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

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 […]

IAAS Annual Conference 2020: “America Gone Wild”

DCU All Hallows Campus Grace Park Rd, Dublin, Ireland

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 Book Club: May 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: 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  

CfP: BrANCH Annual Conference

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 […]