American Studies in Britain Newsletter of the British Association for American Studies

Issue 96 Spring 2007

IN THIS ISSUE:

BAAS Annual Conference Programme, University of Leicester, April 19-22 2007 EiC American Studies Project EAAS News Elections 2007!!

http://www.baas.ac.uk ISSN 1465-9956 Contents

Editorial ...... 2

52nd Annual Conference ...... 3

Obituaries: Robert C. (Bob) Reinders and Arthur Marwick ...... 13

BAAS Requests ...... 15

American Studies News ...... 15

EAAS News ...... 18

American Studies Recruitment Project ...... 18

Report of the BAAS Annual Post-Graduate Conference ...... 19

Travel Award Reports ...... 20

Awards Opportunities ...... 26

Conference and Seminar Announcements ...... 27

New Members ...... 36

Members’ Publications ...... 38

Members’ News ...... 38

Fellowship Opportunities ...... 38

Publishing Opportunities ...... 39

BAAS Membership of Committees ...... 39

Former BAAS Chairs ...... 41

Notice of BAAS AGM 2007 ...... 42

Cover: The late President Gerald Ford with George Harrison and Billy Preston in the Oval Office, 13 December 1974. Photographer: David Hume Kennerly Reproduction Number: A2428-14A Repository: Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, Ann Arbor MI 48109 USA

ASIB American Studies in Britain The Newsletter of the British Association for American Studies Editor: Catherine Morley, Department of English Studies, Oxford Brookes University, Gipsy Lane Campus, Headington, Oxford, OX3 0BP [email protected] ASIB is the newsletter of the British Association for American Studies, but the opinions expressed in its pages are those of the contributors alone and do not necessarily reflect the policies or beliefs of the Association.

Issue 96 Spring 2007  Editorial January’s state funeral of President Gerald R. Ford Kennedy finally admitted, that the man from Grand was one of those spectacular public occasions that Rapids had done the right thing, even though it Americans do so well. It was also a reminder of destroyed him politically. one of the most obvious differences between our Back in 1974, few would have guessed that history’s two political systems. When former British prime verdict would be so generous. But that is the beauty ministers, Edward Heath and James Callaghan, died of history: however fiercely held, opinions evolve over recently, there was little of the public veneration time, allowing a more judicious perspective. No doubt that surrounded the former football star from Grand history’s virtues will be on show at this year’s BAAS Rapids, Michigan. Lampooned and criticized in his conference in Leicester, which promises to be the lifetime, Ford in death was treated with all the respect biggest and best yet, with dozens of panels covering and awe appropriate to a former head of state, as everything from Civil Rights to modernist poetry to well as head of government. And the public mood at the intricacies of congressional politics. American his passing offers an object lesson in how historical Studies in Britain is booming, and thousands of reputations can change. pounds’ worth of prizes and awards will be distributed If nothing else, Ford’s life offers a rare example of at the conference, rewarding the sterling efforts of one the central myths of the American Dream – that our subject community’s teachers, researchers and any man, however humble, can become president students alike. As always, the conference promises – turning out to be absolutely true. Growing up in to be both intellectually rewarding and wonderfully Michigan in the 1920s in a cosy atmosphere of dusty convivial, stimulating plenty of debate about subjects baseball parks and boys fishing on lazy summer historical, political, cultural and literary. afternoons, he was like a hero from a Robert R. Tunis As a great admirer of the Anglo-American cultural baseball story about the virtues of hard work and relationship, Ford would be pleased to know that clean living. Dedication and sporting prowess took American studies in Britain is thriving. The American him first to the University of Michigan and then to Yale people, he told the Queen during the Bicentennial of Law School, where he graduated in the top third of 1976, had never forgotten their debt to ‘British custom, his class, something often ignored by the critics who British fortitude, British law, and British government’. cruelly mocked his intelligence. And thirty-one years on, despite everything that has Succeeding the unfortunate Dick Nixon as president changed in Anglo-American relations, the success of in August 1974, Ford laboured under some pretty BAAS suggests that the relationship is as fruitful as horrendous burdens. He had never won a national ever. election, confronted the worst economic challenges since the 1930s, and, above all, had to make a crucial Catherine Morley decision about his predecessor. In the end he chose Department of English Studies to issue Nixon with a controversial presidential Institute for Historical and Cultural Research pardon. At the time, of course, the pardon caused Oxford Brookes University outrage: Ford’s poll ratings took a hit from which they Gipsy Lane Campus never recovered, and it may well have cost him the Oxford presidential election to Jimmy Carter two years later. OX3 0BP E-mail: [email protected] Even Ford’s fiercest adversaries later admitted that he had taken the right decision. The journalist Richard Reeves, perhaps his most savage critic, wrote in 1996 that Ford ‘had the guts to take the hit’ and that ‘I, for one, did not have the sense to calm down and get beyond the obvious and into what he might have been thinking’. And in 2001 the Kennedy family presented Ford with the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award, the ultimate recognition, as Ted

 American Studies in Britain 52nd Annual Conference Hosted by the Centre for American Studies, Joe Merton (Oxford), “The Politics of Symbolism: University of Leicester, 19-22 April 2007 Richard Nixon’s Appeal to White Ethnics and the Please note that the programme is provisional at this Frustration of Realignment 1969-72” stage. As circumstances dictate, sessions or single papers Aaron Z. Winter (Brighton), “The White Man Has No may have to be moved. All panellists will be notified by Nation: Race, Nation and Christian Patriotism” e-mail if there is a forced alteration to the time or date of Developments in Pan-Africanism their paper. Chair: TBC Thursday 19th April Jarod Roll (Sussex), “Black Nationalism in the Rural South 1921-1936” 2:00 – 4:00pm Conference Registration [Tea will be served 2:00 – 4:45pm] Kathryn Davies (Sussex), “The Decline of Pluralism: African Americans and the Notting Hill Riots, 1958” 3:00 – 4:00pm Address by Professor Tony McEnery Fabian Hilfrich (Edinburgh), “En Route to Hanoi: Director of Research, Arts & (National) Identities and the Difficulty of International Humanities Research Council Revolution” 4:45pm Official Welcome to BAAS Political Marketing in Contemporary Politics 5:00 – 6:00pm Opening plenary lecture: Chair: James Stanyer (Loughborough) Stephen J. Whitfield (Brandeis) “How the Fifties Became the Sixties.” Dennis Johnson (George Washington University), “Amateur Hour” 6:00 – 7:00pm Drinks reception kindly sponsored Peter Ubertaccio & Patrick O’Toole (Stonehill College), by University of Edinburgh, hosts “Network Marketing in American Party Politics” for BAAS 2008 Darren Lilleker (Bournemouth), “The Politics 7:00 – 8:30pm Dinner of the Shrinking Marketplace: Marketing Voter 8:30pm – 1:00am Late Bars & Entertainment Disengagement” Including “American Folk and Images of War Bluegrass Jam” with Will Kaufman, Chair: Dick Ellis (Birmingham) Scott Freer and William Van Vugt Liam Kennedy (UCD), “Unknown Knowns: Friday 20th April Photography and the War in Iraq” Kathryn Nicol (Leicester), “Divided Loyalties: Race, 7:45 – 8:45am Breakfast Citizenship and the Writing of War in Minority 9:00 – 10:30am SESSION 1 American Literature” Paul Williams (Plymouth), “Spectacles of Censorship: The Freedom Rides Starship Troopers and the Concealment and Chair: TBC Revelation of Political Violence in the War on Terror” Ray Arsenault (South Florida) “The Freedom Riders” Literature at the Turn of the C20th Derek Catsam (Texas), “The Kennedy Administration’s Response to the Freedom Rides” Chair: TBC Bernard Lafayette (Rhode Island), “A Personal Debbie Lelekis (Missouri-Columbia), “Mob Mentality” Reflection on the Freedom Rides, Nonviolence, and Rebekah Scott (Cambridge), “‘Everywhere a Foreigner’: the Beloved Community” Aliens, strangers and other selves in the early American fiction of Henry James.” Redefining Conservatism: From Nixon to the Gerald Naughton (UCD), “Ages of Degradation”: Africa Militias as a site of Family Trauma in Charles Chesnutt’s The Chair: TBC Marrow of Tradition” David Sarias (Sheffield), “‘We must quit using our hearts’: The Conservative Movement and the Southernization of Richard Nixon”

Issue 96 Spring 2007  9/11 and New York City Limits of US Interventionism? Perceptions and Chair: Catherine Morley (Oxford Brookes) Reflections from the Cold War to the War on Susana Araujo (Sussex), “Images of Terror, Narratives of Terror Captivity: Specimen and Other Days” Chair: TBC James Peacock (Edinburgh), “New York and yet not Bevan Sewell (De Montfort), “Of Unrecognised New York: Brooklyn in Contemporary American Fiction” Importance: The Impact of the Soviet Economic Aliki Varvogli (Dundee), “Falling Towers/ New York/ and Offensive on US Policy in Latin America 1956-58” Utopia in Jay McInerney and Ian McEwan” Kaetan Mistry (Birmingham), “Political Warfare: The US, Italy, and the Origins of an American Approach to Postwar Poetry Wage a ‘Cold’ War, 1945-49” Chair: TBC Maria Ryan (Birmingham), “The need for judgement Jasmine Kitses (San Francisco State), “Allen Ginsberg: and prudence”: Neoconservatives Confront the Limits Clothed in Nakedness” of Regime Change, 1992-2006” Brendan Cooper (Cambridge), “Poetic Canons, Contiguous States: Race and Sexuality in Avocados: John Berryman and Frank O’Hara” ‘American’ Cinema Tim Woods (Aberystwyth), “Moving Among my Particulars: The ‘Negative Dialectics’ of Olson’s The Chair: TBC Maximus Poems” Rebecca Scherr (Oslo), “Intersections of Race and Queerness in Far from Heaven and Transamerica” 10:30 – 11:00 am Coffee Julianne Pidduck (Université de Montréal), “Brokeback 11:00am – 12:30pm SESSION 2 Mountain’s Queer Revisionism” Memory and Race in the Civil Rights Michele Aaron (Birmingham), “Between the Fockers Movement and the Fantastic Four: Jewishness and Gender in Chair: TBC Recent American Cinema” John A. Kirk (Royal Holloway), “‘Looking Back at Little From Puritanism to Pragmatism Rock’: Understanding the 1957 School Crisis in the Chair: TBC Context of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s” Peter Kuryla (Belmont), “‘Esthetic Sensitivity’: Zoe Hyman (Sussex), “Selective Amnesia: Truth and Reflections on Paul Conkin’s Puritans and Pragmatists” Reconciliation in the American South” Peter Rawlings (UWE), “Jonathan Edwards, William Ken Bindas (Kent State), “Remembering the Past/ James, and the Grammar of Puritanism” Projecting the Future: Race and Memory” David Greenham (UWE), “(N)either / (N)or: Emerson, Richard Nixon and Groups Puritanism, Pragmatism and Literary History” Chair: Gareth Davies (Oxford) Writing in the Wake of 9/11 Dean Kotlowski (Salisbury, MA), “Richard Nixon and Chair: Heidi Macpherson (Central Lancashire) Native Americans” Catherine Morley (Oxford Brookes), “Infiltrating the Robert Mason (Edinburgh), “Richard Nixon and the Infidel: Some Thoughts on John Updike’s Terrorist” Republican Party, 1946-1974” Alison Kelly (Reading), “‘Words Fail Me’: 9/11 and its Ross Nicholson (Oxford), “Richard Nixon, the Silent Aftermath in Stories by Lydia Davis, Jenefer Shute and Majority and Young Voters” Lorrie Moore” The “Criminal”, Heroes and Anti-Heroes David Brauner (Reading), “Fantasies of Flight and Chair: Elizabeth Clapp (Leicester) Flights of Fancy: the Retreat from Trauma in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” Vivien Miller (Independent scholar) “Harry Sitamore, ‘Raffles’ of Miami: Crime and Celebrity in Depression Confessional Poets Florida” Chair: TBC Campbell (Portsmouth), “The Death of Frank Wilson: Race Jo Gill (Exeter), “The ‘grotesque house’ of the Body: & Murder in a 19th Century Northern US community” Subjectivity and Self-surveillance in the poetry of Hope Howell Hodgkins (North Carolina), “‘Every Word Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath” True!’: Daniel Boone on the Margins of History”

 American Studies in Britain Ann Walsh (Cork), “Translation: Lowell, Goethe and ‘Die Ways of Seeing Gold Orangen’” Chair: TBC Luke Ferretter (Baylor), “‘Just Like the Sort of Drug a Jeffrey Geiger (Essex), “Ways of Seeing Empire: Man Would Invent’: Sylvia Plath’s Feminist Critique of The White City, the Midway and the arrival of Psychiatry” Documentary Film” 12:30 – 1:30pm Lunch Jonathan Stubbs (UEA), “Under Western Eyes: Tourism and Imperialism in Around the World in 80 Days 1:30 – 3:00pm SESSION 3 (1956)” Religion, Race and Realignment and Modern Guy Barefoot (Leicester), “Planet Mongo and Plug-Ugly American Conservatism Shows: Henry MacRae, the Serial and 1930s America” Chair: Brian Ward (Manchester) Literary Masculinity and America Joseph Crespino (Emory), “Desegregation, Church Chair: TBC Schools & the Religious Right in the 1970s” Clive Marsland (Canterbury Christ Church), “Availing William A. Link (Florida), “Jesse Helms and the maleness in Ralph Waldo Emerson and Wallace Religious Right, 1972-1990” Stevens” Tom Packer (Oxford), “Jesse Helms and North Carolina, Paraic Finnerty (Portsmouth), “The Object of Their the Rise and Nature of North Carolina Republicans, Affection: The Englishman in America” 1972-1986” Stefania Ciocia (Canterbury Christ Church), Concepts and Visions of Race “‘Making the stomach believe: ‘story-truth and the problematization of gender in Tim O’Brien’s The Things Chair: Tessa Roynon (Warwick) They Carried” Nicky Cashman (Aberystwyth), “‘Black and White’: Historical and Contemporary Visions of Colour in Contemporary Black Writing African American Drama of the 1960s” Chair: TBC James Miller (KCL), “James Baldwin’s Black Power: ‘No Sinead Moynihan (Nottingham), “Passed Tense?: Racial Name in the Street,’ Frantz Fanon and the Third World” Not Passing in Barbara Hambly’s Benjamin January Andrew Fearnley (Cambridge), “‘A Sapling Bent Low’: Series” Racial Formations in Modern American Psychiatry” Elizabeth Boyle (Sheffield), “Liminal City: race, text Writing History and Revisionism and the urban environment in John Edgar Wideman’s Philadelphia Fire (1990)” Chair: TBC Nicole King (Royal Holloway) “‘Soul is Soul all over the James Humphreys (Wise College), “Challenging the world’: Blackness, gender and the expatriate view of Dunning Orthodoxy: The Reconstruction Revisionism Americanness” of Francis Butler Simkins and Robert Hilliard Woody” Keith Olsen (Maryland), “Eisenhower Revision should Contemporary Poetry extend to Civil Rights” Chair: TBC Chris Dixon (University of Newcastle Callaghan), William Watkin (Brunel), “Spiritual Typography of “Citizen Soldiers and Bands of Brothers: Stephen Elegy: Susan Howe and the Limits of Elegy” Ambrose’s Vision of American Victory in World War Emma Kimberley (Leicester), “Narrating nothing: Two” Ekphrasis and Abstraction in Contemporary American Nineteenth Century American Theatre Poetry” Anthony Caleshu (Plymouth), “My Theory is Simple- Chair: TBC Minded to be Sure: The Posture of ‘New Knowledge’ in Lisa Merrill (Hofstra), “Mirror of Humanity: Women on Contemporary American Poetry” the C19th American Stage” Theresa Saxon (Manchester Metropolitan), “A variety of Mute Expression: Non-verbal Performance on the American stage” Robert Vorlicky (NYU), “Performances of Democracy in C19th America”

Issue 96 Spring 2007  3:00 – 3:30pm Tea Roundtable: US Mid-term Elections 3:30pm – 4:30pm SESSION 4 Chair: David Waller (Northampton) Philip Davies (DeMontfort) Jewish-Americans: The Creation of a Specific James P. Pfiffner (George Mason) Identity Peter Ubertaccio (Stonehill College) Chair: Aubrey Newman (Leicester) 4:40 – 6:00pm BAAS Annual General Meeting Marc Saperstein (Leo Baeck College), “American Jewish Preaching on the Great War” 6:30 – 7:30pm Cambridge University Press / Journal of American Studies sponsored Michael Berkowitz (UCL), “Emma’s America: from plenary lecture: Kovno to Rochester” Linda Kerber (Iowa) “Marriage on Red Scare and Yellow Peril Politics Trial: Historians’ Briefs for Same-Sex Chair: TBC Marriage Cases in American Courts” Alex Goodall (Edinburgh), “American Anticommunism 7:30 – 9:00pm Dinner at Home and Abroad, 1911-1920” 9:00pm – 1:30am Late bars and BAAS disco M.J. Heale (Lancaster & Rothermere American Institute), “From Red Scare to Yellow Peril in Reagan’s Saturday 21st April America” 7:45 – 8:45am Breakfast Unintended Consequences: the US at War 9:00 – 10:30am SESSION 5 Chair: TBC Ian J. Bickerton (New South Wales), “Turning points” Capital and the Civil Rights Movement Kenneth J. Hagan (US Naval War College, Monterey), Chair: TBC “Unintended consequences” Helen Laville (Birmingham), “‘Solidly Part of the Community’: White Women, Social Capital and Civil Jonathan Franzen Rights in Little Rock, Arkansas” Chair: TBC Lee Sartain (Nottingham), ‘Its accounts may have been Ben Williamson (UWE), “Dollar-sign-headed: American slipshod…’: An initial appraisal of the accounts of the Economies of Meaning” SCLC, 1957-1968.” Jerry Varsava (Alberta), “Not Bowling at All: Jonathan Peter J. Ling (Nottingham), “Testing the Ties that bind: Franzen and the Erosion of American Social Capital” African American ‘Social Capital’ within Protest Situations Djuna Barnes (Montgomery 1955-56 and Birmingham 1963) Chair: TBC Reading Against the Grain in the Age of Richard Espley (Birmingham), “Every Mother in Antebellum Slavery exortion for her milk: Maternal Bonds in Djuna Barnes’s Chair: TBC The Antiphon.” Kerry Larson (Michigan), “Answering Uncle Tom: Alex Goody (Oxford Brookes), “Coney Island Baby: Southern Women Novelists and the Fictions of Gender, Technology and Djuna Barnes’s Journalism” Paternalism” Roundtable: “Google Scholarship, Xiomara Santamarina (Michigan), “19th century Wikischolarship: Information and Knowledge African American Chroniclers of the ‘Higher Classes’” in the Internet Age” Sandra Gunning (Michigan), “Imperial Subjectivity, James Mackay (KCL) Black Masculinity and the Possibilities of Antebellum Lynne Brindley (Chief Executive, British Library) Emigration to West Africa: The Case of Robert Campbell” Graham Thompson (Nottingham) US in the Middle East Chair: TBC Mohammad Hassan Khani (Imam Sadiq University, Tehran), “America & its place in the Hearts and Minds of the Middle Eastern People”

