BAAS 61 & IAAS 46
7-9 April 2016
Queen’s University Belfast

The 61st annual conference of the British Association for American Studies will be a joint event with the Irish Association for American Studies as it holds its own 46th annual conference. For the first time in a generation both associations will come together for what promises to be an exciting and not-to-be-missed conference at The Queen’s University of Belfast.

2016 will mark a number of anniversaries in these islands, most notably the centenary of the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916. Americanists will mark the 240th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and Belfast is an ideal location for this collaboration between the IAAS and BAAS. The Belfast News Letter was the first English language newspaper in Europe to publish details of the Declaration of Independence in 1776; in 1796, George Washington established a US Consulate in Belfast, appointing Belfast-born James Holmes on 20 May (coincidentally, Holmes’ brother-in-law Henry Joy was owner of the News Letter) as the first US Consul to Belfast. Other notable anniversaries include the centenary of James Montgomery Flagg’s Uncle Sam recruitment image in July 1916, and also the bicentenary of Uncle Sam’s first appearance in literature.

The 2016 conference will be a three-day conference beginning on Thursday 7 April and concluding with the conference banquet at Titanic Belfast on the evening of Saturday 9 April.

The organisers are delighted to announce our plenary speakers:

Richard Ford: award-winning author of major contemporary American novels including Independence Day, Canada, and Let Me Be Frank With You
Deborah Willis: Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging, the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University
John Howard: Professor of American Studies, King’s College London

The Call for Papers has now closed. The conference organisers expect to inform potential participants whether their paper has been accepted by mid-December.