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Issue 90 Spring 2004

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Issue 90 Spring 2004

Editorial

It’s that conference time of year again and this issue of ASIB contains details of conference registration, with a tear-out registration form at the back of the newsletter, along with a provisional programme. Manchester seems to have attracted a large number of papers and the programme looks as though it showcases the full multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary nature of American Studies. Postgraduate students should note first of all the subsidy that has been arranged for them again this year, but also that there is limited availability. So apply early. This substantially reduces the cost and £150 for the full conference with all meals provided in the heart of one of Britain’s biggest cities represents excellent value.

A couple of conference-related matters. First of all, the BAAS website (http://cc.webspaceworld.me/new-baas-site) will this year carry copies of paper outlines and these should be online by the time you receive this newsletter. I know this facility was promised in the corresponding ASIB last year but never materialised. Apologies for that. But the outlines have all been formatted and put into a database and now it’s just a case of setting up links. If you are giving a paper at Manchester and your outline does not appear on the website then please send the outline in the first instance to Sue Currell at sue.currell@virgin.net. If your outline is incorrect in any way or you want it amended then, again, please send any changes onto Sue.

Second, as you may be aware, it is now the responsibility of paper-giver to send in a report on their paper to the editor of ASIB in order that it can appear in the autumn issue. The number of people who sent in reports last year was quite low, but by not sending in your report you may be missing out on a chance to advertise your expertise in a particular area. Now that ASIB appears in electronic format, search engines will index it and throw up hits given the appropriate search criteria. So please send in your reports after the conference. Last year there was a facility on the BAAS website to allow this. In addition to the traditional methods of email and snail mail, this facility will be available again this year.

Graham Thompson
School of American & Canadian Studies
University of Nottingham
University Park
Nottingham NG7 2RD
E-mail: graham.thompson@nottingham.ac.uk

Manchester Conference, April 15-18, 2004

BAAS AGM

Agenda:

1. Elections: Chair, 3 committee members, postgraduate member, any other offices that fall vacant before the AGM
2. Treasurer’s report
3. Chair’s report
4. Amendments to the Constitution
5. Report of the Conference Sub-Committee, and Annual Conferences 2005-2007
6. Report of the Publications Sub-Committee
7. Report of the Development Sub-Committee
8. Report of the Libraries and Resources Sub-Committee
9. Report of the Representative to EAAS
10. Any other business

The AGM will be asked to consider an increase in membership rates to include subscription to the association’s journal, the Journal of American Studies. This is in order to bring us into line with other professional associations. The Treasurer will outline the membership benefits of such a proposal.

At the 2004 AGM, elections will be held for three positions on the Committee (three year terms), for the Chair of the Association (three year term), and for the postgraduate member (two year term, non-renewal) and for any offices that fall vacant before the AGM. Current incumbents of these positions (except the postgraduate member) may stand for re-election if not disbarred by the Constitution’s limits on length of continuous service in Committee posts.

The procedure for nominations is as follows: Nominations should reach the Secretary, Heidi Macpherson, by 12.00 noon on Saturday 17 April. Nominations should be in written form, signed by a proposer, seconder, and the candidate, who should state willingness to serve if elected. The institutional affiliations of the candidate, proposer and seconder should be included. A ready-made form can be found at the back of this newsletter. All candidates for office will be asked to provide a brief statement outlining their educational backgrounds, areas of teaching and/or research interests and vision of the role of BAAS in the upcoming years. These need to be to the Secretary at the time of nomination so they can be posted and available for the membership to read before the AGM.

Dr. Heidi Macpherson
BAAS Secretary
Department of Humanities
University of Central Lancashire
Preston PR1 2HE
United Kingdom
Tel. (01772) 893039
hrsmacpherson@uclan.ac.uk

Costs and Registration

Fees: The standard conference fee includes registration, hotel accommodation and all meals including the Gala Dinner at the Town Hall on Friday evening. There is a reduced rate for shared hotel rooms. The fee for postgraduates is offered at a subsidised rate. The daily delegate rate excludes accommodation.

£ 230 BAAS Postgraduate Standard Conference Fee*
£ 330 Standard Conference Fee (BAAS members)
£ 350 Standard Conference Fee (non-BAAS members)

£ 150 BAAS Postgraduate Standard Conference Fee (shared accommodation)*
£ 250 Standard Conference Fee (BAAS members, shared accommodation)
£ 270 Standard Conference Fee (non-BAAS members, shared accommodation)

£ 50 Postgraduate Daily Delegate Fee*
£ 150 Daily Delegate Fee (BAAS members)
£ 170 Daily Delegate Fee (non-BAAS members)

£ 20 Late Fee (for payment made after 23rd January)

* Postgraduate rates are discounted by £100 (limited availability)

A registration and booking form is available at the conference website:
http://http://www.baas.ac.uk/administration/baasconf.asp

You can also find a copy at the back of this newsletter.

Any queries about the conference can be addressed to:

Dr Sarah MacLachlan
BAAS Conference Secretary
Department of English
Manchester Metropolitan University
Geoffrey Manton Building
Rosamond Street West
Manchester M15 6LL

Tel: +44 (0)161 247 1755
Fax: +44 (0)161 247 6345
E-Mail: s.maclachlan@mmu.ac.uk

Provisional Programme

British Association for American Studies Annual Conference, 2004

Manchester Metropolitan University, 15-18 April

THURSDAY, 15 APRIL

2.00-4.00 Arrival and key collection – Travel Inn Hotel

2.30-4.30 Registration – Reception, Geoffrey Manton Building, Manchester Metropolitan University (conference venue)

3.00-4.00 Walking Tour of Manchester
Terry Wyke (Manchester Metropolitan University)

