Although the North American Conference on British Studies (NACBS) can trace its history back to the early postwar years, the various regional affiliates are of a much more recent vintage. Writing to his New England colleagues in British history in 1967, David Berkowitz, chair of the History Department at Bowdoin College, noted that regional affiliates of the NACBS seemed to be operating in the San Francisco Bay Area, in Southern Michigan, and around Pittsburgh – but not in New England. After contacting members of the NACBS who resided in New England, Berkowitz and fellow enthusiasts established what was variously known as the New England Conference on British Studies, the New England Affiliate of the North American Conference on British Studies, or the North American Conference on British Studies, New England Branch, in 1968.
Annual conferences took place most years during the next decade, largely small, chummy affairs limited primarily to faculty participants from New England colleges and universities, along with the occasional historian from Britain descending to offer an illuminating plenary address. The relationship between the various regions and the NACBS remained fluid throughout the 1980s, with the New England body not only unable to host a national meeting but faltering and only staging two of its own annual meetings between 1984 and 1988.
Formally adopting a new constitution in 1991 (which still governs the operation of the organization today) – and changing its name to the current Northeast Conference on British Studies (NECBS) in 1993, the better to recognize the growing importance of the role played by historians in Québec and the Canadian Maritimes in the work of the organization – the NECBS began to grow and flourish on a much firmer footing.
Conferences have taken place annually since then and the NECBS has regularly hosted the NACBS for a number of joint meetings, held throughout the region and especially in Montréal or Boston/Cambridge. Papers presented at the annual meeting have grown in number since those early days, in part facilitated by the Internet, which has extended the remit of the various regional British Studies bodies beyond the region they were initially intended to serve.
Recognizing the increasingly important function of the NECBS as a forum for graduate students to present their work, the NECBS inaugurated the David Underdown Prize in 2010, named in honor of a pioneering member of the organization and awarded each year for the best paper presented by a graduate student.
From its rather humble beginnings more than half a century ago, the NECBS has become a vibrant forum for the work of scholars of the British past, broadly understood, bringing together historians from throughout New England, Eastern Canada, and beyond.