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British Association for American Studies

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6th International Conference on American Drama and Theater – “‘Game Over!’: U.S. Drama and Theater and the End(s) of an American Idea(l)”

CFP: HOTCUS 2022 Postgraduate and Early Career Conference: Poverty and (In)Equality in U.S. History

University of Leicester University Rd, Leicester, Leicestershire, United Kingdom

In recent years, the gap between the poorest and the wealthiest in society has increased exponentially and exacerbated the stark inequalities that have long existed in American society. This has been further impacted by the lasting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has also raised a number of questions surrounding the treatment of those that were/are in poverty by the government, employers, educators, and society. Amidst these transformative changes in the United States, gross inequalities only grew. This conference will highlight the intersections between poverty and other facets of 20th century US history, such as; work and work relations, government support and programs, racialisation, the healthcare system and socioeconomic inequalities. Throughout the 20th Century, state initiatives attempted on various levels to reduce the socioeconomic inequality that existed throughout the US, for instance the growth of government programs that either aimed to tackle the gross unemployment levels or the changes that […]

BAAS 2023 Annual Conference- Call for Papers

Keele University Keele, Staffordshire, United Kingdom

BAAS is delighted to invite submissions for the 67th annual British Association for American Studies conference at Keele University, which will be held between April 12 and April 14, 2023. Prof. Richard Blackett (Vanderbilt) and Prof. Louise Siddons (Southampton) will serve as keynote speakers. BAAS looks forward to welcoming the international American Studies community to Keele's beautiful campus.  Keele is located a short distance from Stoke-on-Trent, historically renowned for its pottery production. Building on the successes of the past two conferences, the Keele conference is currently planned as a hybrid event. Proposals are welcomed on any subject in American Studies, broadly conceived; that is, we hope to attract a range of papers across eras, geographies, and disciplines. Beyond research, we are interested in receiving session proposals that address American Studies pedagogy, “impact” and “knowledge exchange,” and the shape and future of the discipline. Along these lines, BAAS welcomes panels that include […]

Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford

Rothermere American Institute University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

1963: A Watershed Year? HOTCUS Winter Symposium, February 24, 2023  The Rothermere American Institute, Oxford The 2023 HOTCUS Winter Symposium provides a fitting occasion to reflect upon 1963, often described as a watershed year that shaped the direction of the 1960s and beyond. Several social movements gained momentum in 1963, including the civil rights movement, which received significant national coverage in Birmingham, Alabama and at the later March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique was published the same year, and is often interpreted as a key spark in the evolution of Second Wave Feminism. In June 1963, the secularization of public education received a significant push through the Supreme Court decision that banned Bible readings in public schools. Meanwhile, as Americans mourned the deaths of JFK and W.E.B. Du Bois, the Cold War context shifted in response to a ban on American travel and financial transactions in Cuba […]

CFP- SASA 2023

University of Glasgow Glasgow, United Kingdom

The 24th annual conference of the Scottish Association for the Study of America (SASA) will convene on March 4, 2023. The SAS committee invites proposals for papers exploring all aspects of and approaches to the history and culture of the Americas. The day before the conference, on Friday, March 3th SASA will be holding its bi-annual Postgraduate Workshop. More details will be announced in due course. The conference and workshop will be hosted by the Andrew Hook Centre for American Studies at the University of Glasgow. SASA recognizes a broad definition of the Americas and includes any topic situated within North, South or Latin America, at any point in history. The intent of the conference is to reflect the range and vitality of American studies and history in Scotland and beyond. As such, there is no particular theme to the conference. Participation is open to all scholars. SASA particularly encourages […]

CFP-February 28 2023- SHAW Annual Conference, Manchester Metropolitan University.

Manchester Metropolitan University Manchester, United Kingdom

The Society for the History of Women in the Americas (SHAW) welcomes proposals for its annual conference at Manchester Metropolitan University. The conference is open to papers on any topic, geographical period, chronological time, or themes related to the history of women and gender non-conforming individuals in the Americas. However, SHAW would particularly encourage papers that explore ‘Reproduction, Bodily Autonomy and Law’. The conference welcomes proposals from academics at any stage of their career, especially graduate students, as well as those active in civil society groups. We invite 250-word abstracts for papers of 20 minutes length. For full panels and roundtable discussions, please include descriptions of all papers proposed. Please note this is an in-person conference, and SHAW will not be accepting virtual papers on this occasion. Please submit 250 word abstracts and 100 word biographies to Dr. Marie Molloy at shawsociety@gmail.com by 28th February 2023.

Université de Picardie Jules Verne and Université d’Artois

Université de Picardie Jules Verne Chem. du Thil, 80000, Amiens, Somme, France

In the word "trans-formations", the prefix "trans-" invites us to reflect on changes (from one place to another, from one medium to another, from one genre to another...) The notion of transformation thus prompts us to examine borders, boundaries, limits, even crossings that lead to new experiences, new ways of considering the world from a common heritage- questioning it, re-evaluating, and re-imagining it. The EAAS Southern Studies Forum of 2023 will be particularly interested in the process through which the American South has constantly changed its face (the Old South, the Reconstruction South, the Modern South, the New South) in order to adapt (or not) to a world that is constantly moving, constantly changing. To what extent can it be said that the South has continually preserved its identity, the way it presents itself to the rest of the nation and the world? Is the intertwining of myth and reality […]

CFP:  American Politics Group Postgraduate and Early Career Conference.