4.45-5.00 WELCOME ADDRESS
Prof. Philip Davies, BAAS Chair

5.00-6.00 KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Prof. Bharati Mukherjee (University of California, Berkeley) – title tbc
(Sponsored by the English Department, MMU)

6.00-7.00 RECEPTION (Atrium)

7.00-LATE DINNER – Royal Naz Indian Restaurant, Rusholme

FRIDAY, 16 APRIL

7.00-8.45 BREAKFAST (Travel Inn)

9.00-11.00 PANEL SESSION 1

A. Negotiating Racial and Regional Boundaries
Christopher McKinlay (University of Dundee) – Who Were the Free Blacks? Freedom, Race, Power and Influence in Virginia
Gary Smith (University of Dundee) – Democracy For All? Kentucky Frontiersmen and the Issue of Black Slavery
John Howard (King’s College, University of London) – South by West: Sectional Alliances and National Belonging in Early Twentieth Century America
Henrice Altink (University of Glamorgan) – Solution or Source of the Problem?: Attitudes Towards Interracial Marriage in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries
Chair: tba

B. Looking Back: Americans in Europe
Finn Pollard (University of Edinburgh) – Travelling Between Two Worlds: Washington Irving and the Search for Homeland
Hywel Dix (University of Glamorgan) – Mark Twain: the Selective Tradition
Shirley Foster (University of Sheffield) – The Crowd as Other: Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry James on the British Populace
Bent Sorensen (Aalborg University, Denmark) – Images of Europe in Generational Novels
Chair: Theresa Saxon (Manchester Metropolitan University)

C. Contested Places and Spatial Transformations
Duncan White (Kingston University) – Placelessness: A New System of Space in the Work of Ben Marcus and Mathew Barney
Gregory Bush (University of Miami) – Parks and Urban Identity: Civic Activism in Miami, 1996-2001
Nissie Ellison (University of Oregon) – Putting the Woman’s Building in its Stylistic Place
Kate Holden (University of Huddersfield) – Domestic Redemption: the Significance of Home in Contemporary North American Fiction
Chair: tba

D. US Foreign Policy Since 1940
Mark Ledwidge (University of Manchester) – The African-American Foreign Affairs Community and the Formation of the UNO
Alex Thomson (University of Coventry) – Dealing with Apartheid: US Foreign Policy Towards South Africa, 1948-1994
Thomas C. Wales (University of Edinburgh) – No ‘Innocents Abroad’: The American Intelligence Network in North Africa, May 1941-November 1942
David W. McBride (University of Nottingham) – A Policy for Palestine? Examining American Interests Behind Truman’s Palestinian Policy
Chair: Dr Ian Scott (University of Manchester)

E. New York Stories
Louis J. Kern (Hofstra University) – ‘Seeing the Elephant’: Mortimer Neal Thomson and the Origins of Colloquial Humor in America
Christoph Lindner (University of Wales, Aberystwyth) – Silhouettes of New York: Reflections on the Modern Skyline
John Fagg (University of Nottingham) – ‘Framing Out’ and ‘Framing Off’ in the Work of Stephen Crane and George Bellows
Mark Brown (Keele University) – ‘Dis-alienating’ Paul Auster’s New York: Re-reading The New York Trilogy
Chair: tba

F. Speaking the Unspeakable: Cultural Trauma in America
Bridget Bennett (University of Leeds) – There is no Death: Abraham Lincoln and the Spiritualist Politics of Memory
Paul Burgess (University of Glasgow) – Censoring History: An Investigation of the Air and Space Museum’s Exhibition of the Enola Gay
Lincoln Geraghty (University of Nottingham) – A Network of Support: Coping with Trauma through the Star Trek Community
Simon Newman (University of Glasgow) – ‘It Don’t Mean Nothing’: Explaining the Inexplicable in Vietnam War Films and Fiction
Chair: Rick Crownshaw (Manchester Metropolitan University)

G. The Anxiety of Influence: Contemporary Poetry and the American Canon
Will Montgommery (Queen Mary College, University of London) – The ‘shock of poetry telepathy’ and Susan Howe’s Melville’s Marginalia
Rob Stanton (University of Leeds) – ‘By homely gifts and hindered words’: Reading Susan Howe Reading Emily Dickinson
Catherine Martin (University of Sussex) – How the Dead Prey Upon Us: Susan Howe and Robert Duncan
Sally Connolly (University College London) – The Offspring of Pound’s Pact: Contemporary Poetic Approaches to the Figure of Walt Whitman
Chair: Philip McGowan (Goldsmiths College, University of London)

H. New Perspectives on African American Women’s Writing
Jennifer Terry (University of Warwick) – Class, Race and Vacationing in the Fiction of Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall and Barbara Neely
Tessa Roynon (University of Warwick) – ‘Aesop Live’: Toni Morrison’s Engagement with the Classical Tradition
Owen Robinson (University of Essex) – ‘Unembellished Stories Told and Retold’: Narratives of History in Toni Morrison’s Paradise
Keren Omry (Goldsmiths College, University of London) – Paradise and Parataxis: Adorno and Free Jazz in Toni Morrison’s Paradise
Chair: Rachel van Duyvenbode (Sheffield)

11.00-11.30 TEA / COFFEE (Atrium)

11.30–1.00 PANEL SESSION 2

A. Warwork: Soldiering, Labour, and the Anglo-American Transition to Capitalism, 1759-1865
Peter J. Way (Bowling Green State University) – Class Warfare, Common Soldiers: The Army and the Making of Empire in the Seven Years’ War
Lawrence T. McDonnell (Independent Scholar) – Bloody Work: Toward and Beyond a Labour History of the American Civil War
Marc Egnal (York University, Toronto) – John Sherman: Leader of the Second American Revolution
Commentator: Christopher Clark (University of Warwick)
Chair: John S. Ashworth (University of Nottingham)

