The International Ralph Ellison Symposium September 28-30, 2017 Oxford University The Rothermere American Institute (www.rai.ox.ac.uk) at the University of Oxford and the Ralph Ellison Society (https://ellisonsociety.wordpress.com) are pleased to announce the first International Ralph Ellison Symposium. The symposium will bring together Ellison scholars and readers from the United States, the United Kingdom, and other international locales. The symposium will explore a variety of themes vital to Ellison’s life and work, in particular the relevance that his self-fashioned American and African-American identity has around the world. The likely session topics include: Ellison in translation (Invisible Man is in print in more than twenty different languages, including a Mandarin edition published in 2016). The reception, past and present, of Ellison’s fiction and essays in different countries. The status and future direction of Ellison scholarship. Ellison’s own engagement with the world: for example, his urge (thwarted by tonsillitis) to fight in the Abraham […]

Surveillance, Race, Culture Call for Papers Dr Susan Flynn, University of Arts, London. s.flynn@lcc.arts.ac.uk Dr Antonia Mackay, Oxford Brookes University Oxford. antoniamackay@brookes.ac.uk Drawing on huge interest in the upcoming collection Spaces of Surveillance: States and Selves which is currently in press this new collection seeks to merge cultural explorations of surveillance with the issue of race. We wish to examine how culture produces or reproduces power relations via the surveillant technologies which have captured the cultural imagination. Through a critical reading of contemporary and historic narratives of race and surveillance, we seek to illustrate the ongoing cultural fascination with technologies of control and surveillance. The current global moment is one of extreme cultural upheaval; political populism, the ‘alt right’ and the greatest movement of peoples since World War 2 are coupled with the increasing salience of surveillant technologies and regimes. At this juncture in history, with exclusionary policies, increasing racism […]

Trump’s America Clinton Institute for American Studies University College Dublin 5-6 May 2017 Call for Papers This conference will examine the political and cultural significance of Donald Trump’s election as president of the United States, and consider the first 100 days of his administration. Speakers include: Robert Brigham (Vassar College), Scott Lucas (University of Birmingham/EAWorldview), Diane Negra (University College Dublin), Inderjeet Parmar (City, University of London), Donald E. Pease (Dartmouth College). Topics may include but are not confined to: “Make America Great Again” – American exceptionalism, nostalgia “America First” – foreign policy and diplomacy “Protect our borders” – immigration and terrorism “Drain the swamp” - Washington elites, lobbying and corruption “A historic movement” – white nationalism, identity politics, protest “American carnage” – dystopian visions of the US, narratives of decline “Crime and gangs and guns” – race and the cities, gun violence, civic anxiety “Fake news” – politics in the […]

Winning the Western Approaches: Unrestricted Submarine Warfare and the US Navy in Ireland, 1917-18 University College Cork 5 – 7 July 2017 Industrial warfare during the First World War extended underwater, as submarines destroyed up to 5,000 vessels and altered the course of the conflict. Germany’s resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare in early 1917 brought the United States into the war and created severe Allied shipping losses and dangerous food shortages. A transatlantic convoy system introduced that year relied heavily on US Navy escort vessels based in Ireland and France. These American escorts helped bring Allied shipping losses under control and protect troop ships packed with American soldiers bound for France. The American naval presence in Europe contributed to the final defeat of the Central Powers and announced the arrival of a new military power. This multi-disciplinary conference will explore the consequences of underwater warfare during the First World War, […]

Theorising the Popular Conference 2017 Liverpool Hope University, June 21st-22nd 2017 The Popular Culture Research Group at Liverpool Hope University is delighted to announce its seventh annual international conference, ‘Theorising the Popular’. Building on the success of previous years, the 2017 conference aims to highlight the intellectual originality, depth and breadth of ‘popular’ disciplines, as well as their academic relationship with and within ‘traditional’ subjects. One of its chief goals will be to generate debate that challenges academic hierarchies and cuts across disciplinary barriers. The conference invites submissions from a broad range of disciplines, and is particularly interested in new ways of researching ‘popular’ forms of communication and culture. In addition to papers from established and early career academics, we encourage proposals from postgraduate taught and research students. Possible topics include, but are not limited to: Film and Television Media and Communication Politics and Populism Celebrity Literature (Fiction and Non-Fiction) Music […]

Trinity College Dublin, 7-8 July 2017 Keynote Speaker: Dr Wim Van Mierlo (Loughborough University) In recent decades there has been a gradual yet dramatic shift in the means by which scholars engage with literary archives, as the widespread digitization of manuscript texts and the comprehensive shift to digital research tools has changed the nature of scholarly routes into archival material. There has also been a simultaneous shift within archives themselves, as the increasing prevalence of born-digital works necessitates radical changes in methods of curation and preservation. “Literary Archives in the Digital Age” aims to gather scholars together in order to consider these changes; the conference aims both to showcase contemporary archival research and to reflect on the opportunities and challenges presented by 21st-century archival study. We invite theoretical discussions around self-reflective methodological questions as well as considerations of practical issues such as copyright and access to archival material. We will […]

USAbroad – Journal of American History and Politics is the first Italian academic journal published annually by an editorial team of early-career scholars and entirely dedicated to the study of U.S. history and politics. The journal pays particular attention to recent historiographic trends (Atlantic and global history, transnational history) and multidisciplinary approaches, which intermingle history with social and political sciences. The aim of USAbroad is to offer postgraduates and early-career scholars the opportunity to publish innovative and groundbreaking research that investigates any aspect of U.S. history and politics. For the year 2017, USAbroad invites potential contributors—from Italy, Europe, and around the world—to submit papers that discuss the idea of “America Unfinished” from different perspectives. With this expression, we are pointing to the never-ending process of social and political reinvention of the American nation regarding the following main subjects: Government and institutional developments Cultural heritage and political thought Foreign policy and international […]

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 […]

On 19th May 2017 Liverpool John Moores University will host the second annual International History and Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century conference. After the success of last year’s conference, we are looking to continue again with the wide-range of themes relevant to international history and diplomacy in the twentieth history. The aim of this year’s symposium is to gather a range of academics from all relevant disciplines who have international history, diplomacy, politics, humanitarianism and human rights history as their main subjects of interest to share their research in a multi-disciplinary environment.   The twentieth century was shaped by the changing dynamics of international relations. The first half of the century was dominated by the old European Imperial powers and the rivalry between these nations that ultimately lead to the outbreak of two world wars. The aftermath of the Second World War however had a monumental effect on the balance […]

The musical Hamilton, which opened on Broadway in August 2015 after a successful run at the Public Theater, has, in just a few years, become an awards powerhouse, a political lightning rod, and a cultural touchstone. Lin-Manual Miranda’s epic work, based on Ron Chernow’s sweeping biography of Alexander Hamilton, stands at the intersection where history and historical accuracy converge, where rap and showtunes merge, and where pop culture and high (or middlebrow) culture meet. Hamilton is simultaneously a groundbreaking musical theater experiment and an heir to the musical’s historical legacy, and it is in this divided, even contradictory role, that the musical finds its success. Musicologist Paul Laird (University of Kansas, kuvillancico@gmail.com) and theater scholar Mary Jo Lodge (Lafayette College, lodge@lafayette.edu) invite scholars from a wide range of disciplines to create essays about Hamilton for a proposed forthcoming edited collection with publication interest from Oxford University Press. For this scholarly volume, they seek chapters of 5000-6000 words that […]