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4th Annual Kent Americanist Symposium: The Spacial Americas (Online)

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CFP: Sea Change: Wavescapes in the Anthropocene (University of Split)

Sea Change: Wavescapes in the Anthropocene   Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Split & Island of Vis, 3-6 December 2018 Keynote addresses: Adeline Johns-Putra (University of Surrey), Rebecca Giggs (Macquarie University) & Joško Božanić (University of Split)   Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change, Into something rich and strange. — William Shakespeare     Ariel's song of the sea, from Shakespeare's The Tempest, describes the transformative force of water. A metamorphosis is worked at the depths of full fathom five – death remade into strange richness. Element of ancient cosmologies, water has long served myth and philosophy as a paradoxical mix of power and gentle transfiguration. As Lao Tzu observes, “Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it.” Likewise, Ovid remarks, “Dripping water hollows out stone, not through force but through persistence.” This ceaseless persuasion is why Božanić […]

2001: Beyond 50 (Bangor University)

The Centre for Film, Television and Screen Studies at Bangor University is proud to present 2001: Beyond 50   A day of talks, music, and an exhibition celebrating the 50th anniversary of Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), featuring experts and people who worked on the film.   Pontio, Bangor University, Deiniol Road, Bangor, LL57 2TQ, UK.   16th June 2018, 2 - 11 pm.   Provisional programme (timings are subject to change but speakers are confirmed):   2.00 Introduction by Piers Bizony, author of 2001: Filming the Future and 2001: A Space Odyssey.   2.30 Alternative perspectives: a panel featuring experts on 2001's legacy beyond film, including psychology, artificial intelligence, evolutionary biology, and philosophy and religion. Panellists: Prof. Robert Ward (Bangor), Prof. Guillaume Thierry (Bangor), Dr. Bill Teahan (Bangor), Mr. Eric Krasny (Bangor), and Prof. Peter Wheeler (Liverpool John Moores).   4.00 Coffee and opportunity to view […]

The Paranoid Style Revisited: Postwar American Cultural Politics and The Argosy Magazine (John Rylands Library, Manchester)

The Paranoid Style Revisited: Postwar American Cultural Politics and The Argosy Magazine John Rylands Library, Manchester, 28-29 June 2018 Half a century ago Richard Hofstadter published his influential essay ‘The Paranoid Style in American Politics,’ in which he identified ‘heated exaggeration, suspiciousness and conspiratorial fantasy’ as a recurrent feature of the nation’s political life. Hofstadter’s thesis has in subsequent decades been at the centre of a rich and interdisciplinary scholarly discourse that has been attentive to the cultural politics of the Cold War period as read especially through the lens of gender, but also those of science and technology, mass media, and corporate capitalism, amongst others. In our current political moment Hofstadter’s call for critical reflection on the genesis, mechanisms and consequences of the paranoid style beckons with renewed urgency. The aim of this conference is to generate such reflection by engaging with and showcasing a rare research resource recently […]

Ninth BrANCA reading group: Voicing the Non-Human (University of Birmingham)

Ninth BrANCA reading group: Voicing the Non-Human University of Birmingham, 29th June 2018, 1-5pm The ninth British Association of Nineteenth-Century Americanists (BrANCA) reading group will be held at the University of Birmingham, 29th June 2018. Among America’s most potent myths and symbols are an array of animal and non-human presences: from its national animal, the bald eagle, to the elusive white whale, Br’er Rabbit, the birds, flies, and dogs of Emily Dickinson’s poetry, and, more recently, King Kong, Mickey Mouse and a whole panoply of Muppets. But to what extent is America interested in the non-human as non-human? Are the non-humans of American literature always performing in ways that exceed their status as non-human? In what ways do the American writers of the nineteenth century approach, or exhibit a sympathy with, such animals on their own terms? Is such an approach possible? Questions like these have been explored in the flourishing field of animal studies, perhaps most famously by writers like Donna Haraway – in When Species Meet (2007) and Staying […]

