The ASEH invites proposals for its 2014 conference that will convene 12-16 March in San Francisco, California. Ever since its founding as a Spanish port in 1776, San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area have served both as a crossroads for Asian, European, Latin American, and African immigration, bringing together diverse cultures across continental and oceanic divides, and as a site for spectacular disasters, from mercury pollution and violence against indigenous peoples during the gold rush to the earthquake of 1906. The U.N. Charter was signed here in 1945 “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,” and since the 1960s it’s been an international leader for the organic food movement, sustainable urban design, transnational trade, the anti-war, environmental, and gay-rights movements, iconic bridges and digital innovation.     
 
The program theme, "Crossing Divides," calls attention to new scholarship in environmental history that bridges geographical and disciplinary differences. We seek panel and roundtable proposals that engage with this theme in creative ways: studies in environmental history from comparative regional and cultural perspectives; investigations in such topics as food culture, urban and rural sustainability, labor and migration, bodies and toxicity, and the past and future of political ecology. The program committee seeks to further discussions that cross disciplinary or conceptual divides in new ways. We especially invite proposals that span gender, generational, and geographic differences among presenters as well as topics. We see the location of the conference in San Francisco as a special opportunity to encourage panels that study the wider Pacific world, and we welcome proposals that involve non-historians with shared interests.

Please note that it is ASEH policy to allow at least 30 minutes for discussion in every session. No single presentation should exceed 15 minutes, and each roundtable presentation should be significantly shorter than that, as roundtables are designed to maximize discussion among the speakers and with the audience. Commentators are allowed but not required.