UCL Americas Research Network 2024 Conference – Historical Roots, Modern Realities: Nationalism Across the Americas

CFP: “Illness and the environment in American Literature and Cinema”, EBAAS Conference 2018 Panel organized within the framework of the European Association for American Studies (EAAS) and the British Association for American Studies (BAAS) conference King’s College, University College, and the British Library, London. 4-7 April 2018. “Environment, Place and Protest.” Deadline for abstracts: September 25, 2017 In Toxic Exposures: Contested Illnesses and the Environmental Health Movement (2007), Phil Brown, American sociologist and specialist in environmental studies, examined the relationship between disease clusters and the environment. He concluded environmentally provoked illnesses (EPI) to be “contested illnesses” as they involve scientific disputes and extensive public debate. The environment as an agent in health has long been an issue in American cinema and literature. Literary scholar Heather Houser’s recent volume Ecosickness in U.S. Contemporary U.S. Fiction: Environment and Affect (2014) speaks to this issue looking at a variety of productions including Todd Haynes’ Safe (1995) and Richard Powers’ Gain (1998), to mention only a few. Literary and filmic narratives that […]

IAAS Postgraduate Symposium Trinity Long Room Hub Arts & Humanities Research Institute November 25th, 2017 In their 1789 Constitution, the founders of the United States aspired to “form a more perfect Union”. Over two hundred and twenty years later, what is the state of this “more perfect Union” today? Have modern exclusionary tactics led to an “America for Americans only” feeling immanent in Trump’s speeches? How has American literature, music, film and philosophy been used to enforce or challenge these feelings of  “America for Americans only”? What can an examination of history and politics do to illuminate the United States’ relationship with the rest of the Americas and the wider world? These are some of the questions we hope to examine in our one-day symposium. We welcome proposals for papers that deal with personal, national, international, unions of any kind. Topics include, but are not limited to: Union and/or disunion […]

CALL FOR PAPERS:  Coming to Terms? Confronting War and Peace through the Visual and Material in the Atlantic World, 1651-1865 Conference at the University of Pennsylvania, McNeil Center for Early American Studies, and The University of Delaware 8 – 10 November 2018 Keynote Speaker: Professor Leora Auslander, University of Chicago. Program Committee: Dr Zara Anishanslin (University of Delaware), Dr Manuel Barcia, (University of Leeds), Professor Kathy Brown, (University of Pennsylvania), Dr Joshua Brown, (The Graduate Center, CUNY), Dr Joanna Cohen, (Queen Mary University of London), Dr Christian Crouch (Bard College), Dr Catherine Dann Roeber, (Winterthur Museum), Dr Bronwen Everill, (Cambridge University), Dr Ignacio Gallup-Diaz, (Bryn Mawr College), Dr, Benjamin Irvin (Indiana University and Editor, Journal of American History). How does war end and who ends it? Historians often turn to diplomacy and formal politics to answer this question. It is clear, however, that a much broader population, both military and civilian, […]

Call for Panelists (EBAAS 2018): Emotions and American Protest We are recruiting panelists for a session on the role of emotions in 20th century U.S. protest and activism, as part of the upcoming EBAAS conference in 2018. In his seminal The Art of Moral Protest, James Jasper calls on scholars to pay more attention to the variety of emotions in social movements: “First, individuals have emotional allegiances and experiences that help propel them into protest. Fear, dread and an accompanying sense of threat are key motives. Grief could also play a role, either following the loss of a loved one or as a more general sense of cultural loss. An alternation between shame and anger drives much political conflict. Anger and outrage will almost always play a part, as will pre-existing negative and positive affects toward symbols, places, individuals, and groups.” Although protest is inherently an expression of dissatisfaction with the […]

