Oral History in the Mid-Atlantic Region (OHMAR) announces its Spring 2011 Conference to be held April 20-21 at the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

How have oral history and personal narratives helped communities document and deal with incidents of displacement and dislocation? How have oral history and personal narratives helped communities build connections and grow stronger?

These are two of the questions that guide the OHMAR program committee as we prepare for our 2011 conference. We invite individual papers as well as entire panels that address displacement and community building in the context of environmental crises; regional, national and global migrations; changes in the economy and workforce; social movements; culture and the arts; the built environment; changing land use patterns in countryside, suburb and city; politics and political culture; and actions related to health and medicine. Topics may include but are not limited to issues of pollution, gentrification, modified political boundaries, gerrymandering, imminent domain, war or civil unrest, and health, healthcare, and medicine. Presenters may also want to address how new media and new technologies are transforming how we conduct, preserve, and present oral histories.

The mid-Atlantic region, with its great variety of people and places, is an ideal place to explore the themes of displacement and community. The program committee invites participants to interpret the theme expansively and to propose panels and roundtables that include voices and images. OHMAR welcomes participants from a wide variety of fields—history, anthropology, folklore, literature, political science, and others—who work in the academic and public sectors. OHMAR also welcomes submissions from archivists, librarians, web designers, museum curators, and other oral history practitioners engaged in work relevant to the 2011 conference theme.

For more information or questions about the call for papers, please contact the conference co-chairs, LuAnn Jones (LuAnn_Jones@nps.gov) or David J. Caruso (dcaruso@chemheritage.org). Details about the call for papers, proposal submission guidelines, and the conference location are available at OHMAR's website, http://www.ohmar.org/confer.html. Proposals are due no later than 15 January 2011.