Review: IAAS Postgraduate Conference, ‘E Pluribus Unum: Out of Many, One’
One of the first panels of the morning, ‘Form and Function’, was quick to establish a material basis for the theme. All speakers were concerned in some way with the (in)stability of artistic media, especially the ways in which seemingly divergent forms might converge.
Continue ReadingReview: ‘American Into Periodical Studies’, The First Network of American Periodical Studies Symposium
The Network of American Periodical Studies (NAPS) was recently formed by Sue Currell and Victoria Bazin, and aims to bring together scholars working on American periodicals from any historical period. Hosted by the Eccles’ Centre for American Studies at the British Library—and supported by the British Association for American Studies, Northumbria University, and the University of Sussex—‘American into Periodical Studies’ constituted the inaugural NAPS symposium.
Continue ReadingReview: SSAWW 2015 Conference: ‘Liminal Spaces, Hybrid Lives’
SSAWW conference participants revealed refreshingly complex critical interpretations of this year’s theme, that went beyond the post-colonial contexts where so many of us first encountered them.
Continue ReadingReview: ‘Collaboration in America and Collaborative Work in American Studies’
Co-organised by postgraduates at the Universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde, the conference charted the range of collaborative practices that are emerging in American Studies, whilst also recognising the wider responsibilities of researchers to work beyond traditional academic spaces and foster partnerships with educational, cultural and public bodies.
Continue ReadingReview: ‘Keywords: Nineteenth-Century American Studies in the Twenty-First Century’
Over the summer, researchers were invited to respond to a keyword—or suggest their own—that they felt was pertinent to studying nineteenth century America in the twenty first century. From this, eight keyword panels were formed: ‘Capital’, ‘Crisis’, ‘Development’, ‘Network’, ‘Sensation’, ‘Territory’, ‘Time’, and ‘World’.
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 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 ReadingReview: ‘The Historical “Dispute of the New World”: European Historians of the United States and European History, Culture and Public Life’
The vast majority of speakers emphasized the importance of geographic location in writing U.S. history, albeit with different nuances. For example, diverse focuses included migration among Swedish Americanists, the state in France, and transatlantic relations in Italy, clearly showed the relevance of location in defining the different national contexts of U.S. historiography.
Continue ReadingBook Review: Ecofeminism: Feminist Intersections with Other Animals and the Earth edited by Carol J. Adams and Lori Gruen
In the centrefold photograph from a pig farmer’s magazine, entitled “Ursula Hamdress,” a seemingly unconscious, pale-skinned pig in panties reclines on a sofa, with red-painted trotters parted. This shocking image, a conflated objectification of both woman and animal, stands as a central example of the concerns of Ecofeminism: Feminist Intersections with Other Animals and the Earth.
Continue ReadingReview: The State of Fiction: Don DeLillo in the 21st Century
DeLillo’s late twentieth century novels are striking in their engagement with distinctly twenty-first century concerns; from the pervasive influence of commercial media, to the insidious spectre of terrorism on contemporary society.
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