The ISIH is delighted to issue the CFP for its twelfth international conference: The Importance of Learning: Liberal Education and Scholarship in Historical Perspective, Princeton University, 5-7 June 2013 (please note new date).
The ideal of liberal education, long a mainstay of Western ideals of higher education, is suddenly under attack the world over. In country after country, the idea that higher education should aim primarily at the cultivation of the intellect and sensibility rather than at preparation for a particular vocation is being swept vigorously aside by more exclusively utilitarian understandings. The international membership of the International Society for Intellectual History is uniquely well suited to examine this phenomenon from a genuinely historical and cosmopolitan perspective, and this task will be the focus of the Society’s next conference.
We welcome proposals for papers on any period, region, tradition or discipline (including the arts, humanities, sciences, and various forms of professional learning) which deal with liberal education, criticisms of it, and alternatives to it in historical perspective. In addition to papers, we also welcome contributions in the form of posters, which should aim to document ongoing attempts to reform higher education systems currently being pursued in individual countries around the world. Abstracts (500 words), panel proposals (2500 words including a maximum of four abstracts), and poster proposals should be sent by email to james.lancaster(at)postgrad.sas.ac.uk by 4 January 2013. For more information on the conference and the full CFP, please visit the conference webpage.