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UCL Americas Research Network 2024 Conference – Historical Roots, Modern Realities: Nationalism Across the Americas

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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 […]

American Politics Group 2023 Postgraduate and Early Career Conference

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

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 American Politics Group on Friday, June 23rd, at the Vere Harmsworth Library in Oxford to share 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 levels 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 a panel, please […]

Transatlantic Studies Association 2023 Annual Conference

University of Plymouth Drake Circus, Plymouth, United Kingdom

Transatlantic Studies Association 21st Annual Conference University of Plymouth, UK 3-5 July 2023 _______ Call for Papers Submissions are invited for the 2023 Annual Conference KEYNOTE LECTURES Professor David Haglund (Queen’s University) “What is So ‘Special’ About the Franco-American Relationship? The View from Lake Wobegon” AND Professor Faye Hammill (University of Glasgow) “Ocean Modern: Poetics and Geometries of the Transatlantic Liner” AND Professor Michelle Wright (Emory University) “Exchanging Blackness in Afroeuropolis: Questions of Race, Gender and Fungibility in 20th Century Europe” PLUS A Roundtable discussion on: Transatlantic Memorialisation and Heritage AND An Early Career Workshop on: Impact and Engagement The TSA is a broad network of scholars who use the ‘transatlantic’ as a frame of reference for their work in a variety of disciplines, including (but not limited to): history, politics and international relations, and literary studies. All transatlantic-themed paper and panel proposals from these and related disciplines are welcome. The conference […]

July 7 2023 SHAW Annual Conference, Manchester Metropolitan University.

Manchester Metropolitan University Manchester, United Kingdom

The Society for the History of Women in the Americas (SHAW) will be holding its 2023 annual conference at Manchester Metropolitan University on July 7th 2023. 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’. This will be an in-person conference and SHAW would love to see as many colleagues and friends as possible!

Manchester Metropolitan University and the Centre for the Critical Study of Apocalyptic and Millenarian Movements

Imperial War Museum North Trafford Whard Rd, Trafford Park, Stretford, Manchester, United Kingdom

Since the end of the Cold War, its imagery, atmosphere, and music have been repeatedly appropriated and reappropriated within contemporary popular culture. More than thirty years after the Berlin Wall fell, these images continue to appeal to generations with no memory of the original tensions of the time. From the early Cold War imagery of games such as the Fallout series, or the mid-1980s backdrop of Soviet infiltration in Stranger Things, visual culture, music, and ideas from the period are constantly recycled in popular culture. These images are often linked to fears of nuclear destruction or disturbing post-apocalyptic settings, while also recalling nostalgic and often patriotic images of a lost world of the West. With the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine and heightened fear of nuclear war, these images are being appropriated and applied in new ways online and in popular entertainment. This conference invites participants to examine this theme and to explore […]

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 […]

Resisting Toxic Climates: Gender, Colonialism Environment

Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Whether it’s the spectacular event of an oil spill or the scarcely perceptible pollution of micro-plastics, toxicity is central to the environmental concerns of today. To exist in the world means being vulnerable to multiple forms of toxicity. Yet, conditions of vulnerability are unequal, shaped by enduring global histories of colonialism and capitalism. Held at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh on July 26th and 27th, this two-day event will highlight the toxic valences of coloniality, asking how toxicity manifests and mutates with particular regard to gender across variously situated bodies, lands and waterscapes. While we are concerned with the interrelated forms of material toxicity that threaten the wellbeing of human and more-than-human communities, we also seek to facilitate dialogue around pertinent social, political and cultural discourses of toxification. Operating at the intersections of the medical and environmental humanities, and centering feminist, queer, decolonial and Indigenous paradigms, this interdisciplinary event […]

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 […]

CFP: EAAS 2024 | 1924-2024: The American Immigrant Narrative Revisited

Amerikahaus Munich Karolinenpl. 3, Munich, Bavaria, Germany

From April 2-7, 2024, the 35th Biennial EAAS-conference, titled 1924 – 2024: The American Immigrant Narrative Revisited, takes place at Amerikahaus Munich. It is hosted by the Bavarian American Academy (BAA). CFP: It has become a longstanding cliché, albeit highly controversial, to note that the U.S. is – and always has been – a nation of immigrants. Oscar Handlin, among others, famously remarked that to write the history of America was to write the history of immigrants. This history – or, to be precise: these histories – have throughout been marked by extreme inequalities for groups of various origins, yet the Immigration Act of 1924 (the Johnson-Reed Act) sticks out as one major paradigm shift in the larger course of events. One hundred years ago, this piece of legislation drastically limited the number of immigrants allowed to come to the U.S. each year through a national quota system and completely excluded Asians from immigrating to the U.S. […]

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 […]

Sex in Contemporary Media: An Interdisciplinary Conference

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 […]

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 […]