BOOK REVIEW: HILLBILLY ELEGY: A MEMOIR OF A FAMILY AND CULTURE IN CRISIS, BY J.D. VANCE
Joe Bageant’s Deer Hunting with Jesus (2007) drew a global readership’s attention to underprivileged Appalachian communities. J.D. Vance replicates this with his memori Hillbilly Elegy. Published, like Nancy Isenberg’s White Trash, in 2016, Vance and Isenberg agree that despite constitutionally enshrined freedom, social mobility remains unattainable for many disenfranchised white working-class US citizens.
Continue ReadingRaymond Carver: Thirty Years On
On the 30th anniversary of Raymond Carver’s death, Jonathan Pountney analyses the enduring relevance of his writing for white working class voters today.
Continue ReadingReview: The Cartographic Imagination: Art, Literature and Mapping in the United States, 1945-1980
Papers were impressively varied in reach and scope, covering landscape photography, the New York art scene, the refugee crisis, and maps of Disneyland. Though focused on the post-war period in the U.S., discussions, it seemed, could not help being drawn towards the present moment.
Continue ReadingReview: Transatlantic Literary Women Series: Women’s Partial Suffrage Centenary Celebration
Nestled into the corner of the Scottish suffrage exhibition (the walls lovingly adorned with transcriptions of suffrage letters and memorabilia), Glasgow’s People’s Palace Museum was an apt location for the talks planned over the weekend.
Continue ReadingReview: Exhaustion and Regeneration in Post-Millennial North American Literature and Visual Culture
Its focus was the topics of exhaustion and regeneration in American and Canadian literature and visual cultures, including but not limited to film, visual arts, video games, and television from the year 2000 to the present day.
Continue Reading60 Seconds with Christina Westwood
The U.S. Studies Online 60 Seconds interview feature offers a short and informal introduction to a postgraduate, academic or non-academic specialist working in the American and Canadian Studies field or a related American and Canadian Studies association.
Continue Reading60 Seconds with Maria Elena Carpintero Torres-Quevedo
The U.S. Studies Online 60 Seconds interview feature offers a short and informal introduction to a postgraduate, academic or non-academic specialist working in the American and Canadian Studies field or a related American and Canadian Studies association.
Continue ReadingReview: Pursuing the Rooseveltian Century
Pursuing the Rooseveltian Century, 31 November – 1 December 2017 The two-day conference ‘Pursuing the Rooseveltian Century’ was the inaugural conference of the recently rebranded Roosevelt Institute for American Studies (RIAS) located in Middelburg, the Netherlands. The conference called on scholars of American studies to reinterpret important moments in modern American history through the three Roosevelts, Theodore, Franklin and Eleanor, around four key themes; security, equality, freedom and legacies. Because the Rooseveltian Century is a relatively new concept within American studies, Giles Scott-Smith (Academic Director of the RIAS) encouraged attendees and speakers to thoroughly test this idea. Think big, think critically and think ahead was his three-part motivation during his introductory speech, something many of the speakers and panelists certainly did. The four keynote dialogues and five panels showed not only how broad the framework of the Rooseveltian Century is, but also how versatile this theme can be. The papers […]
Continue Reading60 Seconds with Jennie O’Reilly
The U.S. Studies Online 60 Seconds interview feature offers a short and informal introduction to a postgraduate, academic or non-academic specialist working in the American and Canadian Studies field or a related American and Canadian Studies association.
Continue ReadingReview: BGEAH and BrANCH Postgraduate and Early Career Conference 2018
Overall, the conference demonstrated the value of bringing together members of BGEAH and BrANCH. Concerns about postdoctoral funding and the job market were shared by all, and the range of research discussed highlighted the growing shift away from periodisation within the study of American History. The day provided an opportunity not only for PGRS and ECRs to meet members of another organisation with similar interests, but also to draw on their expertise to enhance their own research.
Continue Reading