Category: Research

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Conference Review: ‘Pandemics, Public Health, and Statecraft in Twentieth-Century U.S. History’

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Day One, University College London, 4-5 July 2022 Organised by University College London’s Stephen Colbrook, Pandemics, Public Health, and Statecraft provided a platform for the exploration of the far-reaching intersections between statecraft and contagious disease, highlighting the emergence of identity, memory, and policymaking as narratives vital to advancing our understanding… Continue reading

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Book Review: Familial Fitness: Disability, Adoption, and Family in Modern America by Sandra M. Sufian

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The University of Chicago Press, £28 Sandra M. Sufian’s Familial Fitness examines the complex role of disability and divergence in US adoption practices from the Progressive Era to the end of the 20th century, trying to “understand past structures and forces that enabled or impeded the integration of children labelled… Continue reading

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Jeffrey Geiger on the 2019-20 BAAS Founders’ Research Award

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I am grateful to have been recipient of a BAAS Founders’ Award – the support has been invaluable to my research into the early uses of amateur colour film. The BAAS Founders’ Award provides UK scholars with financial assistance for research travel and invited conference presentations, and more recently has… Continue reading

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University of Kent: Eyes on Events: Milly Mulcahey & Kate Heffner, Kent Americanist Symposium 2022

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The next episode in our series Eyes On Events, this week we are interviewing Milly Mulcahey and Kate Heffner about the upcoming Kent Americanist Symposium.  You can now grab your free ticket for the Americanist Conference, supported by CHASE and the University of Kent – Curating and Resisting Americana – online and hybrid,… Continue reading

Community Building and Articulations of Race and Gender at Georgia Douglas Johnson’s 'Saturday Nighters': African American Theatre and The S Street Salon

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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

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The Promise and Threat of Black Detroit in the Age of the Great Migration: The People v. Ossian Sweet

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In the first decades of the twentieth century, no northern city drew more southern migrants than Detroit, ‘City of Tomorrow’.[i] As one Free Press reporter noted in 1917, ‘Detroit’s unexampled prosperity is the lodestone that is attracting thousands of Negroes’.[ii] Between 1910 and 1920, Detroit’s Black population increased almost eightfold,… Continue reading

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Black Girl Magic, Community and Celebration in Contemporary American Culture

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This article is adapted from the keynote presentation given at BAAS Postgraduate Symposium, 4th December 2021. The ‘Black Girl Magic’ movement is an opportunity both to celebrate what is means to be a Black woman and also challenge the oppressional practices and contemporary issues that affect them and their community…. Continue reading

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Broadway, Hollywood, and the Problem with The Prom

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Among all the necessary and welcome debates around identity in contemporary culture, few have been more pronounced in theatre and film than that of who should be cast to play characters of marginalised identities. From gender identity and religious beliefs to nationality and disability, this issue is occurring with increasing… Continue reading

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Mending Fences: The Broken Bond between Theatre and Film

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Play to film adaptations have fallen in prestige and numbers in recent years, and one of the main reasons for this is the decline in popularity of plays that can be adapted. For example, A Streetcar Named Desire was the 5th highest grossing film of 1951[i] while Fences was the… Continue reading