The Australian Historical Association will hold its 2006 Biennial Conference at the Australian National University on July 3-7. We invite proposals for papers and posters from all members of the AHA. In considering your proposal, please bear in mind the conference theme: Genres of History. We want not only to discuss various ‘genres’ of historical discourse but also to use a variety of genres in those discussions. Thus, we welcome proposals not only of papers, posters and panels but also of interviews, conversations, staged debates, reviews of books and film (both new ones and ‘classics’), and exhibition reviews.

In making a proposal (and apart from papers for ‘Religious History’- see below), please follow these steps:

1. We require your name, the title of your paper or poster, brief (50 words max) bio, and an abstract of maximum 150 words.
2. Please address the proposal to paul.pickering@anu.edu.au, tim.rowse@anu.edu.au
3. Please put aha.2006 in your subject line.
4. The deadline for submissions is 31 December 2005.
5. In considering proposals for papers, we will give priority to proposed panels, conversations, interviews - so consider getting together with some colleagues before you make an individual proposal. Of course, we will also consider any individual paper offers.

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We are particularly interested in the following themes:

• Non-academic genres of history: TV miniseries, re-enactments, the historical novel, the museum
• Transnational history: meaning, achievements and promise
• Writing the histories of persecution, discrimination and institutional abuse
• Environmental history – local and global
• The role of History in Native Title
• History of higher education
• Comparing Australia: the genocide theme
• The historian’s sources: access and management
• Political history
• Cultural and intellectual history
• Religious History. Inviting especially papers on the theme ‘Religion and Empire’, the Religious History Society will again be holding its conference in association with the Australian Historical Association. The keynote speaker for this theme is Professor Andrew Walls (Edinburgh and Princeton, author of The Missionary Movement in Christian History (1996). The Religious History Society will manage its own stream of papers within the conference, so please address your inquiries and offers of papers to: Professor John Gascoigne, School of History, UNSW, Sydney 2052, j.gascoigne@unsw.edu.au. The Society welcomes papers on all themes related to religious history and those presenting are invited to submit their papers to the Journal of Religious History for consideration and refereeing in the normal manner.
• Finally, we have in mind at least one session called ‘A thousand words on a picture’. Each paper would be strictly limited to 1000 words, and it would focus on a visual image of some kind (map, portrait, news photo, building plan, you name it) and interpret that image as an historical document. In a 90 minute session, it would be possible to have 10 such papers/images, with time for general discussion and questions at the end.

We will publish (on the conference website) a provisional program by mid-February 2006

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