Remembering Annie Hall: A One Day Conference University of Sheffield 31st May 2017 Confirmed plenary speaker: Professor Annette Kuhn (Queen Mary, University of London) CALL FOR PAPERS Since its release on 27th April 1977, Annie Hall has established itself as a key film for Woody Allen’s career and the history of romantic comedy more generally. At the 1978 Academy Awards, it won Oscars for Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Actress. In addition to its central place in Allen’s oeuvre (film critic Roger Ebert called it "just about everyone's favorite Woody Allen movie”), it is regularly cited as one of the greatest film comedies. In 2015 it was voted the funniest screenplay ever by the Writers Guild of America. To mark the fortieth anniversary of the film’s release, the University of Sheffield is hosting a one-day conference to consider the importance of Annie Hall and its cultural influence. We are particularly […]

PURSUING THE ROOSEVELTIAN CENTURY: INVESTIGATING A HISTORICAL FRAME Roosevelt Institute for American Studies Middelburg, The Netherlands 30 November - 1 December 2017 SPECIAL GUESTS: Frank Costigliola (University of Connecticut) Michael Cullinane (Northumbria University) Mario Del Pero (SciencesPo) Mary Dudziak (Emory University) Sylvia Ellis (University of Roehampton) Petra Goedde (Temple University) Justin Hart (Texas Tech University) Lisa McGirr (Harvard University) Kiran Patel (University of Maastricht) CALL FOR PAPERS Theodore, Eleanor, and Franklin Roosevelt are three of the most inspiring and dynamic political leaders in 20th century US history. Theodore and Franklin both redefined the presidency and political leadership, each in their unique way. Eleanor, the first modern First Lady, as a widow became a prominent media personality and advocate of political causes such as human rights and the anti-nuclear movement. Each of the three Roosevelts had a specific impact, influence, and legacy, shaping the foreign and domestic policy of the United […]

Animals in Detective Fiction Since its origins in the mid nineteenth century, detective fiction has been populated by a huge array of beasts. If the genre begins, as is widely supposed (though not without some debate), with Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’ (1841), then detective fiction’s very first culprit is an animal. Such beastly instances of criminal violence are among the genre’s most recurrent figurings of the non-human. Accordingly, like Poe’s frenzied ourang-outang on the spree in Paris, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) identifies a murderous aggression as part-and-parcel of animal nature. Detective fiction accommodates gentler and more law-abiding creatures too, however. Wilkie Collins, often thought of as the founder of the British detective novel, depicts the villain Count Fosco in The Woman in White (1859) surrounded by his ‘pretties’, ‘a cockatoo, two canary-birds and a whole family of white mice’, while Koko and […]