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British Association for American Studies

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Catherine Bateson

Dr Catherine Bateson is a Lecturer and Tutor of American history at Durham University, where she teaches African America, Native America, slavery, political, social and cultural history. She specialises in the history and study of American Civil War song culture, particularly in relation to Irish American Civil War songs and music and their dissemination beyond the Irish American diaspora. She is also the Vice-Chair of the Scottish Association for the Study of America (SASA) and a co-founder of the War Through Other Stuff Society. Follow her on Twitter @catbateson.

‘The Place, The Circumstances, The Remembrance’: The Performative Nature of Irish-American Civil War Memory and Memorialisation

In one of 2020’s notable moments, this November saw centenary commemorations at Westminster Abbey’s Unknown Warrior grave. Consecrated through the burial of an unknown British serviceman from World War One on 11 November 1920, the site has also come to represent the war dead of subsequent conflicts. In America, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier will mark the centenary of its first burial next year in 2021, although unlike Britain, the crypt includes Unknown Soldier tombs from World War Two and the Korean War.[i] At the home of American military and civic memory in Arlington National Cemetery, the memorial is itself an object of interest, with frequent visitors observing in stony silence as Sentinels of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier keep watch and change guard come rain, shine, snow or terrorist disaster.[ii]   The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is not the cemetery’s first, or indeed only, grave of […]


Review: Scottish Association for the Study of America Annual Conference 2019

Review: Scottish Association for the Study of America Annual Conference, University of Edinburgh, 2 March 2019 After falling victim to the 2017 Beast from the East at St. Andrew’s, this year’s Scottish Association for the Study of America (SASA) conference was held in a thankfully snow-free Edinburgh and celebrated a special anniversary. Twenty years on from the society’s 1999 founding in an Edinburgh pub, SASA has become a highlight for those working in the fields of American Studies and American history both in and around Scotland. From its humble beginnings to an ever-expanding organisation and conference that brings together scholars from many nations at various career stages, and covering a plethora of interdisciplinary topics, SASA 2019 did not disappoint. With forty-two speakers and fifteen panel sessions, this year’s conference saw the largest number of presenters and papers, along with one of the highest attendance records. This not only shows the breadth […]


Review: European Association for American Studies Conference 2016

To an historian – like myself – a panel entitled ‘Digitextualities – Spatialities, Fluidities, Hybridities’ seems perplexing at first, but the fact such papers could sit alongside those on nineteenth century slave history or modern American literature demonstrates EAAS’s inclusiveness. The exceptional coordination of such a large and international conference was a credit to the organisers.


Review: Seventeenth Annual Conference of the Scottish Association for the Study of America

Snow dusted the horizon on 5 March, 2016, as the Scottish Association for the Study of America –affectionately known as SASA – gathered at the University of Stirling for its seventeenth annual conference. Promoting research into all forms of Americana, the SASA conference this year showcased the broad range of American Studies, History, and Literature, undertaken by doctoral, early career researchers, and established academics throughout Scotland and beyond.


Conference Review: Sixteenth Annual Conference of the Scottish Association for the Study of America

While SASA is first and foremost a Scottish-based organisation, it is by no means dominated by academics from Scottish universities. Indeed, attendees and speakers travelled north from Newcastle, Coventry, Warwick, London and Dublin, highlighting the Association’s inclusiveness.


An Assessment of the American Civil War Sesquicentennial

Does the fact that events occurred 150 years ago give them a significance that differs from any other year? Bound to it is the Civil War’s meaning in America today.


Book Review: The American President in Film and Television: Myth, Politics and Representation by Greg Frame

Greg Frame’s work, The American President in Film and Television: Myth, Politics and Representation, is a tour-de-force of analytical investigation into the iconographical development and narrative frameworks of the fictionalised presidential genre.