The application form, and other details can be found at hotcus.org.uk/hotcus-resea...

Successful applicants agree to submit a short report within two months of the research activity for publication on the HOTCUS website and to acknowledge the award in future publications.

All applications must be submitted to [email protected] by 1 March, 2026.

Applications may be made for up to £500 for research expenses, including the cost of hiring a research assistant and/or research travel to take place within 12 months after the date of application. There are no residency restrictions and travel may be to, or within, any country.

HOTCUS welcomes applications from doctoral students and recent PhD graduates not yet in academic employment, as well as those on short-term (less than three years), fractional, or hourly paid contracts working on any area of twentieth-century United States history.

To enter, authors or editors should email a PDF of their article to [email protected] by 13 February 2026.

Please do **specify** whether you are eligible for the Early Career Article Prize in your email (that way the committees don't have to guess).

The Early Career Article Prize is open to doctoral (and pre-doctoral) students and recent PhD graduates not yet in academic employment, as well as those on short-term (less than three years), fractional, or hourly paid contracts.

Submit a single document with a 250-word abstract, and one page CV (panel proposals to include overview + individual abstracts and CVs) to [email protected]
by Wednesday 10 December 2025 (or, better still, earlier).

Full details on our website: hotcus.org.uk

We invite individual paper and panels that consider how Americans have drawn upon the Declaration of Independence to articulate new understandings of belonging, sovereignty, and democracy, and how these debates have shaped the historical imagination in or about the twentieth-century United States.

Things usually quiet down over the summer, but we are looking to welcome members for our future events in 2026, all of which you can see advertised on our website or here on Bluesky as they come up. hotcus.org.uk

Lastly HOTCUS members Fabian Hilfrich, @calebwoodall.bsky.social and Emma Long delivered their well-received panel Revisiting Race, Gender, and Religion in Wars during the Long 20th Century at @shafrhistorians.bsky.social's conference chaired by our membership secretary @lizingleson.bsky.social

2. @lucyekelly.bsky.social , working on ““I want to fight the fight. I want my rightful place”: Queer Worldmaking in the American South, 1970-2000”
3. @paula-murphy.bsky.social , working on “‘Whatever Happened to Unity?’ Co-Curation and Resistance in Hip-Hop’s First Decade”

HOTCUS also announced the winners of the HOTCUS Research Awards to the following 3 recipients:
1. Sophie Stanford, working on “Restorative Justice or Cold War Manipulation?: Situating Redress for Japanese Internment Within the Context of International Geopolitics During the Reagan Administration”

You can read Tom's article in the Journal of American Studies, and can consult the Article Prize committee's commendation on the HOTCUS website at hotcus.org.uk/awards/artic...

At the conference, we were pleased to announce that HOTCUS 2025 ECR article prize was awarded [email protected] for his article “‘A False Picture of Negro Progress’: John Hope Franklin, Racial Liberalism, and the Political (Mis)uses of Black History during the 1963 Emancipation Centennial.”

Professor Andrew Preston's insightful keynote on his new book Total Defense: The New Deal and the Invention of National Security was welcomed, as were his asides (and primary documents) into the founding of HOTCUS way back in 2007.