The Exchange

A reminder that the deadline is approaching for those wishing to apply for the 2016-2017 John Rovensky Fellowships. Two $8,000 fellowships will be awarded for doctoral students writing their dissertations in U.S. business or economic history. The fellowships are available largely through the generosity of the late John E. Rovensky and are administered by the University of Illinois Foundation. Awardees may use the fellowship concurrently with other funding sources, including grants or teaching assignments.      Applicants must be working toward a Ph.D. degree with U.S. business or economic history as the area of major interest. Fellowship recipients must be enrolled in a doctoral program at an accredited college or university in the United States. Preference will be given to applicants who are preparing for a career in teaching and research and who will have completed all graduate course work prior to the fall of 2016. Awards are non-renewable.    ...

The Program in Early American Economy and Society (PEAES) at the Library Company of Philadelphia invites applications for dissertation and short-term fellowships  during 2016-2017. These research fellowships are designed to promote scholarship in early American economy and society, broadly defined, from its colonial beginnings to the 1850s. Possible research topics include Atlantic and global connections of the American economy; its commerce, business, technology, manufacturing, agriculture, internal development, or political economy; the history of race and the economy, capitalism, households, or gendered economies.  All fellows are expected to be residence in Philadelphia and conduct research in the area for the duration of awards. Applicants for the post-doctoral and dissertation fellowships may submit proposals based not only on the extensive collections at the Library Company, but also on the printed and manuscript materials of other institutions in the Philad...

The December 2015 issue of Itinerario (International Journal on the History of European Expansion and Global Interaction) features a set of articles on the constitutional activities of seventeenth-century trading corporations; Cambridge University Press is making the essays freely available at this time. According to the editors, The trading corporation’s constitutional status and its constitutional powers provided it with the means to impersonate the state and govern trade; to subordinate itself to state power; and to operate between state jurisdictions. From the seventeenth century onwards, these transnational and constitutional characteristics played an important part in the development of corporate trade and national and international constitutions. Articles are: William A. Pettigrew, "Corporate Constitutionalism and the Dialogue between the Global and Local in Seventeenth-Century English History" David Armitage, "Wider Still and Wider: Corporate Constit...

The John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising and Marketing History , part of the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University, sends a reminder that the deadline for its travel grants is fast approaching. Three types of grants for research travel to the Center's collections are available: the Alvin Achenbaum travel grant, FOARE Fellowship for Outdoor Advertising Research, and the John Furr Fellowship for research in the J. Walter Thompson Co. Archives. According to the announcement, The John W. Hartman Center promotes the understanding of the social, cultural and historical influence of advertising and marketing through the collection of published and unpublished resources.  Strengths of the collection include direct marketing and sales, outdoor advertising, women in the industry, trade industry association records, and the records of multiple advertising agencies and marketing firms.      Travel grants are available to a...

The program for the 2016 Business History Conference annual meeting, which will be held in Portland, Oregon, on March 31-April 2, has now been posted. The theme for the meeting is "Reinterpretation." The Program Committee for the 2016 meeting consists of Rowena Olegario (chair), University of Oxford; Margaret Graham (BHC president), McGill University; Marcelo Bucheli, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Peter Coclanis, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; and Julia Yongue, Hosei University.    In addition to the meeting sessions, the BHC hosts a Doctoral Colloquium in advance of the meeting, as well as two pre-meeting Workshops , one on interacting with the media and one on the journey toward tenure or a permanent contract. (A related but separate paper development workshop, on "Historical Approaches to Entrepreneurship Theory and Research," will also take place.)     For more BHC meeting information, ...

A historical GIS project of interest is "Mapping American Social Movements," directed by James Gregory at the University of Washington. According to the website, This collaborative digital project is assembling data and visualizations about dozens of social movements that have influenced American life and politics during the 20th century, including radical movements, labor movements, women's movements, many different civil rights movements, environmentalist movements, and more. . . . This project allows us to explore the relationships between social movements by bringing them together in time and space. It enables new understandings of how social movements interact and how they reproduce and change over time. The project is ongoing, with plans to add new data and topics over time. Currently the project includes data on the "activist geography" of the NAACP, the Socialist Party, the Industrial Workers of the World, and the Communist Party. Future topics ...

Jeffrey Sturchio , a historian of the pharmaceutical industry, is featured in the American Historical Association's Member's Spotlight for January 14. Also from the AHA, an essay by Amanda Ciafone on Coca Cola and its influence on Atlanta (in honor of the Association's meeting in that city) Among the many tributes on the passing of David Bowie, one concerns his role in the market: "David Bowie: The Man Who Sold Royalties and Brought Music to Bonds," from Bloomberg Business. And among the deluge of writing during the recent lottery excitement, a few stories focused on history: "Lottery Mania in Colonial America," from the American Numismatic Society, and "Lottery Fever: A Brief History of American Lotteries," by Diana Williams at Backstory. The Page 99 Test published a discussion by Bruce Baker and Barbara Hahn of their recent book, The Cotton Kings: Capitalism and Corruption in Turn-of-the-Century New York and New Orleans (Oxford...

