The 55th JAAS Annual Meeting will be held on June 5th and 6th, 2021 at Keio University, Tokyo. The JAAS Annual Meeting Program Coordinating Committee invites JAAS members to send paper proposals for the “Independent Paper Sessions” to be held on June 5th, 2020. If you are interested in giving a paper, please send by email a proposal that includes (1) your name, (2) your affiliation, (3) the title of your paper, (4) a summary of your paper (approximately 800 words) and (5) five keywords to the JAAS Annual Meeting Office (program@jaas.gr.jp) by November 20th, 2020 (Japanese Standard Time, JST). The 55th Conference may be held online, if the of COVID-19 pandemic is not sufficiently resolved. Please check JAAS official website for the latest information. Only JAAS members can submit a paper proposal. Proposals from non-members will be reviewed if their membership application is received by November 20th, 2019 and […]

Digital BAAS 2021 – The Digital Conference  April 6-11, 2021   Call for Papers BAAS are excited to announce details for the British Association for American Studies’s 66th Annual Convention — its first to be hosted entirely remotely. For several years BAAS has been building towards an event of this type, in order to transcend the exclusivity and waste of our traditional conference model. The organisers' plans have been pushed forward by our familiar enemy Covid-19 but are equally motivated by their twin concerns of environmental impact and accessibility/inclusivity. As part of the ‘Green BAAS’ agenda, they are committed to reflecting upon the environmental impact of their activities, and to making positive changes to combat climate catastrophe. The decision to host a virtual conference presents the opportunity not only to minimise international travel, but also to highlight the work of members working in the environmental humanities, and to reflect critically upon […]

We invite applications to a conference dedicated to situating the COVID-19 pandemic in American and global history. The COVID-19 pandemic has confronted historians with the disruptive power of infectious disease. The impact of the crisis has been multifaceted, global, and immense in its scale and ramifications. For the United States, the experience has been especially confrontational. As of the time of writing, the US has among the highest rates of infection and the highest number of deaths of any country on the planet. The virus (and the measures taken to contain it) has disrupted almost every aspect of American life, revealed and exacerbated social, economic, racial and political fault lines, and raised major constitutional issues concerning the role of federal and state authorities in maintaining social well-being. This public health emergency has also set in motion an as yet uncertain set of consequences for the US’s position in the world.  President […]

Call for Papers The Hip Hop and Higher Education online conference is a one-day event, funded by the British Association for American Studies (BAAS), that will take place on Thursday 15th July 2021. Through this conference, we seek to do three things: Provide a space for people to exhibit and enjoy the critical, creative and communal elements of Hip Hop Interrogate Hip Hop's exclusion from higher education, linking it to intersecting systems of oppression and discrimination which underpin the university and wider society Explore the merits and possible dangers of incorporating Hip Hop into formal sites of higher education In order to reflect and honour the dynamism of Hip Hop, music and performance will feature throughout the day. In that vein, we not only invite artists, academics (early careers/established) and members of the Hip Hop community to submit proposals for papers, but also group presentations, performances, videos, virtual exhibitions, discussion […]

WHAT, WHEN & WHERE American Studies Association of Turkey (ASAT) 40th International American Studies Conference Movement and Mobility in America Online Conference June 28-29, 2021 Movement and mobility lie at the core of American society. Whether through immigration, internal migration, social mobility, or domestic and global expansionism, the United States has always been defined as a nation of frontiers and pioneers, a country that is constantly (re)defining itself, where self-(re)invention is part of the American dream. Movement and mobility in the American context can also be physical, sociological, psychological, or political, as in the case of mobilizing for racial justice, such as with the Black Lives Matter movement that is sweeping the nation. The Trump Administration has prompted a reevaluation of movement and mobility across the political spectrum. While some argue that this has stimulated a visible resurgence in activism and a revival of social movements in the United States, […]

CfP DEADLINE: FRIDAY 12 MARCH 2021 Rothermere American Institute University of Oxford 20-22 April 2021   In the mid-twentieth century two mutually influencing revolutions took place, one technological and one socio-political; the emergence of television and the advent of the civil rights movement both fundamentally altered American society and the wider world. Today, social media and digital technologies are reshaping social relations, while the renewed visibility of white supremacist activism has precipitated a new chapter in the long struggle for racial equality. This conference will put the study of the past in conversation with current debates about media, technology, and race. The first day of the conference is dedicated to research development workshops. Participants will have the opportunity to give and receive feedback on in-progress work and meet scholars researching similar topics across a range of disciplines. Abstracts may consider issues of race and ethnicity across news, entertainment, and social media. […]

‘Presidents and Place’ - Edited collection - Dr Thomas Cobb and Dr Olga Ackroyd From the frontier of Manifest Destiny ideology to the contest between industrialism and agrarianism implicit in the Civil War, ideals of place have both driven the United States’s economic development and accentuated its political divides. Appreciation of the United States today still often derives from how place differs for its citizens; from the strife of the ‘Rustbelt’ to the glamour of the ‘Sunbelt’, the US is remarked on, perhaps more than other Western country, for its cultural and climatological heterogeneity. The history of US presidents’ upbringings and home state affiliations, however, presents a comparative uniformity. Seven out of the fifteen presidents who preceded Lincoln were born in Virginia, a hegemony which outlasted the frontier ideology purveyed by presidents Andrew Jackson and James Polk. In the decades between Appomattox and the New Deal, it was Ohio’s turn […]