B. Grammars of Science: Henry Adams, Henry James and Neal Stephenson
Sam Halliday (Queen Mary’s College, University of London) – Electro-Historicism: Henry Adams, Nietzsche and the Laws of Thermodynamics
Peter Rawlings (University of the West of England) – Glossing over Chaotic Intervals in Henry James’s What Maisie Knew
Ben Williamson (University of the West of England, Bristol) – The Multiform Complexity of Things: Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon
Chair: tba

C. The Spectacle of the Black Body
Stephen C. Kenny (Liverpool John Moores University) – ‘A Few Days’ Rest Between Each Trial’: The Relationship Between the Slave Body and the Development of
Professional Medicine in the Old South
Angela W. Thibodeaux (University of California, Santa Cruz) – In Search of the Black Victorian: Black Women and the Transnational Phenomenon of Skin Bleaching
Kate Dossett (University of Leeds) – ‘Joy Goddess of the 1920s’: A’Lelia Walker and Marketing the New Negro Woman
Chair: Mark Whalan (University of Exeter)

D. War in Words: American Writers, American Conflicts
Liz Nolan (Manchester Metropolitan University) – ‘Writing a War Story’: Edith Wharton and World War I
Margaret Smith (Manchester Metropolitan University) – ‘Goodbye Americana, Hello American Real Time’: American Berserk in Philip Roth’s American Pastoral
Theresa Saxon (Manchester Metropolitan University) – The ‘Mechanical Reverberations’ of Rhetoric: Henry James’s ‘The Beast in the Jungle’
Chair: Janet Beer (Manchester Metropolitan University)

E. Photography and Narrative Form
Natalie A. Dykstra (Hope College) – Entanglements: Narrative Uncertainty and the Portrait Photographs of Marian ‘Clover’ Adams
Elizabeth Linda Quinlan – Ethical Documentary or Aesthetic Experiment?: Walker Evans and the Famous Men photographs
Caroline Blinder (Goldsmith’s College, University of London) – American Alphabet: Paul Strand and Nancy Newhall’s Time in New England (1950)

F. Civil Rights in the 1960s
Clair Wardle (University of Pennsylvania) – ‘A Moral Issue’: President Kennedy’s Civil Rights Address, June 11 1963
Tom Kuipers (Roosevelt Study Center) – Commentary, Civil Rights and the Development of Neoconservatism
Dave Deverick (University of Nottingham) – Lyndon Johnson and the Civil Rights Act of 1964
Chair: tba

G. American Masculinities: Boxers, Cowboys and Cheats
Julie Sheridan (Trinity College, Dublin) – ‘A Good Clean Fight’: Masculinity and Hierarchy in Selected Works by Joyce Carol Oates
Luigi Fidanza (Manchester Metropolitan University) – Implications of Performativity in Cormac McCarthy’s Cities of the Plain and its Screenplay
Jamal Assadi (The College of Sakhnin for Teacher Education) – What Do Men Do When Their Wives Are Away?: Exorcists, Spirits and Actors in Saul Bellow’s The Victim
Chair: Lee Grievson (King’s College, University of London)

H. Musical Roots and Routes: Global Flows and the Territorial Imperative
Gillian A. M. Mitchell (University of Toronto) – The Regionalist Vision, National Identity and the Folk Music Revival Movement in the United States and Canada, 1958-1966
Simon Philo (University of Derby) – A Small Axe: Reggae’s Negotiations with America, 1962-76
Alex Seago (The American International University in London) – The Kraftwerk-Effekt: Towards an Analysis of the Deterritorialization of Pop Music in the 21st Century
Chair: Nicholas Gebhardt (University of Lancaster)

I. Mexican Migrant Workers and Film: Restoring Alambrista
Participants: David Carrasco (Harvard University), Albert Camarillo (Stanford University), José Cuellar (San Francisco State University), Daniel Grody (Notre Dame University) – titles tbc
Chair: Nick Cull (University of Leicester)
* A screening of Alambrista will be arranged.

1.00-2.00 LUNCH (Green Room)

2.00-3.30 PANEL SESSION 3

A. Religious and Racial Diversity in Early America
James Fog (University of Edinburgh) – From the Santee to the St. Lawrence: The Contrasting Missions of Charles Woodmason and Simon LeMoyne
Richard Middleton (Queen’s University, Belfast) – Chief Pontiac: Rebel Conspirator or Ottawa Freedom Fighter?
Vassiliki Karali (University of Edinburgh) – Anglicanism and the Formation of Loyalist and Patriot Groups at the Time of the American Revolution: A Focus on Virginia and New York, 1763-1776
Chair: tba

B. Sex and the South
Susan Castillo (Glasgow University) – Darker Hauntings: ‘Miscegenation’ and George Washington Cable’s Southern Gothic
Helen Taylor (University of Exeter) – Spectacular Secrets: Storyville in Focus
Artemis Michailidou (University of Athens) – Patriarchy and Incest in William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! and Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Paramo
Chair: Richard King (University of Nottingham)

C. Literatures of Consumption
Anne Gillingham (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) – Sister Carrie: The Poetics of Materialism
James Annesley (Kingston University) – Anis del Toro: Branding, Consumption and Identity in Hemingway’s Fiction
Gary Blohm (University of Exeter) – Suppressed Subjectivities: The Politics of the Banal in Raymond Carver
Chair: Barry Atkins (Manchester Metropolitan University)

D. Constructing the Post-World War II Landscape: Urban and Suburban Views
Eric J. Sandeen (University of Wyoming) – City Surveillance: Aerial Photography and Urban Renewal in New York City in the 1960s
Paul Edwards (University of Nottingham) – Learning From the Mall: The Regional Shopping Center and American Post-War Urban Renewal
Nick Yablon (University of Iowa) – Architecture of Anxiety: Constructing the Fallout Shelter in 1960s America
Chair: Liam Kennedy (University of Birmingham)