 American Studies in Britain Javad Alipoor (Tehran), “American Exceptionalism and Ethnicity in the 1920s and 30s Islamic Revolution Idealism: Reciprocity or Interaction” Chair: TBC Mira Duric (Leicester), “US Foreign Policy and the Anne-Marie Evans (Sheffield), “Money, Money, Money: Middle East: A Comparative Analysis Between US and Obsessive Working Women in Fannie Hurst’s Imitation Russian Foreign Security Policy” of Life.” Limits of US Interventionism? Perceptions and Catherine Rottenberg (Ben-Gurion), “Begging to Differ: Reflections from the Cold War to the War on Nella Larsen’s Quicksand and Anzia Yezierska’s Arrogant Terror Beggar” Chair: TBC Jenni Lewis (Bath Spa), “The Insurgent Body in Zora Bevan Sewell (De Montfort), “Of Unrecognised Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men” Importance: The Impact of the Soviet Economic Short stories Offensive on US Policy in Latin America 1956-58” Chair: TBC Kaetan Mistry (Birmingham), “Political Warfare: The US, Italy, and the Origins of an American Approach to Rachel Lister (Durham), “Terminal Uniqueness: The Post- Wage a ‘Cold’ War, 1945-49” modern American Short Story Cycle and the Female Self” Maria Ryan (Birmingham), “The need for judgement Ashley Chantler (Chester), “The American Short-Short and prudence”: Neoconservatives Confront the Limits Story” of Regime Change, 1992-2006” Jesús González (Cantabria), “Words versus Images: Paul Auster as Filmmaker” More than Time and Space: Critical Studies of Context in American Film Workshop: Writing Exercises in the Study of Chair: TBC American Literature Damian Sutton (Glasgow School of Art), “Form Follows Nick Everett (Leicester) Fiction: Streamlining Fred and Ginger” Nicole King (Royal Holloway) Karen Randell (Southampton Solent), “‘Something 10:30 – 11:00am Coffee might have snapped’: Circulating notions of the Vietnam veteran in newspapers and on film” 11:00 am – 12:30pm SESSION 6 Niamh Doheny (Galway), “Did the black press eradicate Actors, Activism and Conflict Black American Cinema?” Chair: Jenel Virden (Hull) Contemporary Writing and Aesthetics Patrick Flack (Cambridge), “Tensions in the Chair: TBC Relationship Between Local andNational NAACP Oliver Belas (Royal Holloway), “Genre, Trauma and the Branches: The Example of Detroit, 1919-41” Politics of Representation in Octavia Butler’s Fledgling” Kevern Verney (Edgehill), “Doing the Right Thing: Harry Louise Mousseau (Sheffield), “‘An Epic Tale Deserving Belafonte as a Political and Civil Rights Activist” to be Oft Told’: John Updike’s Reconstructed Abstract K. Kevyne Baar (New York), “All Performances Have Expressionism” Been Cancelled! Actors’ Equity Association Responds to Adam Kelly (UCD), “From Irony to Agency: David Foster Discrimination at the National Theatre, Washington, D.C.” Wallace’s Evolving Aesthetic” Dixie’s Catholics: Religion, Race, and Religion and American Culture Community in the American South Chair: TBC Chair: TBC Monica Kjellman-Chapin (Emporia State), “Precious Maura Jane Farrelly (Brandeis), “The Americanist Crisis Americana: Capitalizing of Cuteness in Carthage” Rethought: Antebellum Catholicism in its Southern James Russell (De Montfort), “Narnia’s Culture Wars: Chris- Context” tianity, America and National Purpose in The Chronicles of Justin D. Poché (Tulane), “Blessed Persistence: Catholic Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005)” Leadership and Black Community in Jim Crow Louisiana” Marisa Ronan (UCD), “Evangelising Postmodernism: Andrew S. Moore (St. Anselm College), “To Be Good Christian Fiction and the Pursuit of a New Evangelical Catholics and Good Citizens”: Religion and Race in the Christianity” Post-World War II American South”

Issue 96 Spring 2007  Native American Culture I Into the 1930s Chair: TBC Chair: TBC Helen May Dennis (Warwick), “Making Spaces: Leslie John Fagg (Nottingham), “Worker-Writer / Literary Marmon Silko’s Gardens in the Dunes” Sketcher: To ‘hammer against the minds of the Joy Porter (Swansea), “Assimilation through workers’ in a Voice ‘unfitted … for any stipulated body Freemasonry: Native American Freemasons and the of labor’” Settling of the United States” Joanne Hall (Nottingham), “Deviance, Difference and Nick Monk (Warwick), “Hybridity and Resistance in Exception to the Rule: The Construction of the Female Leslie Silko’s Gardens in the Dunes” Hobo through Autobiography” Doug Haynes (Sussex), “Laughing at the Laugh: The Democratic Party Since WWII Unhappy Consciousness in Nathanael West’s The Chair: TBC Dream Life of Balso Snell” Eddie Ashbee (Copenhagen Business School), “The Democrats and ‘Moral Values’” Questioning Domesticity Jonathan Bell (Reading), “A Virile and Meaningful Chair: TBC Democratic left”?: Making sense of political ideology Tara Deshpande (Leeds), “History, Domesticity and the in California in the post-World War Two era.” ‘Vanishing Indian’ in Lydia Maria Child’s Hobomok” David Torstensson (Oxford), “The Politics of Failure Louis Kern (Hofstra), “There is no Wholly Masculine – Community Action and the Great Society” man, No Purely Feminine Woman’: Passion and Domestication—Rituals of Courtship and Marriage in Film as Allegory Frontier and Dialect Humor” Chair: TBC Elizabeth Nolan (Manchester Metropolitan), “Charlotte Emma Bell (UEA), “Alien--Nation - on not misreading Perkins Gilman and Early Twentieth Century Women’s Lars von Trier’s (Anti)American Films” Magazine Culture” Hamilton Carroll (Leeds), “Irish Liberation: Ethnic 12:30 – 1:30pm Lunch Whiteness, Class Transcendence, and Million Dollar Baby” Teachers’ Lunch and Q&A Session Brian Jarvis (Loughborough), “Ghosts, gadgets and 1:30 – 3:00pm SESSION 7 screen memories: reading The Ring (2002)” W.E.B. DuBois Black Community Activism in the Late Civil Rights Movement Chair: TBC Jennifer Terry (Durham), “‘From black women of Chair: TBC America […] this gauze has been withheld’: Gender Nick Sharman (Melbourne), “‘Lawyers jailed!’ The New and the Legacies of Slavery in the Work of DuBois” York Times’ coverage of the arrest of four defence Mark Ledwidge (Manchester), “The Dual lawyers in the ‘Chicago 8’ trial” Consciousness of W. E. B. DuBois” Simon Cuthbert-Kerr (Glasgow), “‘Back here to the Barbara Ryan (National University Singapore), “Souls of same old, same old’: The black community of Quitman Black Folk: A Reception Study” County, Mississippi, the Mule Train and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Poor People’s American Crime Campaign, 1968” Chair: TBC Andrew Witt (Edgewood College), “Picking up the Josephine Metcalf (Manchester), “‘My change from hammer’: The community programs and services banger to revolutionary’; the evolution of Monster as a of the Black Panther party with emphasis on the contemporary gang narrative” Milwaukee branch 1966-1977” Helen Oakley (Open University), “Cuban American Trapped in Slavery: Exploitation and Values in Crime: Alex Abella’s The Killing of the Saints” the Antebellum South Alan Gibbs (Cork), “Listen to him, Mr Take-Charge: Chair: David Brown (Manchester) Gender, Race and Morality in Carl Hiaasen’s Crime Novels” Emily West (Reading), “She is dissatisfied with her present condition:” requests for voluntary enslave- ment in the antebellum American South.”

 American Studies in Britain Michael Tadman (Liverpool), “The reputation of the Literature and the West slave trader: white antebellum mindsets and the Chair: TBC commodification of black people.” Sarah Barnsely (Goldsmiths) “Sawmills and sand: Mary Stephen Kenny (Liverpool) “All the advantage of Barnard’s northwestern poetics” demonstration over conjecture:” Anatomy autopsy, Luigi Fidanza (Manchester Metropolitan), “Resisting the and penal dissection of the enslaved in the Old South” New West?: Nostalgia, Displacement and the Domestic Masculinities in Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men.” Chair: TBC Ben Moderate (Independent Scholar), “Logos and Low Alex Hobbs (Anglia Ruskin), “Strength and Physicality Ghost: Jack Spicer’s Western Language” as the Masculine Ideal in John Irving’s The Hotel New Modernist Aesthetics Hampshire” Chair: Martin Halliwell (Leicester) Emma Ruckley (Oxford), “The American Male: Stud or Sarah Davison (Oxford), “The Spectra Hoax: Parody and Dud? Representations of Masculinity in 1950s Popular American Modernism” Culture?” Mark Whalan (Exeter), “The Majesty of the Moment: James Reibman (Lafayette College), “Wertham and Photography and Subjectivity in Paul Strand and Masculinity” Sherwood Anderson” Defining US Foreign Policy Catherine O’Hara (Ulster), “Reading Harlem’s Women: Chair: TBC Graphic Design and the Imaging of Black Women Sandra Scanlon (UCD), “Snatching Victory: Building a during the Harlem Renaissance” conservative foreign policy consensus after Vietnam” Ann Tyler Alex Miles (Salford), “From Pygmies and Pariahs to the Chair: TBC Axis of Evil: The US approach to Rogue States” Heidi Slettedahl Macpherson (Central Lancashire), Lane Crothers (Illinois State), “The Essential Nation: Ex- “Revisiting the Family: Anne Tyler’s The Accidental plaining American Public Support for US Foreign Policy” Tourist” American Film Representation / Representing Janet Beer (Manchester Metropolitan), “Anne Tyler: America on Film Families, Food and Ritual” Chair: TBC Ann Hurford (Nottingham), “‘Finger exercises for your Anna Claydon (Leicester), “When did Mr Collins novels”: the uncollected short stories of Ann Tyler” become the Ugly American? Representing America in 3:00 – 3:30pm Tea the films of Gurinder Chadha” Melissa Anyiwo (Tennessee), “New Women in Old 3:30 – 5:00pm SESSION 8 Shoes – Mammy as Hero in the Matrix Trilogy” Church and Social Change in the Twentieth Sebastiano Marco Ciccio (Messina), “The Century Representation Of Italian Immigrants In American Chair: TBC Silent Films: 1896-1930” Emma Long (Kent), “Religious Neutrality or Religious The Beat Generation Favouritism? The 1984 Equal Access Act” Chair: Polina Mackay (University of Cyprus) Mark Newman (Edinburgh), “The North Carolina Oliver Harris (Keele) “Cutting Up the Beat Hotel” Catholic Church and Desegregation, 1951-1974” Franca Bellarsi (Universite Libre de Bruxelles), “From Randall Stephens (Eastern Nazarene College), “Same as Blake to Buddha: Allen Ginsberg Journey ‘Through the It Ever Was?: Southern Pentecostalism at 100.” Grapes of Wrath’” Distortions in the Representation of Slavery Bent Sorensen (Aalborg) “The Beats as Cultural Others Chair: TBC / Exotics in Recent Memoirs by Exile Poets” Becky Fraser (UEA), “Dere wuzn nothin’ she didn’ know ‘bout dyein: Memories of Enslaved Female Work as Recollected in the W.P.A. Narratives”

Issue 96 Spring 2007  Phyllis Thompson Reid (Harvard), “The Open Sesame Bulwer-Lytton’s The Caxtons and Edgar Allan Poe’s to Every Soul: Slavery and the Idea of Romance in Early Tales” Nineteenth-Century America” Peter Messent (Nottingham), “Mark Twain and London” Lisa Nanney (Georgetown), “(Re)writing the American Emma Louise Kilkelly (Exeter), “Double Consciousness South: Race, Representation, and Politics in the Federal as Social Schizophrenia in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man Writers’ Project Guides to the Southern States” and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.” Roots Music Mid-Twentieth Century Literature Chair: TBC Chair: TBC Scott Freer (Leicester), “Woody Guthrie and the Great Kevin Power (UCD), “The Metaphor Delivered: Historical Bum” Foregrounding the Political Self in Norman Mailer’s Will Kaufman (Central Lancashire), “Remembrance and The Armies of the Night” Resurrection: Ry Cooder’s Chavez Ravine” James Fountain (Glasgow), “‘Fighting the enemy of Kevin Yuill (Sunderland), “Inventing Country Music: the arts’: British and American Literary reactions to the Defining America by its Music” Spanish Civil War” The Role of Ideas in US Foreign Policy Madeleine Lyes (UCD), “‘Grace, Charm and Sophistication’ – The Dream of Urbanity and the Chair: TBC Commodification of the Urban in the Fiction and David Ryan (University College Cork), “The Intellectual Journalism of the New Yorker Magazine in 1960’s and US Foreign Policy: On the Perpetual End of America.” History, the Clash of Civilizations, and the Ends of US Foreign Policy” Sexual Politics David Hastings Dunn (Birmingham), “The idea of Trans- Chair: TBC atlanticism and post-Cold War American political debate” Beverly Haviland (Brown), “Shame and Silence: The Richard Lock-Pullan (Birmingham), “Religious Ideas in Untold Tales” US Foreign Policy” Sarah Farrell (Florida State), “Fragmented Bunny Ears: Escapism and Utopianism found in America’s Sex Utopian Experiments Industry” Chair: TBC Michael Bibler (Mary Washington), “In Love with Sue Currell (Sussex), “‘Breeding Better Babies’: The the Night Mysterious: Queer Myths of the Southern Eugenic Garden City in Europe and America” Plantation in Contemporary American Culture” Maria Jose Canelo (Coimbra), “Carey McWilliams: 5:30pm Transport to banquet at “Athena” inventing cultural citizenship in the 1940s” departs Maeve Pearson (Goldsmiths), “Children of Utopia: Memoirs of childhood in the Oneida Community” 6:00 – 7:00pm Plenary lecture sponsored by the Eccles Centre: Native American Culture II Richard H. King (Nottingham) Chair: TBC “A Dream Deferred or a Nightmare Andrew Dix (Loughborough), “Red, White and Black: Prevented? The Post-1960s and the Racial Exchanges in Fiction by Sherman Alexie” Triumph of American Conservatism” Annie Kirby (Independent Scholar) “It is through the 7:00 – 7:30pm Publisher’s Reception hosted by story that we survive”: Witnessing the Pequots on the Edinburgh University Press for the Mashantucket Reservation” launch of the Twentieth-Century William E Van Vugt (Calvin College), “English Eyes: American Culture series American Indian paintings of George Winter” 7:30pm Banquet Anglo-American Exchanges Late Bars Shuttle buses will run from the Chair: TBC banquet venue back to the Marta Miquel Baldellou (Lleida), “A Nineteenth Century conference accommodation Transatlantic Encounter: Towards the Anglo-American Victorian Ethics of the Coming of age in Edward

