Modern History Postgraduate Discussion Group

Arguing the Establishment: Obedience and Resistance since 1450

Annual Postgraduate Discussion Group Conference, Thursday, 23 May 2013

Birley Room, Hatfield College, Durham University

Resistance, subversion, and other acts of daring in the early modern and modern periods

This year’s annual postgraduate conference aims to examine, through a wide range of topics, political discourse from 1450 to the present, seeking to explore the social, religious, and cultural events and opinions that shaped (and perhaps helped define) ideas of state authority and (non)conformity. The focus is an investigation of the extent to which state power exerted itself on micro as well as macro levels, and the role of rebellion and resistance in this process – whether it was ultimately futile, whether it helped affect change and policy-making, or whether it gave the central government a way to re-assert its own authority.

Areas of interest include: forms of protest; heresy, orthodoxy, and reform; gender; colonial enterprises; popular uprisings; the literature of sedition and discontent; social rights movements; reactions to government policy.

All MA and PhD students (of any discipline), as well as staff, are invited to attend the day-long conference. Lunch, tea, and coffee will be included. See here for the programme.

Please RSVP to Lauren Working or Mike Cressey. 

Easter Term Schedule 2013

A group for history postgraduate students to practice presenting papers in a comfortable environment, gain advice from peers and discuss their research topics - all with the aid of tea and biscuits, followed by a trip to the pub. Papers are on Tuesdays starting at 5.15 pm in Seminar Room 2.

Tuesday 7 May: Reetta Humalajoki, "On the Warpath Against Bogus Indian Art" - The New York Times and Native American Art and Commodities during the Termination Era'

Tuesday 28 May: Kat Beeson, 'Native American Identity and Assimilation, 1880-1920'

Tuesday 11 June: Zoe Cormack, title TBC