The OAH program committee is looking to put together two or more “works in progress” sessions for the 2026 meeting in Philadelphia. This is a fairly new session type for the OAH - we ran two experimental sessions in Chicago. These sessions feature pre-circulated papers, allowing participants and attendees to workshop new pieces of scholarly writing.

Each session will be made up for two presenters and two commentators. The presenters will each pre-circulate a short piece of writing (20 pages or so, due a month before the conference). The papers will be password protected and/or will only be available to registered conference attendees through the OAH conference website. At the start of the session, the presenters will offer brief remarks, and the two commentators will offer short comments on the papers. The majority of the session will be an open workshop. The session will be open to be attendees who have not read the papers, but reading the papers ahead of time is strongly encourage. The goal is to get a serious conversation going between presenter and audience.