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Reviews

Book Review: Sex Scene – Media and the Sexual Revolution by Eric Schaefer

Citing the work of Alan Petigny, and also that of contemporary sexologists such as Alfred Kinsey, editor Eric Schaefer claims that ‘what constituted the sexual revolution was not only a change in manners and morals; that had already been occurring discretely in minds and bedrooms across the nation. It was the fact that sex was no longer a private matter that took place behind closed doors’. (3) Featuring fifteen chapters by sixteen different authors, Sex Scene seeks to argue that ‘what we have come to understand as the sexual revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s was actually a media revolution’.

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“Be broad, be bold and be aware”: Review of the 2014 HOTCUS Postgraduate and Early Career Researcher Workshop

Providing a first hand synopsis of the 2014 HOTCUS Postgraduate and Early Career Workshop, Tom Bishop shares the invaluable advice from senior historians on several uncertain areas for postgraduates: they address, amongst other things, applying for jobs in the U.S. and U.K, the advantages of publishing with smaller presses, and how to engage the public with history through digital spaces and museums. Other panels include: surviving the interview process, grant capture and life outside the academy.

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Review of Culture and the Canada-U.S. Border 2014 Conference

Convening on a sun-drenched weekend amid the wonderful surroundings of University Park Campus, the third Culture and the Canada-U.S. Border conference met to discuss the broad theme of ‘Cultural Crossings’, interrogating production, consumption, and reception across the 49th parallel; that real-and-imagined international boundary that lies between the United States and Canada.

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Review of American Imperialism and Identity Conference

American Imperialism and National Identity Conference, University of Durham 14 June 2014   With Iraq in turmoil and U.S. military involvement in the Middle East once again in the spotlight, the timing of the ‘American Imperialism and National Identity Conference’ on the 14th of June at St. Aidan’s College, University of Durham, could not have been more prescient. This interdisciplinary conference for postgraduates and early career researchers appropriately brought together an international array of academics to present their research on a wide variety of topics pertaining to U.S. imperialism. The conference was opened with a whirlwind welcome by Philip Gannon (Durham University). Perhaps this was a little too brief, as a more detailed introduction would have counteracted the disparate nature of the conference, and established a focal point for discussion to return to. The first panel of the day – ‘9/11 and U.S. Imperialism’ – was kicked off by Dr. Flavio Sanza […]

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The U.S: A Society Without Classes? Conference Review of “How Class Works”

“In an intense and moving talk, the young militant Saket Soni shared his experience as the organizer of the Indian underpaid imported workforce in the post-Katrina New Orleans and stressed the importance of abandoning old categories to analyse new circumstances: the globalization of the job market and the explosive request for flexible/temporary workers have revolutionized the reality of workers in the U.S. Soni closed his talk by underscoring the importance of theorizing and scientifically analysing the new circumstances. This, he maintained, is the starting point to create a truly transnational workers’ organization.”

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Report on the BrANCA Reading Group Session ‘Archival Pleasures’

“Following Garvey’s article, the group spent quite a while discussing the importance of the physical versus digital archive in regards to Carrie Hyde and Joseph Rezak’s piece, ‘The Aesthetics of Archival Evidence’ (J19, Spring 2014). They raise the importance of understanding the ‘aesthetics of the archive’, the need to encounter the ‘heft’ of physical material. In the group we asked does distance matter? Do we need to be able to touch and hold manuscript and original books if it is digitally available? There seems to be a ‘resonating aura’ from material text, a sensual need to have contact with the physical archive for some scholars. This sensual turn in literary studies is the last spatial turn, towards ourselves.”

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Historians at Play: American History in Modern Board Games

“Putting Freedom back into the spotlight, it offers a unique way to physically interact with the issue of slavery. The mechanics of the game are assigned to a real history and the slaves that the players cannot save represent the real slaves that were doomed a fate that the game leaves to the players’ imagination. Physically moving the slaves around the United States, represented by simple wooden cubes, makes it difficult not to treat the slaves as objects.”

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Review of ‘Myths in Culture’ Postgraduate Symposium 2014

“In his seminal Mythologies (1957), Barthes identifies myths as a type of speech, one that takes on universally acknowledged meanings which are rarely questioned. And although Barthes’ name was dropped only occasionally during “Myths in Culture”, a one-day postgraduate symposium at the University of Leicester, the spirit of his words were ever present.”

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Review of the “Alt-American” conference 2014

“Bell should be commended for convening a tremendous conference to do just that, challenging a distinguished group of critics, temporally and geographically dislocated from their subject at a conference in twenty-first-century England, to read the many implausible realities of nineteenth-century America.”

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Review of 25th Annual Conference of American Literature Association 2014

“What stood out from the conference was the breadth of American literary studies, both in terms of approaches, historical periods, and geography. There seems to have been no waning in Trans-American Studies (transatlantic, transpacific, transcontinental and more), with the borders of American Literature stretching ever further.”

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