*ISA Blog

The Bennett Award

The Bennett Award was established in honor of Professor A. LeRoy Bennett, who taught international relations for more than forty years at Michigan State University, Drake University, and the University of Delaware from which he retired in 1995 as Professor Emeritus. The Award is sponsored by the International Studies Association Northeast Region (ISA - NE). The competition recognizes the best paper presented at the ISA Northeast Regional Conference by a scholar who holds a PhD. Papers presented at the ISA Northeast Regional Conference may be nominated during or after the conference by the conference panel chair, discussant, or paper-presenter. The winner receives a cash prize of $100.00 and a certificate. The application deadline is December 15th.

The Hartmann Award

The Hartmann Award is named after Dr. Frederick H. Hartmann, a distinguished international relations scholar born in 1922 in New York City who received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1949. Dr. Hartmann, who taught many years at the University of Florida, the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, and a host of other public and private institutions, including overseas, produced a dozen books on international relations and foreign policy, including student texts. The Hartmann Award is given for an outstanding graduate student or ABD paper presented at the ISA-Northeast annual conference. The recipient receives a certificate, a one-year student membership in ISA, and a $100 prize at the annual ISA conference following the award's announcement. The application deadline is December 15th.

CfP: ISA-Canada Annual Conference

The second ISA Canada Annual Conference will once again be held in conjunction with the Canadian Association of Political Science Conference.  It will be held at Carleton University in Ottawa, May 27-29, 2009. The Call for Papers is available at www.igloo.org/isacanada on the Conferences page.  Submissions are due by November 3, 2008.  Please consider submitting a proposal. The ISA Canada Program Chair is Dr. Mark Neufeld of Trent University (mneufeld@trentu.ca).

ISA-NE Annual Conference

The annual conference of the International Studies Association-Northeast (ISA-NE) will be held October 3-4, 2008 at the Holiday Inn Inner Harbor, Baltimore, MD. The call for papers can be found here (PDF). Thank you to all who have submitted paper and panel proposals, you will be informed of the status of your proposal by June 13, 2008. The preliminary program will be posted by July 18th on the ISA-NE website www.isa-ne.org. Registration is now open, online registration ends on July 7, 2008.

ISA-NE Graduate Student Workshop

International Studies Association-Northeast announces a one-day graduate workshop on “Interpretive and Relational Research Methodologies” to be held on 4 October, 2008, in Baltimore, MD.

The field of International Studies has always been interdisciplinary,  with scholars drawing on a variety of qualitative and quantitative  techniques of data collection and data analysis as they seek to  produce knowledge about global politics. Recent debates about  epistemology and ontology have advanced the methodological openness of  the field, albeit mainly at a meta-theoretical level. And while  interest in techniques falling outside of well-established comparative  and statistical modes of inference has been
sparked, opportunities for  scholars to discuss and flesh out the operational requirements of  these alternative routes to knowledge have been relatively infrequent.

This fourth annual workshop aims to address this lacuna by bringing  together faculty and graduate students in a pedagogical environment.  The workshop will focus on two broad research approaches that differ  in various ways from statistical and comparative methodologies: interpretive methodologies, which highlight the grounding of analysis  in actors’ lived experiences and thus produce knowledge  phenomenologically and hermeneutically; and relational methodologies,  which concentrate on how social networks and intersubjective  discursive processes concatenate to generate outcomes.

In the two morning sessions, four established scholars, whose work  utilizes such approaches as ethnography, discourse analysis,  historical criticism, and linguistic analysis, will talk about precisely how they do their empirical work. These tutorial sessions  will be followed by two afternoon sessions in which graduate student  participants will have an opportunity to receive feedback from the established scholars and from their fellow workshop participants.

This year's faculty participants include:

• Amy Skonieczny, San Francisco State University
• Kamal Sadiq, University of California-Irvine
• Renee Marlin-Bennett, Johns Hopkins University
• Rose Shinko, Bucknell University

The workshop will be held in conjunction with the International  Studies Association-Northeast’s annual conference, which will take  place from 3-4 October in Baltimore, MD. Although all attendees of the conference may come to the workshop sessions, the 6-8 graduate students officially participating in the workshop will have the opportunity to receive detailed feedback and specialized instruction  in the methodologies under discussion.

Graduate students interested in participating in the workshop should  send their c.v. and a letter describing their current research project  to Patrick Thaddeus Jackson by e-mail: ptjack@american.edu. Applications must be received by 15 June 2008.

ISA-NE Call for Papers

International Studies Association-Northeast

Annual Conference

October 3-4, 2008

Holiday Inn Inner Harbor,

Baltimore, MD USA

Submission deadline: May 16, 2008

The annual conference of the International Studies Association-Northeast (ISA-NE) will be held October 3-4, 2008 at the Holiday Inn Inner Harbor, Baltimore, MD.

