Being Hospitable: Languages and Cultures Across Borders The unifying theme for the 2021 MLA International Symposium is Being Hospitable: Languages and Cultures Across Borders, to be understood in the broadest possible senses of both hospitable and language and as a defiant counter-gesture to the currently inhospitable, even hostile, nature of world politics. The word and concept of hospitality will embrace a wide range of disciplinary interpretations, including Ethics (philosophies of self/other, from existentialism to deconstruction) Welcoming the radically other (tout autre) Political theory (from identity politics to the “politics of alterity”) Gender fluidity Decolonial thinking (different modes of “writing back” to the Empire) Ongoing refugee and migration crisis International law and human rights Adoption (particularly international) Medical humanities (notably around the concepts of health, well-being and care, hospitals and hospitality) Social anthropology (rituals of welcoming the other) Security studies and conflict studies (hospitality and hostility) Problematizing the notion of hospitality […]

The IAAS Postgraduate Symposium “Parallel Lives in America” Virtual Event via Zoom 13th-14th of November, 2020 Last year, the Irish Association for American Studies’ Postgraduate Symposium, titled “The Land of the Unfree”, sought to interrogate the legitimacy of democracy in America. One year on, in the midst of a global pandemic, this legitimacy has not only been interrogated, but put on trial. In the U.S., the COVID-19 pandemic has both exacerbated and exposed already existent crises: social, political and economic, among others. Referred to by The New York Times as “The Pandemic Inequality Feedback Loop”, research has shown that individuals of lower economic strata and minority groups are both more likely to contract the virus, and to die from it. From bulk buying to wide-spread job losses, the concerns and priorities of American citizens have existed on a wide spectrum according to relative levels of privilege and oppression. The 2020 […]

This is the list of panels for the 15th SAAS Conference. Prospective participants are now invited to email the abstracts of their proposals directly to the chair of the selected panel using this form. The deadline for submitting abstracts is October 15, 2020. 1) “Domestic Spaces, Safety, and the (Micro)Political in the United States” Panel Chair: Rodrigo Andrés and Cristina Alsina Rísquez, Universitat de Barcelona. E-mail: rodrigoandres@ub.edu / alsina@ub.edu 2) "McCarthyism and Cold War Literatures: A Cultural Response to Fear and Paranoia" Panel Chair: María Laura Arce Álvarez, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid E-mail: laura.arce@uam.es 3) "Unauthorized Mobility, Disposable Living: Migrants, Drifters and Nomads in Contemporary North American Literature and Culture" Panel Chair: Paula Barba Guerrero and Mónica Fernández Jiménez, Universidad de Salamanca / Universidad de Valladolid E-mail: paulabarbaguerrero@usal.es / monica.fernandez@uva.es 4) "The Phenomenology of Fear and Resilience in Women's Poetry: The Role of Poetic Creativity and the Artistic Process" Panel […]

AMERICANISTS VIRTUAL MEET-UP 15:00 (GMT) 30th October 2020 This is a free online event for PhD students, aimed at creating a stronger sense of community for those of us researching within the broad field of American Studies. This event will give PhD students the opportunity to give a short, five minute presentation on their research, and to meet others working in similar areas. If your research focusses on the Americas, and you would like to sign up for the virtual meet-up, please register at https://forms.gle/nJEyFk75rGynsN1W9 by Friday 23rd October. Feel free to contact patrick.1.turner@kcl.ac.uk or a.djelid@pgr.reading.ac.uk if you have any questions.