IAAS Postgraduate Symposium Trinity Long Room Hub Arts & Humanities Research Institute November 25th, 2017 In their 1789 Constitution, the founders of the United States aspired to “form a more perfect Union”. Over two hundred and twenty years later, what is the state of this “more perfect Union” today? Have modern exclusionary tactics led to an “America for Americans only” feeling immanent in Trump’s speeches? How has American literature, music, film and philosophy been used to enforce or challenge these feelings of  “America for Americans only”? What can an examination of history and politics do to illuminate the United States’ relationship with the rest of the Americas and the wider world? These are some of the questions we hope to examine in our one-day symposium. We welcome proposals for papers that deal with personal, national, international, unions of any kind. Topics include, but are not limited to: Union and/or disunion […]

CFP: “Illness and the environment in American Literature and Cinema”, EBAAS Conference 2018 Panel organized within the framework of the European Association for American Studies (EAAS) and the British Association for American Studies (BAAS) conference King’s College, University College, and the British Library, London. 4-7 April 2018. “Environment, Place and Protest.” Deadline for abstracts: September 25, 2017 In Toxic Exposures: Contested Illnesses and the Environmental Health Movement (2007), Phil Brown, American sociologist and specialist in environmental studies, examined the relationship between disease clusters and the environment. He concluded environmentally provoked illnesses (EPI) to be “contested illnesses” as they involve scientific disputes and extensive public debate. The environment as an agent in health has long been an issue in American cinema and literature. Literary scholar Heather Houser’s recent volume Ecosickness in U.S. Contemporary U.S. Fiction: Environment and Affect (2014) speaks to this issue looking at a variety of productions including Todd Haynes’ Safe (1995) and Richard Powers’ Gain (1998), to mention only a few. Literary and filmic narratives that […]

Lizzy Pournara (Ph.D. Candidate at the department of American Literature in Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece) is looking for panel participants for the upcoming conference organized by the European Association of American Studies that will take place in King’s College London, University College London, and the British Library, 4th - 7th April 2018 The panel is entitled “Avant-Garde as Protest: Experimental Literature and Its Role in the American Avant-Garde” and  participants are sought for 20 minutes presentation papers concerning but not limited to digital literature and multimodal narratives, experimental poetics, innovative poetry and fiction, interdisciplinary artistic practices, visuality, experimental typography. The deadline of the submission is on 22nd September 2017.   Please send an abstract (250 words), including a title and a short CV by 22nd September 2017 at lizzypournara@gmail.com