A new peer-reviewed open access journal, the Journal of Evolutionary Studies in Business , has just appeared. The co-editors are Paloma Fernández Pérez and Jaume Valls-Pasola , both of the University of Barcelona, Spain. According to the editors, The Journal of Evolutionary Studies in Business is a new open access journal led by an international interdisciplinary team of scholars located in eight institutions from three continents who want to attract contributions that help shed light on the new questions, challenges, methodologies and realities, faced by businesses in an evolutionary perspective. The journal calls particularly for review essays that deal with new research topics about business, and provide useful overviews of the key ideas, scholars, and debates about important research topics concerning business and its environment. The strategic areas of interest for submissions from authors are: Management Challenges, Entrepreneurship, Science and Business, Creative Indus...

The December 2015 issue of the Journal of Economic History has a special essay section on "The Future of Economic History," all of which is currently freely available. The section is a result of a session at the 2015 Economic History Association meeting, celebrating the organization's 75th anniversary. The essays are: William J. Collins, "Looking Forward: Positive and Normative Views of Economic History" Kris James Mitchener, "The 4D Future of Economic History: Digitally-Driven Data Design" Ran Abramitzky, "Economics and the Modern Economic Historian" Naomi Lamoreaux, "The Future of Economic History Must Be Interdisciplinary"

The Binghamton University Citizenship, Rights, and Cultural Belonging Transdisciplinary Area of Excellence is sponsoring a two-day symposium on "Traffic, Territory, Citizenship: Framing the Circulation of People and Goods between Asia and the Americas in the Long 19th Century." Organized by John Cheng, assistant professor of Asian and Asian American Studies, and Dael Norwood, assistant professor of history, the meeting will be held on April 15-16, 2016 at Binghamton University's Downtown Center.      According to the organizers, Most discussions about the Americas and Asia focus on trans-Pacific trade and migration, overlooking other circuits of movement and connection. We seek, instead, to bring scholars of the Americas into conversation with scholars of South Asia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia to consider global diasporas from each region in the context of labor migration, capitalism, and the emergence of both territorial empires and settler colonial nation-sta...

The WSBI (World Savings and Retail Banking Institute) and the ESBG (European Savings and Retail Banking Group) will hold their 2016 Financial History Workshop on Friday, May 27 in Brussels, Belgium. The theme is "Savings in a World without Interest." The workshop is designed to provide a forum for extensive discussion on new and innovative research covering the history of savings and retail banks as well as savings in general. According to the organizers, Today, the savings and retail banks are facing a challenging economic and financial environment, marked by low interest rates, increased volatility, and new economic and demographic risks. The 2016 Financial History Workshop will focus attention on the impact of low interest rates on the savings behavior and its influence on the savings & retail banks throughout history.  Proposals dealing with any of these aspects, regardless of country or period in time are welcome.  Those wishing to present a paper should...

A paper development workshop (PDW) on "Historical Approaches to Entrepreneurship Theory and Research" will take place on March 31, 2016, in Portland, Oregon, at the Embassy Suites by Hilton Downtown Portland. The workshop will take place immediately before the BHC annual meeting and at the same location but is managed separately. Participation in both the BHC meeting and the workshop is possible.     According to the organizers, The purpose of this workshop is to provide scholars with developmental feedback on work-in-progress related to historical approaches to entrepreneurship and strategy, broadly construed. Our aim is support the development of historical research on entrepreneurship for publication in leading journals, including for the special issue of Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal . In addition to providing feedback and suggestions for specific topics, the workshop will address the commonly faced challenges of writing for a double audience of historians an...

In September 2015, a workshop on the evolution of the retail trade in the 20th century was held with success in Paris. A second round of this workshop will be held on September 22-23, 2016, in Uppsala, Sweden, organized by Fredrik Sandgren, Uppsala University, and Tristan Jacques, Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne. The call for papers states: At a time of swift change and modernisation in retail sectors across the globe, examining long-term patterns and the drivers of retail change in the last century seems to be very relevant. However, historical studies are still a work in progress and further advances are required. The diffusion of self-service, the growth of discount stores or the availability of access to consumer credit have, for example, been topics somewhat neglected by historians. . . .  Although we will primarily focus on historical perspectives, the study of retail industries is naturally inclined toward an inter-disciplinary approach. We thus encourage contributions from s...

The annual Cliometric Society Conference in 2016 will be held May 20-21 at the University of Pittsburgh and hosted by the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, and the National Science Foundation.      The conference is designed to provide extensive discussion of new and innovative research in economic history. Applications to present papers or to attend the conference are welcome from graduate students, junior faculty, and senior faculty in economic history as well as distinguished faculty in other fields who have research interests in economic history.      Typically, twelve papers are selected for presentation and discussion and sent out to all conference participants in advance. All participants are required to have 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 at mhaupert@uwlax.edu ). The conference pa...