Stanf

The Market Cultures Group of New York City [no website] invites you to attend "Pioneering Economic Forecasters and Their Legacies," a presentation by Walter Friedman (research fellow, Harvard Business School, and editor, Business History Review ), in conversation with Anders Maxwell (managing director, Peter J. Solomon Company). The event will take place on Thursday, November 10, 6:00-7:30 p.m., at 80 Fifth Avenue, Room 529, The New School (New York City). For a copy of the paper, please contact Walter Friedman .    Next month the Market Cultures Group will host "The Legacy and Lessons of the Air Controllers' Strike," by Joseph McCartin (associate professor of history and director of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University and the author of the upcoming Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, The Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike that Changed America ), in conversation with Ruth Milkman (professor of sociology, CUNY

The History of Consumer Culture research group in Japan will be holding its next conference at Gakushuin University, Tokyo, on March 26-28, 2012. The meeting's theme is "Genealogies of Curiosity and Material Desire: How Has Consumer Taste Been Constructed?" The program , which includes links to abstracts of the papers, has now been posted. In addition to regular sessions, keynote addresses will be given by Toshio Kusamitsu, Professor in Humanities and Culture, Open University of Japan; John Styles, Research Professor in History, University of Hertfordshire; Avner Ofner, Chichele Professor of Economics History, All Souls College, Oxford; and John Brewer, Eli and Edye Broad Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology.     Additional conference details, including lodging and registration information, are available on the conference website .

The Grupo Cuatrinacional de Estudios Empresariales e Historia Económica and the Coloquio de Historia de Empresas will hold a joint business history symposium on November 10-11, 2011, at the Universidad de San Andrés in Buenos Aires. The program has now been posted. Sessions are organized around three themes: "Economic Fluctuations and Business Strategies in the Twentieth Century," "The Internationalization of Business," and "Agroindustries and Business." More information and registration materials are available on the conference website. Questions may be addressed to Andrea Lluch .      As part of the "Internationalization of Business" topic, there will be a presentation of the book El impacto histórico de la globalización en Argentina y Chile: empresas y empresarios , edited by Geoffrey Jones and Andrea Lluch (Buenos Aires, Temas, 2011). The book represents an early product of the "Latin American Business Initiative" of the Harv

"Railroads and the Making of Modern America" is a digital history site at the University of Nebraska Lincoln, led by William G. Thomas III of Nebraska and Richard Healey, a geographer at the University of Portsmouth, UK, who focuses on historical GIS. The site's introduction explains: This project seeks to document and represent the rapid and far-reaching social effects of railroads and to explore the transformation of the United States to modern ideas, institutions, and practices in the nineteenth century. The railroad was the first and most complex national system in American history. The records of this system's colossal growth are as diverse as they are voluminous, ranging from massive and detailed corporate records to editorials, cartoons, poetry, songs, and even abandoned track lines in today's landscape. While many histories have addressed the railroad's importance, we need a new approach that takes account of how the railroad triggered unexpect

A call for papers has been issued for a conference on "Markets, Law, and Ethics, 1400-1850," which will be held at the University of Sheffield on June 22-24, 2012. In the words of the organizers, This call seeks papers concerned with the culture of the market in the late medieval and early modern periods, conceived broadly as the norms, laws, customs and practices of exchange, including (but not limited to) buying and selling and lending and borrowing in 1400-1850. . . . This conference offers an opportunity for scholars from diverse historiographical backgrounds to come together and compare and contrast findings and thoughts across conventional chronologies and geographies, to reflect on the implications of supra-imperial and global approaches, and ponder possible future interpretations of late medieval/early modern market culture.     Paper proposals should include a title and 300-word abstracts, and should be emailed to Simon Middleton and J. E. Shaw by December 15

Bonus Army, Washington, D.C, July 1932 (Library of Congress) A number of scholars, including some business and labor historians, have been commenting on historical points of comparison for the current "Occupy Wall Street" movement. A brief rundown: Alan Brinkley , Columbia University, on Politico , "Bonus March and Occupy Wall Street" Steve Fraser , New York University, in The Nation , "OWS and the All-American Tradition of Resistance" Beverly Gage , Yale University, on NPR's "All Things Considered" (transcript and audio) Gary Gerstle, Vanderbilt University, in Salon.com and on YouTube Michael Kazin , Georgetown University, New York Times , "Whatever Happened to the American Left?" Kim Phillips-Fein , New York University, New York Times op-ed, "In Bleak '70s, Salvo of Protest" Judith Stein , City University of New York, at Dissent, "OWS: A Sign of Our Times" The History News Network is keep

The Yale Program in Economic History and Yale Environmental History will co-sponsor a conference on the theme “Resources: Endowment or Curse, Better or Worse,” which will take place on February 24-25, 2012. The program has now been posted on the Program in Economic History website. Among the questions the conference will consider are: “How do the characteristics and availability of natural resources shape political institutions? How have states mobilized resources to bolster their legitimacy and extend their influence? How have economic and environmental historians, political scientists, and others approached the concept of resources in the past and what are some directions for future work?” The keynote address will be given by Richard White of Stanford University, who will speak on “Incommensurate Measures: Nature, History, and Economics.”     Further information and updates about the conference will be posted on the Yale Program in Economic History website as they become avai

