Symposium Panel Review: ‘Visualising the Americas: Kent’s Third Annual Americanist Symposium’, The University of Kent, Keynes College, Monday 3rd June, 2019.
From pre-colonised American Indian art to contemporary graffiti murals, the Americas have a rich and varied visual history. This one-day symposium, co-organised by three PhD candidates at the University of Kent – Ellie Armon Azoulay, Sarah Smeed, and Megan King – invited panellists and speakers to focus on one particular image or object as a catalyst for exploring larger themes, trends and figures.
Continue ReadingConference Review: ‘Women’s Transatlantic Prison Activism since 1960,’ the Rothermere American Institute, the University of Oxford, June 7, 2019.
This day-long conference explored a range of topics related to women’s incarceration, such as the often-overlooked history of women’s organising efforts within prison and especially art, print, and visual culture as forms of activism.
Continue ReadingVideo Games and American Studies: Reverberations of Trumpism in Far Cry 5
Politics and contexts of publication are two interesting focalisers when examining video games from an American Studies perspective. While not all video games are overtly political, many have explicit political agendas. The example of Far Cry 5 shows how real-world political rhetoric can find parallels in virtual environments, in this case the ludonarrative design of a video game.
Continue ReadingBook Review: The World Reimagined by Mark Philip Bradley
In June 2018, Nikki Haley, United States ambassador to the United Nations, criticised the scathing Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights on his mission to the United States of America, arguing that the UN should instead focus on developing countries such as Burundi and Congo. Her response highlights America’s complex political geography of human rights, the subject of Mark Philip Bradley’s bridging of diplomatic history and cultural analysis in The World Reimagined: Americans and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century.
Continue ReadingReview: Horror, Cult and Exploitation Media II
Conference Review: Horror, Cult and Exploitation Media II: A Workshop for PhDs and ECRs, Northumbria University, 4 May 2018 Website: https://horrorcultexploitation.wordpress.com/ ‘Horror, Cult and Exploitation Media’ workshop for PhD candidates and ECRs was held at Northumbria University on the 4 May 2018. The day consisted of three panels, carefully programmed by the organisers to depict different themes in the upcoming academic research on horror today, such as contemporary anxieties and research on contemporary horror films transcending the geographical borders, post-humanism, feminism, sexploitation, to name a few. Organised and programmed by Steve Jones (Northumbria University), Johnny Walker (Northumbria University), and Erin Wiegand (Northumbria University), this one-day workshop showcased research on horror, cult and exploitation currently being undertaken by U.K. based and international PhD candidates and ECRs. The workshop was intended as a networking event on a small scale for those new to academia, to be able to share and talk about […]
Continue ReadingBook review: The Royalist Revolution by Eric Nelson
In recent years there has been a renewed interest in executive power on both sides of the Atlantic. In January 2017 the Supreme Court had to decide whether the United Kingdom’s EU membership withdrawal notice could be given by Government ministers without Parliament’s prior authorisation. It could not. The royal prerogative was insufficient. [1] In August 2017, President Trump controversially used the power granted to his office to pardon former law official Joe Arpaio. [2] He could. The President has the “Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States”. [3] Eric Nelson’s ambitious and provocative book The Royalist Revolution: Monarchy and the American Founding successfully demonstrates that these events are in a way deeply connected by uncovering the historical link between the British royal prerogative and the powers of the presidency.
Continue ReadingWalking Distance: Navigation, Epiphany, and Memory in American Small-Town Fiction
The navigation of the physical small-town space triggers memories, emotions, and other physiological responses that help narrate and give shape to localised communities. The act of walking can be epiphanic and cathartic, it can geographise and shape the vast topography of American regions, and, in the texts concerned with small-town America, it becomes a vital signifier not simply of life, but of living.
Continue ReadingSocial Disorder: Publics, 1968, Amateur photography and Vivian Maier
This essay is the fourth in our series, ‘Literature, Visual Imagery and Material Culture in American Studies’. The series seeks to situate literature, visual imagery and material culture at the heart of American studies, and will explore the varying ways in which written and non-written sources have been created, politicised, exploited, and celebrated by the diverse peoples of the United States and beyond. You can find out more information here.
Continue ReadingBook Review: Tennessee Williams by Paul Ibell
Paul Ibell’s Tennessee Williams, part of Reaktion’s Critical Lives strand, provides a thorough, well-balanced overview of Williams’s life; it is a solid, well-considered addition to the biographical materials available on its subject, one of the foremost contributors to the American theatrical canon. Spanning just over 180 pages, Ibell explores three central aspects of Williams’s life-story: his tumultuous familial upbringing; the centrality of homosexuality and gender dynamics to his work; and the sharp, irreversible decline he experienced from the mid-1960s through to his death in the early-1980s, a decline punctuated by his fraught, painful relationship with his critics.
Continue ReadingFolklore and Gay Literature: The Making of a Community
This essay is the third in our series, ‘Literature, Visual Imagery and Material Culture in American Studies’. The series seeks to situate literature, visual imagery and material culture at the heart of American studies, and will explore the varying ways in which written and non-written sources have been created, politicised, exploited, and celebrated by the diverse peoples of the United States and beyond. You can find out more information here.
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