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 2 American Studies in Britain 52nd Annual Conference Hosted by the Centre for American Studies, Joe Merton (Oxford), “The Politics of Symbolism: University of Leicester, 9-22 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 9th April Jarod Roll (Sussex),