Conferences and Workshops

Call for Papers (Deadline: October 15, 2026)

Workshop: “Lines Drawn, Voices Raised: Allotment, Legal Uncertainties, and Indigenous Responses”

North American Studies Program (NAS), University of Bonn, Germany, June 9-11, 2027

Hosted by the North American Studies Program at the University of Bonn, this three-day workshop brings together scholars whose research examines the histories and enduring legacies of the U.S. policy of Allotment, with particular attention to Indigenous experiences of dispossession, resistance, and survivance, as well as the policy’s legal implications and its literary and cultural representations.

The workshop aims to foster interdisciplinary dialogue among historians, legal scholars, literary and cultural studies scholars, and Native and Indigenous studies scholars. In addition to examining the legal and political dimensions of Allotment and historical Indigenous responses, participants will consider how the policy has been represented, remembered, and contested in Indigenous literature and other cultural forms. Particular attention will also be paid to methodological questions, including how scholars can engage critically with the silences, absences, and biases of colonial archives, and how Indigenous knowledge systems, oral histories, and cultural production can help recover perspectives that have been marginalized or excluded from the historical record.

Confirmed participants:

• Jill Doerfler (University of Minnesota Duluth)
• Christian W. McMillen (University of Virginia)
• Sabine N. Meyer (University of Bonn) 
• Robert Nichols (UC Santa Cruz)
• Beth Piatote (UC Berkeley)
• Jonathan Radocay (University of Washington)
• Katja Sarkowsky (University of Augsburg)

The workshop is designed as an intensive forum for exchange. Each participant will present their current research (30 mins), providing the basis for extended discussion and critical feedback. Ample time will be reserved for collective debate on the state of the field, emerging methodological and theoretical approaches, and opportunities for future collaboration on the legal, historical, literary, and cultural dimensions of Allotment.

We invite both early career and established scholars with a demonstrated research focus on the U.S. policy of Allotment and its historical, legal, literary, and cultural dimensions to apply for participation. Applicants should submit a short project outline (approximately 400–500 words), together with a brief CV (no more than 3 pages), by email to Prof. Dr. Sabine N. Meyer (sabine.meyer[at]uni-bonn.de) by October 15, 2026. We plan to submit work emerging from this workshop as a journal special issue. Please confirm your interest in publishing an essay derived from your workshop presentation in your email. 

Applicants will be selected on the relevance of their research to the workshop’s thematic focus. Expected notification on or before December 1, 2026. Limited travel and accommodation funding may be available for selected participants, depending on the availability of funds.

You can download this CfP here.