The Call for Papers is below. Please use this thread to, should you desire, make contacts, organize panels, and find other like-minded scholars planning on joining us in 2013

The 48th annual conference of the Mormon History Association will be held in Layton, Davis County, Utah, on June 6-9, 2013. Our theme emphasizes the particular history of Davis County and other early Wasatch Front Mormon settlements, but also invites broad investigation of what ?Wests? of all types, times, and places have meant to various branches of the Restoration movement. Further, the idea of multiple Mormon frontiers challenges us to consider Mormonism?s encounters with other groups, cultures, and institutions.

Davis County is home to some of the oldest Mormon settlements in Utah, and we hope to attract proposals that explore aspects of this settlement?-as an agricultural borderland essential to the Salt Lake Valley and as a transportation conduit to settlements northward, including an extension of polygamous society. But we also invite proposals that conceive of the West in broader ways.

Geographically, we welcome studies of the ways organized Mormonism and individual Saints have exercised initiative in their interactions with other religions, governments, cultures, and capital in new ?Wests,? including those around and within the Pacific Rim. Chronologically, along with traditional nineteenth-century western themes, we seek sessions that explore more recent transformations of Mormon and Restoration diasporas?-economic, political, military, gendered, and cultural. Thematically, we invite examinations of how these churches dealt with tensions in their own ?crowded west(s),? including the sometimes tense interactions with religious, political, economic, and cultural neighbors.

MHA invites proposals for complete panel sessions and other presentations. The Program Committee will give preference to complete two- or three-paper session proposals. Individual paper proposals will also be considered, as well as innovative formats like round-table discussions, readers? theaters, and film documentaries. Please send an abstract of the paper (no more than 300 words) that outlines your argument and the sources that will be used plus a short CV (no longer than two pages) for each speaker. Panel proposals should include a brief abstract describing the panel?s theme and giving it a title, with suggestions for chair and commentator. Previously published papers will not be considered. Young scholars are especially invited. Students who submit proposals for papers and who wish to apply for financial assistance are invited to include estimated travel expenses with their proposals.

The deadline for all proposals is October 1, 2012. Proposals should be sent by email to: mhameeting2013@gmail.com, or one copy each to Matthew B. Bowman, Graham Hall 853, Hampden-Sydney, VA 23943 and Andrea G. Radke-Moss, Department of History, 262 RKS, BYU-Idaho, Rexburg, ID 83460. Notifications of acceptance or rejection will be made by January 1, 2013.