The 2021 HOTCUS Annual Conference will be held online during the week 7-11 June 2021. The plenary speaker will be Connie Chiang of Bowdoin College. The call for papers is now open and can be found here
‘Presidents and Place’ - Edited collection - Dr Thomas Cobb and Dr Olga Ackroyd From the frontier of Manifest Destiny ideology to the contest between industrialism and agrarianism implicit in the Civil War, ideals of place have both driven the United States’s economic development and accentuated its political divides. Appreciation of the United States today still often derives from how place differs for its citizens; from the strife of the ‘Rustbelt’ to the glamour of the ‘Sunbelt’, the US is remarked on, perhaps more than other Western country, for its cultural and climatological heterogeneity. The history of US presidents’ upbringings and home state affiliations, however, presents a comparative uniformity. Seven out of the fifteen presidents who preceded Lincoln were born in Virginia, a hegemony which outlasted the frontier ideology purveyed by presidents Andrew Jackson and James Polk. In the decades between Appomattox and the New Deal, it was Ohio’s turn […]
American Studies Association of Turkey (ASAT) 40th International American Studies Conference Movement and Mobility in America Online Conference June 28-29, 2021 Movement and mobility lie at the core of American society. Whether through immigration, internal migration, social mobility, or domestic and global expansionism, the United States has always been defined as a nation of frontiers and pioneers, a country that is constantly (re)defining itself, where self-(re)invention is part of the American dream. Movement and mobility in the American context can also be physical, sociological, psychological, or political, as in the case of mobilizing for racial justice, such as with the Black Lives Matter movement that is sweeping the nation. The Trump Administration has prompted a reevaluation of movement and mobility across the political spectrum. While some argue that this has stimulated a visible resurgence in activism and a revival of social movements in the United States, others […]
The Centre for International Studies at ISCTE-IUL (University Institute of Lisbon) is hosting the nineteenth annual conference of the Transatlantic Studies Association. On the right bank of the river Tagus, Lisbon’s history stretches back over time. The 15th and 16th century voyages of discovery turned the city into one of the world’s biggest ports and the centre of an empire that stretched from Brazil to India. Lisbon’s exceptional light has charmed writers, photographers and filmmakers with the polychrome façade tiles creating a unique atmosphere. On foot, by tram, by boat or walking along the river shorelines, any means serves to reveal the cultural diversity of the Portuguese capital as a singular gateway to the Atlantic. KEYNOTE LECTURES Professor Andrew Moravcsik (Princeton University) “Why meeting NATO’s 2% target would make Europe (and the West) less secure” AND Professor Anna Brickhouse (University of Virginia) Mayflower Lecture “From Lima to Lisbon: Earthquake […]
Call for Papers The Hip Hop and Higher Education online conference is a one-day event, funded by the British Association for American Studies (BAAS), that will take place on Thursday 15th July 2021. Through this conference, we seek to do three things: Provide a space for people to exhibit and enjoy the critical, creative and communal elements of Hip Hop Interrogate Hip Hop's exclusion from higher education, linking it to intersecting systems of oppression and discrimination which underpin the university and wider society Explore the merits and possible dangers of incorporating Hip Hop into formal sites of higher education In order to reflect and honour the dynamism of Hip Hop, music and performance will feature throughout the day. In that vein, we not only invite artists, academics (early careers/established) and members of the Hip Hop community to submit proposals for papers, but also group presentations, performances, videos, virtual exhibitions, discussion […]
This edited collection seeks to explore the representation of the First Lady in a range of different texts and media. The collection aims to examine the President’s wife in a purely cultural context by investigating the ways in which she has been represented, embodied, characterised and commemorated in film, fiction, memoir, photography and portraiture, television, theatre, education, museum studies, fashion, and social media. Beyond the White House is an original work that makes use of cultural interpretation to reconfigure the figure of the First Lady as a culturally authoritative individual possessing the ability to sway, change, inspire, and manipulate public attention and opinion. Moving away from biographies and histories, this is the first volume of its kind to consider the representation of the First Lady figure through the prism of popular culture – and therefore consider her impact upon ‘cultural politics’ – and the first to regard her as a strategically important socio-cultural […]
