UCL Americas Research Network 2024 Conference – Historical Roots, Modern Realities: Nationalism Across the Americas

Doig Country: Imagining Montana and the West  Montana State University, Bozeman, September 14-16 2017 On September 14-16, 2017 the Western Lands & People Initiative at Montana State University in Bozeman, with the College of Letters & Science and the MSU Library, will host the symposium to celebrate the work of Ivan Doig and the acquisition of his papers by the university. The organizers invite proposals for papers and presentations that address the literature, history and geography of Montana and the West that Doig explored in his memoirs and fiction. Work need not directly address Doig's writings, but should allow participants to enter into a broad discussion of the connections between landscape and human experience, history and fiction, or what close observation and attention to place contribute to the various disciplines that engage us as scholars and as readers. Further information can be found at http://ivandoig.montana.edu/symposium-2017/

New Directions in American Philanthropy Sheffield Hallam University 14-15 September 2017 Meaning, literally, “love of all mankind”, the historian Lawrence J. Friedman has framed philanthropy as ‘a collective form of charitable giving.’ In the nearly two centuries since Alexis De Tocqueville’s observation that the United States is a ‘nation of joiners,’ volunteerism and philanthropy have played a significant role in America’s domestic and international history. For some, such as the scholar Olivier Zunz, philanthropy is ‘part of the American progressive tradition.’ Yet despite good intentions, the history of American philanthropy is not without controversy. Indeed, the political scientist Inderjeet Parmar, acknowledging that ‘it is difficult to believe that philanthropy…could possibly be malignant,’ has argued that it has not always been either an effective tool or a force for positive change. The purpose of this workshop is to engage in this debate concerning the positive and negative aspects of American philanthropy. […]

Free Public Lecture: Professor Inderjeet Parmar (City University of London), "Foundations of America’s Empire: How Elite Networks Dominate American Power at Home and Abroad" - 14th September 2017, 17.30-19.30, Sheffield Hallam University In this lecture, Parmar argues that corporate foundations – like Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller, among others – have played a significant but neglected or misunderstood role in the rise and development of American power. He argues that despite their cuddly public image and claims of benign support for democracy, human rights, development and freedom, such institutions are locked into the strategic heartlands of American elite power at home and its imperial global projects. Combining a historical analysis with the rise and politics of the Trump phenomenon, this lecture suggests that elite power-knowledge networks centred on influential American foundations, but which extend to think tanks, both main political parties, major universities, the federal executive, mass media and international organisations, built […]