The City of St. Louis sits at the confluence of the Missouri and the Mississippi Rivers. It also occupies a space where America’s long-running histories of repression and resistance meet. From the Gateway to the West to the sacred city of Cahokia; from the injustice of Dred Scott to the Black Lives Matter movement in Ferguson; from the currents of America’s historic waterway to the May 2025 tornado that laid bare the growing pressures of climate change. In these and other ways, St. Louis sits at the nexus of many of the nation’s most pressing issues–both past and present.

In a city shaped by histories of conflict, resistance, and reinvention, our 2027 theme asks how the field of public history can “hold the line.” How do we, as a collective of practitioners, confront a moment of repression and resistance in the places where we work and live? What does it mean to maintain professional responsibility in a politically charged environment? How do we sustain or even rethink our ethical practices in a time of crisis? Are our disciplinary principles adequate to meet this moment? If not, how should they–and we–change?

If St. Louis reveals the tensions that have animated American history, the city also illuminates creative forms of resistance and practices of community building. From the blues of Miles Davis and the ragtime of Scott Joplin to the poetry of Maya Angelou, the films of Josephine Baker, the labor organizing of Peter McGuire, and the Depression-era photography of Walker Evans, this region offers a rich tradition of civic responses to inequality and upheaval. In that spirit, we invite proposals, panels, roundtables, working groups, workshops, performances, films, or other conference activities that explore what it means to ‘hold the line.’