“Prospecting the Past” is an opportunity for undergraduate students to present their research that explores the historical dimensions of virtually every topic – science and technology, food, migrations, environmental change, racial/gender/sexual identities, politics, animal, economics...anything that centers on an exploration of history!
Also, this symposium in not just for History majors! It’s for students in any major that have explored a topic through a historical lens and would like to showcase their work.
This event will be organized like a professional conference. Participants will present their work, either a traditional paper or other project format, in a panel along with other presenters. A Chair and Discussant will join each panel to introduce you and your project title, as well as offer some comments at the end of the presentation. Friday evening, we will have an opening dinner, keynote address, and an activity planned for the panelists. On Saturday, we will have our panel presentations and discussions.
Finally, those accepted into the conference will also be eligible to having their work published in the UA history journal, Footnotes.
When: April 25-26, 2025
Where: The University of Arizona Campus (Symposium Schedule)
Our 2025 Speaker:
Dr. Megan Kate Nelson is a writer, historian, road cyclist, and cocktail enthusiast who is serving as the 2024–2025 Rogers Distinguished Fellow in 19th-Century American History at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. While there, she is also finishing her forthcoming book, The Westerners: The Creation of America’s Most Iconic Region. Prior to this, she authored The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West, a 2021 Pulitzer Prize finalist, as well as Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America, winner of the 2023 Spur Award for Historical Nonfiction and named one of Smithsonian Magazine’s Top Ten Books in History for 2022.
An expert on the American Civil War, the U.S. West, and popular culture, Nelson has written for The New York Times, Washington Post, TIME, The Atlantic, Slate, and Smithsonian Magazine. She also regularly appears on radio shows and TV documentaries, and she is a fellow of the Society of American Historians.
Before she began writing full-time, Nelson taught at Texas Tech, Cal State Fullerton, Harvard, and Brown, after earning a BA from Harvard and a PhD from the University of Iowa.
Questions? Contact:
Dr. David Pietz
dpietz@arizona.edu
AZ Undergrad History Research Symposium - "Prospecting the Past"
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