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CFP: Edited Collection: Surveillance, Architecture and Control: Discourses on Spatial Culture

CFP: Oh, The Horror – The 1980s

Deadline for submissions: August 1, 2017 Full name/name of organization: Kevin M. Scott and Connor M. Scott Contact email: ohthehorror80s@gmail.com Call for Paper (June 7, 2017) Oh, The Horror: Politics and Culture in Horror Films of the 1980s Kevin M Scott (Albany State University) Connor M Scott (Georgia State University) Contact email: ohthehorror80s@gmail.com In the 1980s, a decade significantly known for Ronald Reagan, the Moral Majority, and the ascendance of the corporation as an aesthetic, Hollywood recovered from and reacted to the director-centric 1970s by reasserting studio control over mainstream cinema. With notable exceptions, the films of the 1980s were constructive—supporting a neater and more optimistic view of history and American culture—as opposed to the deconstructive films of the prior decade, challenging and, often, fatalistic. A simple review of Oscar nominees for the 1980s, compared to those of the 1970s, demonstrates that the capitalistic desires of the studios aligned neatly […]

Queer Subjects and the Contemporary United States (University of East Anglia)

Queer Subjects and the Contemporary United States A one-day colloquium hosted by the School of Art, Media, and American Studies 5th August 2017 9am-6pm University of East Anglia, Norwich Research Park, U.K. Keynote: Sam McBean (Queen Mary, University of London) queersubjectsblog.wordpress.com Recent upheaval from the Trump administration’s policy-making in the United States has seen the lives of queer subjects radically altered. This has included numerous executive orders that seek to curtail the power and agency of certain groups based on race, disability, gender, and sexuality particularly. Such identity distinctions are being made through an increasingly nationalist, and therefore heteronormative, lens which lends itself to the supremacy of ideals that support hegemonic cultural discourse. This one-day colloquium aims to highlight queer subjectivities in the contemporary context of the United States, and seeks to uncover modes of resistance and ways in which the queer subject can lay claim to public and private […]

CFP: Slavery’s Untold Stories in the Era of Trump and M4BL (University of Liverpool)

Slavery’s Untold Stories in the Era of Trump and M4BL University of Liverpool, Friday 27th October 2017 Please note: In order to ensure a healthy take-up of the postgraduate travel support we have extended the deadline for proposals to Thursday 10th August. We announce this call for papers at a profound and troubling moment in American life and politics. Persistent structural inequalities remain acute within healthcare, education, housing and the deeply discriminatory criminal justice system, while the M4BL has emphasized that the vulnerability of the black body remains at the very heart of the African-American experience. Historians now see the deep roots of these problems in slavery’s racialized discrimination and violent exploitation, and have recognised that the history of slavery cannot be told without taking into consideration the long and ongoing process of black emancipation. We invite researchers (postgraduate and established academics) from any discipline, as well as writers, artists and other […]

Job: Visiting Lecturer in US and Latin American History and Politics (Regent’s University London)

The International Relations, Social Sciences & Law Programme is looking for a highly qualified academic to teach undergraduate modules in US and Latin America history and politics. Modules include: The International Politics of the United States, 20th Century US International History, and Latin America History and Politics. It is essential you could demonstrate a commitment to high quality teaching at this level to a diverse body of students. It will be advantageous for you to have a record of publications and experience of teaching at undergraduate and preferably postgraduate level, and excellent interpersonal, oral, and written communication skills. Skills and experience required: A commitment to delivering outstanding and innovative teaching. Ability to teach, supervise, and assess high-achieving and challenging students from diverse cultural backgrounds at undergraduate and level. Combine and successfully apply the theory and practice to the field of US and Latin America history and politics. Have a clear […]

CFP: HOTCUS Postgraduate Conference, ‘Contesting Power: Rights, Justice, and Dissent in America and Beyond’

HOTCUS Annual Postgraduate Conference: ‘Contesting Power: Rights, Justice, and Dissent in America and Beyond’ Saturday, 21 October 2017, Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge Keynote Speaker: Dr Kerry Pimblott, University of Manchester The United States has recently witnessed dissent on a scale unprecedented in recent decades.  Mass protests like the Women’s March on Washington, Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, and Standing Rock demonstrations, as well as the renegotiation of boundaries of free speech and minority representation on university campuses nationwide are testament to the increasingly visible forms of resistance and activism that have emerged.  As nationalist sentiment grows in the US and across western Europe, and with the prospect of major shifts in American policies in foreign relations, voting rights, immigration, labour, civil rights, education, healthcare and elsewhere, 2017 presents an important time to consider the contestation of power in modern American history, both domestically and internationally.  At present, efforts […]

CFP: The American Weird: Ecologies & Geographies (University of Göttingen)

The American Weird: Ecologies & Geographies (Call for Papers) “The one test of the really weird is simply this—whether or not there be excited in the reader a profound sense of dread, and of contact with unknown spheres and powers.” —H.P. Lovecraft, "Supernatural Horror in Literature” (1927) “This whole world’s wild at heart and weird on top.” —David Lynch, Wild at Heart (1990) For H.P. Lovecraft, the weird conveys “a subtle attitude of awed listening, as if for the beating of black wings or the scratching of outside shapes and entities on the known universe’s utmost rim.” Taking its cue from Lovecraft’s enduringly influential conceptualization, this conference examines and broadens the notion of weirdness towards an ecology and geography of the weird as a new field of theoretical and practical resonances. What we call The American Weird comprises not only an aesthetics evoked by literary practices or films from the […]

