Book Review: Safeguarding Democratic Capitalism: U.S. Foreign Policy and National Security, 1920-2015, by Melvyn P. Leffler
Safeguarding Democratic Capitalism presents a selection of work from one of the world’s leading scholars of US foreign relations. Together these essays offer an elegant and engagingly written survey of twentieth century US foreign policy and national security debates.
Continue ReadingBook review: Preparing for War: The Emergence of the Modern U.S. Army, 1815-1917, by J.P. Clark
J.P. Clark combines his military experience and meticulous research in Preparing for War: The Emergence of the Modern U.S Army. The book is an insightful combination of military, political, and social history, and describes the evolution of Army officers’ formal education between 1815-1917 in an attempt to contextualise the shift from nineteenth to twentieth century understandings of military proficiency.
Continue ReadingReview: ‘It Is True, We Shall Be Monsters’: New Perspectives in Science-Fiction, Horror, and the Monstrous On-Screen
With 2018 marking the bicentenary of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein – often cited as the first science-fiction novel – the Cinema and Television History (CATH) Research Centre’s seventh annual postgraduate conference at De Montfort University was particularly timely. Indeed, the genres of horror and science-fiction have enjoyed recent critical and commercial successes, such as Black Mirror (2011-), Stranger Things (2016-), and The Shape of Water (2017).
Continue ReadingBook Review: Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War by Viet Thanh Nguyen
All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory. In ‘Nothing Ever Dies’, Nguyen deals with the extensive ways of knowing and remembering wars in general, and delineates the identity crisis that arises from grappling with what some name the Vietnam War and what others would call the American War in Vietnam.
Continue ReadingReview: Exhaustion and Regeneration in Post-Millennial North American Literature and Visual Culture
Its focus was the topics of exhaustion and regeneration in American and Canadian literature and visual cultures, including but not limited to film, visual arts, video games, and television from the year 2000 to the present day.
Continue ReadingReview: Pursuing the Rooseveltian Century
Pursuing the Rooseveltian Century, 31 November – 1 December 2017 The two-day conference ‘Pursuing the Rooseveltian Century’ was the inaugural conference of the recently rebranded Roosevelt Institute for American Studies (RIAS) located in Middelburg, the Netherlands. The conference called on scholars of American studies to reinterpret important moments in modern American history through the three Roosevelts, Theodore, Franklin and Eleanor, around four key themes; security, equality, freedom and legacies. Because the Rooseveltian Century is a relatively new concept within American studies, Giles Scott-Smith (Academic Director of the RIAS) encouraged attendees and speakers to thoroughly test this idea. Think big, think critically and think ahead was his three-part motivation during his introductory speech, something many of the speakers and panelists certainly did. The four keynote dialogues and five panels showed not only how broad the framework of the Rooseveltian Century is, but also how versatile this theme can be. The papers […]
Continue ReadingReview: BGEAH and BrANCH Postgraduate and Early Career Conference 2018
Overall, the conference demonstrated the value of bringing together members of BGEAH and BrANCH. Concerns about postdoctoral funding and the job market were shared by all, and the range of research discussed highlighted the growing shift away from periodisation within the study of American History. The day provided an opportunity not only for PGRS and ECRs to meet members of another organisation with similar interests, but also to draw on their expertise to enhance their own research.
Continue ReadingReview: Ghostly, Ghastly, Corporeal and Creaturely: Tim Burton’s Curious Bodies, First International Conference on Twenty-First Century Film Directors
Tim Burton’s Curious Bodies (The First International Conference on Twenty-First Century Film Directors), University of Wolverhampton, 15 February 2018 The inaugural International Conference on Twenty-First Century Film Directors, organised by The University of Wolverhampton in conjunction with Redeemer University College, Ontario, focused on the films of Tim Burton. Specifically, it explored the theme of ‘curious bodies’ in his work. Held at Light House Media Centre in Wolverhampton, this one-day event brought together contributors from around the world in stimulating discussion that built on existing scholarship about Burton and challenged some existing notions. After a brief introduction to proceedings from Dr Frances Pheasant-Kelly (University of Wolverhampton), Dr Samantha Moore (University of Wolverhampton) delivered the day’s first keynote address. She discussed the function of physical metamorphosis in animation, situating it historically as a subversive tool that serves to disrupt narrative structure and causal logic. With reference to films including Corpse Bride (2005), […]
Continue ReadingBook Review: Irish Nationalists in America by David Brundage
David Brundage, Irish Nationalists in America: The Politics of Exile, 1798-1998 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). pp.312. $36.95. £26.49. Irish Nationalists in America provides a thorough survey of centuries of Irish nationalist politics, distinctions in the Irish diaspora, and transnational cooperation. It is a valuable contribution to scholarship on the history of Irish-America, Irish nationalism, and the global Irish. The book is a chronologically organised monograph analysing key events, organisations and leaders on both sides of the Atlantic. The first two chapters address Wolfe Tone and United Irish exiles emigrating to the early American republic. Chapters three, four and five consider Irish nationalists in America throughout the nineteenth century. Chapter three examines how Irish immigrants and second- or third- generation Irish-Americans campaigned to repeal the 1800 Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland, opposed slavery and supported the Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848. The next chapter highlights the significance […]
Continue ReadingReview: ‘The “Not Yet” of the Nineteenth-Century U.S.’, BrANCA Symposium
Primarily literary in focus, the panellists nevertheless marshalled current political and institutional debates through and alongside their readings of texts, demonstrating the ways in which nineteenth-century U.S. scholarship often hinges on interdisciplinary methodologies.
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