Book Review: Gamer Nation: Video Games and American Culture by John Wills
As Sascha Pöhlmann stresses in his introduction to USSO’s series on Video Games and American Studies, American studies has been slow to embrace video games as a topic of critical engagement. Enter University of Kent’s John Wills and his book Gamer Nation: Video Games & American Culture, which seeks to demonstrate ‘how games have simulated and begun to reframe the American experience’ (14).
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 […]
Continue ReadingBook Review: The Coming of Southern Prohibition by Michael Lewis
The advent of nationwide Prohibition in 1920 marks a pivotal moment in U.S. history. This momentous political step was preceded by a decades-long public controversy as to how to curb the social ills associated with the excessive consumption of alcohol. Michael Lewis’ The Coming of Southern Prohibition is a case study that examines this prolonged ideological struggle between ‘dry’ and ‘wet’ forces in a localised context.
Continue ReadingBook Review: Remaking a Life: How Women Living with HIV/AIDS Confront Inequality by Celeste Watkins-Hayes
Celeste Watkins-Hayes’ Remaking a Life centres on the creation, expansion, and maintenance of the HIV/AIDS safety net in the United States. The book predominately focuses on women of colour in Chicago, highlighting their stories as case studies for the successes of the HIV/AIDS safety net.
Continue ReadingEvent Review: PG and ECR BAAS 2019: Communicating the United States
December, in London, awash with city folks and sightseers ready to be enthralled at the spectacle of the Christmas lights and Oxford Circus. Near St Pancreas lies a library which holds the largest collection of American Literature outside of the United States. Here in the Eccles Centre for American Studies was the British Association of American Studies Post Graduate conference of 2019.
Continue ReadingBook Review: Forging a Laboring Race: The African American Worker in the Progressive Imagination by Paul R. D. Lawrie
The Progressive Era (1890-1920s) was a time of intense social, economic, and political reform largely carried out by the middle class. Most scholars of Progressivism, including David Thelen and Daniel T. Rogers, argue that Progressivism is not monolithic and there has never been a coherent definition. Paul Lawrie has chosen to focus on one particular aspect of the Progressive Era: the deepening inequalities that occurred due to an industrial and economic boom, causing a rise in racism and racial policy.
Continue ReadingReview: 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 of Topophrenia: Place, Narrative and the Spatial Imagination by Robert T. Tally Jr.
Cultural geographer Robert T. Tally Jr. publishes widely and frequently on many aspects of literary geographies, including the myriad forms of map-making. This book comprises his latest research and presents an excellent introduction to his work. Tally Jr. espouses the cartographic imperative: simply by being in the world, he argues, we map and reference our surroundings in an infinite variety of ways.
Continue ReadingReview of “The Market Logics of Contemporary Fiction” by Paul Crosthwaite
The most striking aspect of Crosthwaite’s latest monograph is the delicate balancing of complex interpretations of the relationship between fiction and the market, and accessible, colloquial examples and frameworks through which the reader is invited to analyse this relationship. The result of Crosthwaite’s success in negotiating this balance is that Market Logics is an attractive and engaging read for both newcomers to the economic humanities and experts alike.
Continue ReadingBook Review: A Literate South: Reading Before Emancipation by Beth Barton Schweiger
‘Culture is ordinary: that is where we must start.’ Raymond Williams’ famous statement provides an epigraph to Beth Barton Schweiger’s important study of reading in the antebellum South, A Literate South: Reading Before Emancipation. Barton Schweiger builds on Williams’ statement to provide a bank of evidence that culture was, indeed, ordinary, in the rural antebellum South. Using two chief examples, the diaries of two families, the Cooleys in Virginia and the Speers in North Carolina, Schweiger uncovers how reading and printed materials were important parts of Southern culture, and how this is often ignored in studies of the period.
Continue Reading