Human history has always been shaped by movement. Peoples, goods, capital, technologies, religions, languages, diseases, and cultural practices have crossed borders, traveled along trade routes, circulated through empires, and transformed communities. Just as importantly, ideas migrate. They are translated, adapted, contested, repurposed, and made meaningful in new settings. Movement may produce connection and creativity, but it can also result in conquest, displacement, exploitation, environmental change, and unequal access to power.
“Worlds in Motion” invites participants to explore the many forms of mobility and exchange that have linked local, regional, and global histories. The theme encourages attention not only to physical movement across land, water, and political boundaries, but also to the movement of knowledge, belief, memory, images, technologies, and political ideals. How have mobile people and circulating ideas remade the worlds they entered? How have borders, states, empires, environments, and social hierarchies enabled, constrained, or redirected movement? How do local places, including Texas and the wider Southwest, shed light on larger global processes?
We welcome individual papers, complete panels, roundtables, workshops, and poster proposals from historians, teachers, graduate students, advanced undergraduate students, public historians, museum professionals, archivists, and scholars in related fields. Proposals addressing any region, era, methodology, or pedagogical approach are encouraged.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- Migration, immigration, emigration, diaspora, exile, and refugee history
- Forced migration, enslavement, indenture, deportation, and displacement
- Borderlands, frontiers, border-crossing, and contested sovereignties
- Maritime, riverine, overland, and transoceanic networks
- Trade, travel, tourism, pilgrimage, and the circulation of commodities
- Empires, colonialism, decolonization, and transnational movements
- The migration and adaptation of political, religious, scientific, artistic, and social ideas
- Translation, education, print culture, media, and the movement of knowledge
- Cultural exchange, hybridity, language, foodways, music, and material culture
- Disease, public health, environmental change, climate, and mobility
- Indigenous mobility, land relations, and resistance to colonial movement and enclosure
- War, military mobilization, occupation, and the movement of peoples and resources
- Labor migration, global capitalism, infrastructure, and technological change
- Digital worlds, artificial intelligence, communication technologies, and the circulation of information
- Texas, the U.S.–Mexico borderlands, and the Southwest in global perspective
- Teaching world history through movement, exchange, maps, simulations, primary sources, and digital tools
- Public history, museums, archives, memorialization, and community engagement
Proposal Submission
Please submit a proposal of approximately 250 words, along with a brief biographical statement of 50–100 words. We welcome proposals for individual papers, complete panels, roundtables, workshops, and posters.
Individual paper proposals should include the presenter’s name, institutional or organizational affiliation, email address, presentation title, and proposed format. Proposals for panels, roundtables, and workshops should include a session title, a brief rationale, the names and affiliations of all participants, and the name and email address of one primary contact. Please indicate any anticipated audiovisual, accessibility, or technology needs in your submission.
Please submit the proposal and biographical statement in a single Word (.docx) or PDF attachment. Please use the following email subject line: WHAT 2027 Proposal: [Presenter Last Name].
The program committee particularly welcomes proposals that foster conversation across regions, periods, disciplines, and educational settings. Proposals will be evaluated for their relevance to the conference theme, clarity, originality, and potential contribution to conference discussion.
Submission deadline: November 15, 2026
Notification of acceptance: December 15, 2026
Submission instructions: Submit proposals by email to cynthia.ross@etamu.edu. Receipt of submissions will be acknowledged by email. All accepted presenters will be expected to register for the conference.
Questions may be directed to:
Cynthia Ross, PhD
Conference Chair
Department of History & Liberal Studies
East Texas A&M University
cynthia.ross@etamu.edu
Mark Moreno, PhD
Conference Committee Member
Department of History & Liberal Studies
East Texas A&M University
mark.moreno@etamu.edu
William Kuracina, PhD
Conference Committee Member
Department of History & Liberal Studies
East Texas A&M University
william.kuracina@etamu.edu
We look forward to gathering at East Texas A&M University for a day of conversation about the people, goods, environments, and ideas that have made and continue to remake our interconnected worlds.