E. Hybrid Interventions: Narrating the Border
Elizabeth Jacobs (The Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford) – Chicano/a Mixed Race Discourse and the Formation of Interracial Politics
Rebecca Tillett (University of Essex) – Mapping the ‘Space Between’: Borders and Border Crossings in George Rabasa’s The Floating Kingdom and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead
Helen Dennis (University of Warwick) – Representing History: Interpretations of the Past in Native American Literature
Chair: Helena Grice (University of Wales, Aberystwyth)

F. The US and Vietnam
Sandra Scanlon (University of Cambridge) – The Conservative Movement and Nixon’s ‘Peace with Honor’ in Vietnam
David Milne (University of Cambridge) – Walt Rostow and the Shaping of American Foreign Policy, 1961-1968
Richard Lock-Pullan (Joint Services Command and Staff College) – The Wrong Army: The US Army, Vietnam and the Cold War
Chair: tba

G. Philip Roth: Transatlantic Connections
David Brauner (University of Reading) – Hyperbole, Humiliation, Ignominy and Indignation: Surreal Comedy in ‘Middle’ Philip Roth
David Greenham (Nottingham Trent University) – Philip Roth and Romantic Irony
Catherine Morley (Oxford Brookes University) – In the Shadow of the Renaissance: Anxious Influences in Philip Roth’s American Pastoral Trilogy
Chair: Graham Thompson (University of Nottingham)

H. American Studies Online Resources Workshop
Sue Currell and Beccie Seaman (Elizabeth City State University) – Is E any Good?: A Tour of the Virtual Learning Environment

3.30-4.00 TEA / COFFEE (Atrium)

4.00-5.30 PANEL SESSION 4

A. Prisons and Prisoners in the American South
Michael J. Pfeifer (The Evergreen State College) – A Lethal Transition: Regulator Movements, Law, and Extralegal Punishment in the Antebellum United States
Vivien Miller (Middlesex University) – Of Mules, Men, and Upright Coffins: Convict Life and Labour on the Southern Chain Gang
Zoe A. Colley (University of St. Andrews) – Another Look at the Imprisonment of Civil Rights Workers in South: Race, Class, and Gender
Chair: tba

B. Women Writing in the Shadow of War
Alex Goody (Oxford Brookes University) – Desire, War and Letters in Gertrude Stein’s Lifting Belly
Sarah Graham (University of Leicester) – Falling Walls: H.D.’s Traumatised Poetic
Sarah Robertson (University of the West of England) – ‘The Voice That Doesn’t Talk’: Narrative Silence and Male Inheritance in Jayne Anne Phillips’ Machine Dreams
Chair: Liz Nolan (Manchester Metropolitan University)

C. Civil Rights in the Early Twentieth Century
Simon Topping (University of Wales, Bangor) – Wendell Wilkie: Republican Anathema
K.J. Verney (Edge Hill College) – Growing Pains: The Struggle for Racial and Grassroots Democracy within the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 1909-1940
Lee Sartain (Edge Hill College) – ‘We are but Americans’: Georgia M. Johnson and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Alexandria, Louisiana, 1941-1946
Chair: tba

D. Race, Resistance and the Transnational
Alan Rice (University of Central Lancashire) – From the Lincoln Memorial to Lubaina Himid’s Cotton.com: Manchester in the Black Atlantic Imaginary
James Miller (King’s College London) – Black Redemption: The Construction of Ethnicity in James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time
Martyn Bone (University of Copenhagen) – It’s Not Where You’re From, It’s Where You’re At: The Transnational South in Patrick Neate’s Twelve Bar Blues
Chair: Maria Lauret (University of Sussex)

E. Transcendence, Technology and Death
Andrew Cutting (London Metropolitan University) – How to Make an Afterlife: Edgar Cayce, L. Ron Hubbard, Dick Sutphen and the Production of Past Lives
Megan Stern (London Metropolitan University) – Riding the Bomb: Astronauts, Death and Rocketry in Cold War America
Polina Mackay (Birkbeck College, University of London) – American Experimental Literature, Technology and Death
Chair: tba

F. The Cultural Economy of Popular Music
Nicholas Gebhardt (University of Lancaster) – Studio Time = Money
Holly Farrington (Middlesex University) – ‘[D]elivered of your burden’: Gospel and the Re-Nationalisation of American Popular Music
Sean Albiez (University of Plymouth) – Early Detroit Techno & Post-Soul Cultural Politics 1980-87
Chair: Eithne Quinn (University of Manchester)

G. Men’s Magazines: Sexuality and National Identity
Karen McNally (University of Nottingham) – Your Pal Joey: Frank Sinatra’s Alternative Playboy
Rahul Krishna Gairola (Pembroke College, Cambridge/University of Washington,
Seattle) – The Hybrid Homos of Adonis and Powhatan: American National Identity and Parody in Sixties Gay Images from Physique Pictoral
Milena Katsarska (Plovdiv University, Bulgaria) – Playboys Old and Young: ‘American’ Signs and Symptoms in Playboy’s Bulgarian Edition
Chair: Paul Grainge (University of Nottingham)

JOURNAL OF AMERICAN STUDIES LECTURE
Prof. Philip Morgan (Johns Hopkins University): ‘To get quit of Negroes’: George Washington and Slavery (Sponsored by Cambridge University Press)

7.30-8.15 RECEPTION (Manchester Town Hall)

8.15-LATE DINNER/AFTER-DINNER BAR (Manchester Town Hall)
After Dinner Speaker: Terry Wyke (Manchester Metropolitan University) – Searching for Manchester

