SHGAPE Blog

March 23, 2026

SHGAPE is holding its first standalone conference from June 4-6 in Chicago. Below is an interview with SHGAPE President Amy Louise Wood, who shares context for the decision to hold the conference and provides further details on what attendees can expect. Registration for the conference is currently open.

Why did SHGAPE decide to hold a standalone conference this year?

A SHGAPE standalone conference has been in the works for years. It just took some time to pull everything together and decide on the right time and place. Many members have long expressed enthusiasm for the intellectual community and scholarly exchange that a conference can provide, especially younger members and members without another clear academic home. We are excited finally to be able to offer this opportunity for our members and, hopefully, also broaden our community. And we were delighted by the response to our call for papers. We have over 120 participants and 32 sessions, which include traditional paper panels and roundtables, as well as seminars and book workshops with pre-circulated papers. Here is the preliminary program.

It’s being held in Chicago—what kinds of Chicago-themed events or talks can attendees expect?

We were thrilled that Loyola University offered to host the conference with us. Chicago seemed like the ideal spot for the first SHGAPE conference since the city has loomed so large in the history of the period. From the Great Fire, the 1877 Railroad Strike, and the Haymarket affair to the founding of Hull House, the Columbian Exposition, and the Pullman Strike, events in Chicago have defined key turning points and themes of the era, and the city was at the center of most major developments in the period.

We have partnered with the Driehaus Museum, which is a beautifully restored Gilded Age mansion near Loyola’s water tower campus, right off the Magnificent Mile, that houses exhibitions of period art, architecture, and design. Our Friday night keynote address by Gabriel Winant (University of Chicago) will take place in the museum’s auditorium, followed by a reception with food and drink. Attendees will be able to tour the museum for free. Then on Saturday afternoon, our closing plenary on “Chicago in the Gilded Age” will also take place at the museum and will feature curators from several Chicago institutions, including the Driehaus Museum, Hull House, the Newberry Library, and the Glessner House.

In addition, we are offering a couple of Chicago tours. The Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project will lead a two-hour tour of the Bronzeville and Bridgeport neighborhoods where the riot took place on Thursday afternoon. For those who can stay an extra day, on Sunday afternoon, we are offering an insider of Wrigley Field, the home to the Chicago Cubs, built in 1914, followed by a Cubs game that evening. Conference attendees can sign up for these tours online.

Last but not least, a number of presentations on the program focus on Chicago themes. One session will feature a screening of a documentary on the extraordinary life of Catharine Waugh McCulloch (1862-1945), an Illinois attorney, legislator, and women’s rights advocate. The film’s producer, Susan Hope Engel, will introduce the film and answer questions.

What kinds of events are there for professional development?

Several! We are hosting two dissertation-to-book workshops, in which five rising scholars will share their first book proposals and receive feedback from senior scholars in their field. The audience is encouraged to join the conversation so that the workshops run like seminars with robust discussion on the topics at hand. We hope these workshops not only provide mentorship and advice for the participants but will be useful to graduate students who might be looking ahead down the road. Topics addressed in these workshops include weapons trading, US food systems, native nations’ advocacy at the St. Louis World’s Fair, healing practices in the Kiowa nation, and reform politics in Chicago’s settlement houses. Attendees can register to attend one or both of these sessions and receive the pre-circulated book proposals (Conference registrants only).

Attendees can use the same link to register for the two seminars we have organized and receive the pre-circulated papers. Like the book workshops, the seminars will offer more in-depth discussions of new scholarship than traditional paper sessions can allow, and we are excited to include them in the program. One seminar features papers about planned communities and urban design, while the other features papers that address theatrical cross-dressing, obscenity trials, and sexual policing.

In addition, Brian Ingrassia, editor of the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, has organized a roundtable on publishing in the journal. The session, which includes several former editors, will discuss what it takes to publish in the journal and how the process works, from submission to review to final publication. They will also address issues related to Open Access and artificial intelligence. This session, we think, will be beneficial to not only those who hope to publish in JGAPE, but in any academic journal, and will be of interest to anyone concerned about academic publishing in the current climate.

What are you most excited for?

I am most excited to see so many historians of the GAPE from across the country—and even abroad—coming together. Because community building was a primary impetus behind the conference, we intentionally created opportunities for socializing with lunch each day on the conference site and receptions with food and drink on Thursday and Friday evenings. We want participants to connect with fellow scholars in their sub-fields, to reunite with old friends, and meet new friends.

In addition to the events I’ve already highlighted, I’m excited for our opening plenary on Thursday evening. As a counterweight to the locally themed closing plenary, the opening plenary will kick off the conference with a wide lens, both temporally and geographically. The topic is “The Second Gilded Age.” Is this a useful analogy to think about the relationship between the past and the present? What are the differences and similarities between the Gilded Age and our present? What is gained by framing the present through the past in this way, and what is lost? We have asked the panel to address these questions through a focus on the US and the world, including issues of immigration, border policing, global capitalism, and foreign policy. We believe these topics will encourage robust conversation and resonate with conference attendees. The panel will feature Alan Lessoff (Illinois State University), Maddalena Marinari (Gustavus Adolphus College), Christopher McKnight Nichols (The Ohio State University), and Kate Unterman (Texas A&M University), with Robert Johnston (University of Illinois-Chicago) moderating.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

We crafted the Call for Papers to cast a wide net. We wanted to see what kind of new scholarship was out there, and it was gratifying to see so many different scholars working on so many different aspects of the GAPE apply. The program includes academic historians at all different career stages, public historians, archivists, independent scholars, scholars from different disciplines, and many graduate students, including a number who will be presenting at their first conference. Session topics range from traditional GAPE topics such as politics, reform, labor, and immigration to less traditional GAPE topics such as material culture, religion, policing, and sexuality—and much more!

A reminder, you can register for the conference now!