Panel Review: ‘Instapoetry and Hypercapitalism,’ BAAS Annual Conference 2021 (Online)
April 2021 has seen the return of the British Association of American Studies annual conference, organised by Suzanne Enzerink, in a newly digital form. Following the necessary cancellation of the BAAS 2020 conference due to the coronavirus pandemic, this year’s event was a long-anticipated opportunity to bring together Americanists throughout the UK and across the world after a year of working from home. Being BAAS’s first virtual conference, it offered an unprecedented chance to radically reimagine forms of academic community and knowledge exchange, envisioning not only a sustainably low-carbon footprint event, but one without the usual barriers of travel, time commitment (most panels being recorded for non-live audiences), and cost. One significant outcome of the conference’s online forum was its inclusive and expansive discussion regarding the relation between money, work, creativity, and autonomy in our increasingly digitised late capitalist society. This is an issue pervading both the arts and academia, […]
Continue ReadingReview: SASA Annual Conference 2021 (Online)
When James Baldwin wrote that “The story of the Negro in America is the story of America”[1] he questioned the ways in which history weighs upon what it means to be Black. Moreover, he asked us to recognise that what it meant to be American was tied up with the history of subjugation. The persistent dehumanisation of African Americans was, for Baldwin, linked to the myth of America. But the real stories of America were those that Black Americans had to tell and these, wrote Baldwin, are the stories that “no American is prepared to hear.”[2] The question of how, and by whom, the stories of Black America are told formed the basis for discussions across several panels at the 22nd Annual SASA conference. Papers by Postgraduate and Postdoctoral Researchers discussed Black narratives from Slavery to the Black Lives Matter movement, asking who tells the story of Black America and […]
Continue ReadingReview: ‘Americans in the World’, HOTCUS Winter Symposium 2021 (Online)
Co-organized by Uta Balbier (HOTCUS Coordinator and Senior Lecturer in Modern History at King’s College) and Jennifer Chochinov (third year Ph.D candidate in History at King’s College), ‘Americans in the World’ invited scholars to inquire how non-state actors connected the United States to the rest of the world and complicated the ideological underpinnings of America’s informal empire during the twentieth century. In doing so, the conference organisers wished also to highlight a recent shift in diplomatic history’s focus: from the traditional inquire of the diplomatic exchanges, military interventions and foreign trade to the individual experiences abroad of students, artists, missionaries, athletes, and scholars among others. Keynote speaker Kaeten Mistry (Senior lecturer in American Studies at the University of East Anglia and historian of United States and the world) devoted his lecture to showing the huge impact that the diplomatic history’s cultural turn had on the research field. Mistry stressed the […]
Continue ReadingReview: HELAAS Young Scholar Symposium – ‘Conflict and Negotiation in American Culture(s)’ (Online)
HELAAS Young Scholar Symposium triumphantly defied the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in an innovative, fully digital format which comprised a week-long asynchronous phase, and a synchronous Q&A session phase on September 19, 2020. However, the symposium’s creative surprise, i.e. the production of the play Women of Ciudad Juarez by the American theatre company TeatroTravieso/ Troublemaker Theatre – along with its post-performance workshop on social theatre politics, aesthetics, and feminicide by educator and director Jimmy Noriega – had to comply with the initial planning and inevitably preceded the aforementioned digital turn of the symposium as it was held on March 6, 2020. The symposim further welcomed two special guests: EAAS President Philip McGowan and US Consul General, Elizabeth Lee who both commented on the significance of bridging conflicts particularly in the current pandemic climate. The conference theme of ‘Conflict and Negotiation in American Culture(s)’ problematised the centrifugal and centripetal forces embedded in contemporary […]
Continue ReadingReview: Maple Leaf and Eagle Conference – “North America: Inclusive, Exclusive, and Exceptional” (Online)
The biennial Maple Leaf and Eagle Conference is the longest running conference at the University of Helsinki, and one of the most prominent academic events in the field of North American studies organized in Finland. Since 1986, it has been being a vibrant venue for exploring North America from a variety of political, ideological and conceptual backgrounds, and a truly interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary conference attracting numerous participants from both sides of the Atlantic. This year it invited scholars to investigate the fluid boundaries and meanings of inclusion, exclusion, and exceptionalism in North American contexts. Yet while sending the CFP in 2019, the conference organizers had no idea how exceptional (and thus fitting the topic of the conference) the coming year of 2020 would be. It has happened to be the year of historic events that are to define the fate of North America and the whole world for years and […]
Continue ReadingReview: Kent Americanist Symposium “The Spatial Americas” (Online)
