Promoting, supporting and encouraging the study of the United States since 1955

Welcome

The British Association for American Studies was founded in 1955. It exists to promote, support and encourage the study of the United States.

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Call for Nominations, BAAS Executive Committee

In advance of the 2025 AGM (which will be held at the University of Hertfordshire on Thursday April 24th 2025), elections will be held for posts on the BAAS Executive Committee. Nominations are now being welcomed.

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BAAS 2025 – University of Hertfordshire 23-25 April 2025

We look forward to welcoming the American Studies community to Hatfield between 23^rd and 25^th April 2025 for the 70^th Anniversary BAAS conference.

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Join BAAS

Thinking of joining the British Association for American Studies? Find full details of what membership of the association includes and how you can registered and purchase your membership.

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Welcome

The British Association for American Studies was founded in 1955. It exists to promote, support and encourage the study of the United States in the Universities, Colleges and Schools of the United Kingdom, and by independent scholars. It welcomes all those engaged in or connected with the study of the United States.

The website is the hub of the BAAS community with information on our awards, annual conferences, schools’ liaison work, calls for papers, publications, job listings, related networks and a media contacts database through which we share our expertise. On these pages you can find BAAS news, resources and links, as well as information on our committee structures. We welcome communication from our members and from anyone interested in the work we do to promote the study of the United States in the UK.

BAAS 2025 – University of Hertfordshire 23-25 April 2025

We look forward to welcoming the American Studies community to Hatfield between 23^rd and 25^th April 2025 for the 70^th Anniversary BAAS conference.

Alongside our usual practice of accepting work in any area of American Studies we also aim to have two key strands within the conference:

‘1955’: We will be thinking about 1955 as a flashpoint year. We welcome proposals about key 1955 events/culture (e.g., the opening of Disneyland; the Montgomery Bus Boycott; Emmett Till’s murder; On the Waterfront at the Oscars) and their aftermath/longue durée.
‘American Studies Today’: We want to think about the history, shape, and development of American Studies (especially in the UK), as well as the discipline’s present and future in an era of higher education crisis.

You can find out more about the conference, including how to register, on the conference page of our website.

The BAAS Awards

The 2025 BAAS Awards are now open for submissions with a deadline of 16 December 2024.

Each year, BAAS offers a growing list of awards, prizes, teaching assistantships, and research assistance awards. In recent years, we have added a new essays award for students of colour at school, undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and, in light of the climate crisis and our commitment to promote low-carbon research practices, we transformed the travel assistance awards into research assistance awards, offering the possibility of hiring research assistants to pursue archival research remotely.

Find out more about the BAAS Awards and how to apply, on our BAAS Awards Page.

Latest News and Events

Retrograde at the Apollo Theatre in London’s West End

Inspired by real events, this ‘exceptional Sidney Poitier drama’ (The Guardian) takes place ten years before he becomes the first Black man to win the....

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The Other Public Lands: Preservation, Extraction, and Politics on the Fifty States’ Natural Resource Lands by Steven Davis

Temple University Press For most Americans, state lands are the most readily accessible type of public land; however, despite their ubiquity, they remain....

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Call for Papers: Trans Liberation Now

The Trans Liberation Now! conference will be held on Midsummer’s Day, 21st June 2025, in Bush House on the Strand Campus of King’s College London. The....

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Submit to the BAAS Weekly Digest

Every week, BAAS sends out a mailing of Calls for Papers, Fellowship and Job Opportunities, and all Events of interest in American Studies scholars in Britain and beyond. These events are also posted here on the BAAS website under our News & Events section.

If you have an item you’d like to submit to the weekly digest, please click below to complete our submission form.