Northwestern University is organizing a graduate conference on “Insurgencies” this spring.

The conference announcement reads: “This graduate conference to be held April 10, 2015 at Northwestern University aims to broaden historical understanding of insurgency. Insurgencies challenge legitimacy from below. Theorists often understand insurgencies as challenges to political and military authority, but insurgencies also arise against social, cultural, and economic authority. The concept of insurgency overlaps with concepts like revolution and rebellion, but it avoids the teleology inherent in those concepts by not presuming eventual success or a fixed time horizon. With its companion concept counterinsurgency, insurgency emphasizes the multi-directionality of power. This concept has prominently reemerged in recent years, and historians have much to gain by joining the conversation.”

“This conference provides an opportunity to reexamine the history of insurgency, drawing attention to insurgencies in previously under-examined domains such as culture and economics, periods such as medieval and early modern history, and modes such as transnational insurgency. It calls for papers on “insurgency” broadly construed.  Papers can address questions including (but not limited to): How have insurgencies shaped and reshaped political, social, and cultural institutions? What makes insurgencies succeed? What happens to insurgencies after they succeed? What happens to insurgencies that fail?  How does power reconstitute itself in wake of an insurgency? What is the life of an insurgent? What are the power dynamics within an insurgency? What are the dynamics of transnational insurgency?”

“This conference features keynote speaker Martin A. Miller of Duke University, author of The Foundations of Modern Terrorism: State, Society, and the Dynamics of Political Violence (Cambridge, 2013), and distinguished commentator Paul Thomas Chamberlin of the University of Kentucky, author of the The Global Offensive: The Palestinian Liberation Organization, and the Making of the Post-Cold War Order  (Oxford, 2012) and of the forthcoming The Cold War’s Killing Fields: The Human Tragedy of the Superpower Struggle (HarperCollins). Professors from the history department at Northwestern University will also participate.”

For more information on this conference, see the Northwestern University website.