The BAAS Postgraduate Conference will take place on Saturday 15 November at the University of Sussex. Due to generous support from BAAS, the cost of attendance is only £10. We encourage all postgraduates working in the field of American Studies to attend: information on registration can be found here. The Draft Programme is as follows:

8:30 – 9:00 Registration
9:00 – 9:15 Welcome
9:15 – 10:35 Session 1

The Sounds of Protest
Craig Doughty –
African-American Cultural Entrepreneurship in Twenties Boston, Massachusetts.
Rosie Knight –
The Sound of Resistance: African American Musical Cultures in the 19^th and 20^thCenturies.
Ellen O’Donoghue Oddy –
A Protest Against Print: Reclaiming and Reinventing Language in Toni Morrison’s Jazz.

Nature, Environment, and Disobedience
Amel Kheirat –
Hurricane Katrina: The Southern Belle’s Illegitimate Child.
Joanne Mildenhall –
“Little Things”: The Civil Disobedience of Thoreau’s “Huckleberries”.
Thomas Williams –
“The sun is but a morning star”: Upstream Color and the New American Ecology.

Ethnicity and Dissent
Alys Beverton –
“Shall We Be Mexicanized?”: Perceptions of Mexico in E. L. Godkin’s Critique of U.S. Political Culture, 1876-1884.
Emma Scanlan –
Pacific Protest: Haunani-Kay Trask’s Decolonising Poetics.
Angela Sparks –
How are the Goals and Protests of AIM Represented in Works by Contemporary Native American authors?

10:35 – 10:50 Break
10:50 – 12:10 Session 2

Poetics of Resistance
Kristen Grogan –
Labor and Resistance in William Carlos Williams’ Paterson.
Arun Sood –
Robert Burns and the Transatlantic Radical Dissenters.
Jennifer Wong –
Poetics of resistance in the work of Marilyn Chin: from Protest to Dual Allegiance.

Challenging Gendered and Sexual Identities
Josh Hollands –
Boycott Coors: Solidarity and the Role of Labour Activism in the Struggle for Gay Liberation, 1970s San Francisco.
Bianca Scoti –
Persian Carpets as Protest and Symbols of Emancipation.
Sarah Stratton –
Butch Gender Identity and Clothing as Dissent: 1950-1969.

Race, Class, and Stereotypes
Sara Gray –
Deploying Stereotypes as Resistance: American Indian Appropriation of Stereotypes on Tribal Web Sites.
Megan Hunt –
A Monster of the South’: Cape Fear, White Trash, and the Oppositional Region.
Hannah Murray –
An Inexplicable Voice: The Protesting Corpse in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar.”

12:10 – 12:20 Break
12:20 – 1:20 Keynote Speaker

Dr Joe Street (Northumbria University)
The Shadow of the Soul Breaker: Understanding Huey P. Newton.

1:20 – 2:20 Lunch
2:20 – 3:40 Session 3

Religious Dissent
Nathan Alexander –
Infidel Anti-Racism: The Case of ‘the Great Agnostic’ Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899).
David Deacon –
“Atheists with Souls”: Rebecca Goldstein’s 36 Arguments for the Existence of God, American (ir)religious identity and dissent.
Jonathan Sudholt –
Religion as Plan B: The Book of Mormon’s Critique of the Public Sphere.

Rebel, Youth, and Counter-Culture
Barry Germansky – The Generational Gaze: Nicholas Ray’s Anti-Capitalist Rebellion Through the Development of a New Film Syntax.
Ciaran Leinster –
The Youth is Revolting, or is it?: The Most Dangerous Teen in America v. Michael Cera.
Patricia Malone –
The Times They Are Unchangin’: The Complexities of Counterculture in the Work of Jennifer Egan.

Political and Legal Resistance
Henna Karhapaa –
The Bostonians in Distress: Satirical Prints Protesting British Blockade of Boston 1774.
James Nixon –
“You Think I’m Joking”: President Obama’s Stand-Up Comedy Addresses at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and the Utilisation of Comedy to Deflect Political Resistance and Criticism.
Vaia-Vanessa Zidros –
The Examination of Anne Hutchinson by the General Court (1637): Resolving Nonconforming Views in the Context of the Courtroom from a Historical Pragmatic Approach with Special Attention to Discourse Strategies.

3:40 – 3:50 Break
3:50 – 5:10 Session 4

Media and Resistance
Ryan Boothroyd –
“They are Talking About Me:” A Protest to Silence and Misogynoir in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americana.
Shaun Wallace –
“Endeavouring to Pass as a Free Man”: Black Literacy and Slave Rebelliousness in the US South c. 1790-1810.
Mark Joseph Walmsley –
All the Protest Fit to Print: How Newspaper Coverage Can Affect our Understanding of Social Activism.

Liberty, Race and Civil Rights
Darryl Barthe –
Consumed in Flames: A Genealogy of African American Avengers.
Conall MacMichael –
Remembering Dissent: The Memory of the Black Power Movement.
Rosemary Pearce –
The Reverse Freedom Rides: “a diabolical, inhuman game of revenge.”

Protesting War
Thomas Pollard –
Kurt Vonnegut’s Patriotism and Protest in a Draft Letter: Killing as the Touchstone inSlaughterhouse Five.
Jonathan Stewart – Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and a Typology of Anti-War Protest Songs.

5:10 – 5:20 Break
5:20 – 6:20 Keynote Speaker

Professor Will Kaufman (University of Central Lancashire)
The Politicisation of Woody Guthrie.

6:30 – 7:15 Drinks Reception
8:00 – Conference dinner