International Symposium October 19-20, 2017 École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, Lyon (France)  Thoreau from across the pond   Organized by Julien Nègre (ENS de Lyon) François Specq (ENS de Lyon) and Laura Dassow Walls (University of Notre Dame) Guest speakers (confirmed): -        Professor Branka Arsić (Columbia University) -        Professor William Rossi (University of Oregon)   In honor of Henry David Thoreau’s 200th birthday in 2017, this conference would like to interrogate the multiplicity of viewpoints from which he is read today. In recent years, Thoreau’s writings have been approached from a variety of perspectives: he has been envisioned as a poet and a philosopher, but also as a political thinker, a scientist of sorts, a surveyor, a lover of nature and an environmentalist. While these different perspectives complement each other to a certain extent, they also reveal how multifaceted his writings are, and how elusive his figure remains. Something resists in his texts, […]

‘US Elections in Historical Perspective’ Symposium 8th November 2016, The Institute of Americas, UCL No one needs reminding that the 2016 election has been a race like no other. Two historically unpopular candidates are claiming democracy is under threat. Ideological coalitions are breaking apart and the spectre of re-alignment hangs over the party system. To make some sense of it all, we’re organising a half-day symposium on ‘US Elections in Historical Perspective’ at the Institute of Americas on Election Day itself - Tuesday November 8th. We invite abstracts for 20-minute papers on American elections from any period of the nation’s history. Although we’re keen to look at elections in historical perspective, we do not require speakers to explicitly link back to the 2016 race. Given the nature of the event and the limited time frame, presentations can be fairly informal. In addition to the presentation of papers, there will be […]

Call for Papers Making America “Great”: Negotiating the Borders and Boundaries of Americanism Saturday 19th November 2016 University of Leeds Deadline for Abstracts: 23rd September 2016 The current US presidential election has witnessed the resurgence of a nostalgia for a past American “greatness”, defined in the popular imagination by specific boundaries and characteristics. Notably, institutional, social and economic power structures have shaped less inclusive definitions of American identity which continue to endure. Conversely, others propose that American “greatness” is characterised by the nature of always being in flux, incorporating and reshaping various identities, traditions and social norms. Whereas many other national identities are rooted in centuries of shared history, religious and cultural traditions or language, American national identity has less tangible roots and can, arguably, be characterised by a constant process of redefinition. The constantly changing nature of what it means to be American contributes to and builds upon what […]

Date: September 30, 2016 Location: Maryland, United States Subject Fields: American History / Studies, Contemporary History, Literature In her 1998 play How I Learned to Drive, Paula Vogel described Maryland as a place where “You can still imagine what how used to be before the malls took over. This countryside was once dotted with farmhouses. From their porches, you could have witnessed the Civil War raging in the front fields.” Considering the preceding quotation—as well as Maryland’s geographical and figurative status as a border state between the North and South—in terms of America’s complicated racial and social history, the following panel invites scholars from a variety of disciplines to present on the representation of Maryland in the American consciousness at NeMLA's 2017 conference in Baltimore, Maryland (March 23rd-26th). How has Maryland paradoxically been portrayed as a place of freedom and promise, and, more recently, a place of civil unrest and failed […]

Pynchon's New Worlds La Rochelle, France, June 5-9, 2017 Literary new worlds The 2017 International Pynchon Week will be held on the French Atlantic coast in the old harbor of La Rochelle, from which a number of Europeans set sail for the New World. The conference will be hosted by the Musée du Nouveau Monde, among its collection of Allegories of America. The conveners hope this liminal space on the margins of Europe will inspire Pynchon scholars to sail out towards yet unexplored territories, following some of the leads below or picking up any related or unrelated Pynchonian line.Convenors: Gilles Chamerois (Université de Brest) and Bénédicte Chorier-Fryd (Université de Poitiers) Pynchon's early fiction was published under the auspices of "new worlds:" "Low-Lands" was issued by New World Writing, a paperback magazine (volume 17, 1960); speculative fiction writer Michael Moorcock's New Worlds magazine ran "Entropy" in 1969. How "new" were and […]

CFP: Duality and Duplicity in African-American Literature Location: Marriott Waterfront, Baltimore, MD Dates: 23/03/2017 – 26/03/2017 Organization: Northeast Modern Language Association The idea that African-Americans are actual and full-fledged citizens of the United States is not a new one; the racism that prevents that idea to flourish is also not new. Recent events, including the death of Freddie Carlos Gray, Jr. in Baltimore, have brought to the fore the question of whether or not the United States values its black citizens, and extends to them the same rights as it does to its non-black citizens. The historical record has much to say on this point, but the literary record also is instructive in perceptions of race in the United States. This panel will explore the literary precedents to examine how tensions between citizenship and real-world status have formed the basis of works by American authors.  How do the literary works […]

Preliminary Call for Participation 2017 Appalachian Studies Association Conference EXTREME Appalachia! March 9-12, 2017, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia “Extreme Appalachia” is the theme for the 40th annual Appalachian Studies Conference. By "extreme" we mean the impassioned commitments people have to the region, the land, and Appalachian communities, ways of life, and livelihoods. We mean the ways extreme economics—excessive resource extraction and use, underfunding of public education and services, and dismal job opportunities—have sparked community resilience and activism that advance a sustainable future for the region. “Extreme Appalachia” also references exploitative pop culture products like reality television programming—as well as the countering power of the region’s visual, performance, and literary arts to nurture, provoke, and inspire. In the face of extremity, regionalist scholarship continues to augment ongoing struggles for racial, social, economic, and environmental justice. The 2017 Program Committee invites proposals for panels, papers, posters, roundtables, performances, workshops, or organizing sessions. Papers and posters […]

  What is the history of the perception of the U.S. president – including as a global president – in the decolonized/ing world? At which junctures did that perception arise, shift, and assume contrasting if not conflicting forms? Who produced, consumed, spread, and contested it? And what does this theme tell us about globalization? These are key questions underlying this conference which, for three reasons, will focus on the presidency of John F. Kennedy. Firstly, Kennedy (and his administration) was greatly interested in decolonized/ing countries, which he saw as central to a changing world. Described by Arthur Schlesinger as “Secretary of State for the third world” , he unprecedentedly engaged also nonaligned countries, courted on the D.C. stage leaders of decolonized countries, and intensified public diplomacy and expanded polling worldwide. But simultaneously, he sought to not alienate European NATO allies that held colonies. Related, secondly, the time around 1960 was […]

My Dream or Yours: Make America ___ Again? University College Cork 26th November, 2016 The Irish Association for American Studies draws together scholars and researchers, new and experienced, on the island of Ireland, to bring fresh perspectives to the field of American Studies. The 2016 IAAS Postgraduate Symposium, “My Dream or Yours: Make America ___ Again?” encourages scholars to question cultural, political and social perspectives of the United States, historically, today, and tomorrow. The concept of American identity is one which has been continuously interrogated since the first colonies were established, and remains a pressing question in all facets of American life today. “My Dream or Yours: Make America ___ Again” is a one-day interdisciplinary symposium that seeks to provide an opportunity for Postgraduate Students and Early Career Scholars to share their ideas and add their individual voices to this melting pot of academic exploration. We welcome proposals for fifteen-minute […]

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 […]

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 […]

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.