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Conference Theme - Embracing Contradictions
| Conference Dates - March 26 - 29, 2009
| Annual Conference 2009!
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The 2009 NRHC Conference will be held in Annapolis, Maryland, from March 26 to 29, 2009. Annapolis is a small colonial city rich in history and complexity. This city’s complexity provides a perfect venue in which to evaluate the ways we confront contradictions in our work and in our lives.
- Conference Theme - Embracing Contradictions
Annapolis, Maryland, reflects many of the contradictions at the core of American history and society. Founded in 1694, and for one year the capital of United States (1783-1784), it was a Puritan city in a state created as a haven for Catholics - and yet which never had a Catholic majority and banned the religion for a century before the Revolution. Colonial Maryland was both a proprietary and a royal colony. In the Civil War Maryland was a slave state but fought with the Union. Building off an economic tradition of growing tobacco, Maryland is now a world leader in biotechnology. Settled mostly by indentured servants and slaves, Maryland is now the richest state in the Union.
The tradition of combining opposites began early in Annapolis, which was named at different times for two different Annes - first as "Anne Arundel’s Town" for the wife of Lord Baltimore, and later by its more familiar name for Queen Anne. The city hosted the Annapolis Convention of 1786 which proposed the rewriting of the Articles of Confederation. That meeting was in Philadelphia the next year. It boasts a beautiful and historic State House, as well as two rather distinctive universities: the U.S. Naval Academy and St. Johns College, home of the Great Books program. Perhaps a hope for similar resolution of contradiction explains why Annapolis was chosen as the site for a Middle East peace conference in 2007.
Annapolis hosts the 2009 Northeast Regional Honors Council's Conference on the theme "Embracing Contradictions." Members can consider the ways opposing forces conflict and (at least some of the time!) lead to solutions - in the arts and humanities; in business and technology; in the natural and applied sciences; in education; and in the social sciences. Success and failure in resolving conflicting forces may be seen in the lives of perhaps the two most famous Marylanders of the 20th century: do we, like Thurgood Marshall, face remarkable conflicting forces and find resolution? Or do we, like Spiro Agnew, face great responsibility and destroy ourselves? Meeting in March of 2009 Honors students and faculty will try to answer these questions.
The 2010 NRHC Conference - It is never to early to start planning. The 2010 NRHC Conference will be held in Harrisburg, PA at the Hilton Hotel, April 8 - 11, 2010.
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