10 American Studies in Britain Sunday 22nd April 10:30 – 10:45 Coffee 10:45am – 12:30pm SESSION 10 7:45 – 8:45 am: Breakfast 9:00 – 10:30am: SESSION 9 US Foreign Policy in Africa and the Pacific Chair: TBC Idealism and Cold War Foreign Policy David M. Walton (Eastern Michigan), “The U.S. and the Chair: TBC End of Apartheid in South Africa: The Militant Phase Andrew Johnstone (Leicester), “The realism of 1970-1990” idealism: Thomas Finletter and Multilateralism in US Donna Jackson (Nottingham), “The Ogaden War and foreign policy” the Demise of Détente” Andrew Priest (Aberystwyth), “The pragmatic idealist: Joshua Wu (American University), “Flying the Flag: The US George W. Ball and US foreign policy” 7th Fleet and American power projection in the Pacific” Maxine Hong Kingston David Mosler (Adelaide), “The Future of US Power in Chair: TBC the Western Pacific and the US- Australia Alliance” Fiona Wong (Warwick), “Tale-(re)telling and (re)writing Immigration and Identity in the Literary works of Maxine Hong Kingston and Chair: TBC Amy Tan” John Killick (Leeds), “Missives from America: Travel Ying Kong (Manitoba), “Mediating Between American Advice on the Cope Line Pre-Paid Passenger Ticket Culture and Chinese Culture” Stubs” Language, History and Nationhood Shiori Nomura (Birmingham), “Voices about romantic Chair: TBC love and marriage: Ethnic, Sarah MacLachlan (Manchester Metropolitan), racial and gender identity of Japanese immigrant “Translation, Nostalgia and Chicano Culture: El Vez and women in the U.S.A., 1914-1924” Ry Cooder” Heike Bungert (Bremen), “Festivals of Migrants to the Maria Roth-Lauret (Sussex), “Multilingual America: United States as a Medium of Ethnic Memory” division or diversty?” Tara Stubbs (Oxford), “‘Irish Magic’ in America: Marianne Moore at the Dial Magazine, 1925-1929” Contemporary US Violence Chair: TBC Contemporary Cultural Industries: On Claire Stocks (Oxford), “Lessons in Trauma: Representa- Entertainment Experience and Mutable Media tions of High School Violence after Columbine” Chair: TBC Stuart Price (De Montfort), “The Rhetoric of Security; Gianluca Sergi (Nottingham), “Entertaining Cinema Representations of the ‘long war’ in US public culture” Audiences” I.Q. Hunter (De Montfort), “Hostel: the politics of gore” Paul Grainge (Nottingham), ““Total Entertainment”’ The Affective Economics of Contemporary Hollywood” Gender, Politics, and Representation in Roberta Pearson (Nottingham), “Interfacing the Women’s Writing Expanded Narrative: Video Games and Character Chair: TBC Construction” Jude Davies (Winchester), “Mothering and Cleaning Mark Gallagher (Nottingham), “Steven Soderbergh, Up: Gender, Class, “Race” and Social Change in Ev’ry Authorship and Contemporary Media Industries” Month and The Delineator 1895-1910” Carol Smith (Winchester), Next to Power: “‘Influence,’ Post 9/11 Cultural Dispatches Political Agency and Gender Culture in Women’s Chair: Catherine Morley (Oxford Brookes) Magazines 1896-1910 and in the Figure of the First Nicholas Lawrence (Warwick), “What I Heard: Lady” Testimony in Post 9/11 America” Holly Kent (Lehigh), “‘Promised Relief from Her Richard Godden (Sussex), “Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park Thralldom’: (Re)Writing Feminism and Femininity in and Neoliberal Ashes” the Nineteenth Century Woman’s Rights Literature”

Issue 96 Spring 2007 11 Rowland Hughes (Hertfordshire), “‘Staying home, 12:30 – 1:30pm Lunch going home, being home and errors of leaving home’: Environment, Place and Identity in Annie Proulx’s The 50 Years in Space: Commemoration of the Old Ace in the Hole.” Launch of Sputnik Stephen Shapiro (Warwick), “Biopsies: The Etiology of Hosted by the National Space Centre and held in Resentment in the Era of US Middle-class Collapse” conjunction with the University of Leicester’s Centre for American Studies and Space Research Centre Literary Exile and Expatriation [NB Because the capacity of the planetarium is capped, Chair: TBC please e-mail the conference secretary in advance if you Jeffrey Herlihy (Pompeu Fabra), “In Paris or Paname: plan to attend this final section of the BAAS conference] Hemingway’s Expatriate Americans” 2:00pm Transport to National Space Centre Katy Masuga (Washington), “Henry Miller’s visions of Paris” 3:00 – 5:00pm Roundtable: “50 Years in Space” Emma Staniland (Leicester), “Exile, gender and Discussants include: sexuality in James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s R Room and Michael Neufeld(Smithsonian Air and Sylvia Molloy’s Certificate of Absence” Space Museum, Washington DC) Alan Wells (University of Leicester) Otared Haidar (Oxford), “The Expatriates: Arab David Pascoe (University of Glasgow) American Poets and their Legacy” 5:00 – 5:30pm Planetarium screening American Romantics 5:30 – 7:00pm Exhibition launch and buffet Chair: TBC Daniel Koch (Oxford), “Emerson on Three Revolutions: 7:00pm Conference close American Independence, 1848, and the Civil War” Clare Elliott (Glasgow), “‘Mystics, Extatics’ and Godly Visions: Blake’s Influence on Whitman’s ‘Passage to India’” Tony Hutchison (Nottingham), “‘Deeper than Ishmael Can Go’: Moby Dick and the Form of American Political Fiction” Ryan Schneider (Purdue), “Transcendentalism and Irish-American Ethnicity in Henry David Thoreau’s Cape Cod” Globalization and Citizenship Chair: TBC Faith Pullin (Edinburgh), “Xicanisma, feminism and literary experimentation in the work of Ana Castillo” Victoria Bizzell (Nottingham), “Transnational Neo- Tribalism: Goa Gil and Global Rave Culture” Benita Heiskanen (UCD), “The International Turn in American Studies” Anouk Lang (Birmingham), “The Rhetoric of Reading: Citizenship, Community and the Nation in US One Book Programs”

12 American Studies in Britain politician or labor leader, an obscure mid-Western Robert C. (Bob) Reinders anarchist or a socialist mayor—Bob could tell you where he came from. For Bob culture and politics (born July 11, 1926; died October 19, 2006) were local, before they were anything else. Dave Bob Reinders retired from the American Studies Murray particularly remembered Bob’s patience department at Nottingham in 1990 and returned with his younger, British colleagues’ “ill-founded to his native Wisconsin to live. But his recent death opinions” and “mispronunciations of American place brought back numerous fond memories among those names.” Finally, there was Bob’s concern for his friends in the (now)School of American and Canadian Studies and former students. In the last months of his life, who remember Bob. Having taught at Tulane between numerous of them from Nottingham, Tulane and 1957 and 1965, Bob came to Sheffield in 1965 as a Wisconsin shared their memories of Bob via email, Fulbright lecturer and the next year took a position in while being kept appraised of Bob’s condition by his History at Nottingham. In 1977, the American Studies cousin, Bea Reinders, who cared for Bob with love and group, head up by Brian Lee and including Bob, Dave devotion in his last days. Nor was there anything or Murray, Pete Messent, Jennifer Bailey and Peter Boyle anyone that Bob was prouder of than he was of his became a separate department at Nottingham. That three sons, Karl, Matthew and Eric. core of the department was in place when Bob retired, In general, Bob’s historical interests focused on the though Richard King had replaced Jennie Bailey in years roughly between 1850 and the 1950s. Maggie 1983 and Douglas Tallack and Peter Ling, were hired Walsh remembers going to meetings of the Society in 1978 and 1989 respectively. for the Study of Labor History with him, while the Bob was a tall man with a certain Lincolnesque quality 1970s saw Bob and his friend, Fred Basler, touring about him. He was always approachable, definite universities and schools in Britain with a “sound and in his political opinions but kind and generous in light show” on the American West. He also wrote his appraisals of others. There was a winning sort of articles and reviewed books on African American humility and self-deprecation about him. Brian Lee, history and writers such as Claude McKay. Indeed, the founder of the American Studies department and Bob helped establish the strong concentration that its first Chair, remembers that after the interviews for American Studies at Nottingham has always had the Nottingham job, the interview panel offered Bob in civil rights, race and southern history. His one the job. But when they informed Bob of the good monograph was End of an Era: New Orleans, 1850-1860 news, he apparently tried to convince them that one (1964). Murray also remembers that Bob was active of the other candidates was much his superior and in local race relations organizations in Nottingham should be offered the job! during the 1970s and taught at the WEA (Workers It has been fascinating to canvass my colleagues Education Association) in those same years. for their memories of Bob. The best remembered of Fundamentally, Bob lived out his political and moral Bob’s qualities were his great personal friendliness convictions in his personal dealings with others, and helpfulness. Both Pete Messent and Douglas in his teaching, and his writing. A democrat by Tallack remember Bob’s acts of kindness to them temperament, his politics were a product of the great as young academics when departmental duties Progressive-Populist traditions of the upper Middle got to be too much for them. Another thing that West. Having just seen Robert Altman’s last film “A everyone mentioned was Bob’s consuming interest Prairie Home Companion”, I can’t help feeling that in American history, especially America as a place. Bob Reinders would have been a natural for Garrison Though politically on the left—he was involved in Keillor’s radio show. Too bad Bob was never on it. He civil rights activities in New Orleans while at Tulane should have been. and his former student there, Steve Whitfield of Richard H. King (with the help of Brian Lee, Margaret Brandeis University, assumes that he left for political Walsh, Douglas Tallack, Pete Messent, Dave Murray, reasons—America was no capitalist Moloch for Steve Whitfield, Susan Atkinson and Liam Kennedy) Bob. For him it was a country filled with fascinating places, particularly his native Wisconsin; moreover, Bob seemed to know about everyone of any note who came from any and all of these places. Name a

Issue 96 Spring 2007 13 as assistant lecturer at Aberdeen University. His first Arthur Marwick book, The Explosion of British Society 1914-62 (1963), had a byline which proudly proclaimed: “At the time of (born February 29 1936; died September 27 2006) his appointment he was, at 24, possibly the youngest Arthur Marwick, who has died aged 70, was a major history lecturer in the country.” There was a warning social historian and an outstanding teacher of history. here, for “young Turks” grow older, and Arthur was to Professor of history at the Open University from its find this difficult. inception until his retirement in 2001, Arthur brought After a year at Aberdeen, he was appointed to to his post his fascination with the methodology Edinburgh University. The history department during of the study of history. He had firm views on the Arthur’s decade there had an array of historical talent necessity of history, the ability of the trained historian with various views on politics and history. Among to extract from primary sources something close his colleagues were Geoffrey Best, Paul Addison and to objective truth, and the dangers of approaching Alan Milward, who, like Arthur, were interested in history via philosophy or grand theories of historical the impact of the wars on Britain. Perhaps this was development. This was reflected in the introductions his happiest time. He was a figure on the Edinburgh to historical study he provided for Open University social scene, a published author (four books by 1968), students and in his book, The Nature of History (1970 a man obviously on the way to greater success and and many times revised and reprinted). young enough, extravagantly clad in rock star fashion, For many years his main work was on the relationship to enjoy the success with women he craved. Perhaps between war and social change, the subject of his it was the cautiously swinging Edinburgh of the time most successful and seminal book, The Deluge (1965), that made him forever a 1960s man and was to result a study of British society in the first world war. He in his later analysis of the time and its mores. expanded his interest in the field of war and society in The high road to London called. Arthur’s relationship a study - not just of Britain’s experience, but of those of with his homeland was always ambiguous. Proud European nations and the US during the world wars - of being Scottish, though no nationalist, and War and Social Change in the Twentieth Century (1974). of his accent, he had, long before he moved to Under his leadership, the Open University history London, acquired an attic flat in Hampstead. Here, department produced a series of courses on 20th he considered, was the only place for a proper century Europe, the world wars and social change. His intellectual, and the post of professor of history at the conviction that film was a valuable source ensured Open University, which he accepted in 1969, would that these and other courses made full use of archive enable him to live there. The move, nevertheless, footage. involved considerable risk. He was by then a reader He subsequently wrote Class in the Twentieth Century at Edinburgh, one of Britain’s best universities, and a (1986), Beauty in History: Society, Politics and Personal chair there or another prestigious university would Appearance c. 1500 to the Present (1988) and The Sixties: surely follow. The Open University was in the planning Cultural Revolution in Britain, France, Italy and the stage and a change of government might abort it. United States c.1958-c.1974 (1998). His British Society Arthur took the risk. Since 1945 (1982) has gone through many editions. Historians are usually remembered by their books The son of WH Marwick, a Quaker and historian of and their contribution to teaching. Arthur will be no Scottish labour and dissent, and his wife, Dr Maeve exception, but his contribution to the establishment Brereton, the parental household provided a caring of the Open University alongside his publications will but an intellectually austere and earnest environment. stand as his legacy. At the history department he led a Reflecting this and rebelling against it, Arthur became team - which he inspired, prodded and infuriated - to from his undergraduate days at Edinburgh University, produce history courses that made large numbers of a sort of puritan cavalier; immersed in work which he adult students approach the past with new eyes. took very seriously, until, his stint in library or archive He will also be remembered for his extravagant over, he would sally forth in search of drink and women. personality. For decades his colleagues have Ability and work gained him a first from Edinburgh, exchanged anecdotes, for Arthur was, alternatively, a postgraduate place at Balliol, and an appointment wonderful, outrageous and dangerous to know. Kind

14 American Studies in Britain and supportive to colleagues, he was an heroic drinker EUP/BAAS Series but not always fun after the first few drinks. And he The Edinburgh University Press /BASS book series was arrogant, even if friends sensed the vulnerability continues to be a vibrant success in publishing books beneath, but also fearless in delivering his views. in all areas of American Studies in Britain with co- Although he considered himself a progressive when it publishing deals in America. Recent publications are came to women’s rights, he affronted many feminists The Civil Rights Movement, Mark Newman and The and his book on beauty in history was a bold venture Vietnam War in History, Literature and Film, Mark Taylor. which occasioned many brickbats. His politics were Forthcoming are The Twenties in America, Niall Palmer, moderately left of centre, but his dislike of Marxist and The Civil War in American Culture, Will Kaufman and post-modernist approaches to history was expressed Contemporary Native American Literature, Rebecca trenchantly. One wonders if his career would have Tillett. flourished in today’s cautious and correct academia. The series editors (Simon Newman - S.Newman@ He never married, though he had many girlfriends history.glas.ac.uk and Carol Smith - Carol.Smith@ and lovers, but had a daughter who became the most winchester.ac.uk ) welcome new proposals at important person in his life. any time. They will be happy to advise and shape AW Purdue proposals and are particularly seeking books on the American short story, American music (all types) and the American city and its representations.

BAAS Requests US Studies Online: The BAAS Postgraduate BAAS Database of External Examiners Journal The Secretary of BAAS, Heidi Macpherson, holds a list US Studies Online is seeking articles on American of potential external examiners. If individuals would literature, culture, history or politics for upcoming like to put their names forward for this list, please issues. US Studies is a refereed journal and submission email her on [email protected]. Include guidelines can be found at our website: www.baas. the following information, in list form if possible: ac.uk/resources/usstudiesonline/enotes.asp • Name and title • Affiliation with complete contact details including American Studies News address, telephone, fax, and email Externalling experience (with dates if appropriate) American Studies Network • Current externalling positions (with end dates) The American Studies Network (ASN) is an • Research interests (short descriptions only) organization of 18 leading European centers involved in the study of the United States. Founded in 1990 By providing this information, you agree to it being in Berlin and closely affiliated with the European passed on to universities who are seeking an external Association of American Studies (EAAS), the ASN for American Studies or a related discipline. Should promotes the cause of American Studies research you wish your name to be removed in the future, and exchange in Europe. All members take an please contact the Secretary. interdisciplinary approach to American Studies; Any university representative interested in receiving are independent organizations with some of their the list should also contact the Secretary. BAAS only own sources of funding, not exclusively linked acts as a holder of the list; it does not “matchmake”. to a university; have some research facilities; and are committed to a role of public service to the Paper copies can also be requested by sending a letter community at large. Among the main ASN projects to: is the American Studies Network Book Prize, a prize Dr. Heidi Macpherson, of €1,000 for a remarkable book published in English BAAS Secretary, by a European scholar on any aspect of American Department of Humanities (Fylde 425), Studies. ASN also provides dedicated funding for a University of Central Lancashire, Visiting European Fellowship, which allows a member Preston PR1 2HE of a center to stay for a week at another center and

Issue 96 Spring 2007 15 to participate in its activities. In addition, a student Transatlanticism”: www.llc.ed.ac.uk/graduateschool/ exchange program allows Ph.D. students at ASN index.html. centers to spend up to two months at another The School’s Susan Manning is responsible for the member center. In order to become a member, an STAR (Scotland’s Transatlantic Relations) Project, institution should write and apply to the current ASN a seminar programme run from the Institute for president. Contact details and application criteria can Advanced Studies in the Humanities and the be found at: www.eaas.eu/asn.html National Library of Scotland: www.star.ac.uk. In the School of Social and Political Studies, the recently University of Edinburgh -- recent appointed Professor of International Politics, John developments in the study of America Peterson, has set up a complementary Transatlantic Some years have elapsed since ASIB received a seminar series: www.pol.ed.ac.uk/transatlantic. report from Edinburgh. In that time, the university html. (John’s recent inaugural lecture, “US Democrats has undergone an administrative revolution, with = the True Europeans? Public Opinion and Foreign financially autonomous Schools replacing the Policy” is available as a podcast at www.podcasts. former Departments. The concomitant upsurge in ed.ac.uk/politics/2006/). The School of History and transparency has made it evident that the study of Classics chimes in on this theme, too. Fabian Hilfrich, America pays for itself, and the field has become a new arrival this year, has a masters degree from stronger than ever. For example, the course American Washington University, a summa cum laude PhD from History 2, a year-long survey of the entire period since the Free University of Berlin, and a research interest in 1607, combines the traditional Scottish foundation- European Union-USA relations in the 1970s. course principle with a marked degree of didactic A further, innovative meeting of postgraduate minds innovation. With its intake of well over 200 annually, it occurs fortnightly in the American History Workshop. is one of the most popular courses in Europe devoted Under the leadership of Robert Mason, from whom to the study of America. current programme details may be obtained (Robert. The four-year duration of the Scottish MA degree [email protected]), speakers address issues affecting means that two years can be devoted to post- American historians, such as how to pitch an article foundation honours teaching, and this yields a rich for general readership. This year, Alex Goodall has diversity of courses. In the field of American History, organised a lively subgroup within the workshop to 8 full-time members of staff teach 24 courses. On discuss abstract issues such as the introduction of the the postgraduate level, the Scottish masters degree self into historical writing about America. is called an MSc to differentiate it from the MA More traditionally, School of History and Classics undergraduate degree. MSc and PhD enrolment formal seminars or lectures allow for contributions in American History is stronger than in any other from distinguished Americanists, recently, for historical field within the School of History and example, Kevin Kenny (Boston College) and Classics -- details may be gleaned from our website: Christopher Waldrep (San Francisco State). In the www.shc.ed.ac.uk/americanhistory. Autumn of 2007, an event to look forward to will be Equally, a considerable number of PhDs on American the British Academy Sarah Tryphena Phillips Lecture in foreign policy, politics, and society are being supervised American Literature and History, to be given by Susan- in the School of Social and Political Studies, and its larg- Mary Grant of the University of Newcastle. est taught MSc degree – in International and European Although the chief support for the study of America politics – offers a popular postgraduate seminar in US comes from the public purse in the guise of central Foreign Policy, to be taught in 2007 by Seán Molloy. funding, teaching income and research awards, the Within the School of Literatures, Languages and generosity of private donors has made a significant Cultures, the study of American literature flourishes qualitative difference. For example, Jim Compton, even more strongly than before the university’s our former colleague whose previous gift established reorganisation. An indicative example of an honours the Compton American History Library, has now course is “The Black Atlantic.” For Atlantic studies is established a prize, to be awarded annually, to reward a flourishing field at the University of Edinburgh. the best student of American History at the University The School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures of Edinburgh. And, each year, we benefit from the offers a new MSc programme, “Literature and munificence of one of our American History graduates,