Cambridge American History Seminar: “Newsprint Metropolis: City Papers and the Making of Modern Americans”

Cambridge American History Seminar 2017-2018  We are pleased to announce the schedule of seminars and events for the academic year 2017/18. Seminars will be held on Mondays at 5:00 PM in the Knox Shaw Room, Sidney Sussex College, unless otherwise indicated. Several of the seminars will be based on pre- circulated papers that will be made available two weeks prior to the seminar date. All inquiries should be directed to Jonathan Goodwin, jmg216@cam.ac.uk, 01223 335317. 27 November: Julia Guarneri, Lecturer in American History and Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge Book Launch: Newsprint Metropolis: City Papers and the Making of Modern Americans (University of Chicago Press, 2017) 

(Im)Possible Cities: The First International Conference of the Association for Literary Urban Studies (University of Tampere)

The First International Conference of the Association for Literary Urban Studies,.University of Tampere, Finland, August 23-24, 2017 In the wake of two successful international conferences under the auspices of the Helsinki Literature and the City Network, we are welcoming scholars interested in urban writing to the first international conference of the Association for Literary Urban Studies (ALUS), to be organized at the University of Tampere, Finland. This inaugural conference will be devoted to the theme of possible and impossible cities, the links between them, and the complex relationships between city imaginaries and real-world cities. This topic acknowledges the debt that literary cities owe to real-life city plans, and the similar debt that visions of urban development owe to the imaginary scenarios put forth in fictional narratives. The conference theme straddles a variety of fields, including literary urban studies, urban planning theory, cultural geography, and future studies. The two keynote speakers […]

Job: Lecturer in Film Studies (University of Sussex)

The School of Media Film and Music at the University of Sussex wishes to appoint a Lecturer Film Studies from 1 September 2017 to contribute to developing research and teaching in critical approaches to Film Studies. The successful candidate will normally possess a completed doctorate in a relevant academic discipline, will engage in high-quality research activity, will have teaching experience and will be able to help the development of Film Studies at the University of Sussex. It will be desirable if the candidate can contribute to teaching provision across a range of core and optional modules. We welcome applications from candidates who are experienced in any area of Film Studies, but particularly those with strengths in film theory, British Cinema, European Cinema and/or American Cinema. For full details and how to apply see our vacancies page. Closing date: 25th August.

Studying the South: Approaches and Orientations (University of Herefordshire)

Studying the South: Approaches and Orientations A one-day colloquium organised by the Southern Studies in the UK Network (www.ssukn.com) 26th August 2017, University of Hertfordshire Studies of the U.S. South have radically changed across the last century, and especially so in the twenty-first. As Michael Bibler (2016) has argued recently, southern studies scholars “begin with the assumption that there’s no such thing as a solid South. We are interested in all kinds of Souths, bringing a dazzling range of theoretical approaches” to the region. This one-day colloquium will explore the variety of perspectives or “orientations” (Bibler) that open up discussion of the U.S. South today. Where historically the South has been considered as the “nation’s region” (in Leigh Ann Duck’s words), southern studies scholars see the region in smaller and larger scales and frames. The South can be read in relation to other American regions like the West or Midwest; it can be thought […]

CFP: Reinventing the Social: Movements and Narratives of Resistance, Dissension, and Reconciliation in the Americas (Coimbra/Portugal, 2018)

Reinventing the Social: Movements and Narratives of Resistance, Dissension, and Reconciliation in the Americas (Coimbra/Portugal, 2018) The struggle over social issues and the resistance to ruling elites have a long history in the colonies and nations of the Americas. They range from wars of independence and slave uprisings to conventions for women’s rights, workers’ and peasants’ rebellions, indigenous movements, and protests against U.S. wars in Vietnam or in Iraq. Since World War II new forms of international and national inequalities and new dynamics in societies and in the media have increased our awareness of the many ways in which the social keeps being re-negotiated from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. Recent decades have been characterized by new approaches to time- and space-binding and mediational and relational webs of the social; the invention, invocation, and narration of tradition, history, and heritage serve as key elements in the creation of new social […]

BCEAH 2017: Land and Water

LAND AND WATER: PORT TOWNS, MARITIME CONNECTIONS, AND OCEANIC SPACES OF THE EARLY MODERN ATLANTIC WORLD. The British Group of Early American Historians will hold its annual conference at the University of Portsmouth, 31 August - 3 September 2017. Drawing on Portsmouth’s historic significance as a port town this year’s conference theme is: “Land and Water: Port Towns, maritime connections, and oceanic spaces of the early modern Atlantic World.” Portsmouth was a site of embarkation for those who shaped (or attempted to shape) the political, social, and demographic contours of the Atlantic World: the Roanoke colonists departed from the town in 1587; as did Admiral Nelson for the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. It was a hub of imperial force in the form of the Royal Navy and intimately connected with the imperial conflicts across the globe, and also of the protection and then prevention of the transatlantic slave trade. […]