‘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.
Continue ReadingReview: The University of Nottingham Postgraduate Academic Retreat, 30 May – 6 June 2015
Timo Schrader and James Brookes, organisers of the University of Nottingham Postgraduate Academic Retreat, 30 May – 6 June 2015, look back upon the trip and its various strengths and weaknesses.
Continue ReadingWhat 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.
Continue ReadingThere’s still more to be done, says Zalfa Feghali at the end of her two year term as BAAS ECR Representative
In April 2013 Zalfa Feghali was elected Early Career Representative for the British Association for American Studies. At the end of her term she joined U.S. Studies Online co-editor Michelle Green to discuss her time in the post, why she lobbied for this position in the BAAS exec, and where her successor can go from here.
Continue ReadingJob-hunting: An Early Career Perspective
Moving from postgraduate research to an early career perspective, the third SHAW post is an honest account about the search for employment. David Doddington writes about his experiences and provides useful advice for other scholars in this transitional phase.
Continue ReadingSurviving a Long-Distance Research Project
In SHAW’s second post in their series, Charlie Jeffries shares her experiences of embarking upon a PhD about the US in the UK and gives practical tips for others thinking of doing likewise.
Continue ReadingAmerican Studies in Europe: Interview with Dietmar Meinel, Freie Universität Berlin
[starbox] Richard Martin: Your postgraduate work was undertaken at the John F. Kennedy Institute in Berlin, which was founded in 1963. How would you characterise the approach to American Studies taken at the institute? Dietmar Meinel: My personal experience has been shaped by two trajectories at the JFKI. On the one hand, interdisciplinary thinking is a feature of the American Studies programme at the Institute. Since it is composed of culture, literature, history, sociology, political science and economics departments, these different approaches to American Studies are felt from the BA to the PhD level. In addition, I have found my field of work, cultural studies, to be passionately engaged in a critical dialogue with particular groups and movements in U.S.-shaped American Studies. In my experience, issues of theory and questions about the field of American Studies as such played a vital role in the approach to American Studies at the […]
Continue ReadingAmerican Studies in Europe: Introducing the Interview Series
In the coming weeks, US Studies Online will feature a series of interviews with early career scholars in American Studies who are teaching and researching at institutions across Europe – from western Spain to central Turkey, via Copenhagen, Warsaw and Timisoara. We’ll hear from PhD students, post-doctoral researchers, lecturers and associate professors working in literary studies, film studies, history and cultural studies.
Continue ReadingDesigning a Module, Redux: Or, Why We’re Watching Buffy Again This Year
In High Fidelity, Rob (John Cusack) muses on the art of making a mixtape: “The making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do and takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick off with a killer, to grab attention. Then you got to take it up a notch, but you don’t wanna blow your wad, so then you got to cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules.” Designing a module is a similar balancing act.
Continue ReadingTeaching History and Theory through Popular Culture: My First Time Designing a Module
“The academic analysis of popular entertainment can serve to bridge the chasm between traditionally “highbrow” literature and the more populist media that often defines a student’s pre-existing cultural experience. One educator, Rana Houshmand, describes this practice as the “scaffolding [of] difficult literacy skills” – a strategy which has proven remarkably successful in foundational projects where the critical analysis of hip-hop lyrics has been used as means of connecting students’ contextual experiences with the analytical skills developed in the classroom.”
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