The American New Wave: A Retrospective An International Conference to be held at Bangor University, North Wales 4 th -6 th July 2017. In 1967, amidst the dying embers of the old studio system, two films were released that extinguished them apparently for good. Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate suggested the nascent promise of an American New Wave, as directors were emboldened by the collapse of the Production Code; inspired by the stylistic flourishes and narrative seriousness of their European counterparts; carried along by the youthful revolutionary fervour embodied by the optimism of the Civil Rights Movement and protests against the Vietnam War, and granted a creative freedom unheard of in Hollywood as producers and executives floundered desperately for the next big hit after a series of costly flops. Arguably, The American New Wave lasted only thirteen years, flaming out in spectacular fashion with the financial disaster of Michael […]

Imperial Cultures of the United States University of Warwick, 5 May 2017 It has been nearly 25 years since the publication of Donald Pease and Amy Kaplan’s seminal collection of essays, Cultures of United States Imperialism (Duke, 1993), a volume which built on and expanded in new directions a field of foreign policy and imperial studies initiated largely by William Appleman Williams and the Wisconsin School in the 1950s and 60s. Since then, of course, ‘US imperialism’ has become a familiar (if still deeply contested) concept for historians, political analysts, sociologists, literary critics, and scholars of other cultural forms. Meanwhile, U.S. foreign policy itself has moved in decisive new directions: the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, interventions in Libya and Pakistan, the changing relationship with Cuba and Iran, and so on. This one-day symposium seeks to revisit and reassess the continuing currency of ‘U.S. Imperialism’ as a concept and its place […]