First experiences

USSO and BAAS PG WORKSHOP: Turning the Page – from Dissertation to Book Manuscript

Turning the Page – from Dissertation to Book Manuscript Wednesday 11 November 2020, 4 PM (London)  Three excellent researchers, Dr. Hannah-Rose Murray, Dr. Harriet Earle, and Dr.  Thomas J. Cobb are kindly sharing their publishing experience in this workshop on how to transform your Phd dissertation into a monograph.  Invited Speakers: Dr. Hannah-Rose Murray Dr. Hannah-Rose Murray is an Early Career Leverhulme Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on recovering and amplifying formerly enslaved African American testimony (including forgotten slave narratives, oratory and visual performance), specifically focusing on their transatlantic journeys to Britain between the 1830s and the 1890s. She has created a website (www.frederickdouglassinbritain.com) that maps their speaking locations across Britain, and has organized numerous community events including talks, performances, podcasts, plays and exhibitions on both sides of the Atlantic. Her first book, Advocates of Freedom: African American Transatlantic Abolitionism in the British Isles was published […]

The Importance of Sherry Receptions; or, Where Are All The Women In This Archive? First Impressions as the Cadbury Library BAAS Archive Intern

n spring 2017, BAAS and the Cadbury Research Library became partners in a project to develop and promote use of the BAAS archive, held in Special Collections at the University of Birmingham. They sponsored an internship open to PGRs and ECRS to conduct a piece of research exploring gender, race and class in BAAS and British academic life. The internship also offered the opportunity for researchers to receive training in archive skills and gain experience in disseminating research to a wider public. The award was made to Sabina Peck, PhD student in U.S. history at the University of Leeds.

My Research across Borders: Lonneke Geerlings

‘My Research’ is a new feature that aims to introduce and summarise the research of Postgraduates and Early Career Researchers within the field of American and Canadian Studies. Sit back, and get to know some of the craziest, challenging, and rewarding places researchers have been taken to…

From Academia to Parliament: How academics can support the Foreign Affairs Committee

A few months ago I attended a half-day workshop at the Houses of Parliament as part of an effort by the Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC) to engage with the research and expertise of academics and, in particular, early career scholars.

My Research: Juliet Williams

‘My Research’ is a new feature that aims to introduce and summarise the research and work of Postgraduates and Early Career Researchers within the field of American and Canadian Studies. Sit back, and get to know some of the craziest, challenging, and rewarding places researchers have been taken to…

Curating LGBT History Month: Lessons Learned

February 2016 featured the most successful LGBT History month event series the University of Nottingham has ever seen. Hannah Rose Murray, programme organiser, reflects on the challenges she faced when curating the series and what systems of support she needed in place when she began. The post concludes with a series of event reviews from postgraduates in the Department of American and Canadian Studies at the University of Nottingham.

Fault Lines in American Studies: Re-evaluating Academic Conference Models

In the first month of my PhD I read Barbara Tomlinson and George Lipsitz’s daring article on academic conferences in American Quarterly. “American Studies as Accompaniment” criticizes, amongst other things, the institutionalized, egotistical model of scholarship that prioritizes the scholar over the work or discussion:

“Because of the publications, presentations, positions, honors, and awards enumerated on it, the CV circulates out in the world as a strange surrogate for the person whose work it describes . . . The CV represents scholarly achievement largely as individual activity capable of being measured in quantitative terms. The work that scholars actually do, however, is innately collective and qualitative . . . scholarly conversations are cooperative creations, the product of collective communications in which all participants play a part.”

In writing this post I intend to expand on Tomlinson and Lipsitz’s reflections to make visible the flaws in our field with regards to conferences and, more importantly, offer feedback to postgraduates in the ways they can approach conference organizing.

Teaching American Studies with iPads

My students are technologically savvy in a way I never was; using an iPad is second nature to most of them. But a focused activity like this shows how their digital skills can be applied towards productive research and, beyond that, to source commentary and analysis. As Professor Katherine Aiken has written, “establishing common ground with students is often the first step to effective teaching.” In this light, iPads – rather than being tools of distraction – can be aids to discussion and debate.

‘The speed of every incident is unbelievable’: Writer Muriel Rukeyser and the Spanish Civil War

Having been awarded funding through the AHRC International Placement Scheme, I arrived in Washington DC in early October 2014 to begin research in the Muriel Rukeyser Papers held at the Library of Congress. Rukeyser’s diary and notes from Spain at the Library of Congress furthered my understanding of how the article was produced. The sense of speed that characterised ‘Barcelona, 1936’ was even more evident in her diary, which she wrote in short phrases, punctuated by dashes as though she was keen to capture events as they unfolded. As well as her diary, the archive contains lists, maps, sketches and even another passenger’s diary from Spain. I had a sense that Rukeyser had chosen a camera-like aesthetic but the archive revealed just how far Rukeyser had gone to document what she had seen.

What We Learned: Organiser’s report on the 1st Americas Postgraduate Conference at the UCL Institute of the Americas

In part two of our 1st Americas Postgraduate conference double header the organisers James Hillyer, Anthony Teitler, Thomas Maier and William Sawyers offer some useful organising tips for next year.