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British Association for American Studies ☰

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CFP: New Perspectives in English and American Studies (Jagiellonian University)

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‘The Winchester: Legend of the West’ (British Library)

British Library Conference Centre 96 Euston Road, London, United Kingdom

When Friday 29 September, 18.30-20.00 Where The British Library Conference Centre Price £8/£6/£5 http://www.bl.uk/events/the-winchester-an-american-icon BBC journalist Laura Trevelyan explores the history of, and family behind the Winchester Rifle The Winchester Rifle, the iconic gun made in New Haven, Connecticut, and sold in its hundreds of thousands around the world, mirrors American expansion at a key period in the young country’s history. The lethal repeating rifle became the defining image of America’s frontier – and was known amongst Native Americans as “the spirit gun”. It represented both the pioneering vigour and the brutal force which conquered the West. Laura Trevelyan is a BBC journalist and descendent of the Winchester family. She is the author of The Winchester: Legend of the West (I.B.Tauris, September 2016).

CFP: Literary Maryland in the American Imagination (Baltimore)

Date: September 30, 2016 Location: Maryland, United States Subject Fields: American History / Studies, Contemporary History, Literature In her 1998 play How I Learned to Drive, Paula Vogel described Maryland as a place where “You can still imagine what how used to be before the malls took over. This countryside was once dotted with farmhouses. From their porches, you could have witnessed the Civil War raging in the front fields.” Considering the preceding quotation—as well as Maryland’s geographical and figurative status as a border state between the North and South—in terms of America’s complicated racial and social history, the following panel invites scholars from a variety of disciplines to present on the representation of Maryland in the American consciousness at NeMLA's 2017 conference in Baltimore, Maryland (March 23rd-26th). How has Maryland paradoxically been portrayed as a place of freedom and promise, and, more recently, a place of civil unrest and failed […]

CFP: International Pynchon Week (La Rochelle, France)

Pynchon's New Worlds La Rochelle, France, June 5-9, 2017 Literary new worlds The 2017 International Pynchon Week will be held on the French Atlantic coast in the old harbor of La Rochelle, from which a number of Europeans set sail for the New World. The conference will be hosted by the Musée du Nouveau Monde, among its collection of Allegories of America. The conveners hope this liminal space on the margins of Europe will inspire Pynchon scholars to sail out towards yet unexplored territories, following some of the leads below or picking up any related or unrelated Pynchonian line.Convenors: Gilles Chamerois (Université de Brest) and Bénédicte Chorier-Fryd (Université de Poitiers) Pynchon's early fiction was published under the auspices of "new worlds:" "Low-Lands" was issued by New World Writing, a paperback magazine (volume 17, 1960); speculative fiction writer Michael Moorcock's New Worlds magazine ran "Entropy" in 1969. How "new" were and […]

USSO BAAS PG Keynote Award

In collaboration with this year’s BAAS Postgraduate Conference (19 November, University of Leeds) USSO is delighted to be launching its Keynote Competition for PGRs and ECRs. The winning entrant will be the USSO sponsored Keynote speaker at the conference, and will also be awarded with a £100 book token. The Keynote must engage with the theme of the conference, ‘Negotiating the Borders and Boundaries of Americanism’. The competition is open to all PGRs and ECRs. The closing date for abstracts is 30 September. For further details see: https://usso.uk/calls-for-contributions/cfps-us-studies-online/keynote-competition/

CFP: Duality and Duplicity in African-American Literature (Baltimore)

CFP: Duality and Duplicity in African-American Literature Location: Marriott Waterfront, Baltimore, MD Dates: 23/03/2017 – 26/03/2017 Organization: Northeast Modern Language Association The idea that African-Americans are actual and full-fledged citizens of the United States is not a new one; the racism that prevents that idea to flourish is also not new. Recent events, including the death of Freddie Carlos Gray, Jr. in Baltimore, have brought to the fore the question of whether or not the United States values its black citizens, and extends to them the same rights as it does to its non-black citizens. The historical record has much to say on this point, but the literary record also is instructive in perceptions of race in the United States. This panel will explore the literary precedents to examine how tensions between citizenship and real-world status have formed the basis of works by American authors.  How do the literary works […]

Job: Terra Foundation for American Art Visiting Professor (Oxford University)

Applications are invited for a Terra Foundation for American Art Visiting Professor for the 2017/18 academic year at Oxford University. This post, which is generously funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art, will be based in the History of Art Department, part of the History Faculty and is offered in association with a Visiting Fellowship at Worcester College. This 1-year post is a unique and exciting opportunity to build on long-term research networks, encourage international symposia and conferences, and inspire a new generation of American art academics and curators by further embedding the subject into Oxford’s graduate and undergraduate curricula. The successful candidate will be required to give tutorials, lectures, classes and supervision at both undergraduate and graduate level, to engage in examining and administrative work, and to engage in advanced study and original research in the history of American art. The successful candidate will hold a doctorate and […]