The Kent Americanist Symposium returned on November 21st for the fourth of what is now an annual gathering of early career scholars. The day was admirably led by Jack Dice and Irene Lopez Sanchez, both of the University of Kent, and was sponsored by the British Association of American Studies (BAAS) and the Centre for American Studies at Kent. The timely and topical title of the day was “The Spatial Americas,” embracing the full diversity of thinking on the continental scale. As this event becomes embedded within the Americanist calendar, it is growing more substantial with each iteration. This year saw a full schedule of four panels and two very engaging keynote papers, insightfully engaging with the conference themes of liminalities and frontiers, written spaces, space, memory and exile, and racialised spaces. The preliminary lecture was delivered on Wednesday 18th November by Professor Hsuan L. Hsu (UC Davis), discussing “Racial […]
Continue ReadingReview: The IAAS Postgraduate Symposium “Parallel Lives in America” (Online)
‘Parallel Lives in America’ encouraged scholars to investigate the juxtaposition of various dynamics, particularly between those with power to those who are oppressed, that exist in America today. This year’s theme of the IAAS postgraduate symposium, co-organised by Sarah McCreedy and Maria Manning, was described in the opening remarks by IAAS chair, Catherine Gander, as “a painfully astute topic.” The conference follows a tumultuous year in American history, following the COVID-19 pandemic, the rise of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, and the tensions surrounding the presidential election. As these events have drawn awareness to the state of inequality in America, the symposium allowed scholars focusing on American studies to examine how their research ties in with America’s history of disparity. Held across two days, the virtual conference participants showcased their different interpretations of this year’s theme, with topics ranging between historical aspects on America’s racial inequality, queer feminist hip-hop in Cuba, how […]
Continue ReadingReview: Zoom into BrANCH 2020 (Online)
Conference Review: ‘Zoom into BrANCH’, 10th – 11th October 2020 In a pre-COVID-19 world, the Association of British American Nineteenth Century Historians (BrANCH) would have met in person for a range of exciting papers on nineteenth-century American history. But, just as the world has had to adapt, so too has BrANCH. Organised by Dr. Elizabeth Barnes, the decision to move the annual conference online brought together the BrANCH community through pre-circulated papers and an hour-long Q&A from each speaker. Making the most of the online platform, four papers dwelled on a range of topics and themes, from American sailors in Algeria to German anarchism in the late nineteenth-century US. The pre-circulated paper format allowed the attendees to think deeply about the work presented to them and contribute thought-provoking questions, fostering stimulating debates that, if in person, would have long continued into the post-panel drinks in the pub afterward. Saturday afternoon […]
Continue ReadingReview: ‘Teaching Histories of Race in America to UK Undergraduates: A Review Panel’, Rothermere American Institute (Online)
Conference Review: ‘Teaching Histories of Race in America to UK Undergraduates: A Review Panel’, Rothermere American Institute (RAI) Webinar, 22nd October 2020. Chaired by the University of Oxford’s Research Fellow, Sonia Tycko, ‘Teaching Histories of Race in America to UK Undergraduates’ hosted virtually by the Oxford Rothermere American Institute (RAI) invited scholars and academics of racial history to attend a review panel characterised by a discussion on a pre-circulated collaborative bibliography, ‘America and Race: A Bibliography for UK History Undergraduates.’ This event provided an interrogation of key issues in pedagogy on the history of race among early American and US historians based in the UK. The Black Lives Matter movement and the murder of unarmed African Americans including George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of the police within Trump’s America amidst a backdrop of institutionalised racism, has sparked the latest conversation for the need of social and education […]
Continue ReadingEvent Review: HOTCUS PGR and ECR Conference 2020: ‘America at and beyond the ballot box’ (Online)
Co-organised by Tim Galsworthy and Lizzie Evens, ‘America at and beyond the ballot box’ invited scholars to examine the ways in which values and ideologies are framed in both policymaking, political rhetoric, and popular discourse, with specific regard to citizenship, suffrage, and the marginalisation of under-represented minority groups. The conference served as an intriguing preface to the upcoming presidential election, calling for roundtable discussions of historically definitive elections and case studies of exclusionary politics and governmental decision-making. Structured to combat the all-too-relatable Zoom fatigue, attendees were provided with pre-circulated conference papers as well as a pre-recorded keynote address, allowing all participants to engage in thought-provoking Q&A-based dialogue. It has been argued that annual events could just as easily be cancelled, rather than adapted to an online format, but realistically, the conference provided postgraduates and early career researchers with a critical opportunity to not only refamiliarize themselves with specific facets of […]
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