The 2020 Program Committee invites proposals for panels, roundtables, and individual papers on any subject, but particularly welcomes proposals that address the conference theme: The Past is Always Present. 2020 plausibly stands as a year of historically resonant events, locally, nationally, and globally. Today, as debates regarding truth and authenticity churn at dinner tables, in classrooms, and clatter through the echo chambers of news and social media, historical understanding and analysis is more important than ever to navigating conflicts over immigration, equality, racial justice, democratic institutions, and war and peace. The 2020 PCB-AHA conference encourages participants to think about and discuss how historical knowledge and interpretation—of the distant as well as immediate past—advances professional scholarship and simultaneously shapes public understanding of the world. In the same vein, the program committee encourages participants to explore the trajectory of change and challenge within the profession of history—the imperative of diversity, broadening career paths, obligations and responsibilities of teachers and mentors, and emerging historiographical themes. 

The Program Committee encourages proposals that enable conversations across specialist boundaries and engage the audience. We welcome submissions from graduate students, adjunct faculty, non-traditional scholars, and K-12 teachers. Anniversaries may provide inspiration for panels and roundtables: For example, the Missouri Compromise (1820); enactment of Nineteenth Amendment and Woman Suffrage (1920); end of World War II, liberation of the Nazi death camps, atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, U.N Charter, and closing of Japanese Internment Camps in the U.S. (1945); the Voting Rights and Immigration and Naturalization Acts of 1965; and Bush v. Gore (2000).