CFP: Ecology, Economy, and Cultures of Resistance: Oikoi of the North American World (University of Edinburgh)

Marisa Futernick - In the run-up to the U.S. Presidential election, Professor Iwan Morgan and artist Marisa J. Futernick discuss the role of personal narrative, biography, and place in the American Presidency. This event coincides with the publication of Futernick’s new book of short stories and photographs, 13 Presidents, which features each President from Herbert Hoover to George W. Bush as a protagonist. Weaving together fact and fiction, Futernick forms a vision of America that is both invented and true. Futernick is a London-based American artist who recently drove across the U.S. to visit all thirteen of the nation’s Presidential libraries as research for 13 Presidents. A screening of photographs from the publication will accompany the talk. 13 Presidents is published in September 2016 by Slimvolume, London.www.slimvolume.org Attendance is free of charge but registration is required. IMPORTANT NOTE on access to 51 Gordon Square: in order to secure the smooth […]

20 October 2016, 5:30pm-7:00pm ON THE ROAD WITH THE AMERICAN PRESIDENTS Marissa Futernick, a London-based American artist will be in conversation with Iwan Morgan about her book 13 Presidents. More information.

Jacob Rees-Mogg to deliver the Sir Winston Churchill Memorial Lecture at the American Museum in Britain Thursday 20 October, 2016 6 – 8pm (drinks at 6pm, lecture starts at 6.45pm) £7 The fourth Churchill Memorial Lecture at the American Museum in Britain is entitled ‘The UK’s Role in the World post-Brexit’ and will be delivered by local MP Jacob Rees-Mogg. In his lecture, pro-Brexit Jacob Rees-Mogg will explore the advantages and challenges of Great Britain being independent from the bureaucracy of the European Union. He will cover the various implications leaving the European Union will have on Great Britain’s economy and governance, and its relationships with countries still in the European Union, as well as America and the rest of the world. Director Richard Wendorf says: ‘This lecture offers the American Museum in Britain the opportunity to host a stimulating speaker whose financial and political experience promise a lively talk […]

Cambridge American History Seminar For further details, pre-circulated papers and other seminars see the CAHS webpage. Thursday 20 October (Trinity Hall, Room TBC), 6:00pm: Manisha Sinha, Draper Chair in American History, University of Connecticut Book Launch: The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition (Yale University Press, 2016) Hosted by the Trinity Hall History Society

Homeland Insecurities 2016 Canadian Association for American Studies Conference Fredericton, New Brunswick, October 21-23 2016 Neoliberalism has ushered in new forms of global insecurity, which instill in American citizens the desire for enforced security. Through tightened border controls, antiterrorism laws, the expansion of the prison system, the war on drugs, and other measures, the U.S. government both provokes and assuages American insecurities about imagined and real terrors, both foreign and domestic. Often, these measures erode welfare institutions that actually provide a degree of safety against economic and social uncertainty, thereby perpetuating a vicious cycle intrinsic to neoliberalism’s creative destruction. What are the origins of the insecurity state, and how has it shaped American culture? More broadly, what does it mean to imagine the United States as a secure homeland? Can non-indigenous Americans ever feel at home in North America without inventing abject social categories meant to contain their insecurities? Further […]

Cambridge American History Seminar For further details, pre-circulated papers and other seminars see the CAHS webpage. 24 October: Nick Witham, Lecturer in US Political History, University College London Remembering 1968: Life Writing, Politics and Protest

Tuesday 25 October, 18.30-20.00 The British Library Conference Centre £8/£6/£5 http://www.bl.uk/events/migrant-landscapes Explore the role of geography in the migration crises witnessed this year So far in 2016, from the Mediterranean Sea to the deserts of the US–Mexico border, thousands of migrants and refugees have died while trying to reach their destinations. As never before, the natural barriers that lie between people fleeing poverty and violence, and their objectives, have become graveyards. In this event, two specialists with experience of the US–Mexico deserts and the Mediterranean Sea respectively, discuss their work and the role of geography in the current migration crises. Dr Robin Reineke is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Colibrí Center for Human Rights, based in Tucson, Arizona. Colibrí is a non-profit organisation working to end migrant death and related suffering along the US–Mexico border through forensic science, advocacy, and research. Patrick Kingsley is the Guardian’s inaugural migration […]

26 October 2016, 6:00pm-8:00pm BLACK HISTORY MONTH FILM SCREENING AND DISCUSSION: TANGERINE To mark Black History Month, the UCL Americas Research Network is collaborating with UCL's LGBTQ Research Network, qUCL, to host a screening of Tangerine followed by a discussion around themes of intersectionality raised in the film. More information.

Forging the American Century: World War II and the Transformation of U.S. Internationalism  Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands, October 27-28, 2016 The intersection of contemporary debates about the future of American power and recent developments in the field of diplomatic history compel us to reconsider the foundations and contours of the American Century. "Forging the American Century", seeks to combine the current concern for America's changing role in the world with new and developing insights into the nature of international relations to revisit the origins of the American Century: World War II and its aftermath. The conference is not about the high diplomacy of the war, nor is it necessarily about the start of the Cold War. Instead, it will address the ways in which the World War and America's rise to global power drove Americans in different fields, both inside and outside the sphere of formal diplomacy, to forge […]

Polish Association for American Studies Annual Conference American Studies Center, University of Warsaw, October 27-29, 2016 Plenary speakers: Rob Kroes, Utrecht University, Netherlands James Kyung-Jin Lee, University of California, Irvine Agnieszka Soltysik-Monnet, University of Lausanne, Switzerland Marta Figlerowicz, Yale University Debate on American Studies in Poland Ewa Łuczak, University of Warsaw; Tadeusz Rachwał, University of Social Sciences and Humanities (SWPS); Marek Wilczyński, Gdańsk University Can American studies benefit from expanding beyond its current intellectual framing by adopting a consciously transnational approach and a more determined interdisciplinary approach? What would such an evolution imply in various locations and cultural/intellectual/political contexts? How would it affect current hierarchies of knowledge production and distribution? Our aim is to provoke critical reflection on what it is we Americanists do and to expand the field of inquiry through methodological innovation. Vernon Louis Parrington wrote in Main Currents in American Thought (1927) that he has "chosen to […]