The next U.S. Studies Online Book Hour will take place 28th April 2023, at 4pm GMT/12pm EST with Dr. David Riddle Watson and his first monograph, Truth to Post-Truth in American Detective Fiction (Palgrave Macmillan Crime Files Series, 2021). Dr. Watson teaches at Central Carolina Community College. He completed his… Continue reading
The next U.S. Studies Online Book Hour will take place 17th March 2023, at 4pm GMT with Dr. Kevin Waite, who will talk with us about his first – and award-winning – book, West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire (The University of North Carolina Press,… Continue reading
This article is part of the USSO special series Resilience/Renewal: Shifting Landscapes in American Studies For decades, American Studies in the UK has had a glaring underrepresentation in terms of the presence of disability in twentieth-century American literature. In the twenty-first century, scholarship is moving towards looking at disability studies,… Continue reading
This article is adapted from a presentation given at the London Arts and Humanities Partnership postgraduate conference, 21st January 2022 During the Harlem Renaissance period, 1461 S Street, Washington D.C., the home of Georgia Douglas Johnson (1877-1966), represented an important hub of creativity and community for African American women writers. ‘Saturday… Continue reading
This article is adapted from a presentation given at BAAS Postgraduate Symposium, 4th December 2021. Among the many subplots in Gloria Naylor’s 1985 novel Linden Hills is the story of Willa, who finds herself imprisoned in the basement of her house with her son because her husband, Luther Needed,… Continue reading
Understanding Jennifer Egan by Alexander Moran is the first book-length study to provide critical analysis of all of Jennifer Egan’s published fiction to date. Arriving in the same year as Ivan Krielkamp’s A Visit from the Goon Squad REREAD,[i] the rising critical attention to Egan’s work is a welcome sight, correcting the tendency to overlook Egan’s constant and significant presence in contemporary fiction. Continue reading
Climate change is no taboo topic as in recent years, figures and organisations such as Greta Thunberg and WWF have brought the on-going environmental crisis to the media’s forefront, presenting us with frankly terrifying statistics about our planet’s future if radical changes to our destructive behaviours are not made. Literature… Continue reading
The American Weird is an essay collection divided in two parts: ‘Concept’ and ‘Medium’. Its claim to originality lies in the latter part’s focus on manifestations of the weird in non-literary media running the gamut from film and music to television and videogames. Naturally, however, these cannot be discussed in isolation from the first part’s question of ‘concept’ – of what the weird is. Continue reading
Content Warning: Graphic Images (violence, severed heads) Netflix released the first series of Luke Cage in September 2016 to immediate acclaim. Cheo Hodari Coker, the producer of the Marvel comic adaptation, uses the richness of African American culture to create a hyper-real Harlem as the backdrop for his eponymous hero…. Continue reading
Questions remain over whether former President Donald Trump will fade away or return, Grover Cleveland style, for another election cycle in 2024. Trump’s single term in office was memorable for its quality of sensory overload and contribution to a culture of partisan desensitisation in the Republican Party. The relationship… Continue reading