16 American Studies in Britain Simon Fennell, making possible activities as diverse as Library Association’s CHOICE Outstanding Academic lectures by distinguished visitors and country-house Title Award, the latter the Organization of American reading parties. Historians’ James A. Rawley Prize, as well as being a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Edinburgh University Press is the vehicle for BAAS publications, and editorial responsibility for these Manchester would also like to welcome Dr. David is shared by the Press’s excellent Nicola Ramsey Brown who is joining the programme from the and officers of BAAS itself. However, Edinburgh’s University of Sheffield. Dr. Brown is an expert in 19th Americanists have for years made an unobtrusive century American history, especially of the south, but supportive contribution by serving on the Press’s and his new book, Southern Outcast, nominated for committee. Current members of the committee the BAAS Book of the Year Award 2007, is the first include Susan Manning and Mark Newman, whose full-length appreciation of one of that region’s most own book The Civil Rights Movement (2004) appeared controversial thinkers; Hinton Rowan Helper. Dr under the BAAS/Edinburgh University Press Brown’s exciting follow-up, Race in the American South imprimatur, and who was earlier a co-winner of the has been written with Clive Webb of Sussex and is biennially awarded EAAS best-book award. available now from Edinburgh University Press. Recently, Susan Manning has been engaged With this input of new staff, Manchester has also in another initiative with Edinburgh University initiated plans to re-invigorate its programmes of Press, a book series entitled “Edinburgh Studies in research and study. We would welcome enquiries and Transatlantic Literatures.” The first title in the series has applications from all students interested in pursuing appeared, with four others due for publication over postgraduate study in the programme. We intend to the next eighteen months (details: www.eup.ed.ac. extend our portfolio of MA pathways in the coming uk). The series operates on “the assumption that the years and opportunities abound for any students with study of American literatures can no longer operate on inter-disciplinary interests ranging from history and a nation-based or exceptionalist paradigm.” Co-editing film, through literature and politics, to popular culture the series with Susan is Andrew Taylor, who has just and theory. The university library is also embarking edited, rather appropriately, a new edition of Henry on an ambitious programme to augment its already James’s The Europeans. significant holdings in the fields of American culture, Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones history and literature and has recently purchased a massive database of 19th century U.S. newspapers American Studies at Manchester containing 1.5 million pages of original text. Manchester American Studies is very pleased to an- Any colleague, tenured academics as well as doctoral nounce that the oldest programme of its kind in the candidates who might have an interest in presenting United Kingdom is beginning the next stage of its re-de- their work to the programme and its students are also velopment by making a number of new appointments. invited to contact the English and American Studies Subject Area, specifically through Dr. Natalie Zacek at: Firstly the university wishes to welcome its newly [email protected] appointed professor of American Studies, the first for over a generation. Professor Brian Ward has returned Dr. Zacek is the coordinator of the Manchester Critical to the UK from the University of Florida and, as the MASS (Manchester American Studies Seminar Series) programme’s new Chair, brings a wealth of expertise and would be very happy to hear from scholars who and achievements to the role. Professor Ward’s work would like to present their current work in progress in in the fields of African American and southern history a scholarly, collegial and encouraging environment. with emphases on both media and culture, have been Further details concerning Manchester’s the subject of outstanding praise at the international programmes of study and research interests level. Two of his books, Radio and the Struggle for in American Studies can be obtained from our Civil Rights in the South (2004), and Just My Soul website: www.arts.manchester.ac.uk/subjectareas/ Responding: Rhythm and Blues, Black Consciousness englishamericanstudies/research/americanstudies/ and Race Relations (1998), are multi-award-winning publications, the former receiving the Association for Colleagues may also contact the Programme Director, Education in Journalism and Mass Communication’s Dr. Peter Knight at: [email protected] History Division Book Award and the American Ian Scott

Issue 96 Spring 2007 17 EAAS News American Studies Recruitment

EAAS Report January 2007 Project The EAAS newsletter number 57 is now out. The new Issues affecting CIC Sixth Form Student editor, Vice President Martin Heusser, has taken charge Recruitment to American Studies of the newsletter and it is hoped that the newsletter Undergraduate Degree Courses - Summary of will be more timely with the introduction of new Research software. This version of the newsletter contains The BAAS Executive Committee is grateful to workshop reports from the 2006 Cyprus conference, Hannah Lowe for making the results of her work on Board minutes and minutes from the hand-over recruitment to American studies degrees available to meeting in Paris as well as call for papers and reports the whole Association. Hannah teaches at the school from various national associations. The newsletter described in the report and is a co-opted member can be found on the EAAS web site, which has a new of the BAAS Executive Committee, responsible for domain – please revise your web site favourites to schools liaison. Hannah’s excellent report makes www.eaas.eu clear the scale of the challenges faced by our subject EAAS President Marc Chénetier has continued to area in the current climate and offers some practical work on his two latest initiatives: the European Journal and thoughtful recommendations about steps we of American Studies (EJAS), which has a continuous might take to improve recruitment. The Development call for contributions, and the European library of Subcommittee has already discussed various American Studies. The European library is the plan measures and will be working on these over the next of the President’s to promote the work of European few months. Updates will appear in future ASIB issues. scholars of America who have published in English. Richard Crockett, Chair, Development Sub-Committee EAAS also helped to sponsor an inaugural meeting of the European Study Group for 19th Century American Background Literature. The first meeting took place in Poland in In 2006 I undertook a HEFCE funded project which October 2006 and was attended by 20 scholars from examined the recruitment of students from City and throughout Europe and the US. The Study Group Islington Sixth Form College to American Studies hopes to consolidate its initial venture by having undergraduate degree courses. The project came more study group meetings in future years. If anyone under The Excellence Fellowship Awards scheme is interested in joining or learning more about this which was a £1.9 million initiative introduced in 2002 please consult the EAAS newsletter. to support the Government’s plans for expanding participation in higher education The pilot’s aim was As noted above, the EAAS Treasure Hans-Jürgen to provide an opportunity for teachers in schools and Grabbe has acquired a new domain for the EAAS web further education colleges to research issues with site. The site is now accessible at www.eaas.eu The direct relevance to widening participation. current site will continue to operate for the next few months until the transition is complete. City and Islington Sixth Form (CIC) is a multi-ethnic 16-19 education provider based in the Borough of As an election will take place at the BAAS conference Islington and predominantly serves students from in Leicester for the new EAAS representative, anyone the London Boroughs of Hackney, Tower Hamlets, who is interested in standing for election and would Islington, Haringey and Camden. The cohort of the like further details about what the job entails should centre has always been extremely mixed in terms of contact me on [email protected] ethnic origin, social class and educational background. Many of the students at the Sixth Form are labeled “non-traditional” because of their class and/or ethnic background as well as their lack of family background in higher education. The majority of students (approximately 350) at CIC do apply for university and progress to a higher education course. Yet admissions

18 American Studies in Britain from CIC to American Studies degree courses are Recommendations traditionally low with only a handful of students To universities applying for the course each year over the last few years. • Increase non-traditional students’ knowledge of American Studies. This might be done in a number Aims of ways: The main focus of this research project was to examine - improve the links between American Studies the perception and uptake of American Studies departments and careers departments by students from CIC, in the progress of choosing - hold outreach Widening Participation workshops courses to study at university. The project also sought - consider ways to increase teachers’ knowledge of to examine the reasons why students did apply for American Studies American Studies (through examining the motivations • Focus on targeting students studying Humanities of American Studies undergraduates at Kings College subjects such as Politics, History and English London in choosing their course) and offered as these are the most likely to be interested in suggestions for how interest in the subject might American Studies at HE be fostered and promoted at CIC. In carry out this research, I held focus groups with students from Kings • Ensure that the time studied in the US is offered College London (KCL) and CIC students in both the AS in a flexible way to ensure that students have no and A2 years of study. I also issued questionnaires to extra financial burden if studying American Studies AS and A2 Level Humanities students (as those most • Consider ways in which to ease the financial likely to apply for American Studies) and carried out burden of higher education study on non- extensive interviews with higher education advisors, traditional students admissions tutors and teachers. To CIC Findings • Continue to work in collaboration with HE CIC students’ perceptions of and access to higher institutions to widen participation education are affected by two factors – lack of • Provide accurate predicted grades knowledge and financial restriction. The lack of • Consider ways in which to improve careers family background in higher education means advisors’/teachers’/tutors’ knowledge of non- students often lack the same “cultural capital” when school subjects at higher education level it comes to their expectations and understanding Hannah Lowe of university. Students studying American Studies at KCL, the majority of whom do have parents/siblings who have been to university, cited family members as “America(s): Representations crucial in assisting them in making university course choices. Approximately half of all Sixth Form students and Negotiations”. Report interviewed and issued questionnaires had not heard of of the British Association of American Studies and were therefore unlikely to apply for it. Of those that had, most had vague ideas about American Studies Annual Post- what the subject involves, or what progressions and Graduate Conference careers opportunities might come out of studying it. University of Nottingham, 18th November The second factor affecting CIC students’ applications 2006 is finance. Again, approximately half the students In November the University of Nottingham welcomed involved in this research felt that a compulsory four delegates from universities including Harvard, year degree would prevent them from applying to Bergamo, University College Dublin, Cambridge, the subject. Yet at the same time many students Oxford, Queens (Belfast), Leeds and Loughborough to were attracted to the degree precisely because of the the 51st BAAS Postgraduate Conference. opportunity to study in the US. The conference was intended to offer opportunities to as broad a range of postgraduates as possible. In all sixty-seven people attended to participate in panels

Issue 96 Spring 2007 19 convened around topics as diverse as “Negotiating the Nineteenth Century: Contexts and Contestations”, Travel Award Reports “A Place for Memory: Twentieth-Century Regional Literatures”, “Sexuality and Violence: Memoirs Of The BAAS/US Embassy Franklin Fellowship Americas”, “Between Two Worlds: Travel, Immigration Report 2006 And American Identity”, “(Trans) Nationalisms: Matthew Pethers American Cultural and Political Influence”, and Thanks to the Franklin Fellowship, awarded by the “Exploring the Sixties: Images and Identities”. A British Association for American Studies in association selection of the best papers will be published as with the U.S. Embassy, I was able to spend six weeks articles in an issue of US Studies Online. in the United States at the end of 2006 starting Prof. Liam Kennedy (Head of The Clinton Institute, a research project on the relationship between University College, Dublin) explored the idea of Revolutionary politics and the American theatre a ‘New’ American Studies in an informative and during the late eighteenth century. The American interesting plenary session which was well-received by theatre has become an increasingly important field delegates and provided focus for such a wide-ranging of study in the past decade, one which has allowed conference. scholars to re-evaluate and refine their understanding of the way in which key concepts like race, class and The final formal session of the day was a Roundtable gender functioned in the New World. Much of the best Discussion on “Getting Published” with Elizabeth and most provocative of this recent work, however, Boyle, editor of U.S. Studies Online, Prof. Nahem has been carried out by scholars working on the Yousaf (Nottingham Trent), editor of the book series nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A number of Contemporary American and Canadian Writers with historians have examined the Revolutionary period, Manchester University Press; Dr. Julian Stringer, but they have largely focused on the early American managing editor of Scope: Online Journal of Film theatre as an institution rather than as a site for Studies, Professors Sharon Monteith and Richard ideological debate. Consequently, while they have King from the University of Nottingham, together provided us with valuable accounts of the actors and with former Nottingham PhD student, Karen the economics involved in eighteenth-century theatre, McNally, currently leading the Film Studies team at they have neglected such important phenomena London Metropolitan University and whose PhD is as the interaction between theatrical imagery and forthcoming as a book. This session was greeted republicanism in Revolutionary discourse, the shift enthusiastically by delegates who asked questions on in representations of monarchy between 1750 and all aspects of the publishing process, benefiting from 1800, and the role of amateur productions in fostering the experience of a panel representing a wide range of patriotic sentiments. Wishing to pursue these issues, publishing experience. amongst others, I set out with the intention to begin The buffet lunch and post-conference reception recovering a much more detailed and comprehensive provided opportunities for post-graduates, delegates critical context for the early American drama. and speakers to mingle freely and discuss the issues As this area of study, not to mention my project, is still explored during the day in an informal and relaxed very much in a fledgling state I was primarily hoping manner. This stimulated debate and created a friendly to complete an ongoing collation of the theatrical and positive forum for postgraduates, some of whom repertoire of the period while investigating some were attending their first conference. particularly significant archive materials, and in this I The organisers would like to thank all who was not disappointed. My trip began with a two week participated in making the day a success. Particular stint in New York, largely working in the NY Public thanks go the US Embassy in London and to BAAS Library for the Performing Arts at the Lincoln Center. for the financial support which made this conference Here I focused on tracking down and examining possible. a number of rare playscripts (both published and Helen Bralesford unpublished), at the same time as trying to get a clearer picture through newspaper reports and personal documents of the kind of work being performed in the run up to the Revolution. One of the

20 American Studies in Britain great challenges facing scholars of early American on the non-professional aspect of early American theatre is the elusive nature of the mid eighteenth- drama and its role in public institutions. Documents century canon, particularly as most plays and uncovered at the Beinecke and the Sterling Memorial performers before 1776 were imported from Britain. libraries confirmed that Connecticut student bodies The preliminary evidence from my research suggests such as the Linonia Society were as dramatically that, just as American publishers edited novels such prolific as their Massachusetts counterparts, and (as at as Pamela and Robinson Crusoe to emphasize certain Harvard) I also spent some valuable time examining ideological messages about virtue and self-reliance, college commencement plays – short dialogues and so they freely adapted British plays such as Thomas performances written for graduation ceremonies and Otway’s The Orphan and Shakespeare’s Macbeth to other public events. The subtly changing political reflect upon patriarchal relations and the nature of tone of these pieces pointedly suggests the gradual monarchy. But this line of research has also made clear slide toward independence from Britain. The scattered to me the necessity for a more rigorous bibliographical nature of many of these materials, divided up as account of early American drama in order to precisely they are amongst collections of personal papers and appreciate what was being read and performed in different institutional categories, rather than in a where and when. Some time spent trawling through central theatre archive, presented something of a booksellers’ catalogues and the records of circulating challenge, but thanks to the indefatigable detective libraries appears to be beckoning… work of the library staff I was able to view what seems to be the majority of the documents available. Rather Following my time in New York, I then moved on to more easy to work through were the electronic Massachusetts where I spent another fourteen days. archives such Evans’ Early American Imprints and Amongst the hectic modernity of New York it may American Periodicals Series Online on offer at all the have been difficult to see traces of the eighteenth libraries I visited. Unfortunately unavailable in this century but the quiet colonial vibe of Harvard was country, these computer resources provided a fast and perfectly in tune with the period I was studying, effective way of accessing some of the published texts and I whiled away many productive hours in the which had previously escaped my notice. Houghton and Widener libraries in Cambridge. Here I was particularly interested in following up on some To conclude, I would like to warmly thank BAAS and of the ‘non-professional’ aspects of American drama the U. Embassy for allowing me this invaluable and during the Revolutionary period. As a number of immensely stimulating opportunity to pursue my scholars have recently suggested, there was a vivid research. My gratitude must also be expressed (once and vitally important street culture in eighteenth again) to all the library staff who so ably assisted me century America, replete with multiple parades and during my time in America, and I should not forget protests, and I am intrigued by how the theatricality Graham Thompson, who answered all my queries of these events might be linked to the plays and and requests prior to the trip with great patience. If dialogues being performed at the same time. Thus I nothing else, the Franklin Fellowship has left me with took the opportunity of being in Boston, the hub of a deeper and more direct appreciation of American the Revolution, to gather some more details about the culture, and some fond memories of the people and precise nature of those ‘spontaneous’ performances places I encountered. But the wealth of material I which the public would have witnessed in the 1760s gathered during my time abroad will also prove crucial and 1770s. Perhaps even more significant, though, to refining and, in many cases, challenging my initial was the chance to examine the records of the theories about the early American drama, and will I am numerous student clubs which populated Harvard in sure have laid the groundwork for pushing my project its early days. Many of these clubs wrote and produced on toward the beginnings of the writing stage. amateur theatricals which shed revealing light on how ordinary Americans conceived of and responded to John D. Lees Award the dramatic arts. Vicki Gordon, Oxford Brookes University The students of Harvard were not alone in their As the fortunate recipient of the John D Lees BAAS concern for the theatre, of course, and so the final Short-Term Travel Grant I was able to spend two weeks two weeks of my trip, which was spent working in the in the United States in June 2006 conducting research archives of Yale University, involved further research for my PhD thesis titled: ‘Unilateral executive power:

