Welcome to the postgraduate section of the BAAS website! BAAS has a long history of supporting the UK-based American Studies postgraduate community.
From offering financial support postgraduate conferences to annual prizes for essays and research trips in the US and elsewhere, BAAS acknowledges the significant contributions made by postgraduates in sustaining and rejuvenating the multidisciplinary field of American Studies. In addition, through the election of a postgraduate representative to the Executive Committee, BAAS is able to respond to the real needs and concerns of postgraduates in the field. We offer concessionary membership fees and hold an annual postgraduate conference.
Postgraduate Representative: David Malcolm
POSTGRADUATE CONFERENCE
Our annual postgraduate conference is designed to provide a supportive and encouraging environment where postgraduates and early career researchers can meet, forge connections, and share research. You can find details of the previous postgraduate conferences below.
2025 Conference
The 2025 BAAS Postgraduate Symposium is taking place on November 26th as a hybrid event at Teesside University.
You can register for the event on EventBrite. If you are a BAAS member, you can get a discount on your fee by visiting the member area and using the discount code.
‘The people favored and the people oppressed’: The Unequal Struggle for Equality and Rights in America
The original copies of the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights can be found on permanent display at the United States National Archives. The National Archives describes America’s Founding Documents collectively as ‘the Charters of Freedom [which] have secured the rights of the American people for more than two and a quarter centuries and are considered instrumental to the founding and philosophy of the United States.’ Part of this ‘philosophy’ was rooted in the idea that liberty and equality for mankind was not simply a privilege, but a self-evident truth, laid out in the Declaration of Rights.
The 2025 BAAS Postgraduate Symposium will involve postgraduate researchers at all levels and across all disciplines that address the diverse interpretations, possibilities and liminality of the symposium’s theme of The Unequal Struggle for Equality and Rights in America with presenters discussing the depictions and theorisation of America’s (un)equal past and/or future.
The symposium will be a hybrid event with in-person and online attendance available for presenters and attendees. Catering will be provided in-person with a range of vegetarian and vegan options and a social networking event will take place on campus at the Teesside University Students’ Union opposite The Curve.
PREVIOUS POSTGRADUATE CONFERENCES
2018 – Northumbria University: America’s Urgent and Great Problems: Antecedents and Legacies of 1968
2017 – University of Essex: Post Truth & American Myths
2016 – University of Leeds: Negotiating the Borders and Boundaries of Americanism
2014 – University of Sussex: Protest: Resistance and Dissent in America
2013 – University of Nottingham: “Homeward Bound”: Nation, Belonging, and the American Home