The Economic History Association (EHA) will hold its next annual meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, on September 21-23, 2012. The theme for the meeting is "Revisiting the Transportation Revolution." The program committee (Robert Margo, Boston University [chair]; Ran Abramitzky, Stanford University; Leah Boustan, UCLA; and Eugene White, Rutgers University) welcomes submissions on all subjects in economic history, though some preference will be given to papers that specifically fit the year's theme. All papers should be submitted individually; authors may suggest that three particular papers would fit well together in a session but such suggestions are not binding on the committee.     Papers and session proposals should be submitted online at www.eh.net/eha/meetings/submissions . Paper proposals should include a 3-5 page précis and a 150-word abstract suitable for publication in the Journal of Economic History . The submission deadline is January 27, 2012

Detail from Marinus van Reymerswaele, "The Usurers," c. 1540 Readers may be interested in an exhibit that opened in September at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, "Money and Beauty: Bankers, Botticelli, and the Bonfire of the Vanities." The exhibit "recounts the birth of our modern banking system and of the economic boom that it triggered, providing a reconstruction of European life and the continent's economy from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance." For those fortunate enough to be in Florence soon, the exhibit runs through January 22, 2012; others can read more about the exhibit and see examples of the artwork on a number of sites, in addition to the "exhibition walkthrough" material on the Palazzo Strozzi exhibition pages: The Economist , "The Benefits of Early Money-Laundering" The Wall Street Journal , "For the Love of Money: The Birth of Modern Banking and the Art That Made It Possible" Medievalists.net

The M6 Business History Group , an informal network of business historians who live and work near the M6 motorway in England, will hold its next workshop on January 26, 2012, at Coventry University. As detailed in the call for papers, the topic is "Firms' Responses to Globalisation in Different Periods of History." Although the workshop will focus on how firms have responded to globalisation, the submission of papers outside of the theme is also encouraged. Presenters from all disciplines are welcome to attend, as are those who work in archives. Those interested in presenting should submit a 200-word abstract to Andrew Smith before December 1, 2011 . Those interested in attending should complete and return the booking form , by January 19, 2012. The full call for papers is available here .

Origins is an on-line site for multimedia occasional papers published by the Department of History at Ohio State University. The current featured article, “Energy Policy and the Long Transition in America,” written by OSU professor William R. Childs , will be of interest to business and economic historians. The abstract states: Energy has been in the news lately: The natural gas industry appears to be developing a world market; the U.S. Army is experimenting with “alternative” and “renewable” energy sources; “green” and “conservation” are being marketed as sound corporate management strategies. A half century ago the emphasis on natural gas, alternative and renewable fuels, and conservation were not in the energy policy mix in the United States. The convergence of historical trends in the 1970s, however, ushered in a “long transition” in American energy policy-making that is on-going. This month historian William R. Childs untangles a few of the many complex strands that make

Recently we mentioned a GIS site that visualized the growth of the United States through the establishment of post offices. Stanford University's Rural West Initiative provides a similar visualization through the founding of newspapers in its "Journalism's Voyage West." In addition to the primary map, which provides a visual representation of the number and locations of newspapers from 1690 to 2011, the site also includes historical background, an industry analysis, and other data visualizations , including the growth of daily and weekly newspapers, and German- and Spanish-language publications.

The Association of Business Historians has issued a call for papers for its 2012 meeting, which will be held at the Aston Business School , Birmingham, U.K., on July 6-7, 2012. The theme of the meeting is "Decision-Makers and Decision-Making." As the call for papers states, Business history has frequently focused on the role of strategy and decision-makers, and its long-term impact on the organisation and its wider environment, both nationally or internationally. Conversely, the potential to make decisions is often limited, and constrained by economic, political and social factors, while recent shocks to the economy have been seen as politicians and business leaders taking the wrong strategic decisions when trying to manage risks. This gives rise to a number of possible topics, which are detailed in the full call for papers . The ABH will also welcome papers on any topic related to business history, even those that do not focus on the conference theme, and on any time

The Society of Automotive Historians is seeking proposals for papers to be presented at its Ninth Biennial Automotive History Conference, to be held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, April 12-14, 2012. The conference theme is “A World of Cars: Manufacturers, Drivers, and the Impact of Globalization.” It will focus on the international growth of the industry, initially by North American, later by European, and more recently by Asian manufacturers, leading to the dominance of integrated multinational corporations. Please see the full call for papers (scroll down the SAH page) for recommended topics. Proposals should include the title of the submission, names and affiliations of presenters, chairs, and other participants, together with addresses, phone/fax numbers, email addresses of contact personnel, the proposed format (paper, panel, workshop, etc.), and a one-page abstract describing the content of the presentation. Proposals must be received by October 31, 2011 . Proposals sh

The Center for Financial Policy at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business has issued a call for papers for a "Henry Kaufman Forum on Religious Traditions and Business Behavior," to be held in spring 2013. The forum will explore "two central questions in the relationship between the world’s major religious traditions and the business behavior of adherents to those traditions: First, what do the world’s major organized religious traditions . . . proscribe about business and financial ethics and behavior? Second, how and why have business and financial actors seriously compromised the leading religious traditions of their cultures?"    The submission deadline for completed papers  is February 1, 2012 . Please submit proposed papers as e-mail attachments to BusinessandReligion@rhsmith.umd.edu . Those sending papers should also include a title page with an abstract, names of authors/affiliations, and contact information for the submitting