Issue 96 Spring 2007 21 Shaping US national security policy from Kennedy to access to the CRS resources. As well as conducting George W Bush’. interviews in DC I also spent some time at the library at Georgetown University, using the electronic My thesis is an in depth study of how unilateral databases to find national security policy documents executive action has been used to shape US national and reports. I also spent some time at the Library of security policy. Unilateral executive action is the ability Congress using the Historical Newspapers Archive in of the president to act independently, either with order to find out the saliency of directives, executive or without the explicit consent of Congress or the orders etc over the specified period. courts, to effect policy change outside the bargaining framework. It is based on an institutional theory of My visit to the US was a wonderful experience and I the presidency, and builds upon and seeks to test have made great progress in my research as a result. the unilateral politics model developed by William I have returned with many new ideas and renewed G Howell (Power Without Persuasion: the Politics energy for my project. I am very grateful for the of Direct Presidential Action, Princeton University financial support of the BAAS which made my trip Press 2003). Whilst previous studies have focused possible. on a single tool of unilateral executive action (e.g. executive orders or executive agreements) none Marcus Cunliffe Award have systematically looked for patterns across all Josephine Metcalf, University of Manchester the tools (executive orders, memoranda, national My PhD research focuses on contemporary street security directives, proclamations and signing gang memoirs which have been variously demonised statements). Using a four stage process to distinguish in the media as violent and sensationalist or, by ‘significant’ unilateral actions from non-significant contrast, praised as offering a pedagogic and unilateral actions, my thesis examines the five tools preventative anti-gang stance. I will be exploring across a single, albeit large, policy domain of national these contradictions both within the memoirs and security to test the hypothesis derived from the in their reception, concentrating on three principal unilateral politics model. I pay particular attention authors: Stanley “Tookie” Williams, Sanyika Shakur aka to national security directives in order to provide an “Monster”, and Luis J Rodriguez. The BAAS short-term understanding of what they are and their role within travel award allowed me the opportunity to spend the unilateral making of national security policy. The three weeks in LA (in November/December 2006), in study also provides some insights into how these tools libraries, literally on the streets, and interviewing a have been used collectively to shape national security wide range of sources. policy, by presenting an historical overview of the use Perceived by many to be the “gang capital” of the of unilateral actions with some selected case studies. US, it comes as no surprise that LA’s libraries (UCLA, The purpose of my trip was to conduct interviews USC and public libraries) have an extensive collection with ex-national security advisers Brent Scowcroft of gang-related texts, some of which are not even and Anthony Lake in order to gain an understanding stored by the British Library in the UK. Indeed, this of the extent to which these tools play a role in was a valuable opportunity to access books such as the development of national security policy. I also Donald Bakeer’s out-of-print novel about the Crips conducted an interview with a Senate Foreign gang, Sergeant Wes McBride’s analysis of gangs (the Relations Committee staffer in order to gain some most mainstream study to ever be written by a police insight into the response of Congress to the use of officer), Celeste Fremon’s report on gangs in East LA unilateral actions in shaping national security policy and a PEN Anthology of prison writing prize winners. in terms of its oversight and policy making role. I also As an aside, UCLA is renowned for its extensive managed to collect various documents which are not collection of children’s literature, and I was interested available in the UK. to learn that Tookie’s series of anti-gang children’s books were actually held on reserve as they form I spent my time in Washington DC, where my first stop part of this collection (and not, as you might assume, was the Library of Congress to visit the Congressional because of their controversial reputation). Research Service (CRS) where I had arranged to talk to a specialist in the government division. He was To develop my interdisciplinary argument, I will not extremely helpful in providing data he had acquired only be conducting close textual readings of the three after a long service at CRS and provided me with texts, but moreover analysing their press reception.

22 American Studies in Britain I therefore spent much time using LexisNexis at Although I did some volunteer work in California ten UCLA’s libraries, slowly working my way through years ago with a community gang project for minor the book reviews and media materials since the gang involvement, I was never subjected to real gang earliest publication date of my three authors (1993). life to this degree; suddenly everything I had read Street gangs have traditionally been subjected to about in the autobiographies was being played out sensationalised and inaccurate coverage in the media, before my eyes. In one of the East LA schools that I and thus I also researched articles by known gang visited (where the teacher actually spent several hours journalists (for example, the infamous Jesse Katz teaching a “gang unit” revolving around subjects such who worked towards reversing this trend by trying as Tupac’s lyrics and poetry), the metal classroom to understand the street gang phenomenon). By doors automatically locked behind you and the coincidence, I was in LA for the one-year anniversary students spoke tentatively around the subject, not of the execution of Tookie and was shocked that wishing to upset the classmate who had recently lost despite the extensive media coverage this time last her boyfriend in a gang-related shooting. In a second year, there was not a single article mentioning him in school, the reception to welcome visitors was manned any of the major LA publications. I would regularly by police officers, while in a third, students were drop his name into conversations to gauge people’s screened for weapons upon entry. At the last school I reactions, and it was fascinating to note the wide visited, the teacher showed me her classroom window range of responses, varying from complete amnesia, where 6 months earlier she had witnessed two gang to sympathy, to adamant support of his death. members trespassing on campus and shooting dead a school pupil. Whilst not wishing to sensationalise My project will contextualize this cycle of gang such a sensitive and sad topic (I must remind you that memoirs in terms of post-civil rights America. To this the vast majority of LA’s youth will never join a gang), end, I was keen to meet a journalist who currently these stories reinforced for me the context in which writes for the LA Weekly (a slightly alternative press to gang autobiographies are being used at schools the mainstream LA Times) as well as a journalist who across LA. Certainly, in order to comprehend student formerly worked for the Times throughout the gang reactions it is useful to have some grasp of the reality heyday of the late 1980s/early 90s. I compared their of their situation. viewpoints and comments about American society’s role in encouraging the development of the gang, I met with four former gang members whom I was and more specifically, society’s role that has led to the introduced to through probation and through popular demand for the gang autobiography. We also Father Greg Boyle (the “gang priest”). Whilst they discussed to what extent they felt the extended room were more than happy to show me bullet scars and of an autobiography, could possibly readdress the heavily criticise the police, they were actually all very media’s selective coverage of gangs in general. enthusiastic about the autobiographies themselves, and the potential part they could play in the lives of Through selective interviews, I began to trace actual contemporary American youth. All four of them had responses by situated readers in order to test out their own children, and we conversed about these the points of identification opened up by these texts in view of their role as parents. Certainly, the memoirs. To reinforce this ethnographic element of politics of all these three memoirs have been seen as my study, I spent time at four different high schools complex and contradictory; on one hand they offer in lower socio-economic areas of LA (monitored a strong anti-gang sentiment, whilst simultaneously by the LA Unified School District by how many they can be seen to be glorifying violence. One of the students receive free school lunches), and spoke highlights of my trip was listening to these young with teachers, librarians and students themselves. men, who have “been there and done that” and their The majority of adults that I interviewed, felt strongly resulting views of these gang memoirs. that it was better for students to read/discuss these controversial texts, than it was not to read/engage I also interviewed the Head of the Media Operations at all. Interestingly, Luis J Rodriguez’s text is the firm at the LAPD, who spoke candidly about the press favourite; his book has apparently earned the award of reports surrounding gang incidents, which contrasted being the most stolen book in LA’s library system. This with my meeting with a former Sergeant from the trip permitted me the priceless chance to actually ask LA County Sheriff’s Department (the two institutions students in person why they thought this might be so. have varied greatly in their management of gangs).

Issue 96 Spring 2007 23 My eyes were also forced open following my meeting former Blood gang member who works with youth with a probation office (she had some intense stories gangs and gun crime in South London, as well as a to share), and a professional gang photographer who law lecturer (from Manchester University no less!) who has spent 15 years tracking one particular gang in is at the forefront of the internationally renowned LA. I was thrilled to meet Angela Davis and ask her “Eurogang” organisation. Upon returning to the UK, about her role as one of the most outspoken critics of a friend had saved me a newspaper article reporting Tookie’s execution, and was equally excited to meet on Britain’s growing youth gang epidemic, and I Luis J Rodriguez and spend time with him at the hope that perhaps we can learn something from our Cultural Café he established out in the San Fernando colleagues worldwide to aid with the situation in this valley. It was such a perfect opportunity to quiz him country. about so many questions that were raised by his book. Needless to say, I have gathered some valuable and Unbeknownst to many, there is a vast body of fascinating materials for my research. I would like to academic work that is available on American street take this opportunity to thank BAAS for awarding me gangs (commencing with Frederick Thrasher’s the Marcus Cunliffe travel grant; I am sincerely grateful renowned study from Chicago at the turn of the to them for making this trip possible. Thanks also to century). I was fortunate to meet with Professor Claire Wardle and my supervisors for their assistance Malcolm Klein, formerly of USC, who has made a in preparing questions, to all those generously gave huge contribution to gang studies over a 40-year their time to interviews and provided me with further career. Indeed, several of his texts have been seen contacts or sources of information, and to Kayse to form the backbone to academic studies of gangs. Gehret for ferrying me to and from airports and letting We had a lively discussion about how contemporary me bore her with my stories. academic gang studies have evolved and what other academics are critical when considering this subject. Founders’ Award Sadly, Professor Vigil (an academic “barrio expert”) Catherine Morley, Oxford Brookes University was not able to find the time to meet with me, but I was fortunate enough to be amongst the inaugural we have commenced an online interview so that I recipients of the BAAS Founders’ Awards, which were may be provided with further viewpoints from an launched at the Kent conference in 2006. My travel academic perspective. I also ran out of time before grant took me to the Midwest last summer. I travelled having the chance to interview Jesse Katz, but we are to Lincoln and Red Cloud, Nebraska, to participate in again interviewing online. The only other last-minute the annual Willa Cather conference at Red Cloud and cancellation was my police escort around the streets to conduct archival work there and at the University of South Central. However, due to recent demographic of Lincoln, Nebraska, for a forthcoming monograph changes, Latino gangs far outnumber African project. American gangs, and therefore it was more logical The first part of my trip consisted of archival work that I spend time in the traditionally Latino areas of at the University of Lincoln, where I was able to East LA anyway. read Cather’s correspondence and that of her I think that I single-handedly funded the LA bus companion and editorial assistant, Edith Lewis. My system for a period of three weeks (if you ever have most interesting discovery though, was the diary any questions about the LA bus system then I am an of Dr Frederick Sweeney which Cather used (with expert; I discovered places that aren’t even listed in his permission) in the composition of her Pulitzer the guide book). Regular journeys of two hours by Prize winning novel One of Ours (1922). Such finds, bus did not phase me: not only did it give me an idea only possible with close archival work, are incredibly of how far some of the children I met had to travel to illuminating for the literary scholar (and indeed the school each day, it also gave me a true understanding biographer) as they offer insights into the mind of of the socio-economic status of some of these the writer and processes of composition. Cather neighbourhoods, which I wouldn’t have noticed had I was often criticised for One of Ours, especially by driven on the freeways. Plus my nerves are still in tact the likes of Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos, having avoided driving anywhere myself. who questioned her credentials as a war writer and dismissed her accounts of life at the front as Ironically, as a result of travelling all the way to unrealistic. The diary at Lincoln offers evidence to the California, I have now been placed in touch with a

24 American Studies in Britain contrary with Cather using vast swathes of Sweeney’s using digital imaging extensively to copy the relevant testimony in her composition. materials. During the course of my four week trip I took over 12,000 pictures. From Lincoln, I travelled to Red Cloud, for the annual conference and to conduct further research. This Prior to the trip I had already gone through quite a lot was my first real taste of the Midwest and my first of White House related material housed here in the experience of an early morning siren call – a hangover UK or available online. This included White House War from the Cold War days. I was lucky enough to stay at on Poverty central files, files of Presidential aides, oral the Cather’s Retreat guesthouse, home of the Cather histories, and taped conversations of Lyndon Johnson family after the author had moved East. The house was and his staff. Therefore, the focus of my research immaculately kept in the style that that Cather family would be on the College Park records of the Office of would have known and I was delighted to stay in the Economic Opportunity (OEO). These records include room used by Willa on her visits home. the papers of the OEO Director, Sargent Shriver; his deputy from 1966 and later OEO director, Bertrand The conference gathered Cather scholars from all over Harding; the director of the Community Action the US. I, however, was the only non-US participant. Program (CAP), Ted Berry; internal investigations and This accolade won me a front-page feature and evaluations of local and regional Community Action photograph on the local Hastings Herald Tribune – a Programs and other antipoverty programs, such as the source of much amusement for my fellow delegates Job Corps, Head Start and Legal Services. Within these throughout the conference. The conference kicked records were also documents from OEO sub divisions off with a wonderful walk over the Nebraska prairies and regional offices. This was a wealth of material and the unveiling of a plaque in honour of the that has provided me with a not inconsiderable writer. My paper, ‘Willa Cather and the International amount of raw data from the audits and evaluations Modernist Movement’, was well received by the group of local Community Action Programs, and plenty of and selected for publication in forthcoming volume revealing internal memorandums between OEO staff. on the author. I was also invited to participate in These sources have revealed that many historians the upcoming international conference in Paris and understanding of the Community Action concept Province as one of the keynote speakers. has been limited to the idea of it being a radical, My two-week trip concluded with nine days amongst revolutionary idea promoting dramatic social change. the writer’s papers at Red Cloud. The archives are Actually, the documents show that the concept was stored in a nineteenth-century bank, which has been not so static and that there existed many competing beautifully maintained in its original state. I worked conceptions of the purposes of Community Action; a in the cage, and unearthed dozens of personal letters fact that caused great friction and conflict within the and diary materials. Cather’s letters and diaries cannot OEO. Of these the most prominent one was in fact a be published due to a clause the author placed over service-oriented, quite moderate approach. her estate and papers before her death. Again, these In addition to the OEO documents, I spent some letters were of immense critical value. But they also time at College Park looking at the Department of offered insights into a very private personal and Agriculture’s (USDA) records, and particularly the writing life. My work on Cather continues and I am papers of their then secretary, Orville Freeman, and grateful for the personal and intellectual value of my his assistant secretary John A. Baker. These records BAAS Founders’ Award, without which the trip and all revealed an extensive correspondence between CAP’s its incipient benefits would not have happened. rural affairs office and the USDA on how to combat David Torstensson, St. Anne’s College, Oxford rural poverty; something that many War on Poverty historians have missed altogether. I also managed to As my DPhil thesis is on Lyndon Johnson’s War on find a copy of a substantial 1969 General Accounting Poverty, its main Community Action Program, and the Office investigation of the OEO and the antipoverty executive agency running the antipoverty programs, program and several smaller investigations of specific the Office of Economic Opportunity, the two main local programs during 1966, 1967, and 1968. sites I needed to visit on my research trip were the Lyndon B. Johnson presidential library in Austin, Texas, In Austin the most interesting material were the files and the National Archives, College Park, Maryland. For of several prominent presidential aides, in particular purposes of speed, efficiency and economy I opted for those of Bill Moyers and Fred Panzer. Unfortunately

Issue 96 Spring 2007 25 these files did not reveal as much as the College Park professional journal. Care should be accordingly material. However, this was not a lost trip as the LBJ be taken with matters of presentation and library also holds the papers of OEO’s 1965 deputy documentation. Prize-winning essays will be offered director Bertrand Boutin; several interesting oral publication in US Studies Online: the BAAS Postgraduate histories not available anywhere else, like OEO director Journal. Shriver’s; and several useful secondary sources such as Robert F. Clark’s Maximum Feasible Success: A History of BAAS Monticello Teachers’ Fellowships the Community Action Program. Now in its second year The British Association for American Studies (BAAS), in conjunction with In summary, my findings from the research trip the Thomas Jefferson Foundation (TJF) and the support my thesis that there is a different and International Center for Jefferson Studies (ICJS), is important history of the War on Poverty that still delighted to announce two awards for teachers who needs to be written; a history that adds to, and cover the American Revolution, the Constitution questions, many of the basic assumptions held about and related materials in their A Level or Advanced Community Action, the OEO, and the Johnson White Higher teaching of history and politics. To be eligible House. to apply for these awards, applicants must have at least three years teaching experience, and teach A Level or Advanced Higher materials relevant to the Awards Opportunities Fellowships. It is expected that these awards will be BAAS Postgraduate Essay Prize of particular interest to teachers interested in the new Edexcel History Paper ‘From Colonies to Nation The prize is offered annually by the British Association 1763-87’, as well as to those teaching other 18th for American Studies. It is awarded for the best century history and American politics topics at A Level, essay-length piece of work on an American Studies such as the American Revolution, slavery, and the topic written by a student currently registered for a development of American constitutional government. postgraduate degree at a university or equivalent intsitution in Britain. The value of the prize will Barringer Fellowship normally be £500. One Barringer Fellowship will be awarded to a British Candidates should submit four copies of the teacher in 2007. This award will enable a teacher to typescript by February 16, 2007 to: travel to Monticello, and work with academic staff at ICJS (including those involved in the Archaeology Dr. Ian Scott Department, and their extensive programme on English and American Studies Subject Area slavery in Virginia). The Fellowship will allow the SAHC, University of Manchester successful applicant to spend two weeks working on Oxford Road the development of classroom materials, lesson plans, Manchester and related materials. The successful applicant will be M13 9PL chosen by BAAS and then confirmed by the ICJS. Their The essay should be between 3,000 and 5,000 words application must demonstrate that the Fellowship will in length, and should be accompanied by a letter from relate to and directly benefit their A Level or Advanced an institutional representative, tutor or supervisor, Higher Teaching. The Barringer Fellowship will include: as attestation that the candidate is registered for a a stipend of $1,500; travel costs up to $1,000; $1,400 postgraduate degree course, or has been accepted for for lodging in a local hotel; and $50 per diem for food. a course. In addition, BAAS will provide a £500 travel award to Care should be taken to ensure that the name of pay for international travel. The grant can be taken at the author does not appear on the essay itself, but any time during the recipient’s summer vacation, with only in the covering letter. All essays will be assessed the approval of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. For anonymously by a panel drawn from the BAAS more information see: www.monticello.org/research/ Executive Committee. fellowships/barringer_fellowship.html The essay should form a self-contained piece of writing, suitable for publication as an article in a