CFP: Extreme Appalachia! (Virginia Tech)

Preliminary Call for Participation 2017 Appalachian Studies Association Conference EXTREME Appalachia! March 9-12, 2017, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia “Extreme Appalachia” is the theme for the 40th annual Appalachian Studies Conference. By "extreme" we mean the impassioned commitments people have to the region, the land, and Appalachian communities, ways of life, and livelihoods. We mean the ways extreme economics—excessive resource extraction and use, underfunding of public education and services, and dismal job opportunities—have sparked community resilience and activism that advance a sustainable future for the region. “Extreme Appalachia” also references exploitative pop culture products like reality television programming—as well as the countering power of the region’s visual, performance, and literary arts to nurture, provoke, and inspire. In the face of extremity, regionalist scholarship continues to augment ongoing struggles for racial, social, economic, and environmental justice. The 2017 Program Committee invites proposals for panels, papers, posters, roundtables, performances, workshops, or organizing sessions. Papers and posters […]

Registration: BRANCA Reading Group (Oxford University)

For our Autumn 2016 Reading Group, the British Association of Nineteenth-Century Americanists (BrANCA) will address the role and representation of pedagogy in nineteenth-century American literature. The students who arrive at university do so after years of training in what were once called schoolrooms by people who were once known as schoolmasters. This set of readings takes up the question of how and why the nineteenth-century American schoolroom and its attendant schoolmasters reshaped notions of reading, personhood, and the relation of the school to the state, the domestic sphere, and religion. These readings also encourage a historical view of the origins of current humanities pedagogy, from early childhood through tertiary education, at a moment when institutional pressures have incited a defence of said pedagogy at all costs. One question to take up then is whether the schoolroom in its various current incarnations—lecture hall, small group, tutorial, seminar—is worth defending. A second […]

Job: Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in History, 0.66 FTE (Nottingham Trent University)

Closing Date: 02/10/2016 Salary: Grade H/I (£31,656 - £46,414 p.a.) Post Ref: S3617 This is a fixed term post for 14 months with a pro rata salary We are seeking to appoint a 0.6FTE Lecturer in History from 1 November 2016 for a fixed term period of 14 months. Applications are sought from candidates with teaching expertise in the modern history of the United States. You will be able to demonstrate experience and expertise in teaching, curriculum design and assessment in History and within your own specialist area. Candidates must possess a commitment to teaching and learning and be able to work in a team-based and interdisciplinary context. The post-holder will be expected to contribute to curriculum delivery and development at undergraduate level in History; there are also opportunities to contribute to postgraduate level teaching. Applicants should have the aptitude to teach to the highest standards at both undergraduate and […]

CFP: Deprovincializing the U.S. Presidency: John F. Kennedy as seen from the decolonizing world (Princeton)

  What is the history of the perception of the U.S. president – including as a global president – in the decolonized/ing world? At which junctures did that perception arise, shift, and assume contrasting if not conflicting forms? Who produced, consumed, spread, and contested it? And what does this theme tell us about globalization? These are key questions underlying this conference which, for three reasons, will focus on the presidency of John F. Kennedy. Firstly, Kennedy (and his administration) was greatly interested in decolonized/ing countries, which he saw as central to a changing world. Described by Arthur Schlesinger as “Secretary of State for the third world” , he unprecedentedly engaged also nonaligned countries, courted on the D.C. stage leaders of decolonized countries, and intensified public diplomacy and expanded polling worldwide. But simultaneously, he sought to not alienate European NATO allies that held colonies. Related, secondly, the time around 1960 was […]

Cambridge American History Seminar: Book Launch

Cambridge American History Seminar For further details, pre-circulated papers and other seminars see the CAHS webpage. Tuesday 4 October (Room G.04, English Faculty West Road), 4:30pm: Mark Greif, Associate Professor of Literary Studies, The New School, New York City Book Launch: Against Everything: Essays (Penguin Random House, 2016) Hosted by the Cambridge American Literature Research Seminar

Hybrid Republicanism: Italy and American Art, c. 1840-1918 (Rome)

Hybrid Republicanism: Italy and American Art, c. 1840-1918 Rome, October 6-7 2016 Sponsors:  American Academy in Rome, Centro Studi Americani, Rome, and Museo di Roma, Palazzo Braschi, Rome Italy has served as a key destination for American artists since the founding of the republic.  American painters, sculptors, and illustrators were enchanted with its mythic arcadian past, fascinated with its classical legacy, and impassioned by its political movement toward independence and unification, the Risorgimento.  This conference will consider the shared notions of republicanism and tyranny that animated American and Italian politics in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  Although Italians eventually chose a constitutional monarchy as their governing structure, Americans understood the Italian state in republican terms—as a nation comprised of free, autonomous, and self-governing citizens.  The scope of the conference will take into account significant historical events that linked Italy and the United States, such as the Italian wars of […]