RHN 38/2026 | Call
Organisers: Elyssa Ford (Northwest Missouri State University), Joe Anderson (Mount Royal University), Karen Scholthof (Texas A&M University), John Seitz (Tennessee Wesleyan University), Mary Curtin (University of Limerick), Corrina Neal (Arkansas State University) and Jodey Nurse (McGill University)
1 – 5 June 2027, North Dakota, United States
Deadline for Submissions: 1 June 2026
Call for Papers:
“Identities, Landscape, Boundaries”
2027 Agricultural History Society & Rural Women’s Studies Association Joint Conference
For their joint 2027 conference, the Rural Women’s Studies Association and the Agricultural History Society invite scholars and students, artists and scientists, and community practitioners to explore the theme “Identities, Landscape, Boundaries.” Boundaries—whether physical, political, social, cultural, or ecological—shape how people define themselves and their communities. They mark divisions between places, professions, and identities, while also creating dynamic spaces of exchange, negotiation, and transformation. This theme invites participants to examine how boundaries are made and remade, crossed and contested, and how those processes affect rural lives, landscapes, and livelihoods across time and place.
We welcome papers and panels that engage with literal and figurative boundaries, including but not limited to topics such as transnational and regional borders; farm and town relationships; environmental and ecological change, the borders of race, gender, class, and sexuality; and the boundaries of ownership, belonging, and representation. By bringing together the insights of agricultural, environmental, and rural women’s history, this conference aims to illuminate the shifting identities, power dynamics, and connections that emerge where people, ideas, and environments meet at the borders.
Possible theme-related proposals might include—but are not limited to—the following topics:
- Life on the border, i.e., trans-national borders, state borders, community borders, reservation borders
- Life between borders, i.e., farm/town relationships
- Relationships between professions, i.e., sustainable vs conventional farmers
- Explorations of “big” boundaries of race, religion, politics, gender, sexuality
- Contesting and negotiating borders
- Climate change and shifting ecological borders
- The boundaries of ownership -- exploring land use, ownership, and dispossession
- Queer ruralities and reimagined borderlands
- Agricultural practices, policies, and trade as boundary-making
- Digital borders and rural connectivity
- Land, water, and ecological boundaries
- Seasonal, temporary, and invisible borders of labor
- The borderlands of belonging
- Imagining and representing rural borders
- Boundaries of memory and storytelling
While both organizations urge scholars to submit papers, panels, and presentations that relate to the conference theme, submissions on other topics are also welcome.
AHS Statement:
The Agricultural History Society was founded in Washington, DC in 1919 "to promote the interest, study and research in the history of agriculture." Incorporated in 1924, the Society began publishing a journal, Agricultural History, in 1927. The term "agricultural history" has always been interpreted broadly, and the Society encourages research and publishes articles from all countries and in all periods of history. Initially affiliated with the American Historical Association, the Agricultural History Society is the third oldest, discipline-based professional organization in the United States. Currently the membership includes agricultural economists, anthropologists, economists, environmentalists, historians, historical geographers, rural sociologists, scientists, and a variety of independent scholars.
RWSA Statement:
Founded in 1997, RWSA is an international association for the advancement and promotion of research on rural women and gender in a historical perspective. RWSA welcomes academic scholars, public historians and archivists, graduate students, and representatives of rural organizations and communities to be association members and conference participants.
RWSA promotes and advances farm and rural women’s/gender studies from a historical perspective by encouraging research, promoting scholarship, and establishing and maintaining links with organizations that share these goals. Worldwide, the association aims to encourage research, to promote existing and forthcoming scholarship, and to establish and maintain links with contemporary organizations around the interests of rural women, rural communities and the rural environment, including farming and the agricultural sector, from a gender perspective.
Both organizations welcome academic scholars from diverse fields, public historians and archivists, graduate students, practitioners, and representatives of rural/agricultural organizations and communities as conference participants and members of our organizations. We look forward to proposals for individual papers, full panel sessions, posters, roundtables, and what we are calling ‘novelty’ sessions that could include films, performances, practitioner discussions, and more.
Submission Instructions:
Deadlines
- June 1, 2026 – Early submission deadline (recommended if you need additional time to arrange international travel visas)
- September 15, 2026 – Regular deadline
Presentation Formats
- Full panels
- Roundtables
- Novelty Sessions (i.e., film, performance, etc.)
- Individual papers (recommendation: please submit to and review the Collaboration Spreadsheet to identify similar papers and form a full panel)
- Posters
Submission
- All submissions must be made using THIS FORM before September 15, 2026.
- Submissions received by June 15, 2026, will receive a response by August 15, 2026.
- We will notify all applicants of the status of their application by December 1, 2026.
For most submissions, you will need your paper title and abstract, and presenter name/position/affiliation/email address. These materials for all papers, plus the session title and abstract are needed for full panels and roundtables. To submit a panel or roundtable, you will need to identify one person to gather and submit the entire panel/roundtable.
Most sessions will be 90 minutes. If you wish to deviate from the normative session length or style, please detail your preferred format in your proposal. Please include any audiovisual or other technological needs with your proposal.
This will be an in-person conference in Grand Forks, North Dakota, USA. By submitting a proposal, you are committing to participate in person at the date and time assigned should your proposal be accepted.
AHS and RWSA are able to provide a limited amount of Jensen-Neth grants that will cover conference registration and housing in the university dorms. The Jensen-Neth grant application is available HERE. Deadline to request a grant is September 15, 2026.
Program Committee:
- Elyssa Ford, Northwest Missouri State University (chair)
- Joe Anderson, Mount Royal University (AHS)
- Karen Scholthof, Texas A&M University (AHS)
- John Seitz, Tennessee Wesleyan University (AHS)
- Mary Curtin, University of Limerick (RWSA)
- Corrina Neal, Arkansas State University (RWSA)
- Jodey Nurse, McGill University (RWSA)
Contact Information
Cynthia C. Prescott
Department of History & American Indian Studies
University of North Dakota
Contact Email
cynthia.prescott@und.edu
URL
https://ruralwomensstudies.org/conferences-2/rwsa-2027-conference/