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

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

The BrANCH committee is pleased to invite paper and panel proposals for our 29th annual conference, to be held at College Court, University of Leicester, 7-9 October 2022. The following Call for Papers for BrANCH 2022 at College Court is issued in the expectation that the Covid-19 rules will be sufficiently relaxed, and the various vaccinations sufficiently effective, that the conference can be held in person in October.  The committee will be keeping a close eye on the situation. —–0—– We are delighted to announce that the Parish Lecturer for 2022 will be Professor Susan-Mary Grant of the University of Newcastle.  Until recently the Chair of BrANCH, Professor Grant has made a major contribution to the study of nineteenth-century American history in the United Kingdom.  She is the author of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.: Civil War Soldier, Supreme Court Justice; The War for a Nation: The American Civil War; and […]