26 American Studies in Britain Monticello-Stratford Hall Seminar for Teachers (circa June-July 2007) Conference and Seminar One Fellowship will be awarded to a British teacher Announcements in 2007 to enable participation in the annual Monticello-Stratford Hall Seminar for Teachers. The Commonwealth Fund Lecture on Designed exclusively for teachers, this annual three- American History week programme has an interdisciplinary flavor and Friday, 2 March 2007 a distinctive historical approach. Seminar sessions 5.30pm in the Chadwick Lecture Theatre will be held in the Jessie Ball duPont Memorial Library University College London, at Stratford Hall, in the Rotunda at the University of Gower Street, Virginia, and on the Monticello grounds, but historic London Virginia itself also serves as a classroom. On-site instruction is featured, and students will study Professor Edward L. Ayers, University of Virginia (now architecture by examining the historic structures and president-elect of the University of Richmond) will landscapes of both plantations (and of the University); speak on ‘Making Black Freedom in the American agriculture by actually farming for a day with colonial South, 1863-1900’. tools and methods; urban life by visiting Williamsburg; To be followed by a reception. slavery by tours along Monticello’s All are welcome Mulberry Row and at Stratford Hall’s “Quarters”; and Contact Melvyn Stokes, commercial activity by an afternoon at Stratford’s University College London eighteenth-century mill and wharf area. George [email protected] Washington will be studied at Mount Vernon and Popes Creek, Patrick Henry at Hanover Court House Hayes-Robinson Lecture at Royal Holloway and St. John’s Church, James Madison at Montpelier, University of London John Marshall at his Richmond home, George Mason Friday 16 March 2007 at Gunston Hall, and James Monroe at Ash Lawn- The annual Royal Holloway, University of London, Highland. History Department Hayes-Robinson lecture will take The successful applicant will be furnished all books place on Friday 16 March 2007 at 5.30pm in the Main and course materials, as well as all room and board. Lecture Theatre. This year’s lecture will be delivered All participating teachers will be housed near the by Prof. Nell Irvin Painter talking on “America through “Great House” at Stratford and will take their meals French Eyes: Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de in the scenic plantation dining room nearby; for the Beaumont.” Monticello phase, housing and lodging will be “on Free admission and all are welcome. the Lawn” at the University of Virginia. In addition, BAAS will provide a £500 travel award to pay for Nell Irvin Painter is the Edwards Professor Emeritus international travel. For more information see: of American History at Princeton University and a www.monticello.org/education/stratford.html renowned interpreter of African American history. She is the author of five books and numerous articles The successful applicants will be required to share about the American South; and her latest work, just their experiences and relevant teaching materials on published by Oxford University Press, is Creating the BAAS website for school teachers. Black Americans: African-American History and its Meanings, 1619 to Present (2006). For travel information to Royal Holloway see www.rhul.ac.uk/visitors-guide/directions.html

Issue 96 Spring 2007 27 Comparative American Studies: Free on-line Plenary Speaker: Professor John Tulloch Access John Tulloch, a Professor of Sociology at Brunel, and a https://online.sagepub.com/cgi/register?registratio survivor of the London bombings of 7th July 2005, has n=FT6486 been a vocal critic of Blair’s political uses of the event. The current special issue of Comparative American Exhibiting Artist: Dan Williamson Studies features articles from such leading theorists There will be an exhibition and talk by artist Dan as Slavoj Zizek, Richard H. King and Donald E. Pease. Williamson, whose recent mixed media work on To celebrate the publication of this special issue Sage the ‘War on Terror’ was one of the most popular would like to offer you free online full text access to installations at the British Art Sideshow 2006. the journal until the 28th February 2007. If you would Round Table Participants: (to include) Chris Cleave and like to take advantage of this opportunity then simply Matt Carr register here: http://sage-news.msgfocus.com/ Chris Cleave, author of Incendiary -- a novel about a c/1kaM24legVtGsLg terrorist attack in London whose publication date Articles Include: was coincidentally the 7th July 2005 -- and Matt Slavoj Zizek, Co-Director of the International Center Carr -- author of Unknown Soldiers: How Terrorism for Humanities, Birkbeck College, UK: Notes Towards a Transformed the Modern World -- will be participating Politics of Bartelby in a roundtable discussion. Richard H. King, University of Nottingham, UK: Since the end of the Cold War, scholarship has Intellectuals and the State: The Case of the Straussians provided new definitions of conflict that have attempted to reconfigure the identity of the Maria Ryan, University of Birmingham, UK ‘enemy’ or ‘other’. Whether in the realm of personal Neoconservatives and the Reagan interaction or political engagements, the changing Administration: The Dilemmas of Strategy and nature of global politics in the post-Cold War era has Ideology fundamentally impacted the many ways people see themselves in relation to others. This inter-disciplinary Pierre Guerlain, University of Paris 10, France: Robert conference encourages fresh scrutiny of contemporary Kagan and Noam Chomsky: Two Ways of Being a debates concerning the relevance of ‘globalisation’, Political Intellectual and the rise of the media to the so-called ‘war on Donald E. Pease, Dartmouth College, USA: After 9/11, terror’. or, Whither the New Americanists? In order to encourage debate and a productive NB: Your free online access to this journal will finish exchange of ideas, the conference will combine on February 28th 2007. To continue to access this traditional panels with themed round table journal online in 2007, please encourage your discussions, determined by the content of the papers institution to subscribe to the print and electronic submitted. The conference will include opportunities versions using the http://sage-news.msgfocus.com/ to discuss issues related to the professional c/1kaNcWevPbhxbj7 library recommendation form. development of research students such as publishing opportunities and academic networking. AHRC Postgraduate Conference To register, contact: Redefining Conflict in Post-Cold War Media School of American and Canadian Studies, Ceri Gorton, Conflict Conference University of Nottingham, UK School of American and Canadian Studies March 29-30th, 2007 Trent Building University of Nottingham UPDATED CFP: PLEASE NOTE AMENDED DEADLINE 1 University Park FEBRUARY. Nottingham NG7 2RD E-mail: [email protected]

28 American Studies in Britain “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” torture, or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment An Interdisciplinary Symposium on James Agee and or punishment. Yet the nineteenth, twentieth, and Walker Evans at the University of London, Stewart twenty-first centuries, the world over, have seen House (Russell Square). unjustified and pre-emptive incarceration and restrictions of freedom, from the American slave With papers by: Caroline Blinder, John Dorst, Mick plantations to the Soviet Gulags, from the North Gidley, Blake Morrison, Paula Rabinowitz, and Alan Korean labour camps to Burma’s closed borders, from Trachtenberg. the Holocaust to the prison cells of apartheid. Friday the 16th. Feb. 2007 Writers from Frederick Douglass to Alexander 9.00-17.00 Solzhenitsyn, Nelson Mandela to Vaclav Havel, have £25/£15 -Students spoken out against such acts, and served to draw the For registration and information contact: world’s attention to the abuses of its peoples. This [email protected] conference will explore the role of the literatures of captivity in the struggle for human rights. F. SCOTT FITZGERALD NINTH INTERNATIONAL What role does the writer have in the struggle for CONFERENCE human rights? The Ninth International F. Scott Fitzgerald Conference will be held in London, from 8 through 14 July 2007. What is the relationship between writing and rights? Senate House, near Russell Square in Bloomsbury, will How can prisoners of conscience best express and be the conference center where panels and plenary protest their situation? sessions will be held. Areas of interest might include: Registration will run from 1 April to 31 May 2007. • the literature of slavery and abolition NOTE: The University of London’s Institute of English • representations of the Gulag Studies will serve as conference organizers, and the IES • the Holocaust will provide a dedicated website later this year (linked to the Fitzgerald Society website) with registration • Japanese American internment and accommodation information as well as further • memoirs of Communism information about the Call for Papers. • memoirs of northern Korean labour camps If you have any questions about the conference • African national struggles for independence program, contact either Kirk Curnutt, Jim Meredith 400-word proposals should be sent to the Conference ([email protected]), or Ruth Prigozy Organisers, Helena Grice and Tim Woods ([email protected]). at [email protected] Conference Directors: William Blazek (blazekw@hope. Closing date: End of February 2007. ac.uk) and Philip McGowan (philip.mcgowan@qub. ac.uk) CFP: National Political Cultures and the Wider World: The Transnational Dimension of CFP: The Literatures of Captivity Political Ideas and Party Politics in Europe and Department of English, University of Wales, the United States since 1918 Aberystwyth A Conference at the University of Reading, 5-6 July, 2007 4-6 September 2007 Closing date: End of February 2007 The deadline for proposals is 1 March 2007 “Open your newspaper -- any day of the week -- and Historians have recently become increasingly aware of you will find a report from somewhere in the world the extent to which political parties and organisations of someone being imprisoned, tortured or executed shared political ideas and experience in an age of because his opinions or religion are unacceptable” rapid industrial and technological change. Although -Peter Benenson, Founder, Amnesty International much work has been done on national political Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human cultures and political parties, only in the last decade Rights states that no one shall be subjected to has much attention been paid to the connections

Issue 96 Spring 2007 29 between the national and international dimensions Symbiosis: A Journal of Anglo-American Literary and of the political process and of political ideas. From the Cultural Relations specifically addresses the artificial relationship between different socialist parties after divide between literatures and cultures on either World War One to the impact of national politics on side of the Atlantic, a separation recognized by the processes of European integration to the impact few creative writers but often institutionalized in of welfare state building in Europe on American liberal the modern academic community. It is the journal politics after World War Two, attention to transnational uniquely concerned with studies of literary and aspects of political change in the twentieth century is cultural relations between the British Isles and the yielding new insights into the workings of the state in Americas and is interested in all genres, all theoretical the modern world. approaches, and all periods from the beginnings of Anglophone America to the present. We welcome This conference will address issues related to the submissions and expressions of interest from a whole transnational dynamics of political culture, political range of fields. parties, non-governmental organisations, and political ideas in the industrialised world since World War One This should be an occasion for productive dialogue in a comparative perspective, with particular attention between scholars of literary and material culture. to Europe and North America. Papers on any aspect of literary, theoretical, and material transatlantic cultural exchange are We welcome paper proposals on any aspect of anticipated. Panel proposals for integrated sessions transnational political relationships of the kind are particularly welcomed. described above. Please send proposals of no more than 300 words, together with your name, professional Our venue seems apt since a concept of innovation affiliation, and brief biographical summary to the in education and learning is central to Brunel’s conference organisers by email attachment. The identity, especially given its origin in the ‘White Heat deadline for proposals is 1 March 2007. of Technology’ in the 1960s. Brunel has expanded and embraced the arts and humanities, and the Symbiosis Please direct all enquiries and paper proposals to: conference offers an opportunity for collaboration Dr Jonathan Bell [email protected] with scholars interested in the principles and practice Dr Linda Risso [email protected] of Anglo-American literary and cultural influence from Dr Matthew Worley [email protected] around the globe. The headline theme of the event CFP: The Sixth Biennial Conference in London does not exclude any other proposals concerning of Symbiosis: A Journal of Anglo-American any other aspect of relevant transatlantic themes and Conference American Literary and Cultural contexts, which are most welcome, as are complete Studies panels (subject to scrutiny and final approval by the conference organizers). A Three-Day International Conference on All Areas of Anglo-American Literary and Cultural Studies. Proposals of approximately 300 words should be submitted, with a brief description (where relevant Venue: Brunel University, West London indicating institutional affiliation and publications in Dates: 12th - 15th July 2007 particular) of the proposer, by email only, to Submission deadline: Sunday 8th April, 2007 Philip Tew; [email protected] Keynote: Ian Bell (Keele University). Other significant William Watkin: [email protected] keynote speakers are to be announced shortly. Submission deadline: Sunday 8th April, 2007. All All Areas & Periods Are Welcome. Headline Theme: submissions: please add ‘Symbiosis Brunel 2007’ to ‘Anglo-American Aesthetics: Innovations and your message subject line since all such submissions Economies of Influence?’ will be stored and retrieved automatically. If you fail to The School of Arts at Brunel University is delighted do so, your submission will be lost. to collaborate with Symbiosis in hosting the Sixth Please note that early approval regarding submissions Biennial Symbiosis Conference in West London. can be indicated on request if it is required for any “Anglo-American Aesthetics: Innovations and institutional or other funding, or for those wishing to Economies of Influence?” will take place at the make early travel plans. Panel proposals will also be Uxbridge Campus, Brunel University, July 12 - 15, 2007. considered and encouraged.

30 American Studies in Britain A draft program will be published on the web at ‘Why Study American Studies’ www.symbiosisonline.org.uk/conference.htm and A project with Subject Centre for Language, on the Brunel website, in 2007. Linguistics and Area Studies (LLAS) and with Conference fee payable to: ‘Brunel University’ £180 the financial support of the US Embassy and in (one hundred and eighty pounds sterling) [the fee conjunction with BAAS to produce a high-quality includes lunches, refreshments, Saturday conference recruitment brochure/CD for American Studies dinner with drinks, plus two-year Symbiosis individual We are currently undertaking a project with Subject subscription]; £150 (one hundred and fifty pounds Centre for Language, Linguistics and Area Studies sterling) postgraduates and retired academics; note (LLAS) and with the financial support of the US also that for partners and family of academics not Embassy and in conjunction with BAAS to produce a offering a paper a fee of can be negotiated, in most high-quality recruitment brochure/CD for American circumstances of £100). These discounted rates Studies -- ‘Why Study American Studies’ -- with the aim will apply until May 25th 2007 after which a 20% of developing interest in prospective school and sixth surcharge will apply of £216 (two-hundred and form students. sixteen pounds) & £180 (one hundred and eighty pounds). Daily attendance rates will be set later and We are writing to BAAS members to ask for will be substantially higher than the discounted rates. contributions to this important project for securing Payment may be made by cheque or credit card; in the future well-being of American Studies in the UK. both cases please request a payment form by e-mail. The project is based at the University of Birmingham Subsequently send monies to: under the supervision of Sara Wood and Dick Ellis. Sara Brown We want to speak to American Studies practitioners Symbiosis Conference Administrator and/or BAAS members working in schools or sixth Department of English form colleges and would be interested to hear School of Arts from anyone that may be able to answer questions Brunel University and distribute a questionnaire to their students on Uxbridge Campus American Studies. Uxbridge To secure a compelling visual dimension to the Middlesex CD-rom and printed material we are intending to UB8 3PH include a large number of striking images but financial All other contact should be by e-mail, at: restrictions dictate the use of visual material that is [email protected] not subject to copyright. In addition to the use of +44 (0)1895 266374 (in emergencies only) images from historical sources from the Library of Fax: +44 (0)1895 269768 Congress (and related resources) we are also asking BAAS members for assistance in this area. If you Accommodation will be available for delegates at the have any suggestions for good copyright free visual Brunel University Conference Centre, where en suite resources, or photographs you yourself have taken single and double accommodation is provided for that are available for use, please contact me, or send those booking early. Your accommodation must be the images in as high resolution jpegs (or the like). booked direct from the Brunel University Conference In a previous project undertaken for the ‘Why Study Centre, and will be charged in addition to the overall Languages’ project the images were drawn from conference fee, and you need to refer to ‘Symbiosis photographs donated by language practitioners in Brunel 2007’ in contacting: the field. Therefore, if you do have any high quality Brunel Conference Services photographs from holidays or research trips that you Uxbridge, Middlesex, UB8 3PH would not mind being used on the project, we would +44(0)1895 238353 be most grateful to receive them. Fax: +44(0)1895 269745 Please send them to Sara Wood: osakaword@hotmail. Email: [email protected] co.uk Information regarding other accommodation can be As part of the project we will also be including short made available on request. Queries to: sara.brown@ film clips in which students describing their reasons brunel.ac.uk

Issue 96 Spring 2007 31 for choosing American studies and why they enjoy BAAS Postgraduate Conference 2007 studying it at University. We would like to get the Following the great success of the BAAS Postgraduate broadest possible response from students around the Conference 2006 which took place this in Nottingham, UK and will be visiting American Studies departments this is a call to find a venue for the conference in 2007. from various institutions to accomplish this. If you think your institution might be interested in We have all the necessary technical equipment hosting this annual event, then please email the BAAS and would only need a room and some student Posgraduate Representative, Josephine Metcalf, on volunteers. If you would be willing to host a visit from [email protected] us to your department to undertake this filming with your students then please contact Sara Wood at: The interested parties will be discussed at the next [email protected] or telephone on 0121-414- BAAS Committee meeting in January, and receive 7812 notice of the success of their application by the end of January. Beyond the Book Imagining Transatlantic Slavery SHARE YOU THOUGHTS ON READING & YOU COULD WIN A £100 BOOK VOUCHER! 16-17 MARCH 2007, CHAWTON HOUSE LIBRARY Go to www.beyondthebookproject.org and click on A conference to mark the 200th anniversary of the abo- ‘questionnaire.’ lition of the slave trade in Britain and the United States. Thanks for contributing to our research project on shared Registration enquiries: please contact: reading and the role that reading plays in our lives. Chawton House Library, Chawton, Alton GU34 1SJ. T: +44 (0) 1420 541010 E: [email protected] ‘Beyond the Book’ is an academic research project, based at the University of Birmingham, funded chiefly General enquiries: please contact: by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Sandy White, School of Humanities, University of Southampton, SO17 1BJ. Woody Guthrie: Hard Times and Hard Travellin’ T: +44 (0) 23 8059 7710 E: [email protected] A live musical presentation by Will Kaufman KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: Vincent Carretta Moira Ferguson Woody Guthrie: Hard Times and Hard Travellin’ is an Catherine Hall Elizabeth Kowaleski-Wallace Marcus hour-long musical programme that sets the songs of Wood Woody Guthrie in the context of the American 1930s- Eccles Centre: The 12th Annual Douglas W the Dust Bowl, the Depression, the New Deal and the Bryant Lecture state of popular music itself. It explores through the performance of twelve songs, buttressed by historical The New Security: A Post-Cold War Understanding of commentary, the blending of music and radical Security in the 21st Century politics that characterised Guthrie’s most powerful Speaker: Gary Hart and evocative work. Eccles Centre for American Studies, British Library Will Kaufman is a Reader in English and American Conference Centre, St. Pancras Studies at the University of Central Lancashire and has 14 March 2007 been a semi-professional folksinger and musician for over thirty years. The New Security in the 21st Century: in a revolution- ary age of globalization, information, eroding nation- For more detailed information, including testimonials, state sovereignty, and the changing nature of warfare, please see: www.uclan.ac.uk/facs/class/humanities/ new realities require new definitions, new policies, and staff/kaufman1.htm new structures. Unlike the Cold War era where secu- To book the presentation for your students, research rity meant the prevention of Soviet encroachment into seminars or academic conferences, contact: Western Europe and the exchange of nuclear missiles, [email protected]. security in the 21st century must include security of Web page: www.uclan.ac.uk/facs/class/humanities/ borders, security of energy supplies, security of liveli- staff/kaufman.htm hood, security of the environment -- in short, security of the global commons. A new understanding of the