Vere Harmsworth Library Rothemere American Institute, 1a S Parks Rd, Oxford, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom

Venue: Vere Harmsworth Library, Oxford SAVE THE DATE – Friday 23rd June 2023  Submission Deadline: Wednesday, 10th May 2023 Are you polishing a dissertation chapter, turning it into a journal article, thinking about your first book manuscript, drafting or re-drafting a work you currently have in progress?  This conference is for you! Join the APG in sharing your research in US Politics.   The APG embraces a broad definition of US Politics to include for example, social, cultural, and institutional politics, governance, political history, domestic policy at federal, state and local level as well as foreign policy and international relations. To submit your paper proposal, please complete the Google Form before Wednesday, 10th May. An automated response will confirm the safe receipt of your submission. After the deadline, you will be notified by e-mail of the outcome. Proposals for individual papers or panels are welcome (4 presenters max) through the Google Form. If you are suggesting […]

CfP: Sex in Contemporary Media: An Interdisciplinary Conference

The University of Warwick Coventry, United Kingdom

The organisers invite scholars, researchers, artists, and activists engaging with media studies, gender and sexuality studies, cultural studies, law, social sciences and the arts to submit proposals. They also welcome and encourage proposals from artists, writers, media practitioners, sex workers and activists who encounter and engage with sex and issues around sexual practices in their work. The conference seeks to explore modern notions of sex and sexuality and the politics of their representations in various forms of media, including film, television, literature, music, social media, and more from both local and global perspectives. The organisers encourage submissions from around the world and hope to create an international conversation which addresses various national and local contexts. They aim to foster an engaging and critical discussion surrounding the current discourse about sexuality, sex work, and the relationship between sexual practices and gender both within and beyond Academia. Topics might include but are […]

CFP- Pro- and Anti-War Voices, University of Worcester

University of Worcester City Campus, Castle Street, Worcester , United Kingdom

Call for Papers: Pro- and Anti-War Voices, 11 November 2023, University of Worcester. Deadline May 31st. This conference is dedicated to illuminating both negative and positive responses to war in the United States, and welcomes proposals from academics, postgraduate researchers (PGRs), and early career academics (ECAs) who focus on either of these perspectives in any historical period. Whilst war has often been analysed by focusing on the important decision makers, both civilian and military, we seek to challenge this lens by concentrating on a “bottom-up” approach to history. This will be done within this conference by focusing on both the pro- and anti-war voices of a range of different “regular” people during war time. The parameters of this conference are therefore expansive and hope to shed light on the perspectives of those who have been ignored and neglected by a previous dedication to “top-down” history. The organisers hope that these […]

CFP: Virtual Conference: Darkness in the American Imagination

Online

Darkness has always been defined in binary opposition to light. As Toni Morrison puts it in Playing in the Dark (1992): “Whiteness, alone, is mute, meaningless, unfathomable, pointless, frozen, veiled, curtained, dreaded, senseless, implacable.” While darkness and light are mutually constitutive, the threshold between the two is ambivalent; it is blurry and changing. In addition to its symbolic dimensions, the darkness-vs.-light binary can also be taken literally: the early settlers feared the dark while electricity effectively banished darkness from cities, for example. The dark may be rife with danger, a metaphorical space of erasure, and a tool of obfuscation, but at the same time, the dark may provide protection, a space for subversion, and a place of beauty. In view of the multiple meanings of darkness in the American imagination, we invite papers on topics including—but not limited to: darkness and the racial imagination darkness and oppression/marginalization/erasure the surveillance of darkness dark bodies […]

CFP: Love and Lenses: Photographic Couples, Gender Relationships, and Transatlantic Networks in the Long Nineteenth Century

Rothermere American Institute University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

Event: 12– 13 October 2023 CFP Deadline: 21 July 2023 Maison Française d'Oxford and Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford The Maison Française d'Oxford and the Rothermere American Institute are delighted to invite paper proposals on the theme: ‘Love and Lenses: Photographic Couples, Gender Relationships, and Transatlantic Networks in the Long Nineteenth Century.’ This conference is being organised by Dr. Emily Brady (Broadbent Junior Research Fellow, Rothermere American Institute) and Martyna Zielinska (DPhil, Université de Paris Cité, LARCA). The Canadian photographers Hannah and Richard Maynard outside Hannah Maynard's studio c.1880, via Wikimedia Commons. This two-day conference invites papers that explore photographic partnerships as a main object of study. Since the invention of the camera, men and women – spouses, friends, members of the same family – have learned and practiced photography together for business, pleasure, educational and scientific purposes. This conference aims to bring new light on how the practice […]

CFP: Individuality and Community in Mid-Century American Culture (1945-1968)

Lund University Lund, Sweden

Mid-century US culture tends to be described in both simplified and paradoxical terms. On the one hand, it is thought of as a period of ‘containment’ culture, ‘Red-Scare’ rhetoric, and McCarthyism: a time when norms were strong, and it was difficult to be different. On the other hand, it is a period romanticized as the great era of American exceptionalism and industry. As today’s politicians from left to right increasingly rely on nostalgia for an idealized past, it becomes relevant to ask questions about the culture and values of mid-century America, and to challenge stereotypical images of this time, especially that of the white, churchgoing nuclear family, which has become an almost indelible image of the ‘long’ 1950s. At this pivotal moment in American history, the individual was often seen as being in conflict with society. Early Cold-War culture saw an increased focus on the negative effects of social conformity […]