SATURDAY, 17 APRIL

7.00-8.45 BREAKFAST (Travel Inn)

9.00-10.30 PANEL SESSION 1

A. Race, Class, and Gender in the Antebellum South
Michele Gillespie (Wake Forest University) – Violence, Work Culture, and Coming of Age in the Early National South: White Apprentices as Citizens-in-the-Making
Tim Lockley (University of Warwick) – Competing for the Poor: Benevolent Women in Antebellum Mobile
David Brown (University College, Northampton) – Uncovering the Informal Economy: Race Relations from the Bottom Up in the Antebellum South
Chair: Martin Crawford (University of Keele)

B. Abolitionism Abroad
Keith Hughes (University of Edinburgh) – Frederick Douglass and the Scottish Press
Daniel Williams (University of Wales, Swansea) – Frederick Douglass and Welsh Abolitionism
Whitney A. Womack (Miami University of Ohio) – ‘The Voice of Living Scotland’: Representations of Scotland in Stowe’s Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands and Margaret Fuller’s At Home and Abroad
Chair: Alan Rice (University of Central Lancashire)

C. America as Liberation, America as Containment
Lisa Merrill (Hofstra University) – Performing Civil War Sympathies
Mary Anne Trasciatti (Hofstra) – Unlikely American Icons of the 1920s: Sacco, Vanzetti and Valentino
Jude Davies (King Alfred’s College, Winchester) – Stupid White Men: Politics, Education and Ethnic Difference in Three Kings and Bowling For Columbine
Chair: Anne-Marie Evans (University of Sheffield)

D. Hollywood, Propaganda, Populism and Post-War Ambivalence
Ian Scott (University of Manchester) – From Toscanini to Tennessee: Robert Riskin, the OWI and the Construction of American Propaganda in World War Two
Nevena Dakovic (University of Arts, Belgrade) – American Political Soap: Popularising the Populism
Mike Chopra-Gant (London Metropolitan University) – American Ambivalence and the Postwar Small-Town Movie
Chair: Andrew Pepper (University of Belfast)

E. Sporting Nation
Colin Howley (University of Sheffield) – Writing Hoop Dreams: Basketball and the Quest for the American Dream
Gabe Logan (Northern Illinois University) – Soccer St. Louis: A Sport Exceptionalism
Ross Dawson (Liverpool John Moores University) – Dallas Does America: The Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders as Mass Ornament
Chair: Duco van Oostrum (University of Sheffield)

F. The Bush Administration: A Pre-emptive Assessment
Niels Bjerre-Poulsen (Copenhagen Business School) – The Imperial Presidency Revisited?
Carl Pedersen (University of Copenhagen) – Bush and the War to Remake the World: The Tragedy of American Empire
Edward Ashbee (Copenhagen Business School) – The Bush Administration, Religious Faith and Cultural Politics
Chair: Steven Hurst (Manchester Metropolitan University)

G. American Icons
Tim Nelson (University of Hull) – ‘Even an Android Can Cry’: Superheroes, Body-Building and Some Ideas of Masculinity in America
James Mackay- Green Hornet vs. Goethe: The Influence of Pulp Narrative on Jack Kerouac’s Doctor Sax
Tanya Horeck (Anglia Polytechnic University) – American Icon: Representing Marilyn in Joyce Carol Oates’ Blonde
Chair: Howard Cunnell (Institute of United States Studies, University of London)

H. Cultural Responses to 9/11
Brian Jarvis (Loughborough University) – Art. After. 9.11
Paul Grainge (University of Nottingham) – A Taste for Black and White: Visual Culture and the Anxieties of the Global
Alex Houen (University of Sheffield) – Novel Spaces and Taking Place(s) in the Wake of September 11
Adriana Neagu (University of East Anglia) – Cultural Studies and Academic Practice after September 11
Chair: Liz Rosen (University College London)

10.30-11.00 TEA / COFFEE (Atrium)

11.00-12.30 PANEL SESSION 2

A. Nineteenth Century American Women’s Writing and Death – Roundtable Discussion
Participants: Alison Easton (Lancaster University), Dick Ellis (Nottingham Trent University), Janet Floyd (King’s College London), Anne-Marie Ford (St Albans Girls’ School)

B. Louis Menand’s The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America
Richard H. King (University of Nottingham) – Explaining American Thought: Menand’s The Metaphysical Club
Peter Kuryla (Vanderbilt University) – Whither ‘Twaddle’ and the ‘Heroic Mind’? Henry Adams and The Metaphysical Club
Paul Jenner (University of Nottingham) – Members Only: Santayana and The Metaphysical Club
Chair: tba

C. New Perspectives on African American Women’s Writing – Roundtable Discussion
Participants: Elizabeth Boyle (University of Sheffield), Mae Henderson (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), Maria Lauret (University of Sussex), Duco van Oostrum (University of Sheffield)
Respondent: Rachel van Duyvenbode (University of Sheffield)

D. Public Space and Communal Ritual in the American South
Paul D. H. Quigley (University of North Carolina) – ‘The Glorious Day Surely Belongs to the South’: The Fourth of July in the Southern States, 1848-1865
Brock Thompson (King’s College, University of London) – Black Lace and Black Face: Womanless Weddings and Rural Drag Culture in Arkansas, 1930-1945
Simon Cuthbert-Kerr (University of Strathclyde) – ‘Back Here to the Same Old, Same Old’: The Impact of the Mule Train on the Black Community of Quitman County, Mississippi
Chair: tba

E. The Modern Supreme Court: The Death Penalty, Abortion Rights and Prayer
Elisabeth Boulot (University of Marne-la-Vallée) – The Impact of 30 Years of Supreme Court Jurisprudence on the Application of the Death Penalty in the United States Today
Mary C. Dagg (University of Kent) – Roe v Wade and the ‘Right to Abortion’: A National Myth
Emma Long (University of Kent) – The Supreme Court and School Prayer
Chair: William Merkel (University of Oxford)

