Review of ‘Avant-Gardes Now!’ Symposium
Throughout the whole day there were repetitions of specific phrases which became tagged to the definition of avant-garde. Notions of simulation and mimicry were frequently raised in relation to the differences between what is imagined, and what is supposed.
Continue ReadingMay Day and the future of workers’ internationalism
The conference “Workers of all lands unite? Working class nationalism and internationalism until 1945,” (University of Nottingham) highlighted how workers, now more than ever, need an international movement, one that can tackle the issues raised by a globalized system of production. (Review by co-organisers and labour scholars Lorenzo Costaguta and Steven Parfitt)
Continue ReadingConference Review (part three) of BAAS 2015, with ’60 Years of BAAS’ Roundtable
This year’s conference celebrated 60 years of the existence of the British Association for American Studies, so it was only fitting that the final session of the conference was “60 Years of BAAS: A Celebration.” The delegates gathered to first hear Nick Witham discuss the way BAAS’s relationship to US political power has evolved over the years.
Continue ReadingConference Review (part two) of BAAS 2015, with Saturday Plenary
On the third evening of BAAS 2015 we were treated to an eloquent and passionate plenary from Professor Dana Nelson (Vanderbilt). Best known for her work on race in the nineteenth century (The Word in Black and White, National Manhood), Dana’s lecture ‘A Passion for Democracy: Proximity to Power and the Sovereign Immunity Test’, drew from her most recent work Bad for Democracy (2008).
Continue ReadingConference Review (part one) of BAAS 2015, with Friday Plenary
Sarah Churchwell’s talk was a part of a longstanding project investigating The Great Gatsby. She set out a number of findings from her thorough research into the era and context of the novel’s creation and reception, which she described as ‘treasure hunting for traces’.
Continue ReadingConference Review: Sixteenth Annual Conference of the Scottish Association for the Study of America
While SASA is first and foremost a Scottish-based organisation, it is by no means dominated by academics from Scottish universities. Indeed, attendees and speakers travelled north from Newcastle, Coventry, Warwick, London and Dublin, highlighting the Association’s inclusiveness.
Continue ReadingConference Review: ‘Supposedly Fun Things: A Colloquium on the Writing of David Foster Wallace’
‘Supposedly Fun Things: A Colloquium on the Writing of David Foster Wallace’ Held at Birkbeck, University of London 7 February 2015 A building as twistingly complex as some of Wallace’s sentences provided the venue for Birkbeck, University of London’s ‘Supposedly Fun Things: A Colloquium on the Writing of David Foster Wallace’, an important event in the field of Wallace Studies. The first wave of Wallace scholarship had a vested interest in eulogizing Wallace in order to justify the study of him. Now that his place in the canon seems reasonably assured, there is an opportunity for scholars to conduct more critical and probing analysis, a development that was evident in many of the papers. Appropriately enough, the first panel dealt with aspects of Wallace’s reception and subsequent canonization. Dr. Tony Venezia (Birkbeck/Middlesex University) began by noting that Wallace is unusual, as the first research into his work was undertaken […]
Continue ReadingConference Review: ‘The War on the Human: Human as Right, Human as Limit and the Task of the Humanities’
The conference touched upon a variety of topics and disciplines, bridging ancient Greek philosophy with deconstruction, experimental poetics with pedagogy, medicine with narratology, textuality with anthropology, the law and institutional policies with literary studies, ethics and politics with metaphysics.
Continue ReadingConference Review: ‘Protest: Resistance and Dissent in America’
Bianca Scoti and Dr Tomas Pollard review a selection of panels and the keynote lectures at the BAAS Postgraduate Conference (15 November, 2014)
Continue ReadingConference Review: IAAS Postgraduate Conference
The annual Irish Association for American Studies post-graduate symposium’s aim for 2014 was to explore and acknowledge the growing numbers of new scholars interested in American Studies, particularly in Ireland.
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