Conference:
Violence and the American Imagination

Loughborough University, 22-23 July 2015

‘Violence is as American as cherry pie’, as Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin (H. Rap Brown), the Black Panther activist, famously stated in the 1960s. If ubiquitous in America, however, violence has also proved polysemic, highly mutable in its occurrences, meanings, and effects from the colonial era to the present. The aim of this interdisciplinary conference will be to explore and evaluate violence in the American imagination, considering its multiple, contested significances in a very wide range of discourses and practices that include literature, drama, film, the visual arts, music, philosophical and religious writings, and historical, political and military representations.

Plenary speakers:
Prof. Richard Gray, Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies, University of Essex
Prof. Amy Wood, Department of History, Illinois State University

For further information, please contact: C.M.Armstrong@lboro.ac.uk