Over Here: US Presidents in Britain, 1918-2018 MANCHESTER CENTRE FOR PUBLIC HISTORY AND HERITAGE, MANCHESTER METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY SYMPOSIUM: FRIDAY 7 DECEMBER 2018, 9.45AM-5.30PM December 1918 saw the first ever visit to Britain by a serving American President: Woodrow Wilson, who led the United States throughout the First World War, made a brief tour through the country on his way to the Paris Peace Conference (which started in the new year). The trip included three key destinations: in Carlisle, to see his mother's birth-place; in London, for meetings with politicians and Royalty; and in Manchester, where he addressed a large crowd outside the Free Trade Hall. To mark the centennial of this latter event, and in order to explore the impact and legacies of subsequent Presidential visits to Britain, the Manchester Centre for Public History and Heritage is hosting a one day symposium featuring talks by several leading scholars of Anglo-American […]

Biannual meeting of the European Early American Studies Association London, 14-16 December 2018 The Making and Unmaking of Identities and Connections in Early America and the Atlantic World, 1650-1850 The 7th biannual meeting of the European Early American Studies Association convenes in London 14-16 December 2018 at King’s College London and Queen Mary University of London. The conference theme for EEASA 2018 is “The making and unmaking of identities and connections in early America and the Atlantic World, 1650-1850.” Issues of identities and connections were as pertinent to the inhabitants of early America and the Atlantic World as they remain today. Up until the mid-nineteenth century, the geopolitics of the Americas were in constant flux. European and indigenous empires emerged, competed, expanded, contracted and collapsed. New nations and unions were formed and reformed. Identities and loyalties were transitory, political and cultural borders permeable. Weak centers fostered local autonomy and a […]

Straight to the Front Row: Investigating Contemporary Western Gay Male Cinema University of Northampton (UK) 16/02/2019 – 17/02/2019 From Weekend (dir. Andrew Haigh, 2011) to Call me By Your Name (dir. Luca Guadagnino, 2017), from God’s Own Country (dir. Francis Lee, 2017) to Moonlight (dir. Barry Jenkins, 2016) and Love, Simon (dir. Greg Berlanti, 2018), contemporary Western gay male cinema has endured a shift in both representational strategies and a boom in popularity within both mainstream and independent spheres, since 2010. ‘Western gay male cinema’, more specifically, refers to cinema that features a gay male protagonist, has narrative themes that relate to gay male identities and films that are primarily produced for gay male audiences. Prior to 2010, there have been Western gay male films that have been significant in either their representations or their popularity (ranging from the films that centred on gay men in New Queer Cinema to films such as Brokeback Mountain ), however, Western gay male films since […]

2019 HOTCUS Winter Symposium: “Nuclear States": Science, Technology, and American Society in the Atomic Age University of Lincoln February 16th 2019 Plenary Speaker: Dr Audra Wolfe University of Pennsylvania In August 2017 President Donald Trump tweeted that if North Korea continued its path of missile development than it would be “met with fire and fury the likes of which the world has never seen”. This aggressive rhetoric, coupled with Trump’s subsequent withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear agreement, acted as a stark reminder for citizens of the United States and the world beyond of the continuing apocalyptic potential of nuclear technologies. Americans have lived with the shadows cast by the bomb on American politics, society and culture, alongside more affirmative visions of ‘free energy,’ ‘plowshares’, medical applications, and scientific advance for seventy years. As Trump’s fiery rhetoric revives Cold War concerns about nuclear doom, the time is ripe for historians to […]

The 64th BAAS Annual Conference 25-27 April 2019, University of Sussex Keynote Speakers: Barbara Savage (University of Pennsylvania/University of Oxford), Robyn Weigman (Duke University), Jonathan Bell (UCL)

American Literature Association, 30th Annual Conference, May 23-26, 2019 Westin Copley Place 10 Huntington Avenue Boston, MA 02116 Conference Director:  Olivia Carr Edenfield Georgia Southern University Conference Fee:  For those who pre-register before April 15, 2019:  $100 ($75 for Graduate Students, Independent Scholars, and Retired Faculty). After April 15, the fees are $125 and $100.

The 12th Biennial Symbiosis Conference, 11-14 July 2019, University of Dundee, Scotland. The 12th Biennial Symbiosis Conference will take place at the University of Dundee, Scotland, 11-14 July 2019. As ever, there will be papers and panels on all areas of Transatlantic literary exchange. https://www.symbiosistransatlantic.com/conferences/  

This July and August BrANCH seek to bring their community together in a series of four online workshops focused on the research of our postgraduate and early career research membership. This week's speaker is Lizzie Evens, PhD Candidate at UCL, and her paper is 'Women Doctors, Sex Workers, and Eugenics during WWI'. The workshop will be held on Zoom, 12 August at 4pm. In each case, papers will be pre-circulated to BrANCH members. The organiser's aim is to elicit instructive and constructive contribution to the work of our early career academics. To that end, they very much hope that as many tenured staff as possible on both sides of the Atlantic will join them for these events. Your presence is key to ensuring their success. If you wish to register your attendance, then please contact us at branchworkshop2020@gmail.com or visit our eventbrite page. For any further questions, please contact Iain Flood at i.a.flood@ncl.ac.uk

Author Simon Hall sits down with Professor Lillian Guerra to discuss his book, TEN DAYS IN HARLEM. About this Event This event is presented in partnership with the Harlem Historical Society. Rising star Simon Hall captures the spirit of the 1960s in ten days that revolutionized the Cold War: Fidel Castro's visit to New York. New York City, September 1960. Fidel Castro - champion of the oppressed, scourge of colonialism, and leftist revolutionary - arrives for the opening of the United Nations General Assembly. His visit to the UN represents a golden opportunity to make his mark on the world stage. Fidel's shock arrival in Harlem is met with a rapturous reception from the local African American community. He holds court from the iconic Hotel Theresa as a succession of world leaders, black freedom fighters and counter-cultural luminaries - everyone from Nikita Khrushchev to Gamal Abdel Nasser, Malcolm X to […]

Due to concerns over covid-19 HOTCUS's annual postgraduate and early career conference will this year take the form of a one-day virtual event, taking place on Friday 18 September 2020. With the presidential election looming in November 2020, politics is paramount in the minds of those interested in the United States. This year also marks a century since the Nineteenth Amendment to the American Constitution was ratified giving women the right to vote. The 2020 HOTCUS Postgraduate and Early Career conference provides a pertinent opportunity for emerging scholars to explore America at and beyond the ballot box. Professor Iwan Morgan (UCL Institute of the Americas) will close the day with a virtual keynote address. The full programme is now available here.There is no charge for the conference and you can register here. The call for papers is now closed.

September 24  Megan Hunt (Edinburgh): Boo, Bull, and Birmingham: To Kill a Mockingbird, Black Protest, and Racial Moderation in April 1963 This session is part of the University of Edinburgh’s American History Fall Workshop series. If you are interested in participating in these workshops, please contact David Silkenat at the University of Edinburgh in order to be added to the mailing list and receive the pre-circulated papers. All of these workshops will occur on Zoom at 5pm on the indicated date