Manchester Metropolitan University and the Centre for the Critical Study of Apocalyptic and Millenarian Movements

Mon 11 April 2022 at 3pm Please join us on Mon 11 April 2022 (3pm to 4.30pm, UK time) for an international panel on “Fictional Maximalism and the Americas: New Voices, New Perspectives,” organised by Elisa Pesce. Details below. All welcome! Please email Elisa at e.pesce.1@research.gla.ac.uk for further information and the Zoom link. A transversal presence in Western literature, the maximalist, or encyclopaedic, novel is a multi- form and unusually long type of fiction. Although its ancestry might lie in Dante’s Commedia, Melville’s Moby-Dick, and Joyce’s Ulysses, it evolved into a distinctive literary style from the 1970s onward, encompassing authors such as Pynchon, Gaddis, DeLillo, and Wallace. Consequently, the maximalist novel came to be associated predominantly with white male writers from the United States, as well as with many of the features and purposes of the Great American Novel. After decades of little discussion on the reasons underlying the exclusion […]

University of Hull, UK Thursday April 21st to Saturday April 23rd 2022

THE IRISH ASSOCIATION FOR AMERICAN STUDIES ANNUAL CONFERENCE, 2022 DCU All Hallows Campus, Gracepark Road, Drumcondra, Dublin. April 29-30, 2022 We are pleased to announce details of the 2022 Conference of The Irish Association for American Studies. The meeting is scheduled to take place on April 29-30 2022, and will be hosted by Dublin City University at its All Hallows Campus. As ever, the Association invites participation from scholars across all disciplines and career stages whose work relates to North America, the United States or the Americas. The theme of the conference is “America Gone Wild”, and contributions are encouraged that will explore the interpretative scope of American wildness and wilderness to its fullest extent. Proposals for papers (of 20 minutes) and panels (of no more than three contributors) are both welcome. Please send abstracts of approximately 300 words (panel proposals should contain individual paper abstracts as well as a […]

WASN recently hosted its first book club on Keisha N. Blain’s Until I am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America. We have further Book Clubs arranged for Friday 11 March and Thursday 5 May, details below: May 5, 2022: The 1619 Project isn't just an initiative or a subject of controversy, it is a confrontation with the truth. For many African American readers, it is a journey towards healing and reparation. For many other American readers, it is an acknowledgement of the wilful ignorance and amnesia about "America's original sin" and the legacy of slavery at the heart of the national narrative. The Women in American Studies Network is ready to engage with these issues. Therefore, the WASN has selected The 1619 Project: A New American Origin Story for our online reading group on May 5 at 6:00 pm. If you’re interested in joining this discussion please register here  

An event part of the UCL Institute of the Americas series Race and Racism in the Americas. **Event synopsis and registration details to be updated shortly**   Dr Lorgia García Peña Mellon Associate Professor at Tufts University

BrANCA 5th Biennial Symposium: Opening Up Friday 13th -  Saturday 14th May 2022 King's College London and online​The British Association of Nineteenth-Century Americanists is pleased to announce dates for its much-delayed biennial symposium on Friday May 13th and Saturday May 14th 2022, 1pm-6.30pm.​This will be a hybrid event held online and at King’s College London to allow participation for those who may not wish to travel. By starting at 1pm London time we hope to allow for virtual attendance from colleagues around the world. It will cost £20 for full time faculty and is free for all others. In addition, some travel grants might be available for postgraduate students. For those who wish to attend in-person there will be a full Covid risk assessment in advance. The theme of the conference is “Opening Up”. We will likely not have seen many of our friends and colleagues for a sustained period […]

A pair of round-table discussions about the successes and failures of the Biden administration so far, and prospects for the midterm elections in November. Organised jointly with the Miller Center at the University of Virginia. This event is taking place in person and will also be live-streamed as a Zoom webinar. To attend in person, please book a place in advance on Eventbrite. To watch the live stream, please register here for the morning session (10.30am to 12pm) and here for the afternoon session (1pm to 2.30pm).

Conference dates: 22-25 June, 2022* Location: University of Edinburgh Plenary Speaker: Professor Melani McAlister (George Washington University ) Historians of the Twentieth Century United States (HOTCUS) is delighted to invite paper and panel proposals for our 2022 annual conference. Following the success of our first online conference in 2021, we are developing a hybrid format for 2022, with a range of both in-person and online events. We hope that this will accommodate those who want to meet in person in the beautiful city of Edinburgh, while also ensuring accessible offerings for all who wish to join us digitally. We will, of course, be keeping a close eye on government advice, and can pivot to an online-only event if necessary. Please consider your availability and preferences if submitting a paper or panel (see below for more information on submissions and the format of the conference). Call for Papers We welcome panels […]

The Society for the History of Women in the Americas (SHAW)  annual one-day conference, co-organised with the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library builds upon this year’s Institute of Historical Research seminar series theme of Black Women of the political, financial, social, and intellectual elite. The annual conference will further expand on this theme to include Black Women’s activism at every level, from the grassroots to the elite circles, at any point in the history of the Americas. Papers, panels, and roundtables will engage with the activism, cultural outputs, social and intellectual networks, and life experiences of Black Women activists. Panels will focus on: Angela Davis (and Claudia Jones). Black Women’s Voices. Institutional Activism. A Roundtable on ‘Representations of Black Women: Modern and Historical Depictions’. The conference will also engage with the British Library’s exhibition on Breaking the News and the day will include a private Show and Tell […]

Pandemics, Public Health, and Statecraft in Twentieth-Century U.S. History July 4-5, 2022, Institute of the Americas, University College London Keynote Speakers:     Professor Gary Gerstle, University of Cambridge Professor Beatrix Hoffman, Northern Illinois University The literature on modern American pandemics is vast and continues to unfold in new directions, as scholars of medicine pay closer attention to the cultural politics of public health and the complex links between capitalism, racism, and infectious diseases. Yet, coverage of epidemics among historians of U.S. statecraft remains far from even. The historiography of the twentieth-century American state says comparatively little about even world-historic outbreaks like the 1918 Influenza pandemic, probably because of an ingrained assumption that epidemics are peripheral, episodic events that do not influence state formation. This conference aims to repair this neglect by setting forth why the history of infectious disease deserves to figure more prominently in accounts of the twentieth-century state. […]