**Each individual can be on no more than two sessions on the conference program. If you agree to participate in more than two and the sessions are all accepted, you will be asked to find a replacement for your role(s) so that you are only on two sessions.**

The deadline for submissions is December 5, 2025, at 11:59pm (Pacific). WHA Staff will be available on December 5 until 2:30 P.M. (Pacific) to provide technical support. No one will be available after 2:30 P.M. (Pacific).

66th Annual Conference Call for Papers
October 21-24, 2026
Hilton Portland Downtown
Portland, Oregon


Unsettled: New Wests, New Lessons

Communities and scholars continue to expand our understanding of who prospered and suffered in the North American West.  They have unsettled the past by showing us that the past is unsettling.  They demand that we attend to climate, migration, misery, resistance, sovereignty, and safety. 

With their insights in mind, the 2026 Program Committee calls for papers, panels, roundtables, workshops, and innovative session formats that encourage us to learn lessons from those demands.  Meeting in Portland, Oregon, the WHA’s 2026 conference offers us a chance to listen. What do these Wests tell us? Can they teach us to consider difference, privilege, continuity, and rupture? What can we learn from places marked by millennia of traditions, encounters, collusion, and conflict?  

We welcome submissions from established and emerging scholars, as well as public historians, K-12 educators, and community members. We welcome submissions from scholars who may not think of themselves as western historians but whose visions of environment, Indigeneity, immigration, gender, economies, expansion, Pacific Worlds, politics, war, law, sexuality, and capitalism unsettle western history. We welcome submissions rooted in the unsettling scholarship by Indigenous peoples, migrants, refugees, and queer persons removed or exiled from their homelands. We welcome submissions that encourage us to learn from our unsettled past. 

For more information and submission guidelines, visit www.westernhistory.org/2026. Submit proposals via the Western History Association website by Dec. 15, 2025.

Policy: Diversity of Program Participants Statement

1. The Program Committee will actively promote the full and equitable inclusion of racial and ethnic minorities, diverse Indigeneities, religious minorities, people with disabilities, women, LGBTQ+ people, and people with various ranks and career paths on the Annual Meeting program.
2. Although not all sessions can reflect the entire diversity of the profession, the Program Committee will encourage proposers of sessions to include diverse sets of participants, addressing gender diversity, racial and ethnic diversity, sexual diversity, religious diversity, disability-based diversity, and/or LGBTQ+ diversity.
3. The Program Committee will encourage session proposers to consider the benefits of including on their panels historians in various career paths and of various ranks (i.e., senior scholars, public historians, graduate students, independent historians, etc.) within their organizations/institutions.

2026 Program Committee Co-Chairs

Farina King, The University of Oklahoma, Co-Chair

Katrina Jagodinsky, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Co-Chair

Michael Lansing, Augsburg University, Co-Chair

2026 WHA President

Anne Hyde, The University of Oklahoma