CFP: Transatlantic Girlhood in Nineteenth-Century Literature Collection

CFP: Transatlantic Girlhood in Nineteenth-Century Literature Collection Although often dubbed “domestic” novelists, nineteenth-century women writers often featured girl protagonists who travelled, and much of the time this travel wasn’t relegated to a local or even national scale.  Rather, like Amy in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, fictional girls on both sides of the Atlantic often journeyed abroad, usually with the intent of learning more about themselves, their relationships with others, and even their country.  This collection will interrogate both literal and metaphorical exchanges of culture that happened in nineteenth-century girls’ fiction.  Creative approaches to thinking about transatlantic travel and how it had an impact on girl culture in both Europe and America are invited.  For instance, contributors could explore novels like Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, Maria Susanna Cummins’s The Lamplighter, and E.D.E.N. Southworth’s The Hidden Hand, all of which earned popularity in both Europe and America.  Likewise, the editors are eager to read submissions centering on girls’ magazines, journals, and […]

Beasts of the Sky: Strange Sightings in the Stratosphere (St Mary’s University, Twickenham)

Beasts of the Sky: Strange Sightings in the Stratosphere 30 June 2018   Proposals are invited for an interdisciplinary symposium at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, to explore representations of creatures of the sky and air, within the context of popular culture. The one-day conference is on Saturday 30 June 2018. Keynote Lecture: Dr Chris Pallant, Canterbury Christ Church University. Taking place in the drawing room of Horace Walpole’s Gothic mansion in Strawberry Hill, this symposium will discuss the sky as space, as well as the creatures associated with it, whether monstrous or mundane, in popular culture. The sky is a privileged locale in popular genres, from science fiction, horror and dystopian film; in animation as well as live action; to natural history programming on television. Sometimes the sky is linked to the archaic, in myth and with prehistoric airborne creatures; at other times it is the site for our projections of the […]

CFP: ‘The Uses and Abuses of the American Past’, HOTCUS Annual PG and ECR Conference (University of Nottingham)

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 […]

CFP: Divided Selves and Societies in Irish and American Literature and Culture (Queens University Belfast)

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, […]

CFP: Book History Research Network Study Day: The Book in the Digital Age (Loughborough University)

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 […]

HOTCUS Inaugural Work-in-Progress Meeting (University of Nottingham)

The University of Nottingham University Park, Nottingham, United Kingdom

HOTCUS Inaugural Work-in-Progress Meeting, evening of Friday 19 October 2018, The University of Nottingham HOTCUS are delighted to launch our inaugural work-in-progress session. This first meeting will include the presentation of two papers. Each presenter will introduce their project/piece of work, and then the majority of the session will be spent fielding questions from the audience and discussing the work in-depth. The sessions are designed to be an open forum for each presenter to share their writing and to receive detailed feedback from the HOTCUS community. Attendees will receive the papers to be discussed two weeks in advance of the session. Our presenters will be: Miguel Hernandez, University of Exeter. "“The Menace of Modern Immigration: Nativism and Violence in the 1920s Ku Klux Klan" Alex Bryne, University of Nottingham. "The Potential of Flight: Pan-Americanism and U.S. Aviation during the Progressive Era"

HOTCUS 2018 Postgraduate Conference (University of Nottingham)

The University of Nottingham University Park, Nottingham, United Kingdom

The 2018 HOTCUS Postgraduate annual conference will be held at the University of Nottingham on Saturday 20 October 2018. The plenary speaker will be Michael Cullinane of Roehampton University. The full programme can be found here.

Let the Sun Shine In: American Theatre, Protest and Censorship (British Library)

British Library 96 Euston Road, London, United Kingdom

Let the Sun Shine In: American Theatre, Protest and Censorship An international conference co-sponsored by the American Theatre & Drama Society and the Eccles Centre for American Studies, October 26-27, 2018, British Library, London (UK) Keynote speakers: Prof. Ramón Espejo Romero, Universidad de Sevilla (Spain) Dr. Marlis Schweitzer, York University (Canada) In 1968, the American musical Hair opened on Broadway, in London’s West End, and in Munich, West Germany. Hailed by many for capturing the zeitgeist of the late 1960s, Hair also reflected changes in the writing and production of American theatre. Produced Off-Broadway at the Public Theater, it emerged from experimental theatre practice to achieve commercial success on Broadway and internationally. Staging contemporary protest and dissent, the musical was censored on tour in Boston but became the first production to open after the Theatres Act ended both censorship in British theatre and the power of the Lord Chamberlain. This conference investigates American theatre, protest, and censorship in […]