F. American Gay Men’s Fiction Before AIDS: A Debate
Participants: Monica Pearl (University of Manchester), Anna Wilson (University of Birmingham)
Respondent: Gregory Woods (Nottingham Trent University)

G. George W. Bush and the World After September 11: A Roundtable Discussion
Participants: Adewale Lasisi, Oyedolapo Babatunde Durojaye, Abiola Hammed Odu, Alfred Toritseju Lawani, (Institute of African Studies, Ibadan)

H. American Landscapes and Photography
John Beck (University of Newcastle) – Dead Calm: The ‘Still’ Image as Aftershock
Neil Campbell (University of Derby) – Virtual Wests: Post-tourism and Postwestern Landscapes
Martin Padget (University of Wales, Aberystwyth) – Photographing the ‘Indian Country’ of the American Southwest: A Critical Travelogue
Chair: Luigi Fidanza (Manchester Metropolitan University)

I. Hollywood and Globalisation
Andrew Pepper (University of Belfast) – The New Face of Global Hollywood: Black Hawk Down and the Politics of Intervention
James Lyons (University of Exeter) – ‘Planet Starbucks’: Gourmet Coffee, Globalisation and the Selling of Seattle
Nathalie Dupont (L’Université du Littoral et de la Côte d’Opale) – The Marketing of American Films: A Global Strategy
Chair: James Annesley

LUNCH (Green Room)

1.30-2.30 PANEL SESSION 3

A. Soldiers and Citizens
Karen E. O’Brien (Northwestern University) – Idealizing America: Soldiers and Popular Citizenship in Revolutionary America
Brad Jones (University of Glasgow) – Friends of the Government: The Impact of the American Revolution on an Emerging Trans-Atlantic British Identity
Chair: tba

B. Progress, Women and Nature: Reinterpretations of Marginal Texts
Rowland Hughes (University College London) – ‘The Panther Captivity’: Shay’s Rebellion, and Early Republican Pamphlet Culture
Stephanie Palmer (De Montfort University/Leicester University) – Female Self-Development Versus the Railroad in Rebecca Harding Davis’ Earthen Pitchers
Chair: Whitney Womack (Miami University of Ohio)

C. 1930s Political Literature
Laura Rattray (University of Hull) – Editing the Thirties: The Lost Work of Josephine Johnson
Juan José Cruz (University of La Laguna, Tenerife) – Poles Without Faith: Anomie and Ethnic Re-affiliation in Nelson Algren’s Never Comes Morning
Chair: tba

D. Aspects of the American Left
Andrew Schroeder (University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh) – ‘Total Information Awareness’ as a Slogan for the Left: Towards an Open Source World
James G. Ryan (Texas A&M University) – The American Communist Party and the Need for Historiographical Synthesis
Chair: tba

E. Re-reading Chinese American Literature
Helena Grice (University of Wales, Aberystwyth) – ‘The beginning is hers’: The Political and Literary Legacy of Maxine Hong Kingston
Yan Ying (University of Nottingham) – Neo-Orientalism in Ha Jin’s Prize-Winning Works
Chair: tba

F. Negotiating Postmodern Spaces
Graham Thompson (University of Nottingham) – The Anxiety of Empire: Business and ‘America’ in United States Postmodern Fiction
Christina Dumbrava (‘Ovidius’ University of Constanta, Romania) – Subject Positions in Postmodern Counterspaces: A Case Study of Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49
Chair: tba

G. American Politics Since 2000
William Merkel (University of Oxford) – America’s Misplaced Opposition to the International Criminal Court
Christy Allen (University of Essex) – ‘The Second Amendment is Homeland Security’: American Identity and Gun Rights Activism post-September 11, 2001
Chair: tba

H. Literary Histories and the Shaping of National Identity
Michael Boyden (University of Leuven) – The ‘Founding Fathers’ of American Literary History
Andrew Green (University of Birmingham) – Postnational Studies and Mid-Nineteenth Century American Literature
Chair: tba

I. New American Cinemas
Sarah Gamble (University of Edinburgh) – Read my Lips: the Political Erotics of New Queer Cinema
Lynne Hibberd (University of Stirling) – Too Cool for School: Quentin Tarantino’s Impact on American Culture
Chair: tba

2.30-3.00 TEA/COFFEE (Atrium)

BAAS ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

5.00-6.00 PANEL SESSION 4

A. Antebellum Masculinities
Richard Godbeer (University of California, Riverside) – ‘The Overflowing of Friendship’: Male Love and Civic Virtue in the Early Republic
Thomas Ruys Smith (University of East Anglia) – ‘Extraordinary Metaphysical Scamps’: The Creation of the Mississippi Gambler

Chair: Anne-Marie Ford (St Albans Girls’ School)

B. Narrating the Nation: Strategies of Inclusion and Exclusion
Jarod H. Roll (Northwestern University) – The ‘Radical’ Roots of the Far Right: The Interracial and Socialist Origins of American Pentecostalism
Louis Mazzari (University of New Hampshire) – The Modern Realism of New Deal America

C. Women, Economics and Activism
S. J. Kleinberg (Brunel University) – Widows and Property in the United States
Rachel Cohen (Brunel University) – Identity and Memory: Jewish Women in America as Activists and Feminists 1960-1990
Chair: tba

D. Rethinking Beat Poetry
Nick Selby (University of Glasgow) – Lying Under the Poem’s Law: America, the Abject, and John Wieners’ The Hotel Wentley Poems
Jo Pawlik (University of Sussex) – The Sublime in Beat Writing: Its Relationship to the American Tradition and to Contemporary European Postmodernism
Chair: Catherine Martin (University of Sussex)

