CFP: Movement and Mobility in America (Online)

Back in March 2020, with events dropping like flies from university calendars everywhere in the face of the global pandemic, we at OxEARS decided to enter the brave new world of remote seminar participation. We hope it will not seem an exaggeration to say that our move online has been a roaring success. With the opportunity to welcome experts not just from Oxford, not just from the UK, but from all around the world, the seminar has gained a new lease of life as a forum for scholarly exchange. Going into the academic year 2020-21, therefore, we will be continuing with this approach amidst the ongoing uncertainty about the safety of face-to-face meetings. Although it is a shame not to be able to invite our presenters and guests to the Turf Tavern or the King’s Arms after a meeting, the advantage of being joined by participants in London, Edinburgh, Turin, […]

What Happened? Continuities and Discontinuities in American Culture The 27th Biennial Conference of NAAS & the 11th Biennial Conference of SAAS Uppsala, Sweden, May 20-22, 2021 While it appears to be perennially tempting to see one’s own time as exceptional and unprecedented, it is nevertheless safe to say that our present time is perceived by many as characterized by crises of different kinds (democratic, humanitarian, environmental, medical, and economic crisis) to an unusually high degree. As a result, the stakes are high when it comes to identifying causes and cures and the political, media and academic communities are all concerned in their different ways with constructing narratives that make sense of what is happening: Backlash, renewal, apocalypse? Whatever their political, ideological or theoretical underpinnings or agendas, all mobilize tropes of either continuity – understood for instance as progress, degeneration or intensification – or discontinuity – understood for instance as a break […]

After a very successful pilot during the summer months, the organisers decided to continue BAAS PGR Work in Progress Session for the winter term. The sessions will run on the second Friday of each month during October-December between 15:00-17:00. (9th of October, 13th of November, and the 11th of December)   The organisers invite postgraduate students to present a work in progress on any topic and period related to the Americas – music, visual culture, art, literature, history, politics etc. Postgraduates are encouraged to circulate any piece of writing they see fit – it can be a dissertation chapter, book review or an essay in preparation for a peer review submission. Each session will consist of three presenters and five readers to provide in-depth feedback in a collegial and supportive atmosphere. Upon submission, the organisers will try as much as possible to curate the sessions based on some common ground – themes, period or genre […]

After a very successful pilot during the summer months, the organisers decided to continue BAAS PGR Work in Progress Session for the winter term. The sessions will run on the second Friday of each month during October-December between 15:00-17:00. (9th of October, 13th of November, and the 11th of December)   The organisers invite postgraduate students to present a work in progress on any topic and period related to the Americas – music, visual culture, art, literature, history, politics etc. Postgraduates are encouraged to circulate any piece of writing they see fit – it can be a dissertation chapter, book review or an essay in preparation for a peer review submission. Each session will consist of three presenters and five readers to provide in-depth feedback in a collegial and supportive atmosphere. Upon submission, the organisers will try as much as possible to curate the sessions based on some common ground – themes, period or genre […]

Being Hospitable: Languages and Cultures Across Borders The unifying theme for the 2021 MLA International Symposium is Being Hospitable: Languages and Cultures Across Borders, to be understood in the broadest possible senses of both hospitable and language and as a defiant counter-gesture to the currently inhospitable, even hostile, nature of world politics. The word and concept of hospitality will embrace a wide range of disciplinary interpretations, including Ethics (philosophies of self/other, from existentialism to deconstruction) Welcoming the radically other (tout autre) Political theory (from identity politics to the “politics of alterity”) Gender fluidity Decolonial thinking (different modes of “writing back” to the Empire) Ongoing refugee and migration crisis International law and human rights Adoption (particularly international) Medical humanities (notably around the concepts of health, well-being and care, hospitals and hospitality) Social anthropology (rituals of welcoming the other) Security studies and conflict studies (hospitality and hostility) Problematizing the notion of hospitality […]

The IAAS Postgraduate Symposium “Parallel Lives in America” Virtual Event via Zoom 13th-14th of November, 2020 Last year, the Irish Association for American Studies’ Postgraduate Symposium, titled “The Land of the Unfree”, sought to interrogate the legitimacy of democracy in America. One year on, in the midst of a global pandemic, this legitimacy has not only been interrogated, but put on trial. In the U.S., the COVID-19 pandemic has both exacerbated and exposed already existent crises: social, political and economic, among others. Referred to by The New York Times as “The Pandemic Inequality Feedback Loop”, research has shown that individuals of lower economic strata and minority groups are both more likely to contract the virus, and to die from it. From bulk buying to wide-spread job losses, the concerns and priorities of American citizens have existed on a wide spectrum according to relative levels of privilege and oppression. The 2020 […]