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

This symposium invites Postgraduate Researchers and Early Career Researchers in the field of American Studies to evaluate and analyse the relationship between the Americas and ‘space’. This could include a geographical approach to ‘space’ and ‘place’, an ecological focus on the environment, the art of mapping, the relationship between the country and the city, the American notion of ‘the frontiers’, a transatlantic focus on the relationship between the Americas and other spaces, or even a more literal look at America’s role in exploring outer space. The interdisciplinary nature of this symposium aims to subvert the common use of space as ‘a context’ by bringing it to the forefront of the conversation to interrogate how the Americas are spatially constructed. Keynote Speaker: Dr Anne-Marie Angelo, University of Sussex. Date: 21st November 2020

Speaker Event via Zoom: Tuesday 24 November, 4.15 (UK), Professor Mary Chapman, University of British Columbia Please join us on Tues 24 Nov at 4.15, when Prof Mary Chapman will give a talk, “Onoto Watanna’s Japanese Kin: Re-recovering Winnifred Eaton”. All welcome. If you'd like to attend, email Dr Laura Rattray (Laura.Rattray@glasgow.ac.uk) and you'll receive a secure Zoom link on the day of the talk. “Onoto Watanna’s Japanese Kin: Re-recovering Winnifred Eaton” Professor Mary Chapman (UBC) Thirty-five years ago, Amy Ling initiated the recovery of Chinese-American novelist Winnifred Eaton, whom she praised for her feminist heroines, charming style, and prodigious output.  But enthusiasm for the recovery of Eaton’s oeuvre was quickly tempered by the chagrin that critics felt, even in the wake of scholarship that understood identity as provisional and strategic, in response to Winnifred Eaton’s masquerade as Japanese author “Onoto Watanna.” Eaton’s posturing as the daughter of a Japanese […]

For the 2020 BAAS Postgraduate Symposium, we welcome proposals that reflect aspects of this year’s theme, Connection and Collective Action: Past and Present. This year has seen an unprecedented reexamination of the ways we interact with one another, be it on an international, governmental, institutional, or personal level. While coming together physically is more complicated than it ever has been, this year has also seen people around the world unite to challenge engrained systems and demand change. This Symposium will enable us to participate in our own evaluation and interrogation of methods of connection and collective action in American history and culture. We seek to touch upon the following questions: How have people taken collective action historically, and how does this reflect on our present historical moment? How are cultures shaped by the points of connection and conflict that arise between the people that form them? How can our connection […]

December 3  Claire Aubin (Edinburgh): 'A Task Worth Doing at All is a Task Worth Doing Well': Holocaust Perpetrators   and Post-war US Immigration Mechanisms 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 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.  

Please note that the conference has been postponed due to the corona virus situation, following the instructions issued by the University of Helsinki. The new dates are December 9 - 12, 2020. Update: The conference will be held as a virtual event. If you have any urgent questions, please do not hesitate to contact: mapleleaf-eagle@helsinki.fi. For decades, the Maple Leaf and Eagle Conference in North American Studies has presented a dynamic setting for examining and describing the phenomenon that is North America, involving the study of North America itself. We thrive on being interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary, welcoming to academic specialties as varied as history, literature, politics, geography, media studies, ethnic studies, culture studies, law, and economics. Presentations are sought from a wide range of research traditions and from a variety of political and ideological backgrounds.

Thematic Approach Cross-dressing and transgender identity in general remained for long in the shadow. It has been only recently that trans rights began to be widely discussed and researched across the academic world. The prevailing majority of existing research dealt mainly with issues and case studies emergent post-1900 – that is, rather recently in academic terms, and therefore, trans rights and related issues as a sphere of academic inquiry have sometimes been depicted as a “modern” concept. We hope we initiate a productive conversation on the notion of transgender identity as connected with the political world, pre-1900s so we find the roots and identify the history of this rich and long topic. Yet, looking back at history, we encounter fascinating figures such as John Randolph of Roanoke (1773-1833), Chevalier D’Eon (1728-1810), Nadezhda Durova (1783-1866), and countless others. The figure of the cross-dressing shaman or spiritual healer, occupying a place of […]