E. Music and Protest: The Sixites
David Ingram (Brunel University) – ‘Prelude to the Afternoon of a Sexually Aroused Gas Mask’: Frank Zappa’s Anti-Pastoral Satire
Seth Hague (Essex University) – ‘It’s not about the words, it’s about the spirit’: Music and the Stylisation of Activism in the American Civil Rights Movement
Chair: tba

F. Presidential Politics: Rhetoric and Elections
Ben Dettmar (University of Glasgow) – God Help Us!: The Use of Religious Rhetoric by American Presidents
Laurence Horton (University of Essex) – The Prairie Progressives: Iowa Democratic Party Caucuses and Presidential Nominations 1972-2004
Chair: tba

G. Native American Narration
Annie Kirby (University of Wales, Swansea) – ‘Forgotten Contextual Meanings’ in Native American and Academic Storytelling: Victor Masayesva’s Hopiit and Itam Hakim Hopiit
Larry Russell (Hofstra University) – A Performance of Healing in Rituals of Pilgrimage
Chair: Martin Padget (University of Wales, Aberystwyth)

6.00-7.00 THE ECCLES CENTRE LECTURE
Prof. Richard Gray (University of Essex) – title tbc
(Sponsored by The Eccles Centre for American Studies)

7.30-8.15 RECEPTION (venue tba) – sponsored by Cambridge University, host of the BAAS Conference 2005

8.15-LATE DINNER / AFTER-DINNER BAR (Kro 2)

SUNDAY, 18 APRIL

7.00-8.45 BREAKFAST (Travel Inn)

9.00-11.00 PANEL SESSION 1

A. Land and Landscape
Jess Edwards (London Metropolitan University) – Cultural Geographies of Early Colonial America
William E. Van Vugt (Calvin College) – American Agriculture: The Contributions and Adjustments of British Farmers in Ohio, 1800-1900
Marina Moskowitz (University of Glasgow) – ‘After a Season of War’: Sharing Horticultural Success in the Reconstruction-Era Landscape
Mariko Ijima (University of Oxford) – In Quest of Paradise: The Achievements of Japanese Coffee Farmers in Kona, Hawaii
Chair: tba

B. Seen and Not Heard: Growing Up in America
James Campbell (University of Nottingham) – Responses to Juvenile Crime in the Urban Antebellum South
Jenny Bavidge (University of Greenwich) – ‘I am a city child’: Images of the New York Child
Rachel McLennan (University of Glasgow) – Voices in the Cosmos: Self and World in Narratives of Female Adolescence
Joanne Hall (University of Nottingham) – The Wanderer Contained: Issues of ‘Inside’ and ‘Outside’ in Relation to Harold Grey’s Depiction of Little Orphan Annie
Chair: Daniela Caselli (University of Salford)

C. Race, Representation and Silence: Strategies of Inclusion and Exclusion
Stephanie Munro (Lancaster University) – The Strange and the Familiar: Lydia Maria Child’s ‘The Quadroons’ and ‘Slavery’s Pleasant Homes’
Cynthia Whitney Hallett (Bennett College, NC) – Mules and Magnolias
Mark Whalan (University of Exeter) – ‘How’d they pick John Doe’: Race, James Weldon Johnson and the Memorialisation of the Great War
Kimberly Springer (King’s College, University of London) – Censoring Black Female Sexual Agency in the Hyper-Capitalist Age
Chair: tba

D. Early Twentieth Century African American Activism: Image, Performance and Health
Catherine O’Hara (University of Ulster) – Reading Harlem Images: Graphic Design and the Harlem Renaissance
Andrew Fearnly (University of Cambridge) – Culture and Controversy in the Communities of Cleveland
John F. Moe (Ohio State University) – ‘Free at Last, Free at Last’: Personal Narratives and Artistic Reflections of the Black Migration to the Urban North
James E. Reibman (Lafayette College) – Health Care in Harlem: the Great War to the Lafargue Clinic
Chair: tba

E. Poetry and Subjectivity I
Michael Hinds (Mater Dei Institute, Dublin City University) – Randall Jarrell and Intersubjectivity: ‘My Randall Jarrell’
Stephen Matterson (Trinity College, University of Dublin) – Robert Lowell’s Collected Poems as a Form of Autobiography
Joseph Kennedy (University of Sussex) – Our Man in the Open Air: Reading Robert Lowell’s ‘F.O. Matthiessen 1902-1950’
Christina Makris (University of Sussex) – ‘The Energy of Meaning’: The Interface of Scientific Discourse, Experimental Poetry and Art in the Work of Madeline Gins
Chair: Nerys Williams (University College, Dublin)

F. Defining Politics in Bush’s America
Esther Jubb (Liverpool John Moores University) – One Dimensional Patriotism: Patriotism and Dissent in Post-9/11 America
Robert Busby (Liverpool Hope University College) – Patriotism Policies and the People: George W. Bush and Public Opinion
Andy Wroe (University of Kent) – The Workplace and Trust in Government
Alex Waddan (University of Sunderland) – Politics and Social Policy in Bush’s America
Chair: John Dumbrell (University of Leicester)

G. Don DeLillo: Narrativity, Subjectivity and Catastrophe
Kiki Benzon (University College London) – Narrative Geometry in Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis
Benjamin Bird (Leeds University) – From Third to First-Person Consciousness: The American Ascetic in Don DeLillo’s Americana
Sarah Heaton (University of Central Lancashire) – Terrorising Space: The Post-Terrorist Landscape, the Twin Towers, Television, and the Everyday in Don Delillo’s Fiction
Elizabeth Rosen (University College London) – Lenny Bruce: Don DeLillo’s Apocalyptist Extraordinaire
Chair: James Annesley (Kingston University)

