American Contagions: Epidemics and the Law from Smallpox to COVID-19

HOTCUS Annual Postgraduate & Early Career Conference: ‘The Uses and Abuses of the American Past’ Saturday, 20 October 2018, The University of Nottingham Keynote Speaker: Professor Michael Cullinane, University of Roehampton Recent political debates across the United States have witnessed different groups claim and contest aspects of the American past to advance their causes. From the changing role of America in the world to tumultuous conversations about civil war monuments, the Standing Rock demonstrations, arguments over school history curricula, and debates about contemporary racial politics influenced by the immigrant history of the United States, the meaning of American history has been invoked on behalf of a myriad of causes. In a mid-term election year, amidst apparently deepening divides of politics, identity and culture, the significance of the American past is only likely to become more contested. As we reflect on the fiftieth anniversary of the turbulent year of 1968, it […]

Common Ground Conference 2018 Divided Selves and Societies in Irish and American Literature and Culture 26 – 27 October 2018  commongroundsymposium.wordpress.com / @commongroundqub Following the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement, the topics of borders and division are once again at the forefront of the global political consciousness. The central protections of the agreement that brought ‘The Troubles’ to an end are now threatened by both the collapse of the power-sharing government in Northern Ireland and by Brexit negotiations, during which concerns relating to the current NI/RoI border and future EU/UK border have posed many obstacles. Borders and division are also a principal concern of the current administration in the United States of America, particularly with respect to the proposed ‘border wall’ with Mexico and the ‘travel ban’ from several Muslim-majority countries. Moreover, Ireland and America share a common interest in the Irish border: it was Senator George Mitchell, […]

Book History Research Network Study Day: The Book in the Digital Age Loughborough University (UK) 24 October 2018   Digital technologies are changing the ways we produce, disseminate, and consume texts. Texts may take traditionally tangible forms, but they may also now take coded forms, physically accessible only through desktop and mobile media. Our perceptions of extant textual artefacts also change in light of increasing digitisation. New digital tools for textual scholarship are regularly released; book historians now enjoy access to vast digital archives of textual material. Indeed, digital technologies allow us to engage with extant textual artefacts in new ways, while at the same time offering new avenues for text production and reception.   This study day, held at Loughborough University, will explore the new prospects afforded to book history scholarship by increasingly digital circumstances. It will do so through two types of presentations: 20-minute paper presentations and 15-minute presentations […]

CALL FOR PAPERS: BRITISH ASSOCIATION OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICANISTS PANELS AT THE BAAS CONFERENCE, UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX 2019 The British Association of Nineteenth-Century Americanists invites submissions to three panels to be submitted to the British Association for American Studies Conference, taking place at the University of Sussex, April 25-27, 2019. More information about the BAAS Conference can be found here: https://hes32-ctp.trendmicro.com:443/wis/clicktime/v1/query?url=https%3a%2f%2fbaas2019.org&umid=016d9e0b-a105-487d-b682-597d2d539645&auth=768f192bba830b801fed4f40fb360f4d1374fa7c-52377cb15bc80a57e1060df589f0c07061ccc65d More information on BrANCA and its activities can be found here: https://hes32-ctp.trendmicro.com:443/wis/clicktime/v1/query?url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.branca.org.uk&umid=016d9e0b-a105-487d-b682-597d2d539645&auth=768f192bba830b801fed4f40fb360f4d1374fa7c-192f481ce12a7f0134bd94404c8afcadee66837f 1. OPEN PANEL ON 19th CENTURY AMERICANIST TOPICS Each year BrANCA hosts a special panel at BAAS showcasing progressive, interdisciplinary work on the United States in the long nineteenth century. This year BrANCA invites paper proposals on any relevant topic to be included within a sponsored panel at the BAAS Conference the University of Sussex, April 25-27, 2019. We invite proposals for papers from all researchers working in the field. We are particularly interested in global, hemispheric and […]

CFP: Straight to the Front Row: Investigating Contemporary Western Gay Male Cinema Conference to be held at the 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 […]

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 […]