Call for Papers: Native American Narratives in a Global Context Special Issue to Appear in Transmotion http://journals.kent.ac.uk/index.php/transmotion/announcement/view/19 Deadline for Abstracts: 1st October 2017 In the contemporary moment, the world has seen an increase in transnational and decolonial activist movements around indigenous rights. Idle No More, Rhodes Must Fall, the BDS movement for a Free Palestine and the Dakota Access Pipeline protests have all garnered international attention and trans-indigenous calls of solidarity. These politics have found their ways to literary productions, and many have dubbed the increase in Native American writings and the rapid growth in Indigenous Studies a cultural, literary, and academic renaissance. Building on this historically significant moment, Transmotion is currently seeking submissions for a cross-disciplinary special issue on the topic of Native American Narratives in a Global Context: Comparative and Transnational Perspectives. The special issue builds on a panel entitled “Native American Literature in a Global Context” that took place at the 2017 […]

The deadline for abstracts is 1 October 2017 and the full call for papers can be found here: http://journals.kent.ac.uk/index.php/transmotion/announcement/view/19. In the contemporary moment, the world has seen an increase in transnational and decolonial activist movements around indigenous rights. Idle No More, Rhodes Must Fall, the BDS movement for a Free Palestine and the Dakota Access Pipeline protests have all garnered international attention and trans-indigenous calls of solidarity. These politics have found their ways to literary productions, and many have dubbed the increase in Native American writings and the rapid growth in Indigenous Studies a cultural, literary, and academic renaissance. Building on this historically significant moment, Transmotion is currently seeking submissions for a cross-disciplinary special issue on the topic of Native American Narratives in a Global Context: Comparative and Transnational Perspectives. The special issue builds on a panel entitled “Native American Literature in a Global Context” that took place at the 2017 meeting of the Native […]

aspeers, the first and currently only MA-level peer-reviewed journal for American studies in Europe, will accept submissions by October 15, 2017. In its eleventh issue, aspeers will feature a general section and a topical focus. While the general section accepts submissions on any American studies topic (e.g. revised versions of term papers or chapters from BA theses), the topical section will focus on the theme of "Alternative Americas," calling for submissions that reflect on the diverse roles and meanings of alternative constructions of 'America.' Please find the two calls for papers below. More information can also be found at http://www.aspeers.com/2018 === General Call for Papers === For the general section of its eleventh issue, aspeers seeks outstanding academic writing demonstrating the excellence of graduate scholarship, the range of concerns scrutinized in the field of American studies, and the diversity of perspectives employed. We thus explicitly invite revised versions of term papers or chapters from […]

Call For Papers Rendering (the) Visible III: Liquidity Atlanta, February 8-10, 2018 Deadline: October 20, 2017 Since the early 2000s, the idea of “liquidity” has been mobilized in discourses ranging from social theory to aesthetics, from informatics to architecture, to describe a new relationship with the networked environments of life within global capital. More specifically, within the study of moving image culture, we have seen an increasing turn toward affective relations, plasticity, resonances and flows, whereby images and sounds—no longer grounded in an analogical relation to the real—are seen variously as malleable, untethered, “viral,” or fluid. The graduate program in Moving Image Studies at Georgia State University has, over the past several years, been exploring some of the implications of these ideas, specifically in relation to race, via our research group “liquid blackness.” Now, however, we wish to explore the ways in which the concept of liquidity might begin to chart […]

American Politics Group of the Political Studies Association Annual Conference 2018 Call for Papers The forty-fourth annual conference of the American Politics Group of the Political Studies Association will be held at St Anne’s College, University of Oxford from Thursday 4 to Saturday 6 January 2018. The keynote speaker will be Professor Marc J. Hetherington (Vanderbilt University) http://www.vanderbilt.edu/political-science/bio/marc-hetherington There is a broad conference theme: “The US Constitutional and Political Order: Challenges and Constraints”. This can be approached in various ways, and we will also be happy to receive proposals considering subjects and material beyond this particular theme. For example, papers or panel proposals examining contemporary US political institutions or processes, foreign policy issues or political history are invited. The conference organizers would also welcome papers addressing comparative themes or relevant theoretical or methodological issues. Proposals (no more than 150 words for single papers, 300 words for panels) should be sent […]

