Announcements and activities.

The Program Committee for the 2007 meeting of the Western History Association invites proposals for panels and papers for "Crossroads of the West: Meetings and Exchanges, Old and New." The association will gather in Oklahoma City, October 3-6, 2007, a year that marks the centennial of Oklahoma statehood. Oklahoma has long been a crossroad geographically as well as for people, commerce, and culture. The committee welcomes papers and panels that reflect the diversity in Oklahoma and the larger American West. We especially welcome papers that explore new interpretations of the western cultural experience, considering issues of ethnicity, race, gender, and the environment. Sessions may follow a traditional scholarly conference format, but we also encourage innovative sessions focusing on art, film, music, or objects of material culture. In addition, we welcome sessions on teaching western history and/or teaching the history of ethnic groups whose presence enriches the region.

Submissions may be for an entire session, a panel discussion, or an individual paper. When submitting an entire session, include an abstract that outlines the purpose of the session and designate one panelist or participant as the contact person. Each paper proposal, whether individual or part of a session, should include a one-page abstract and a one-page curriculum vitae that includes address, phone number, and email address. The committee will assume that all listed individuals have agreed to participate. Send submission materials to L. G. Moses, Department of History, LSW 501, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK 74078-3058 ([e-mail] or lgmoses@ cox.net). Submissions should be postmarked by August 31, 2006.

The Texas Women's History Network (TWHN) is pleased to announce its first annual symposium, which will be held at Rice University in Houston on April 21, 2007. In addition to paper sessions, there will be a forum to discuss future goals and projects. We welcome anyone who is interested in historical scholarship on the topic of women in Texas and/or the Texas region or in promoting women's issues within the profession. If you would like to be placed on the TWHN mailing list, email your postal and electronic addresses to [e-mail]. Please visit our web site at www .ruf.rice.edu/~twhn07.

The program committee invites individual paper proposals as well proposals for full panels. Each submission should include a one-page paper abstract and curriculum vitae and be sent to the above TWHN email address by December 15, 2006. Topics should address some aspect of women in Texas history, although tangential subjects will be considered. Graduate students and junior scholars are particularly encouraged to submit proposals. Student papers will be considered for the Billie Jean Williams Stuntz prize for the best paper, which carries a $100 award. Please indicate your eligibility for the student-paper prize upon submission. Selected participants will be notified by January 31, 2007, and must submit papers of 12-15 pages by March 30, 2007.

The second Virginia Forum will convene at the Library of Virginia, in Richmond, on April 13-14, 2007. The Virginia Forum offers an opportunity for exchanges of ideas among scholars, teachers, archivists, librarians, museum curators, and all those interested in Virginia history and culture. The Virginia Forum welcomes proposals for presentations on all topics in Virginia history, but the 400th anniversary year of 2007 offers a special opportunity for reconsidering large and significant themes in Virginia's history and its place in national and international history. The committee welcomes proposals for individual papers or complete panel sessions, panel discussions, workshops, poster sessions, and electronic presentations. Send a one-page proposal, along with a brief vita of the presenter(s), to the chair of the program committee, Dr. Larissa M. Smith, Department of History, Longwood University, at [e-mail]. The deadline for submitting proposals is October 2, 2006.

The Victoria College Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences is requesting papers for its 2007 South Texas Studies Journal, an annual publication. Papers may be in any discipline (historic or contemporary) but should focus primarily on South Texas. Papers should be twenty to twenty-five pages, double spaced, with endnotes. Papers not presented at the J. W. Stormont Lectures on South Texas conference in February will be published at the editor's discretion. Submit two printed copies as well as one on diskette or CD, preferably formatted in MS Word, by November 30, 2006. We also will be accepting for publication a limited number of papers written in Spanish in accordance with the above criteria. Please send papers to Dr. Edward Byerly, The Victoria College, 2200 East Red River, Victoria, TX 77901.

Beginning in the late 1970s agricultural historians, dissatisfied with the traditional (or "old") emphasis on production, distribution, technology, and policy, increasingly turned their attentions to social and cultural themes, among them, farm communities, women's lives and roles, the immigrant experience, rural culture in the South, and market (vs. agrarian) consciousness and behavior. While the "new" rural history, as it came to be called, continues to thrive, historians and scholars from a variety of related disciplines are transforming and reinvigorating the field once again. The result, what might be called the "next" agricultural history, embraces both "old" and "new" interpretations of previous generations but focuses most intently on interdisciplinary and global issues. The "next" agricultural history not only "puts the culture back into agriculture," as outgoing Agricultural History Society (AHS) president Hal Barron once put it, but the environment, geography, economy, science and technology, politics, and consumption--indeed, a whole range of scholarly perspectives and methodologies.

The program committee for the 2007 meeting of the AHS invites submissions from scholars at all levels and in all disciplines to help cultivate the "next" agricultural history. We extend a special welcome to graduate students. Historians, economists, geographers, sociologists, and other scholars in related fields are encouraged to submit proposals of all types and formats, from the traditional papers/commentary format, to more informal discussion panels focused on specific themes, to roundtables on recent noteworthy books. The program committee will also do its best to organize individual or "orphan" submissions into panels. The deadline for submissions is October 15, 2006.

Complete session proposals should include a chair, participants, and, if applicable, a commentator. Please include the following information: 1) an abstract of no more than 200 words for the session as a whole; 2) a prospectus of no more than 250 words for each presentation; 3) a mailing address, email, phone number, and affiliation for each participant; and 4) a CV of no more than a page for each participant. Individual submissions should include all of the above except a session abstract. Please send submissions, in PDF format, to [e-mail]. While we much prefer electronic submissions, applicants may, if they choose, mail five hard copies of their proposals to David Vaught, 2007 AHS Annual Meeting, Department of History, MS 4236, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-4236.

Should you have further questions, please contact any member of the program committee: David Vaught, chair, Texas A&M University, d-vaught@tamu .edu; Monica Gisolfi, Columbia University, [e-mail]; Douglas Helms, Natural Resources Conservation Service, USDA, douglas.helms@ wdc.usda.gov; Debra Reid, Eastern Illinois University, [e-mail]; and Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, Iowa State University, [e-mail].

The Museum of the Confederacy is pleased to announce that While in the Hands of the Enemy: Military Prisons of the Civil War, by Charles W. Sanders Jr., published by the Louisiana State University Press, is the recipient of the 2005 Jefferson Davis Award. Sanders is a professor of history at Kansas State University. His book is a volume in LSU Press's Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions of the American Civil War series. For information about the 2006 Jefferson Davis Award and 2005-2006 Founders Award competitions, please contact Dr. John M. Coski at [e-mail].