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British Association for American Studies

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International Panel on “Fictional Maximalism and the Americas: New Voices, New Perspectives”

SASA 2022 – Scottish Association for the Study of America Annual Conference

Come and join us for the Scottish Association for the Study of America's 23rd Annual Conference! About this event The Scottish Association for the Study of America (SASA) was formed in 1999 to encourage the study of North America in Scotland. Due to ongoing Covid-19 restraints, our 23rd annual conference on Saturday 5 March 2022 will be a Virtual Conference (via Zoom). With two simultaneously running channels of panels and shorter 10-15-minute papers, we have put together a day of engaging and fascinating research covering the broadest range of topics relating to American history, studies and wider North American, Caribbean and Latin American subjects. Though we may be online, this year we have the widest programme and we look forward to hearing our speakers' discussions! The day will also include our annual AGM meeting where we will be announcing the election results for our committee. Registration for SASA 2022 is […]

WASN Book Club: March 2022

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:   March 11, 2022: For this month's book club, we will be discussing Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers' new book ' They Were Her Property'; White Women as Slaveowners in the American South (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019). We welcome scholars at every stage, so do come along and to share your thoughts!   Date: Friday 11th March 2022   Time: 12 noon- 1pm (UK time)   Register in advance for this meeting: https://mmu-ac-uk.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMqd-qoqzooG9fRM_iLhs1ctMQ0kV5eEtnZ   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 […]

HOTCUS 2022 Winter Symposium: The Manhattan Project Turns 80: Reflections on the Nuclear Age

The Manhattan Project Turns 80: Reflections on the Nuclear Age March 12, 2022, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, UK 2022 sees the 80th anniversary of the official commencement of the Manhattan Project, the vast programme to build the atomic bomb. An undertaking of unparalleled scale and scope, the project’s ultimate success ushered in an era of atomic fear, fantastical atomic utopias, radioactive human and environmental carnage, and legacies up to the present day and into the distant future. The 2022 Historians of the Twentieth Century United States (HOTCUS) Winter Symposium takes the Manhattan Project as its starting point in the hope that this will provoke a wide-ranging discussion of the nuclear age and its histories. The symposium will feature an opening keynote by Dr Jonathan Hogg (University of Liverpool) and a closing keynote from Dr Linda Ross (University of Glasgow). There will also be a round table discussion reflecting on […]

HOTCUS 2022 Doctoral and Early Career Travel Awards 

HOTCUS welcomes applications from doctoral students and recent PhD graduates not yet in academic employment, as well as those on short-term (less than three years), fractional, or hourly paid contracts for its 2022 Travel Award competition. HOTCUS Travel Awards support research in any area of twentieth century United States history. Applications may be made for up to £500 for research travel and/or research expenses more generally during the 2022 calendar year. There are no residency restrictions and travel may be to, or within, any country. Given the current pandemic-related uncertainty surrounding research travel, if you plan to apply for research travel expenses we strongly recommend that you provide an alternative plan for spending the research funding as well.  A survey conducted by HOTCUS, BrANCH, and BGEAH has brought a significant pattern of exclusion within the field of American history in the UK to light (the survey report is accessible via https://hotcus.org.uk/diversity-and-inclusion/american-history-in-the-uk-survey/). In response to […]

Job Opportunity: Research Assistant(s) – Bridging the Resource Gap: American Studies Resources for 16-19s

Job Advertisement Research Assistant(s) – Bridging the Resource Gap: American Studies Resources for 16-19s Project Lead: Dr. Emily Brady, e.brady@leeds.ac.uk Administrative Lead: Emma Hall, emma.hall@warwick.ac.uk   Job Title: British Association for American Studies Outreach Research Assistant   Role: This is an exciting opportunity to work with the British Association for American Studies on a project designed to engage new students in our discipline. This project seeks to raise awareness of American Studies as an undergraduate degree programme through the creation and dissemination of educational resources. Reporting to the Project Leads and working collaboratively alongside another project officer, you will support in creating resources aimed at students aged 16-19 years old.   You will build a range of educational resources to engage students in further education (FE) in the UK with the benefits of American Studies as an undergraduate degree. This will be done in two ways: firstly, through creating lesson […]

