Generation Indigenous (Gen-I): Removing the Barriers to Success
Throughout November 2015, U.S. Studies Online will be publishing a series of posts to mark Native American Heritage Month. In the second post, Benjamin Harvey Sporle (Canterbury Christ Church) discusses Native American youth political activism and the emergence of the Generation Indigenous (Gen-I) movement.
Continue ReadingReview: ‘Legacies and Lifespans: Contemporary Women’s Writing in the 21st Century’
This conference offered a timely reflection upon work on contemporary women’s writing. It was particularly apt because this is a moment when a whole generation of feminist scholars are approaching retirement or have already retired.
Continue ReadingThe Bear River Massacre: Multiple Memories and Cultural Contradictions
Throughout November 2015, U.S. Studies Online will be publishing a series of posts to mark Native American Heritage Month. In the second post, Susannah Hopson (University of Hull) discusses the problem of memory and memorialization in her research on Native American massacre sites.
Continue ReadingReview: ‘The (Re)production of Misery and the Ways of Resistance’ American Studies Association Conference
In what ways do we think about our bodies as active agents or passive recipients? How do we use misery as a form of resistance, and in what ways can resistance be subversive? How do we teach these issues in the classroom? These are a selection of the challenging, but enthralling questions delegates encountered at this year’s American Studies Association annual conference in Toronto, Canada.
Continue ReadingDocumentary Review: The Black Panther Party: Vanguard of the Revolution
Newly released documentary The Black Panther Party: Vanguard of the Revolution shows a lesser-seen side of the Black Panthers that marries the stylised, swaggering interpretations of Party members with the role of J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO and the frequently overlooked Survival Programmes.
Continue ReadingThe Praying Indians of King Philip’s War
Throughout November 2015, U.S. Studies Online will be publishing a series of posts to mark Native American Heritage Month. In the second post, Edward Mair (University of Hull) discusses the “forgotten casualties” of King Philip’s War (1675-1676): the ‘Praying Indians.’
Continue ReadingChickasaw Gender Roles and Slavery During the Plan for Civilization
Throughout November 2015, U.S. Studies Online will be publishing a series of posts to mark Native American Heritage Month. In the first post, Jeff Washburn (University of Mississippi) discusses the evolution of gender roles within Chickasaw society during the early 1800s. The founding of the United States altered the relationship between the Chickasaw and white Americans. Adopting a “plan for civilization,” President George Washington and his Secretary of War, Henry Knox, commissioned Indian agents, like Benjamin Hawkins in 1796, to encourage the adoption of scientific agricultural techniques and a yeoman farming society in an attempt to encourage Southeastern Indians to sell off excess hunting lands for white settlement. This program was also meant to change Chickasaw gender roles and family leadership, both of which were the domain of women, to conform to white American concepts of paternalism and male leadership. The Chickasaw, however, adapted the plan for civilization to their […]
Continue ReadingStorify of our #bookhour on Jonathan Franzen’s PURITY
#Bookhour is an open forum twitter discussion between scholars and the public that takes place the last Tuesday of the month. Find out more here. October marked our twelfth #bookhour, and to celebrate the one year anniversary of this feature U.S. Studies Online co-editor Michelle Green hosted a discussion of Purity by “Great American Novelist” Jonathan Franzen with a panel of Franzen experts. During the discussion Dr Kristin J. Jacobson, Dr Daniel Mattingly, Iain Williams, Joanna Wilson and Michelle Green discussed Purity‘s position in the wider trend of ‘big, so-called Dickensian novels’, Franzen’s wide-spanning critique of ideology as shrouding personal and corporate gain, and the noticeable lack of diversity in the novel that is accentuated by its inter-/intra-national context. Debates arose around Franzen’s depiction of feminism, feminist characters and his authorial persona, along with the novel’s intertextuality and the recurring presence of memoir in his later novels. The panellists ended the discussion with thoughts on Purity‘s conclusion, and left the […]
Continue ReadingResearch Across Borders – As fragile as a metaphor: Constructing Edna St. Vincent Millay from the Library of Congress records
These newspaper and magazine articles provide a striking insight into the version of Millay constructed by the press. She is consistently referred to as a ‘little poetess’ and reviews of her live performances pay as much attention on her gowns, hairstyles and gestures as they do the words of her poems.
Continue ReadingTrauma, Code and 9/11: Reading Vulnerability in a Digitized Present
Trauma shatters what we know and hold to be true, and these 9/11 texts find unexpected ways out of this. They are fictions of terror that embrace the reality of trauma within a digitized world. Beyond mourning, the experience of terror becomes the starting point for re-defining the place of the individual in the convoluted realities of our present day. These texts are a sensorium for a more humane present in the face of global terrorism.
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