32 American Studies in Britain nature of security will also require new global institu- 12.45 - 13.30 Lunch tions to achieve it. 13.30 - 14.15 Area Studies, Globalisation and Gary Hart represented the State of Colorado in the US British Library resources Senate from 1975 to 1987. In1984 and 1988, he was Matthew Shaw and Dorian Hayes a candidate for his party’s nomination for President. (British Library curators for US and Since retiring from the Senate, he has been extensively Canadian Studies) involved in international law and business, as a 14.15 - 15.00 Keynote Speaker strategic advisor to major U.S. corporations. Currently John Ralston Saul (Essayist and Scholar in Residence at the University of Colorado Philosopher) Author of The Collapse and Distinguished Fellow at the New America of Globalism and the Reinvention of Foundation, he was recently named chairman of the the World Council for a Livable World and is chairman of the 15.00 - 15.30 Tea American Security Project. He was co chair of the U.S. Commission onNational Security for the 21st Century. 15.30 - 17.00 Panel: Area studies, Globalisation and He has a PhD from Oxford University and graduate 21st Century diplomacy law and divinity degrees from Yale University. He is Chair: James Dunkerley (Institute for the author of 17 books, including Restoration of the the Study of the Americas) Republic: The Jeffersonian Ideal in 21st-Century America. Panel: Frank Pieke (Director, Institute Event time: 19.00-20.00 (reception 18:15) for Chinese Studies, University of Location: Conference Centre, St Pancras Oxford) Price: FREE (by ticket only) John Dumbrell (Professor of US Politics, Durham University), To book tickets, please contact the British Library Box Yasir Suleiman (Director, Institute for Office (Mon - Fri, 10.00 -17.00). Tel +44 (0)20 7412 the Study of the Arab World & Islam, 7222 or call at the Information Desk in the St Pancras University of Edinburgh) building. Advance registration is £25.00 Eccles Centre Events Find the registration form at www.llas.ac.uk/events Area Studies and the Globalised World - Tuesday 27th February 10am - 5 pm -- British Library conference Monday 5 March centre, St Pancras Burning Bright: An evening for William Blake 18.30-20.00 Programme: 10.00 - 10.30 Registration and coffee To celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of the writer, artist and visionary William Blake, join the 10.30 - 11.15 Keynote Speaker London-resident American novelist Tracy Chevalier Lord Giddens (London School of who will be reading from her forthcoming novel Economics) Author of Runaway Burning Bright, an imaginative revocation of Blake’s World: How Globalization is London, partly based on research on Blake’s note Reshaping Our Lives book held by the British Library. The evening will also 11.15 - 2.45 Panel: Higher Education feature an introduction to Blake’s poetry and methods Chair: Michael Kelly (Subject Centre as a printer. The Treasures Gallery will also feature for Languages, Linguistics and Area of small exhibition of Blake manuscripts and related Studies, University of Southampton) materials. Panel: Itesh Sachdev (Head, School of Tickets £6 (£4 concessions) from the BL box office Languages, SOAS) -- 020 7412 7222 Elspeth Jones (International Dean, Leeds Metropolitan University) David Sadler (Director of Networks, Higher Education Academy)

Issue 96 Spring 2007 33 Tuesday 6 March Tuesday 20th March (doors open 09.30) John Paul Jones: America’s First Sea Warrior -- a talk by 10.00 Panel: Edward Ashbee (Copenhagen Admiral Joseph Callo Business School) Gay rights, the Marriage Protection Amendment, 18.30 - 20.00 followed by wine reception & book and the states signing -- British Library conference centre, St Pancras Christopher Dunn (Memorial Joseph Callo’s book John Paul Jones, America’s First University, Newfoundland) Canadian Sea Warrior received the prestigious Samuel Eliot federalism: quo vadis ~ the Harper Morison Award. Callo emphasises Jones’s dedication government’s approach to the principles of Liberty - and his willingness to risk Robert McKeever (London everything in the fight to achieve it. Metropolitan University) National Tickets £6 (£4 concessions) from the BL box office politics & state implementation of -- 020 7412 7222 abortion policy in the US & Canada 12.00 buffet lunch for all registrants Monday 19th and Tuesday 20th March 12.45 Panel: Christopher Bailey (Keele University) The Federal Nations of North America -- British Library Clearing the air: the new politics of conference centre, St Pancras public smoking in the USA This conference brings together some of the leading Jonathan Parker (Keele University) No scholars from both sides of the Atlantic to discuss Child Left Behind? federal and state recent research and interpretations of contemporary education policy in the Bush years domestic politics and policy in the federal systems Alissa Worden and Andrew Davies of the USA and Canada. A distinguished line up (The University at Albany, NY) of speakers includes Tim Conlan, John Kincaid, Indigent defence policy in US states and Joseph Zimmerman, all winners of the APSA 1982-2002 Distinguished Scholar Award in the field of Federalism 15.00 Panel: Desmond King (Nuffield College, and Intergovernmental Relations, Joel Aberbach, Oxford) Hard cases and the search for Director of UCLA’s Center for American Politics and race equity in the USA Public Policy, and Des King, Mellon Professor of US Gillian Peele (LMH, Oxford) and Politics at Oxford. Joel Aberbach (UCLA & Oxford) The Monday 19th March (registration from 13.00) American conservative movement and the constitution 13.30 Welcome & Keynote Alex Waddan (Leicester) and Douglas Tim Conlan (George Mason Jaenicke (Manchester) US Health University) The Bush administration, politics and policy since the 1990s intergovernmental relations & public policy Conference registration (advance booking only) costs £10 (£5 for students). 15.00 Panel: John Kincaid (Lafayette College, PA) Schizophrenic federalism: trends Access the registration form at: http://americas.sas. since the 1960s ac.uk/events/Mar07FederalistRegform.doc Carl Stenberg (UNC, Chapel Hill) Blurring boundaries: interlocal The Richard E. Neustadt Book Prize, 2007 collaboration and regional The American Politics Group of the PSA is pleased to governance strategies invite entries for the 2007 Richard E. Neustadt Book Joseph Zimmerman (The University Prize. at Albany, NY) Congressional The prize of £400 will be presented to the best book in devolution of powers to the states the field of US government and politics published in the calendar year 2006, and authored by an academic permanently employed at a UK university. The APG is pleased to acknowledge the generous support of the US Embassy for this prize.

34 American Studies in Britain The winner of the prize will be announced at the APG/ Institute for the Study of the Americas Events BAAS annual colloquium at the US Embassy, London Except the Canadian Metropolis conference all the in November 2007. events are free. All are welcome! Previous prize winners have been Professor John Dumbrell, of Durham University, and Dr Nigel Bowles, Wednesday 21 February, 5:00 - 7:30 pm of St Annes College, Oxford. Argentina’s Partisan Past: Nationalism, Peronism and Historiography, 1955-76 Entrants for this prize should arrange for four (4) Michael Groebel, UCL copies of their book to be sent to: Room 12, 35 Tavistock Square, London WC1H 9HA Professor Philip Davies (APG Chair) Eccles Centre for American Studies Wednesday 21 February, 5:00 pm The British Library Visualizing the City: the Modern Megalopolis in Latin 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB America Before the closing date of 31st March 2007 Dawn Ades OBE, Centre for Latin American Studies, University of Essex University of Edinburgh, Transatlantic Old Library, 31 Tavistock Square, London WC1H 9HA Seminars Spring 07 Thursday 22 February, 5:30 - 7:30 pm All sessions 1-2.30pm Fridays in Room G10 Adam Ferguson Building, George Square, From Red Menace to Yellow Peril: Reaganomics, Party Politics and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 23 February Professor John Henley, University of Michael Heale, Rothermere American Institute, Edinburgh, ‘Foreign Direct Investment in Africa: A University of Oxford Dynamic from the South?’ Pollard Room, Institute of Historical Research, North 9 March Dr Christina Boswell, University of Edinburgh, Block, Senate House, London WC1E 7HU ‘Migration and Security after 9/11’ RSVP Olga Jimenez: [email protected], tel. 020 7862 8870 16 March Dr Ali Ansari, University of St Andrews, ‘Understanding Iranian Foreign Policy’ Tuesday 27 February, 6:00 - 8:00 pm 23 March Professor Mats Berdal, King’s College Alan Angell and The Study of Modern Chile London, ‘The United Nations: A Necessary Irrelevance’. HE Rafael Moreno, Ambassador of Chile Alan Angell and Joe Foweraker, St Antony’s College, Transatlantic Exchange: African Americans University of London and the Celtic Nations James Dunkerley, Institute for the Study of the (Swansea University, March 28-30 2007) Americas Keynote speakers: John Callahan, Glenn Jordan, Jeffrey Panel followed by the launch of “Democracy after Stewart, Werner Sollors. Pinochet: Politics, Parties, and Elections in Chile” by Alan Angell Readings by Leonora Brito and Jackie Kay (sponsored Events jointly organised with Chatham House by Academi). Room 12, 35 Tavistock Square, London WC1H 9HA Music by African American singer Rhiannon Giddens (sponsored by the Collegium for African American Wednesday 28 February, 5:00 pm Research), and jazz guitarist Jean Paul-Bourelly (ex The Idol Rich: Spanish and Maya Christians in the Miles Davis, Pharaoh Sanders, Cassandra Wilson) will Belize Colonial Encounter perform with the Welsh jazz quintet Cennad). Elizabeth Graham, Institute of Archaeology, University College London Panel speakers include Linden Peach, Alan Rice, Helen Room 12, 35 Tavistock Square, London WC1H 9HA Mary Jones AM and Robert Lawson-Peebles. The Institute for the Study of the Americas Cheaper ‘early-bird’ registration ends on January 26th. 31 Tavistock Square, London WC1H 9HA All information - posters, programme, and registration tel. 020 7862 8870 www.americas.sas.ac.uk form - on the conference website www.swansea. [email protected] ac.uk/english/crew/transatlanticexchange

Issue 96 Spring 2007 35 and Jerry Jenkins. She is currently planning a research New Members trip for Spring 2007 to go to the Boston Centre for Mil- lenial Studies and the Billy Graham Centre in Wheaton. Larissa Allwork is the current Thomas Holloway Rachel Farebrother is a Lecturer in English at Leeds scholar in History at Royal Holloway, University of Metropolitan University. Her research and teaching London. She completed her Masters in the History of interests are primarily in African-American literature Art and Visual Culture at St. Antony’s College, Oxford and culture. Work in progress includes a critical study University. She completed her BA in Modern History of the Harlem Renaissance. at Mansfield College, Oxford University. The title of her PhD thesis is “The Visual Culture of the ‘Silent Dawn Marie Gibson is a doctoral student at the Majority’ and the Reaction of the West Coast Artistic University of Ulster. She is currently undertaking Avant-Garde, 1964-1968.” Her research interests research on the Nation of Islam in African-American include 1960s ‘Great Society’ era history, politics and history. Her research interests include twentieth- culture, with special emphasis on California; Cold War century African-American religious and cultural American Avant-Garde Art on both the East and West history. She is a member of the Institute for Research coasts; and the dynamics between ‘Art’, politics and in African-American Studies at Columbia University. ‘public sphere’. Otared Haidar is a Syrian writer and journalist Stella Bolaki holds an MSc in Comparative and living the UK. He completed his DPhil in Arabic and General Literature from the University of Edinburgh comparative literature and theory at the University where she is presently a PhD candidate and a teaching of Oxford in 2005. He teaches Arabic at the Oriental assistant in the Department of English Literature. Her Institute at Oxford. He is a member of the Arab Union thesis focuses on ethnic American revisions of the Bil- of Writers and the Arab Union of Writers. dungsroman by women writers. Her research interests Alex Hobbs holds an undergraduate degree lie mainly in the fields of life writing, ethnic American in American Studies from University of Wales, fiction, genre and new developments in transnational Aberystwyth, and a Masters in Literature from The studies. She has published articles on border issues Open University. He is currently working on a PhD and Chicana literature as well as creative writing. through the English Department at Anglia Ruskin Heike Bungert teaches US History at the University University. His thesis is entitled ‘Stereotypic Male of Cologne, Germany, and is interested in BAAS Images in the Novels of John Irving and Philip because in Britain, historians seem to play a larger Roth’. Alex’s primary research interests are in the role in American Studies. She will be attending the contemporary American novel, especially issues of 2007 BAAS conference. She received her M.A. at the masculinity contained therein. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, her PhD at the University of Tuebingen, and her habilitation Jeffrey Herlihyis a PhD candidate at the Universidad at the University of Cologne. Her special fields are Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona; his thesis concerns the international relations, ethnic history, cultural history, use of foreign settings as a literary resource in Ernest and the history of universities Hemingway’s fiction. He has been employed as Visiting Instructor of Spanish at Morningside College Suman Chakraborty completed his BA at the Univer- in Sioux City, Iowa. sity of Calcutta. He is an MLitt postgraduate student at the Unviersity of Glasgow . Suman’s main research Ying Kong is a PhD candidate in the English interest focuses on experimental American verse, es- Department at the University of Manitoba. Her major pecially L=A-N=G=U=A=G=E poetry. His dissertation researches are in Life Writing and twentieth-century is ‘Postmodern Space and Postwar American Poetry.’ literature. Her doctoral thesis is “Duplicities of Life He has previously published on Sherlock Holmes and Writing in the Works of Carol Shields.” Currently, she twentieth-century fantasy writing. is an instructor of Chinese in the Religious Studies Department at the University of Winnipeg, Canada. Jenny Chapman is a PhD student at the University of Manchester. Her PhD examines the conception and Lee Margaret Jenkins is Senior Lecturer in English representation of agency in American evangelical at University College Cork, Ireland. She is the author prophecy literature, from the writings of J.N. Darby to of Wallace Stevens: Rage for Order (Sussex Academic the Left Behind series of Rapture novels by Tim Lattaye Press, 1999) and The Language of Caribbean Poetry

36 American Studies in Britain (University Press of Florida, 2004), and is co-editor She is currently finishing her doctoral thesis on of Locations of Literary Modernism (Cambridge language in the work of Henry Miller. Her areas of University Press, 2000) and The Cambridge Companion interest include twentieth-century American, British, to Modernist Poetry (Cambridge University Press, French and German literature, philosophy and cinema. 2007). Current research interests focus on Caribbean Joe Merton is a D.Phil student at Balliol College, experimental poetries and Southwestern modernisms. University of Oxford researching Republican Party Andrew Johnstone is a Lecturer in American History attempts to capture working-class, ‘white ethnic’ in the Centre for American Studies and School of electoral support in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan Historical Studies at the University of Leicester. His Administrations. He holds a BA in History & Politics research focuses on 20th-Century US foreign policy, from the University of Sheffield and an MSt from the particularly on the theme of US internationalism, and University of Oxford. His research interests centre on relations between the state and private spheres in on post-1945 social and political history, particularly creating and mobilising support for US foreign policy. developments in the 1970s and 1980s. He is a keen follower of Leicester City and a great admirer of Stephen C. Kenny is a Lecturer in American History President Richard Nixon. at the University of Liverpool. His current research focuses upon slavery and Southern medicine. He Thomas Mills is a PhD student at the History and teaches Ethnicity and Immigration in the US, Civil Politics Department at Brunel University. His research Rights history, Southern Culture, and the History of examines Anglo-American economic diplomacy Medicine in the US. during the Second World War. He also works as a teaching assistant on American History and Politics Debbie Lelekis is a PhD candidate and graduate modules at Brunel. teaching assistant at the University of Missouri- Columbia. Her current research focuses on nineteenth Benjamin Moderate took his BA, MPhil and PhD century American literature with a particular interest at Girton College, Cambridge. A specialist in 20th in elements of urbanism. Century American fiction and poetry, he recently returned from two years teaching in Japan. He is Mark Llewellyn is a Lecturer at the University of currently engaged in independent research on the Liverpool. He is currently working on a three-year San Francisco Renaissance. project about the Victorian Prime Minister W.E. Gladstone’s reading. His other main research interests Marie Molloy is a PhD student at the University of are the Anglo-Irish novelist George Moore (1852-1933) Keele. Her research focuses on the multifaceted role of and contemporary women’s writing. Through editing single women in the South during the 19th Century. Moore’s Collected Short Stories (Pickering and Chatto, Her work examines how the spinster fitted into family 2007), mark developed an interest in undertaking life, work, politics and patriarchy. further research on Moore’s attitude to the American Niall Munro is currently at work on a PhD at Oxford publishing market (1900-1930), and his relationship Brookes University on Hart Crane, which explores the with his American ollaborators. poet’s gay, modernist, aesthetic. Madeline Lyes is a doctoral research student at the Anil Narine received his B.A. hons. in English from Clinton Institute for American Studies, University the University of Victoria and his M.A. from McGill College Dublin. Her thesis title is ‘The Resurrection of University. He is currently at work on a Ph.D. in Urban Thought: Urban Literature and Theory During Communication at Simon Fraser University, in the Golden Era of the New Yorker.’ Other areas of Vancouver, British Columbia, where he studies how interest include contemporary urban literature, spatial post-war American and French documentaries and theory, post-Chicago School urban theory, the New narrative films mediate the memory of traumatic Yorker magazine and its cultural footprint, the city historical events. His analysis of ‘Deliverance’ will writing of Maeve Brennan, John Cheever and Donald appear in the Journal of American Studies. Barthelme, as well as Irish- American literature of the 20th Century. Mara Oliva is a PhD candidate at the Institute for the Study of the Americas. His work examines the Katy Masuga is a Ph.D. the University of Washington, role of the US press in US-China relations during the Seattle in the Department of Comparative Literature. Eisenhower administration.

