Roundtables, lightning rounds, and other sessions (film, moderated conversation, etc.) should include a 250-word overview that describes the sessions’ theme and the format. Provide a bio of no more than 100 words for each participant including chair and/or commentator. Proposals for individual presentations (where appropriate) should include a one-paragraph description and brief bio.

ILWCH is soliciting articles for a special issue that will examine the history of unfree labor in carceral spaces within a global context. We are seeking essays that explore invisible labor in settings where people have been historically confined and forced or coerced to work.

In 1918, the American labor organizer and socialist leader Eugene Victor Debs was sentenced to ten years in prison for his anti-war activities opposing America’s involvement in World War One. In his closing defense, Debs said, “Your honor… I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”

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.