On March 17–19, 2027, the RIAS will host War and American Democracy, a conference organized in collaboration with Leiden University’s Institute for History.
In recent decades, historians have moved beyond traditional military history to examine more closely the relationship between military operations, actors, and institutions and the broader fabric of modern societies. In doing so, they have helped foster a thriving and multifaceted subfield often described as the “new military history.” In the United States, such a historiographical turn has been especially important in illuminating the deep and long-lasting impact of war on the evolution of political institutions, social relations, cultural life, and economic structures.
Taking that scholarship as its starting point, this conference seeks to explore the tension between two related but opposing processes in US history: democratization through war and militarization of democracy. On the one hand, militarism and war mobilization created openings for broader inclusion, giving Americans new grounds on which to press claims for citizenship, rights, and social justice, and spurring efforts to institutionalize the promotion of democracy in US foreign policy. On the other hand, war and military-industrial complexes narrowed democratic life by expanding state power, normalizing coercion, diverting and accumulating resources, and justifying exclusion, repression, and violence both at home and abroad.
This conference welcomes papers that examine these tendencies and contradictions and shed new light on how war and militarism have shaped, across time and space, the very foundations of American democracy.
Submission
Please send a 500-word abstract and a brief biographical statement as a single PDF file to info@roosevelt.nl no later than 28 August 2026.
Applicants will be notified of decisions in September 2026.
For a full list of possible topics and further information about submission requirements, please see the full call for papers.