“Where’s Nora?” Reclaiming the Irish Girl’s Presence in New England literature A panel organized by Cécile Roudeau (Université Paris Diderot) and Stephanie Palmer (Nottingham Trent University) and sponsored by the Mary E. Wilkins Freeman Society for submission to the Transatlantic Women 3: Women of the Green Atlantic Conference at the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin, Ireland, June 21-22, 2018. Taking the title of one of Sarah Orne Jewett’s story as its tagline, this panel starts with a simple constatation: in nineteenth century New England literature, Nora, Bridget, Erin and other Irish girls were an ubiquitous presence. They popped in and out of New England sketches— from Louisa May Alcott’s “Work” (1873) to Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’s “The Tenth of January” (1868) to Sarah Orne Jewett’s “A Little Captive Maid” (1893) or “Elleneen” (1901). And yet, ubiquitous as she is, the Irish girl is also conspicuously absent in major scholarly studies of New England […]

HOTCUS Winter Symposium 2018 We are particularly interested in using the symposium to showcase examples of the latest historical research in twentieth century American political history. This includes (but is not limited to): ·         Political ideas and ideologies ·         Social movements and the state ·         Race, class, gender and sexuality ·         Public policy and political development ·         Foreign affairs and diplomacy ·         Political economy, business and capitalism ·         Mass incarceration and the carceral state ·         The environment and environmentalism ·         The state and transnationalism ·         State of the field debates Please send any proposals and one-page CVs to Joe Merton (joe.merton@nottingham.ac.uk), Vivien Miller (vivien.miller@nottingham.ac.uk) and Bevan Sewell (bevan.sewell@nottingham.ac.uk) by Friday 27th October 2017. Further information is available at https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/history/events/2018/hotcus-symposium.aspx.

The Journal of Festive Studies, a new peer-reviewed journal published under the auspices of the H-Celebration network, invites submissions for its first issue, scheduled for March 2018. The journal’s stated aim is to draw together all academics who share an interest in festivities, including but not limited to holiday celebrations, family rituals, carnivals, religious feasts, processions and parades, and civic commemorations. The editors in chief -- Dr. Ellen Litwicki, Professor of History at the State University of New York at Fredonia and Dr. Aurélie Godet, Associate Professor of US History at Paris Diderot University -- welcome submissions of original research and analysis from both established and emerging scholars worldwide. Besides traditional academic essays, authors may submit video and photo essays, archival notes, opinion pieces, as well as contributions that incorporate digital media such as visualizations and interactive timelines and maps. Academic essays should be between 6,000 and 12,000 words; other pieces should be between 2,000 and […]

Doing Women's Film and Television History IV: Calling the Shots – Then, Now, and Next May 23 – 25, 2018 University of Southampton, UK Organising team: Shelley Cobb, Linda Ruth Williams, and Natalie Wreyford As researchers of the AHRC-funded project Calling the Shots: Women and Contemporary UK Film Culture 2000-2015 we are proud to host the fourth International Doing Women's Film and Television History conference in association with the Women’s Film and Television History Network – UK/Ireland. The focus for DWFTH-IV is predicated on the idea of the contemporary as an historical formation. The conference will offer a space to think about the interconnectedness of the past, present and future in feminist historiography and theory, as well as across all forms of women’s film culture and film and television production. It will also consider women’s film and television histories and their relationships with the contemporary, framed and read historically, to […]

Edited Collection: Gender, Sexuality and Queer Identities in American Horror Story Editors: Harriet Earle, Sheffield Hallam University, UK Jessica Clark, University of Suffolk, UK This call for papers seeks submissions that engage with the television series American Horror Story (produced by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk) as part of an edited collection on the theme of gender, sexuality and queer identity. Over seven seasons (so far), American Horror Story has received massive popular and academic interest for its bold and often apposite reworkings of a wide range of cultural tropes and folk stories, set against uniquely American backgrounds and played out through a distinct cast of characters. The series has included many nuanced – and also problematic – representations of sexuality and queer identities, as well as brought into question culturally entrenched issues of heteronormativity and mononormativity. Papers should be between 7000-8000 words and the deadline for final submission is 31stJanuary 2018. Papers should be […]