Each year we will post a selection of CFPs for the annual conference of the British Association for American Studies.
For more information please visit the main BAAS conferences and events page, here.
The 2019 BAAS Annual Conference will be hosted by the University of Sussex. This will take place 25-27 April 2019.
The 2020 BAAS Annual Conference will be hosted by the University of Liverpool.
The 64th British Association for American Studies Conference
25-27 April 2019, University of Sussex
Keynote Speakers: Barbara Savage (University of Pennsylvania/University of Oxford), Robyn Weigman (Duke University), Jonathan Bell (UCL)
Conference Themes
Proposals are welcomed on any subject in American Studies, and submissions are particularly welcome that address our two broad themes:
- LGBTQ+ History. Inspired by the 50th anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall Riots and the heritage of the Brighton area, the conference welcomes submissions relating to the American sexuality, civil rights and sexual dissidence.
- Activism and Radical Thought. Inspired equally by the East Sussex career of Thomas Paine, we also encourage papers exploring the history and culture of radical thought and activism from all sides of the political spectrum.
Submission Guidelines
- Given the size and scope of the conference, we will give preference to fully formed panel proposals, but will also accept individual paper proposals where possible.
- All individual paper proposals should be for 20-minute presentations.
- All sessions at the conference will be a maximum of 1 hour 30 minutes. Proposals for panels should therefore consist of no more than three speakers, or, if more speakers are desired, should be conceived as roundtable discussions.
- BAAS is dedicated to fostering a culture of diversity and inclusion. We will give preference to panels that reflect the diversity of our field in terms of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and institutional affiliation. We will also give preference to panels that include a mix of participants from across the career spectrum (i.e., from postgraduate to professor). All-male panel proposals will not be accepted.
- Equipment for the projection of visual presentations will be available in all rooms.
Special Funding for Targeted Research Panels
As a step towards building a more inclusive and diverse scholarly community, BAAS has made available funding for convenors to organise two successive annual conference panels that will support, promote, and feature the production of research by and about people of colour, LGBTQ+, and disability communities. Through Targeted Research Panels, BAAS seeks to provide opportunities to foster and forward research that attends to and includes historically marginalised communities and scholars without regularised institutional support.
Convenors who apply for funding to organise a Targeted Research Panel must commit to coordinating a thematically cohesive panel for the 2019 and 2020 BAAS Annual Conferences. Each selected Targeted Research Panel will be awarded £5000 for a two-year cycle of BAAS annual conference panels. The panel convenor might, for example, use funds to subsidise the travel and accommodation of the panellists.
The deadline for Targeted Research Panel applications is the same as the general CFP. For further details click here.
Instructions on Submission
Paper proposals should be 250 words maximum, including a title. Panel proposals should include a 250-word abstract for each constituent paper as well as an abstract of no more than 250 words describing the panel session as a whole.
Please submit proposals, along with a brief CV and email address for each participant, to baas2019@sussex.ac.uk by the deadline of 15 November 2018.
Further details at: www.baas2019.org
Follow us on Twitter at: @BAAS_2019
CFP 2017
Writing Shared Futures: African American Literature and Racialisation
BAAS Panel at ‘English: Shared Futures,’ 5-7 July 2017, Newcastle, UK
Contributions are invited for a BAAS panel at ‘English: Shared Futures,’ a large-scale conference spanning across the discipline.
The panel ‘Writing Shared Futures: African American Literature and Racialisation’ will explore the significances of, and engagements with, racialisation in post-Civil Rights writing by African Americans. It will seek to ask how understandings of racialisation are connected with understandings of the future, and to examine the ways in which literary texts have questioned categories and binaries of race and have complicated views of the processes by which racial identity comes into being.
Such processes might be made visible in contexts such as:
- migration and immigration
- multi-ethnic coalitions
- intersectional politics
- future worlds
- internationalism
- coming of age narratives
- popular culture/music/sport
- contemporary politics, especially the Obama years
- new technologies and social media
Possible writers include Elizabeth Alexander, Paul Beatty, Octavia Butler, Samuel Delany, Percival Everett, Adrienne Kennedy, Andrea Lee, Reginald McKnight, Toni Morrison, Suzan-Lori Parks, Claudia Rankine, Ishmael Reed, Colson Whitehead, John Edgar Wideman and August Wilson.
We welcome submissions from researchers at all career stages, including postgraduates. Please send paper proposals of no more than 300 words and short biographies of no more than 200 words to both Jenny Terry j.a.terry@durham.ac.uk and Nicole Kingn.king2@reading.ac.uk by Monday 12 September 2016.
For further details of this conference, organised by the English Association and University English, please see: http://www.