Call for Papers 3rd Young Scholar Symposium: Sharing Critical Testimonies of Wellness in Times of Crisis February 2022 Various interpretations of what constitutes health and the normal functioning of human beings have been around even before the Hippocratic “break from divine notions of health” (Green). The most prevalent ones, like Christopher Boorse’sfamous theory of health, define health via negativa as the absence of disease and sub/dysfunction. However, an alternative, positive view of health, partially powered by interdisciplinary investigations of conditions in which people function for sustained periods of time under other than “normal circumstances” (Boorse 7–8), has claimed the spotlight in the past few decades. Moreover, a critical turning point along the millenia-long trajectory of health discourse in the West, the lack of value neutrality in dominant definitions of health, and of the practices these definitions underpin and legitimize, has been emphasized in recent years. On the broad tracks of […]
As we head into the 20s of the 21st century, we mark the centennials of key O’Neill plays that introduced his voice to a wider audience. Beyond the Horizon premiered on Broadway in 1920 and ushered in a uniquely American tragic form. The Emperor Jones also opened on Broadway in 1920 and was a work that both experimented with emerging expressionist theatrical techniques and broke the color line on Broadway. The Hairy Ape, staged by the Provincetown Players in 1922, criticized capitalist structures and pointed out the fragility and fallibility of the American Dream. Tapping into the zeitgeist of the early 1920s, a time when rapid changes in technology and industry, sudden shifts in workplace environments, and clashes between and among individuals based on differences of race, class, and gender swirled around the cultural and societal ether, O’Neill’s works reflected the longing and belonging that permeated the contemporary culture. A […]
An engaging evening with readings, Q&A, and discussion with Cadwell Turnball. Funded by a US Embassy Small Grant, Bookable-Space African-American Lit-Literary Salon is a monthly event. Each month, we'll feature a book written by an African American author. On the first Friday of each month, the author will join us in Zoom to read us engaging stories from their wonderful book, talk about the writing/themes/influences for the book, and answer questions about writing, process, and/or their publishing path. The events are ideal for readers who enjoy and/or are interested in: fiction, contemporary fiction, American studies, American literature, African-American studies, African-American literature, English literature, and well-told stories. Bookable-Space African American Lit Literary Salon promotes and expects a non-judgmental and supportive attitude from participants. If you’re interested in joining, would like to learn more, or are an author interested in being a salon guest, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. […]
American Crisis/American Renewal? Australian and New Zealand American Studies Association Conference November 24-26, 2021 Hosted by Macquarie School of Social Sciences Online via Zoom Recognizing the multiple challenges confronting the United States, and the academy, during the early twenty-first century, we invite proposals that reflect on the theme of “American Crisis/American Renewal?” All scholars working in the field of American studies – or whose work considers the place of American history, literature, culture, politics, or foreign policy in global or transnational contexts – are invited to submit abstracts for panels or individual papers to Chris Dixon (chris.dixon@mq.edu.au) by 17 September 2021. As always, postgraduate students are particularly encouraged to attend, both by presenting their work to the conference and/or by participating in a postgraduate workshop that will be held on the first day of the conference. Individual presentations that are not part of a proposed panel will be allocated […]
In November 1621 colonists in Massachusetts celebrated a year of survival and their first harvest with a feast that has since been called The First Thanksgiving. The feast was a supposed celebration of resilience after hardship. It was not until 1863, in the midst of the American Civil War and with the nation divided, that this feast was enshrined as a national holiday and a touchstone of American tradition and ideology: a story of togetherness projected over the realities of division, exceptionalism, genocide, and slavery. Now, four hundred years later, the story of the First Thanksgiving both provides comfort in another time of hardship while also revealing a depth of narrative ideology and mythology which obfuscates the ideological construction of modern day American nations. In the narrative of the US, in particular, at home and abroad, we see an increased awareness and attention to historical and contemporary situations that reveal […]
Landscape Research Group is delighted to be able to announce the date for this hugely exciting and important online event exploring the long-lasting physical and cultural impacts of empire on the landscape. We have invited three renowned academics and authors who have written extensively about colonisation’s effects on the landscape in different parts of the world from varying perspectives. They will be discussing and comparing how landscapes and buildings express empires’ power relationships and their enduring legacy, from conquest and dispossession, both in the colonies and metropole. The panellists are: Professor Jill H Casid, a historian, theorist and practicing artist based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her contributions to the transdisciplinary field of visual studies include Sowing Empire: Landscape and Colonization (Minnesota, 2005) and Scenes of Projection: Recasting the Enlightenment Subject (Minnesota, 2015). Professor of English and Comparative Literature at UCLA, Saree Makdisi is the author of Romantic Imperialism (Cambridge University Press, 1998), Palestine Inside […]