Issue 96 Spring 2007 37 Andrew Priest is a Lecturer in the Department of International Politics at the University of Wales. His Members’ Publications main interests are the history of US foreign policy and US-Uk relations. His PhD from the Department Mark Newman of the University of Edinburgh has of American and Canadian Studies at the University recently published a volume, co-edited with Suzanne of Birmingham focused in US-UK relations and NATO W. Jones, Poverty and Progress in the U.S. South since in the 1960s. He recently published a monograph, 1920, (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 2006). ISBN Kennedy, Johnson and NATO: Britain, America and the 90-8659-0489. Dynamics of Alliance (1962-1968), (Routledge, 2006). Rebekah Scott is a PhD student in the English Faculty at the University of Cambridge writing a thesis on Members’ News Henry James, ethics and aesthetics. Peter Rawlings has been appointed to a Chair in English and American Literature at the University of Mark Storrey is a PhD student in American Studies the West of England, Bristol where he has also become at the University of Nottingham. He is working on the Director of the Graduate School in the Faculty of urbanisation and imaginative conceptions of the city Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences in rural and small town American fiction from the 1870s to the 1910s. Mark Newman of the University of Edinburgh has been awarded the 2006 Willie D. Halsell Prize from Karen Veitch is a postgraduate student at the the Mississippi Historical Society for his article “The University of Glasgow. Catholic Church in Mississippi and Desegregation, Abi Vine graduated in 1989 from the University 1963-1973”, Journal of Mississippi History, Winter 2005. of Liverpool with a degree in American Studies & Divinity. After her BA, she attended the Liverpool Polytechnic (now Liverpool John Moores University) Fellowship Opportunities where she gained a Postgraduate Diploma in Library & Information Studies. Abi currently works as an The Rothermere American Institute, University administrator in Mallorca, but hopes to return the UK of Oxford in order to take up an MA in American Studies. Her The Rothermere American Institute is a centre for interests include US government & politics. research in the field of American studies based at Aaron Winter is a Lecturer in Humanities at the the University of Oxford, UK. It houses the Vere University of Brighton (School of Historical and Critical Harmsworth Library, with specialist collections of Studies) and an Associate Tutor in Sociology at the American materials, and also offers access to Oxford’s University of Sussex. His DPhil thesis, in Social and Bodleian Library. The Institute, which was opened Political Thought at the University of Sussex, was on in 2001 by former US President Bill Clinton, also has the transformation of the American extreme right in seminar rooms and offices for Fellows. the post-Civil Rights era, focusing specifically in the We are now inviting scholars to apply for fellowships Christian Patriot movement. His research interests to commence from September 2007. We offer include social and political theory, political identity fellowships for up to one year; however appointments and ideology, anti-Semitism and racial politics in the may be awarded for shorter time periods. US and UK, conspiracy theory and terrorism, and the concept of ‘extremism.’ No stipends are offered, but modern and efficient offices are provided to scholars, including computers, phones and access to administrative support. We also offer travel grants for research purposes with a value of up to £600. During the periods when the colleges of the University are in operation, we provide Senior Fellows with common room rights at one of the neighbouring colleges.

38 American Studies in Britain For more details and an application form, please visit our website at www.rai.ox.ac.uk/scholars/ Publishing Opportunities application.html, or contact the Assistant Director at the Rothermere American Institute, 1A South Parks Call for Special Editors: British Records Road, Oxford, OX1 3TG, United Kingdom. Relating to America in Microform (BRRAM) Tel: +44 1865 282710 Fax: +44 1865 282720 Series Email: [email protected] Special editors are needed for new titles in the Website: www.rai.ox.ac.uk BRRAM series, published under the aegis of BAAS since the 1960s, with Professor Kenneth Morgan Newberry Library Fellowships in the of Brunel University the current General Editor. Humanities, 2007-08 The series comprises images from a wide range of The Newberry Library, an independent research library primary sources on North America and the West in Chicago, Illinois, invites applications for its 2007- Indies from collections around the British Isles. One 08 Fellowships in the Humanities. Newberry Library forthcoming project requiring a special editor relates fellowships support research in residence at the to the 18th century Jamaican plantation papers of the Library. All proposed research must be appropriate to Goulburn family, held at the Surrey History Centre. the collections of the Newberry Library. Our fellowship Further projects at present being explored relate to program rests on the belief that all projects funded by manuscript materials on Canada from the National the Newberry benefit from engagement both with the Library of Scotland. Ideas are also welcome for other materials in the Newberry’s collections and with the unpublished collections, perhaps related to current lively community of researchers that gathers around doctoral or postdoctoral research. The principal those collections. Long-term residential fellowships duties of the special editor are to make a selection of are available to postdoctoral scholars for periods of documents to be microfilmed from a collection and six to eleven months. Applicants for postdoctoral to produce a introduction outlining the provenance, awards must hold the Ph.D. at the time of application. content and scholarly significance of the archive. The stipend for these fellowships is up to $40,000. For further details, contact Dr Roderic Vassie (rvassie@ Short-term residential fellowships are intended microform.co.uk), Head of Publishing at Microform for postdoctoral scholars or Ph.D. candidates from Academic Publishers. outside of the Chicago area who have a specific need for Newberry collections. Scholars whose principal residence or place of employment is within the Chicago area are not eligible. The tenure of short-term BAAS Membership of fellowships varies from one week to two months. The Committees amount of the award is generally $1200 per month. Applications for long-term fellowships are due January BAAS Committee 10, 2007; applications for most short-term fellowships The Association is administered by an elected are due March 1 2007. For more information or to committee (see below), including three officers: download application materials, visit our Web site at www.newberry.org/research/felshp/fellowshome. BAAS Officers html Professor Simon Newman, Chair, If you would like materials sent to you by mail, write Director, American Studies, Modern History, to Committee on Awards, 60 West Walton Street, 2 University Gardens, Glasgow University, Chicago, IL 60610-3380. If you have questions about Glasgow G12 8QQ the fellowships program, contact research@newberry. Tel: 0141 330 3585 Fax: 0141 330 5000 org or (312) 255-3666. E-Mail: [email protected] Professor Heidi Macpherson,* Secretary, Department of Humanities, Harris 222, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, PR1 2HE Tel: 01772 893040 Fax: 01772 892970 E-Mail: [email protected]

Issue 96 Spring 2007 39 Dr Graham Thompson, Treasurer, Ms Josephine Metcalf,* School of American & Canadian Studies, Postgraduate Representative, University of Nottingham, English and American Studies Subject Area, University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD School of Arts, Histories and Cultures, Tel: 0115 9514269 Fax: 0115 9514270 University of Manchester, Oxford Road, E-Mail: [email protected] Manchester M13 9PL E-Mail: [email protected] Executive Committee (after 2006 AGM) Dr Catherine Morley,† In addition to these three officers, the current School of Humanities, committee line up of BAAS is: Oxford Brookes University, Professor Richard Crockatt, Gipsy Lane Campus, Headington, Oxford, OX3 OBP School of American Studies, Tel: 01865 484977 University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ E-Mail: [email protected] Tel: 01603 872456 E-Mail: [email protected] Mr Ian Ralston, Dr Jude Davies,* (Ex-Officio), Chair, Library & Resouces Subcommittee, Faculty of Arts, American Studies Centre, Aldham Robarts Centre, University of Winchester, Winchester SO22 4NR Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool L3 5UZ Tel: 01962 827363 Tel: 0151 231 3241 Fax: 0151 231 3241 E-Mail: [email protected] E-Mail: [email protected] Professor Martin Halliwell, Dr Theresa Saxon, Centre for American Studies, Department of Humanities, University of Leicester, Attenborough Building, University of Central Lancashire, Preston PR1 2HE Leicester Road, Leicester LE1 7RH Tel: 01772 893026 Fax: 01772 892924 Tel: 0116 252 2645 Fax: 0116 2522065 E-Mail: [email protected] E-Mail: [email protected] Dr Ian Scott,* Dr Will Kaufman, Department of English and American Studies, Department of Humanities, University of Manchester, University of Central Lancashire, Preston PR1 2HE Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL Tel: 01772 893035 Fax: 01772 892924 Tel: 0161 275 3059 Fax: 0161 275 3256 E-Mail: [email protected] E-Mail: [email protected] Professor Susan Castillo, (Ex-Officio), Ms Carol Smith,* Editor, Journal of American Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Winchester, Kings College London, Strand, London WC2R 2L Winchester SO22 4NR Tel: 020 7836 5454 Tel: 0196 282 7370 E-Mail: [email protected] E-Mail: [email protected] Ms Hannah Lowe, Dr Jenel Virden,* (Co-opted), Development Subcommittee, Representative to EAAS, E-Mail: [email protected] Department of American Studies, University of Hull, Hull HU6 7RX Dr Sarah MacLachlan, Tel: 01482 465638/303 Fax: 01482 466107 Department of English, E-Mail: [email protected] Manchester Metropolitan University, Geoffrey Manton Building, Rosamond Street West, * indicates this person not eligible for re-election to Manchester, M15 6LL this position. Tel: 0161 247 1755 Fax: 0161 247 6345 † Indicates that the newly-elected Committee E-Mail: [email protected] member is fulfilling an unexpired position due to resignations from the Committee. All co-optations must be reviewed annually.

40 American Studies in Britain BAAS Sub-Committee Members Development: Former BAAS Chairs Professor Richard Crockatt (Chair) Frank Thistlethwaite 1955-59 Dr Jude Davies Herbert Nicholas 1959-62 Ms Hannah Lowe Esmond Wright 1962-65 Ms Josephine Metcalf Marcus Cunliffe 1965-68 Professor Simon Newman Maldwyn Jones 1968-71 Mr Ian Ralston George (Sam) Shepperson 1971-74 Harry Allen 1974-77 Awards: Peter Parish 1977-80 Dr Ian Scott (Chair) Dennis Welland 1980-83 Professor Martin Halliwell Charlotte Erickson 1983-86 Dr Will Kaufman Howard Temperley 1986-89 Professor Heidi Macpherson Bob Burchell 1989-92 Richard King 1992-95 Publications: Judie Newman 1995-98 Ms Carol Smith (Chair) Philip Davies 1998-2004 Professor Susan Castillo Simon Newman 2004- Dr Catherine Morley Dr Theresa Saxon Professor Ken Morgan (Editor of BRRAM)

Conference: Dr Sarah MacLachlan (Chair) Dr Graham Thompson Dr Jenel Virden Dr George Lewis (Leicester Conference Secretary, 2007) Dr Robert Mason (Edinburgh Conference Secretary, 2008)

Libraries and Resources: Mr Ian Ralston (Chair) Ms Jane Kelly (Secretary) (Cambridge University Library) Mr Dave Forster (Treasurer) (American Studies Centre, Liverpool John Moores University) Ms Kate Bateman (Eccles Centre) Dr Jude Davies (BAAS representative) Professor Philip Davies (Eccles Centre) Dr Kevin Halliwell (National Library of Scotland) Dr Catherine Morley (BAAS representative, Oxford Brookes) Ms Jean Petrovic (Eccles Centre) Dr Matthew Shaw (British Library) Rose Goodier (John Rylands University Library of Manchester) Mr Donald Tait (University of Glasgow Library)

Issue 96 Spring 2007 41 Notice of BAAS AGM 2007 Agenda: The procedure for nominations is as follows: 1. Elections: Chair, 3 committee members, EAAS rep, Nominations should reach the Secretary, Heidi any other offices that fall vacant before the AGM Macpherson, by 12.00 noon on Friday 20 April 2. Treasurer’s report 2007. Nominations should be on the appropriate written form, signed by a proposer, seconder, and the 3. Chair’s report candidate, who should state willingness to serve if 4. Report of the Conference Sub-Committee, and elected. The institutional affiliations of the candidate, Annual Conferences 2007-2009 proposer and seconder should be included. All 5. Report of the Publications Sub-Committee candidates for office will be asked to provide a brief 6. Report of the Development Sub-Committee statement outlining their educational backgrounds, 7. Report of the Awards Sub-Committee areas of teaching and/or research interests and vision of the role of BAAS in the upcoming years. 8. Report of the Libraries and Resources Sub- These need to be to the Secretary at the time of Committee nomination so that they can be posted in a prominent 9. Report of the Representative to EAAS location and available for the membership to read 10. Any other business before the AGM. Those standing for election are expected to attend the AGM. At the 2007 AGM, elections will be held for three positions on the Committee (three year terms), for Professor Heidi Macpherson, BAAS Secretary the Chair of the Association (three year term), for the Department of Humanities, EAAS rep (five year term, non-renewable) and for University of Central Lancashire, any offices that fall vacant before the AGM. Current Preston PR1 2HE United Kingdom incumbents of these positions (apart from the EAAS Tel. (01772) 893039 rep) may stand for re-election if not disbarred by the [email protected] Constitution’s limits on length of continuous service in The Secretary requests that those who send forms to Committee posts. her through the post or via email also keep a copy and Elections can only take place if the meeting is quorate; bring it with them to the conference, in case of delays please make every effort to attend. or missing post. All forms will need to be signed.

42 American Studies in Britain Chair of BAAS - Nomination Form

I should like to propose ...... for the above.

Proposer:

Name: ......

Institution: ......

Signature: ...... Date: ......

I should like to second the above nomination.

Seconder:

Name: ......

Institution: ......

Signature: ...... Date: ......

I confirm that I am willing to stand for election to the above.

Candidate:

Name: ......

Department/Programme: ......

Institution: ......

Signature: ...... Date: ......

Nominations must reach the Secretary, Heidi Macpherson, by noon on Friday 20 April 2007.

Issue 96 Spring 2007 43 BAAS Executive Committee - Nomination Form

I should like to propose ...... for membership of the above.

Proposer:

Name: ......

Institution: ......

Signature: ...... Date: ......

I should like to second the above nomination.

Seconder:

Name: ......

Institution: ......

Signature: ...... Date: ......

I confirm that I am willing to stand for election to the above.

Candidate:

Name: ......

Department/Programme: ......

Institution: ......

Signature: ...... Date: ......

Nominations must reach the Secretary, Heidi Macpherson, by noon on Friday 20 April 2007.

44 American Studies in Britain EAAS Representative for BAAS - Nomination Form

I should like to propose ...... for the above.

Proposer:

Name: ......

Institution: ......

Signature: ...... Date: ......

I should like to second the above nomination.

Seconder:

Name: ......

Institution: ......

Signature: ...... Date: ......

I confirm that I am willing to stand for election to the above.

Candidate:

Name: ......

Department/Programme: ......

Institution: ......

Signature: ...... Date: ......

Nominations must reach the Secretary, Heidi Macpherson, by noon on Friday 20 April 2007.

Issue 96 Spring 2007 45 Candidate’s Name: ...... Brief statement outlining educational backgrounds, areas of teaching and/or research interests and vision of the role of BAAS in the upcoming years.

46 American Studies in Britain British records relating to American in microform (BRRAM) series

Papers of the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies from the National Library of Scotland (1694-1709)

The Darien Company The Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies was created by Act of the Scots Parliament on 26 June 1695, receiving royal assent from King William II of Scotland (William III of England), almost 100 years after the ‘Union of the crowns’. The intention was for Scotland to set up trading colonies around the globe after the model of other European nations at that time, beginning with a settlement on the Darien Isthmus near present-day Panama. This BRRAM collection includes all the principal manuscripts at the National Library of Scotland on the doomed scheme, and complements the earlier published collection of documents held in the archives of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).

Brief description of the Papers While the bulk of these papers date from 1696 through to 1707, including copies of the general journals for the Company, the collection also contains miscellaneous certain documents which antedate by two years the legal incorporation of the Company, and others span the period of its dissolution up to 1709. The quality and variety of financial documents and in the amount of correspondence are remarkable, the bulk dating from the initial period (1696-1700) culminating in the return of survivors from the second disastrous expedition to Darien. Among the former category are numerous subscription books, dating from 1696. In addition there are account books, detailed cash books and receipts, trading ledgers and promissory notes, the book of the Company’s storekeeper at the port in Leith, together with lists of goods shipped. The minute books and journals of the principal of the Company’s committees also survive: the committee for improvements, for equipping ships, the board of directors in Glasgow.

Significance of the Papers The enterprise was motivated by the desire to invigorate an ailing Scottish economy and, at the same time, to compete with the Honourable East India Company, established in England in 1600. However, the massive debts incurred as a result of the collapse of this initiative in 1699 were perhaps the chief factor which drew Scotland into the ‘Act of Union’ of 1707. As such, these manuscripts are significant not only to the study of British trade with the Americas in the late 17th century, but also the sweeping political and economic changes that gave rise to the forging of Great Britain. In addition, they provide a detailed and comprehensive, yet manageable, record of the systems and processes by which European colonisation and trade might be spread.

ISBN: 978-1-85117-094-4 12 reels + guide Price for set £900.00 / US$1,800.00 (or £1,000 / US$2,000 if bought with the 3 reels of the Darien Company records from the RBS) BAAS members enjoy a 10% discount on the above prices

Prices quoted valid until the end of 2007

Email: [email protected]; Website: www.microform.co.uk/academic

Issue 96 Spring 2007 47 48 American Studies in Britain