BrANCA Panel at BAAS Conference 2017 The British Association of American Studies (BrANCA) invites proposals for a special panel at the British Association for American Studies Conference, 6-8 April 2017 at Canterbury Christchurch University. Each year BrANCA hosts a special panel at BAAS showcasing progressive, interdisciplinary work on the United States in the long nineteenth century. We invite proposals for papers for this year’s panel from all researchers working in the field. We are particularly interested in global, hemispheric and transatlantic approaches to key themes in nineteenth century literary studies, and papers that propose new ways of conceiving the field. Researchers at all stages are welcomed, and papers from postgraduates are particularly encouraged. 250 word proposals for 20-minute presentations, with a provisional title and brief CV, should be sent to Dr. Tom F. Wright, University of Sussex at tom.wright@sussex.ac.uk by Tuesday 25 October. Queries should also be directed to this address.

aspeers is the first and currently only peer-reviewed print journal for MA-level American studies scholars in Europe. It is a platform for the best work done by American studies graduate students below the PhD level. It aims to foster academic exchange among young Americanists across Europe, and to thereby advance the field as well as its genuine European perspective on ‘America’ and its presences and effects around the world. aspeers features a general section in addition to a topical one that brings academic works into a dialogue on one common theme. For the upcoming issue, this topical section will be organized around different notions of "American Monsters." Please feel free to send in work to have it considered for publication in aspeers if you are an American studies student at a European university and are looking to publish a paper without a topical restriction. or you are an American studies student at a European […]

University of Valencia 9-10 March 2017 While the turn of the new millennium was received with general optimism, the first two decades of the 21st century proved to be much more tumultuous than expected for U.S. society. If the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001 shattered to pieces both the real and the symbolical sense of national security, the ensuing international military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and natural catastrophes such as hurricane Katrina, which devastated the city of New Orleans in 2005 leaving a death toll of almost 1,500 citizens, notoriously heightened the sense of historical downfall. The situation was further aggravated by the current financial crisis, which, according to a report recently published in Yale Global Online, is the worst the world has seen since the Great Depression. In the new, globalized world of closely interdependent economies, what seemed a local subprime mortgage crisis in the summer of 2007 reintroduced […]