The Program Committee has assembled over 30 panels and featured events. The complete conference program is availabe on-line through the link above or as a PROGRAM 2011 PDF document. Again this year, we will include off-site sessions as part of the Conference Program. Following the early Thursday afternoon sessions, buses will be provided for travel to the New York State Cultural Education Center --the Archives, Museum, and Library-- for a series of off-site sessions and gallery talks. Special panels -on New Netherland and Attica will precede the gallery talks, and reception.

Registration information is available through the link above : REGISTRATION 2011. Detailed information about lodging, navigating the campus, or the surrounding area, is avalable at Visiting the Campus. Conference registration and most sessions will be held in the Science Library, adjacent to the Campus Center.

Follow the highlights link above for details of featured conference events. The include:

Following a reception/light supper at the Museum, our featured speaker, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tony Horwitz, will discuss his new book, Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War, scheduled for publication October 2011. There will be a book signing immediately following his presentation. This event is made possible with support from The New York State Council for the Humanities.

As a Wall Street Journal reporter, Horwitz received the Pulitzer Prize in 1994. Perhaps best known to historian s for Confederates in the Attic (1998),  he is also the author of four nonfiction bestsellers, including A Voyage Long and Strange (2008), Blue Latitudes (2002), and Baghdad Without a Map (1991). Co-sponsored by NYS Writers Institute. There will be a book signing immediately following the talk.

On Friday Temple University historian Heather Ann Thompson presents the conference keynote, Rescuing and Remembering Attica. Included among Professor Thompson's numerous publications are the forthcoming Blood in the Water: The Attica Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy as well as Whose Detroit: Politics, Labor and Race in a Modern American City (Cornell University Press, 2001) and the edited work " Speaking Out With Many Voices: Documenting American Activism and Protest in the 1960s and 1970s."

Kirstin Downey will join us to discuss the life of Frances Perkins -- based on her 2009 book, Frances Perkins: Architect of the New Deal. Frances Perkins, witnessed the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, wrote the state's fire safety code, and helped steer the state industrial commission from 1918-1932 before moving to the national stage. The nation's first female cabinet secretary, her ideas became the cornerstones of the most important social welfare legislation in U.S. history. Today, her name is almost unknown. Downey will explore this woman's remarkable life-and her surprising drop into obscurity.

Researching New York brings together historians, researchers, archivists, museum curators, librarians, graduate students, teachers, Web and multimedia producers, and documentarians to share their work on New York State history. If you have any questions or comments, please contact us at resrchny@albany.edu. We look forward to your participation at this year's Conference.