Call for Papers: ‘Slavery and Emotions in the Atlantic World’

University of Reading Reading, United Kingdom

Department of History, University of Reading, November 17-18, 2022 This workshop will bring together historians researching the roles that emotions played in the creation, maintenance, and experience of slavery in the Atlantic World. Fundamental to how enslavers wielded power, the enslaved also used emotion as a method of resistance, and it was clearly central to their everyday lived experiences. It is almost impossible to read testimony left by the enslaved, or sources produced by enslavers, without encountering mentions of acute feelings, yet studies are only recently beginning to emerge that explore slavery through the lens of emotion. The value of pursuing this avenue of research has been exemplified by recent historiographical turns focused on the ‘history of emotions’ and the analysis of archival silences. Historians of emotion have fruitfully demonstrated that to understand societies, we must explore how emotional conventions functioned and how ordinary people created their own emotional worlds. […]

Pre-Conference meet up for Women in American Studies

This WASN sponsored session is designed as a meeting place for delegates who are planning to attend U.K based American studies/history/politics conferences in 2022. It is open to and welcoming of all who identify as women and those marginalized along the gender spectrum.Come and introduce yourself and get to meet colleagues who are attending the same American studies conferences as you in 2022. These include but are not limited to the annual conferences of BAAS, SHAW, HOTCUS, APG and BrANCH.This virtual hangout provides an opportunity to:  meet a confirmed sister panellist for an upcoming conference introduce yourself to colleagues working in your field who you would like to meet up with at a conference find potential panellists to collaborate with on a panel proposal for a conference later in the year consider how to network and stay safe at conferences   Register in advance here:   https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwvf-muqjksE9BniEFN5wL02UE7AANzqRTW   

CfP: Pandemics, Public Health, and Statecraft in Twentieth-Century U.S. History, Institute of the Americas

University College London 51 Gordon Square, London, United Kingdom

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. […]

CfP: BRANCA 5th Biennial Symposium: Opening Up

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 […]

CfP: Conference for the American Studies Association of Norway: “Appalling Ocean, Verdant Land: America and the Sea”

Proposal Deadline: 8 April 2022 The 2022 ASANOR conference will be held at Nord University from September 29 to October 1. We welcome papers from a wide range of fields, including literature, history, political science, linguistics, and cultural studies, that explore the role of the sea in the American experience. From the Puritan pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock to the digital nomads stopping over in San Francisco, the multifarious interchange across the seas has, for better or worse, shaped the nation; whether through the unspeakable horrors of the Middle Passage or the grateful arrival of huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the ceaseless, multidirectional traffic of people, ideas, values, expressions, aesthetics, and wares has defined and ceaselessly redefined what we think of as American. This process is sometimes slow and gradual, sometimes precipitate and radical, but whether through generations of involvement with economic and cultural energies or a lightening extension […]

CfP: ASANOR Conference 2022 – “Appalling Ocean, Verdant Land: America and the Sea”

Nord University Universitetsalléen 11, Bodø

Proposal Deadline: 8 April 2022 The 2022 ASANOR conference will be held at Nord University from September 29 to October 1. We welcome papers from a wide range of fields, including literature, history, political science, linguistics, and cultural studies, that explore the role of the sea in the American experience. From the Puritan pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock to the digital nomads stopping over in San Francisco, the multifarious interchange across the seas has, for better or worse, shaped the nation; whether through the unspeakable horrors of the Middle Passage or the grateful arrival of huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the ceaseless, multidirectional traffic of people, ideas, values, expressions, aesthetics, and wares has defined and ceaselessly redefined what we think of as American. This process is sometimes slow and gradual, sometimes precipitate and radical, but whether through generations of involvement with economic and cultural energies or a lightening extension […]

International Panel on “Fictional Maximalism and the Americas: New Voices, New Perspectives”

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 […]