Reviews

Black History Month Roundup: U.S. Studies Online Special Series

Throughout October 2014 U.S. Studies Online has published a series of posts by U.K. and U.S.-based academics of all levels in honour of the UK’s Black History Month. This is a round-up of the series all in one place.

“There wouldn’t be an America if it wasn’t for black people”: Programme Review of the University of Nottingham’s Black History Month Events

At the University of Nottingham, the month of October has been punctuated by a series of events, lectures and screenings relating to Black History Month. Postgraduate Hannah Jeffery has reviewed the series in the first ever Series Review for U.S. Studies Online. In this post she explores Black History Month not only as an opportunity to heighten awareness of black history and educate the public about the past, but Black History Month as a practice of institutions and professional organisations.

Review of Protestantism and the Superpowers: Mission, Spirituality, and Prayer in the USA and USSR

Dr Mark Hurst gives a comprehensive review of the ‘Protestantism and the Superpowers: Mission, Spirituality, and Prayer in the USA and USSR’ workshop, held at the University of Leicester.

Book Review: Slavery in American Children’s Literature, 1790-2010 by Paula T. Connolly

Connolly’s text is well-situated to help lay a foundation for the continuing study of American children’s literature as an individual field unto itself. This ambitious and highly accomplished work examines an extraordinary breadth of material. Connolly situates both the specific popular texts she explores and the genres of which they are representative as a foundation upon which two didactic goals are accomplished vis-à-vis American children and childhood: first, these texts inform the development of children’s identities, both as racialized individuals and as Americans (and all the cultural baggage that American-ness involves), and second, each successive generation of texts generates a complicated understanding of contemporaneous racial politics by reshaping the historical memory established by its precedents.

Review: Joint BrANCH and HOTCUS Annual Conference

Andrea Livesey puts both her BrANCH and historian hat on when she reviews the Joint Annual Conference of British American Nineteenth Century Historians (BrANCH) and Historians of the Twentieth Century United States (HOTCUS).

A Relatable Past? Early America on the Small Screen

Do readers need to relate to historical figures in order to understand Early American literature and history? Is it important to connect with the personalities encountered from the past?

Hannah Murray explores these questions in relation to the recent cluster of Early America-inspired television shows. Murray discusses Sleepy Hollow (2013), American Horror Story: Coven (2013), Turn: Washington’s Spies (2014) and Salem (2014).

Book Review: Atheists in America, edited by Melanie E. Brewster

Brewster’s collection is filled with sorrowful disclosures of inequality, existential torment legitimated by biblical rhetoric and background, and ultimately a sense of overcoming from its eclectic grouping of contributors. The common thread of endurance binds the experiences of these ‘Atheists in America’. This collection informs the reader of the stigma and deep-rooted suspicion which exists in many parts of the United States, often those one would expect to be receptive of minority identities. It is a timely reminder of the value, virtues and antecedents of rational thinking and the humanistic endeavour which can arise from it.

Review of the Tenth Annual ‘Wikimania’ Conference

Kiron Ward reviews the debates and panels at the forefront of this year’s Wikimania conference, held in London.

Book Review: American Unexceptionalism – The Everyman and the Suburban Novel after 9/11 by Kathy Knapp

By ignoring the lack of innovation in fiction after “9/11,” and by continuing to privilege the representation of a singular “event” as the cornerstone of a national literature, American Unexceptionalism can only partially commit to dismantling the exceptionalism played upon by its title.

Review of Celebrity Encounters: Transatlantic Fame in Nineteenth-Century Britain and America Conference

Hannah-Rose Murray explores celebrity encounters in her review of the ‘How to Define Celebrity’ conference, held at the University of Portsmouth.