ISA-NE invites paper and panel proposals on any subject related to international studies, broadly defined. Topics might include (but are not limited to) international relations theory, international law and organizations, foreign policy, globalization, human rights, international development, conflict resolution, military/strategic studies, the environment, feminist theory/gender studies, and international political economy. ISA-NE expressly welcomes research on critical constructivism, post-structuralism, and postmodernism and/or undertaken through these lenses. 

We also encourage paper, panel, and roundtable proposals on subjects related to this the this year’s conference theme transnationalism, broadly conceived. Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• Conceptual and theoretical analyses of ‘the transnational’ especially in relation to other spaces, practices, and actors in world politics (e.g., national, international, global, supranational, local)

• Transnational practices (e.g., migration, transnational crime, markets) and transnational actors (e.g., terrorists, advocacy networks, and multinational corporations)

• Transnational identity, gender, race, and culture

• Post-national expressions of political authority, legitimacy, and citizenship 

Conference participation is open to all scholars and graduate students. We especially encourage proposals from varied disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives and from graduate students. We seek to showcase the work of advanced graduate students and junior as well as senior scholars.

Papers delivered on ISA-NE-sponsored panels are eligible for consideration for the Fred Hartmann Award (graduate students/ABD) or the Lee Bennett Award (non-graduate students). Graduate students whose papers are accepted for presentation and who do not receive support from their departments are eligible to apply for travel support from ISA-NE.

Paper proposals should include: title, name of presenter(s), institutional affiliation, one-paragraph abstract, and complete contact information (email address, mailing address, telephone, and fax numbers) for SUMMER and FALL 2008. Panel proposals should include all the above information for each presenter and for the chair/discussant, plus an abstract of the panel as a whole.

Scholars willing to serve as panel chairs/discussants or roundtable participants should send full contact information and a brief summary of your areas of expertise.

Deadline for paper/panel submissions is Friday, May 16, 2008. Submissions and Questions should be directed to the Program Chair: Janice Bially Mattern, Department of International Relations, Lehigh University, Maginnes Hall, 9 W Packer Avenue, Bethlehem, PA 18015. Email: jbm3@lehigh.edu. Phone: (610) 758-3394.

You will be informed of the status of your proposal by June 13, 2008. The preliminary program will be posted by July 18^th on the ISA-NE website www.isa-ne.org.

ISA-West 2008 Call For Papers

ISA-West 2008 will be held in San Francisco, California on the September 26-27, 2008. The 2008 conference will continue ISA-West’s work with the Carnegie Institute for Ethics and International Affairs, the International Ethics Section of the ISA, the Active Learning in International Studies Section of the ISA, and Women in International Security to bring in exciting roundtables, knowledgeable speakers, and practical applications of International Relations scholarship. As always, ISA-West welcomes submissions from all areas within international relations and comparative politics across disciplines. ISA-West also welcomes pedagogical proposals, roundtables, and full panel proposals.  Panel proposals should have 3-4 papers, a chair and a discussant. The 2008 conference will also continue ISA-West’s scholarly and activist exploration of questions of ethics in International Relations.

It is in that spirit that we introduce the ISA-West 2008 conference theme: “Prioritizing People in a Globalizing World.” The theme calls for papers which analyze the relationship between the individual and the political in an increasingly globalizing world. With the securitization of issues from domestic violence to influenza, the issue of individual safety has never been more timely in international politics. “Individual,” “inclusive,” “human,” or “food” security are concepts that have gained a high profile in recent years in international relations. This theme invites contributors to analyze the role of people as agents and actors as well as subjects and victims in global politics.

The theme also invites participants to think about the ethical dimensions of policies across international relations as they relate to and impact people’s lives. How do we calculate the justice of a given international intervention? Does such a calculation necessarily involve weighing the impacts on the lives of people in the area of the intervention? What are the ethical concerns that should be dealt with when we see global politics as a forum not only for state interaction but for human interaction?

We invite proposals for papers and panels that seek both to shed light on the challenges and to explore just resolutions to them, and look forward to continuing ISA-West’s forum for discussions of ethics in global politics. We also look forward to ISA-West’s substantive and methodological diversity.

Please email your proposals to isawest AT gmail DOT com. When you do, please include your name, a title, an abstract, and whether you are faculty, a graduate student, an undergraduate student, or none of the above. Faculty will be expected to serve as chairs and discussants. Further, if you submit a proposal to ISA-West, please be certain that you can attend if accepted. Participants dropping after September 1 in the absence of an emergency will be blacklisted from applying to or participating in ISA-West 2009. For more information, please see the conference website. The deadline for the conference is May 30, 2008.