The Oxford American Literature Research Seminar Spring Term Card:

The convenors of the American Literature Research Seminar at Oxford’s Rothermere American Institute (RAI) would like to announce our spring term card. Unless otherwise noted, regular seminar talks take place from 5-6:30 PM in the lecture room at the Rothermere Institute on South Parks Road in Oxford, OX1 3UB. The seminar includes a glass of wine.

 Thursday 27 April: Hazel Hutchison (Aberdeen), ‘Truth Has No Place in War’: WWI Writing and Censorship in America

The US government formally joined the First World War in April 1917, and quickly moved to control what the public could read and know about events in Europe. But it was already too late. Since the war began in 1914, American readers had been absorbing the kind of graphic information and images that were suppressed in warring nations. This paper explores how American writers, journalists and publishers, attempted to tell the truth about war, only to find themselves at odds with the national agenda, as war fever took hold in the US in the closing stages of the conflict.

Hazel Hutchison is Professor of English at the University of Aberdeen. She is the author of The War That Used Up Words: American Writers and the First World War (Yale, 2015). She has published books and articles on Henry James and his contemporaries, and is currently editing theTurn of the Screw and Other Tales for Cambridge University Press.