Roundtable Review: ‘American Studies in the Twenty-First Century’, BAAS Annual Conference 2021 (Online)
In his introduction to ‘American Studies in the Twenty-First Century’, Andrew Fearnley (University of Manchester), who co-organized the roundtable with Hilary Emmett (University of East Anglia), argued that the “greatest challenge that faces British American Studies is our subject’s diminishing profile among young people.” This panel sought to consider how we should explain what American Studies is today to the public and to potential American Studies undergraduates, who are increasingly being drawn away from American Studies towards other subjects. How do we explain this field to those who have little or no knowledge of what it is? What words best capture what it is we do today in American Studies departments, or in American Studies degrees? To begin addressing these questions, the roundtable brought together five speakers from different institutions around the United Kingdom. These speakers brought a variety of backgrounds and experiences teaching American Studies to the panel, a […]
Political Identity in the Crossroads of America: Swing States, Campaign Presence, and Presidential Outcomes
‘The reality of recent United States presidential elections is that there are only about ten states which are the object of attention for candidates and campaigns,’ Stacey Hunter Hecht and David Schultz wrote in 2015.[i] In the five presidential elections between 2000 and 2016, thirty-eight of the fifty American states voted for the same political party.[ii] Many of the twelve outlying states that have not voted consistently—often labeled as swing states—have taken on disproportionate importance in national elections, drawing candidates’ time, money and attention. Since the nineteenth century, the Midwest, historically home to many of the nation’s swing states, has been the most frequently visited region by presidential candidates. Yet while Vigo County, Indiana is the only county in the nation that has voted for the winner of the presidential race in every election since 1956, Indiana is not on the list of Midwestern battleground states. Instead, Indiana is in […]