Review: Teaching Black HERStories, 24th-25th July, University of Missouri (Online)
“Teaching Black HERStories”: a review of transatlantic conferential learning Teaching Black HERStories was the University of Missouri’s Carter Centre’s 3rd Annual ‘Teaching Black History’ conference. Delivered online due to COVID-19, HERStories focused on “K-12” Black History education. For those unfamiliar with the acronym, K-12 terms US education delivered to children ranging from school starters through to school leavers i.e. 4-18 years old. Bringing educators from across the United States together, with virtual attendees from outside of North America, HERstories facilitated discourse around nuance and personal experience with the delivery of Black History education, in various formats. Comprising of a showing of the stirring soliloquy ”Walking with my ancestors” and Q&A opportunity with Professor Ama Oforiwaa Aduonum; sessions and workshops aimed to enrich the planning of and impartation of learning to students; tales of important characters throughout Black History; discourse of trials and errors when refining Black History pedagogies, and apt […]
Continue ReadingReview: HOTCUS Work-in-Progress Meeting 2019
Review: HOTCUS Work-in-Progress Meeting 2019, University of Oxford, 17 October 2019. At the second annual work-in-progress session, two developing articles were discussed: Liam O’Brien’s (University of Cork) paper, ‘Winning Back the Peace: The George H.W. Bush Administration and the Creation of Operation Southern Watch, 1992’ and Dr. Meghan Hunt’s (University of Edinburgh) piece, ‘”He was shot because America would not give up on racism”: Martin Luther King Jr. and the African American civil rights movement in British schools.’ Like last year’s event, papers were circulated before the session so attendees had time to read and develop comments for each paper. The goal of this session was to foster a supportive environment and to provide feedback which would aid the authors in the publication of their articles: this goal was met. There was an element of ‘article by committee’ which is often helpful to postgraduates and early career researchers who perhaps […]
Continue ReadingReview of ANZASA Conference 2019: Community, Conflict and the “Meaning of America” 14-16th July, University of Auckland
For their biennial conference, the Australian and New Zealand American Studies Association (ANZASA) encouraged those in attendance to engage with Perry Miller’s intellectual endeavour to define “the meaning of America.” Using Miller’s seminal work, An Errand into the Wilderness, as a launching pad, a thoughtful offering of keynote speakers, plenaries and panels emphasised the ongoing relevance of community, conflict, and the meaning of America in present-day research.
Continue ReadingConference Review: The Biennial Symposium in American History – In Pursuit of Law and Order: American Governance in Historical Perspective, Queen Mary University of London, 21 June 2019
The Biennial Symposium in American History at Queen Mary, University of London, hoped to shed some light on the contemporary moment by illustrating that state actors have a long history of using the law and political governance for nefarious purposes.
Continue ReadingConference Review: The 17th International Willa Cather Seminar, Winchester, Virginia, 17th-21st June 2019
Arriving at Shenandoah University for the 17th International Willa Cather Seminar, scholars were greeted by the incongruous sounds of revving Harley-Davidson motorbikes and bagpipes. For one week in June, the small town of Winchester, Virginia, played host not only to the Willa Cather Foundation’s biennial seminar, but also to the Virginia Piping and Drumming School’s summer meet and the 2019 HOG (‘Harley Owners’ Group’) Rally. While that meant that accommodation choices in town were limited, the celebratory atmosphere befitted the fact that, for the Cather group, this conference was something of a homecoming.
Continue ReadingVisualising the Americas: Kent’s Third Annual Americanist Symposium, Keynote Addresses
What happens when you attempt to condense thousands of words, and years of research, into a single image? This was the challenge put to attendees of the Kent Americanists Symposium in June 2019 – to find and share the single image through which an entire wider discussion could be accessed.
Continue ReadingSymposium Panel Review: ‘Visualising the Americas: Kent’s Third Annual Americanist Symposium’, The University of Kent, Keynes College, Monday 3rd June, 2019.
From pre-colonised American Indian art to contemporary graffiti murals, the Americas have a rich and varied visual history. This one-day symposium, co-organised by three PhD candidates at the University of Kent – Ellie Armon Azoulay, Sarah Smeed, and Megan King – invited panellists and speakers to focus on one particular image or object as a catalyst for exploring larger themes, trends and figures.
Continue ReadingConference Review: ‘Women’s Transatlantic Prison Activism since 1960,’ the Rothermere American Institute, the University of Oxford, June 7, 2019.
This day-long conference explored a range of topics related to women’s incarceration, such as the often-overlooked history of women’s organising efforts within prison and especially art, print, and visual culture as forms of activism.
Continue ReadingReview: Marx and Marxism in the United States
Conference Review: ‘Marx and Marxism in the United States: A One-Day Symposium’, University of Nottingham, 11 May 2019. In 1906, German economist and sociologist Werner Sombart declared that there was no socialism – and no class consciousness – in the United States. Just over a decade later, America was plunged into its first Red Scare over fears of radical socialist and anarchist influence on newly emerging leftist organisations and trade unions. This hysteria ebbed and flowed, reaching another peak in the early post-war period spearheaded by Senator Joseph McCarthy. With the increasing embrace of socialism by young Americans in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, it is clear that the relationship between socialism and Americanism has been nothing short of turbulent. Throughout all these developments, one figure has loomed large – Karl Marx. This symposium, co-organised by Christopher Phelps (University of Nottingham) and Robin Vandome (University of Nottingham), invited […]
Continue ReadingReview: BAAS Annual Conference 2019
Review: BAAS 64th Annual Conference, 25-27 April 2019, University of Sussex “The only reason you’d go to uni,” the young man on the train confidently declared to his friend, “is so you don’t have to work anymore.” The participants of the BAAS 64th Annual Conference, to which I was travelling, quickly proved him wrong. Over the course of three days Americanists from the UK and far beyond discussed current issues in the field, built new networks, and expanded existing ones. Given that the conference was celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall riots and took place in Brighton, a city with a rich LGBTQ+ history, it should come as no surprise that the LGBTQ+ experience proved a central theme throughout. Activism and radicalism also took centre stage, both within academic sessions and beyond, with a walking tour to celebrate Brighton’s queer legacy and a one man show by Ian Ruskin […]
Continue Reading