11.00-11.30 TEA / COFFEE

PLENARY SESSIONS

Prof. Peter Nicholls (University of Sussex) – Wars I Have Seen: Problems for Twentieth Century American Poetry

Prof. Tony Badger (University of Cambridge) – Southern Liberals Confront the World: LBJ and Albert Gore

12.30-1.30 LUNCH

1.30-2.30 PANEL SESSION 2

A. Native Sons: Race, Violence and Social Change
Andrew Read (Queen Mary, University of London) – Black Violence, White Mask: Reconsidering Racial Indeterminacy in Faulkner’s Light in August
Steven Troy Moore (Abilene Christian University, Texas) – Rage and Symbolism in Richard Wright’s Native Son
Fred Arthur Bailey (Abilene Christian University, Texas) – C. Vann Woodward and the Transformation of Southern Historiography
Chair: tba

B. Exploring the Limits of Genre
Gary Williams (University of Idaho) – Julia Ward Howe’s Hermaphrodite Novel: Conceptualising Gender Ambiguity in Mid-Nineteenth Century America
Tim Lustig (Keele University) – Sun Spots and Death’s Heads: Irony and Realism in Henry James’s The Europeans
Emily Barker (University of Essex) – ‘Communicating Modernity’: Different Stylistics of Voice and Place in the Detective Fiction of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett
Chair: tba

C. American Popular Music in the 1930s and 1940s: Morale, Ideology and Success
Martyn Beeny (University of Kent) – The Dance Bands of the American Forces During World War II: Music for Morale, Music for Mayhem
David Butler (University of Manchester) – Can Anybody Swing Here?: Performing Jazz for Hollywood in the 1930s and 40s
Tim H. Blessing (Alvernia College, Pennsylvania) – Glenn Miller at 100: A Reassessment of His Impact on Popular Music
Chair: tba

D. Americanism and Anti-Americanism in the Post-War Era
Dominic Sandbrook (University of Sheffield) – From ‘Americanisation’ to the British Invasion, 1954-1966
Joe Street (University of Sheffield) – Malcolm X, the West Midlands, and the Black Atlantic in the 1960s
Simon Hall (University of Leeds) – Organising Experience, Anti-Americanism, and 1960s Radicalism
Chair: Adam Smith (University College, London)

E. Discipline and Punish: Masculinity and Criminality in America
Howard Cunnell (Institute of United States Studies, University of London) – Breaking the Code: Compulsive Masculinity and the Convict Ethic in Edward Bunker’s Dog Eat Dog
Lee Grievson (King’s College, University of London) – Underworlds and Reformations: Gangsters and Governance in the Silent Era
Terrie Schauer (Simon Fraser University, Vancouver) – Punks and Cowboys: American Popular Filmic Discourses of Punishment
Chair: Luigi Fidanza (Manchester Metropolitan University)

F. Abstract Expressionism in America
Sara Wood (University of Birmingham) – On Norman Lewis (title tbc)
Lisa Rull (University of Nottingham) – Expatriate Visions of Americans in Europe: Painters, Collectors, Writers, and Myths of Modernism in Film
David Howard (NSCAD) – Modernism’s Last Post: The Critical Demise of Clement Greenberg’s ‘Post Painterly Abstraction’ Exhibition in Los Angeles
Chair: tba

G. Poetry and Subjectivity II
Nerys Williams (University College, Dublin) – ‘Why can’t I write a book called Fraud?’: Reading Norma Cole’s Contrafact
Philip McGowan (Goldsmiths College) – Sectioning Sexton
Brendan Cooper (University of Cambridge) – John Berryman’s Dream Songs, Theodicy and the Book of Job
Chair: Stephen Matterson (Trinity College, University of Dublin)

H. The Presidency of George W. Bush: American Government in a Time of War
John Dumbrell (University of Leicester) – The Bush Doctrine
Michael Cox (London School of Economics) – title tbc
Steve Hurst (Manchester Metropolitan University) – The Intellectual Roots of George W. Bush’s Foreign Policy
Chair: Andy Wroe (University of Kent)

I. The Subversive Gaze: Race, Gender and Film Genre
Martin Shingler (Staffordshire University) – Epitomising Hollywood Melodrama: Now Voyager (Irving Rapper, 1942)
Celeste-Marie Bernier (University of Nottingham) – ‘Sometimes it is those outside our world who can best understand us’: Sympathy and Race in Todd Haynes’s Far From Heaven (2002).
Chloe Toone (University of York) – Blonde and Brunette: Non-White Identification with American Film Culture of the First Half of the Twentieth Century
Chair: Eithne Quinn (University of Manchester)

Minutes of the 2003 AGM

British Association for American Studies: Annual General Meeting 2003

The 2003 AGM of BAAS was held on Sunday 13 April 2003 at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth at 4pm.

Elections:
Treasurer: Nick Selby (to 2006)
Committee: Janet Beer (to 2006), Ian Scott (to 2006), Tim Woods (to 2006)

The Treasurer circulated a draft of the audited accounts, which was approved. There was limited discussion regarding the old Leeds Building Society Account. NS reported that he is still attempting to trace the account. PD reported that BAAS has rationalized accounts significantly over the last several years. NS asked members with information on the account to contact him directly. Steve Mills asked NS to contact members who hadn’t returned giftaid forms.

The Chair provided a comprehensive report of the year’s activities for American Studies as a discipline. The report included mention of:
1. Media enquiries on American Studies topics, ranging from the BBC to The Malay Straits Times, as well as coverage of American Studies in the THES (including ‘Don’s Diary’)
2. American Studies under threat at Keele and BAAS’s vigorous response
3. The passing of key American Studies colleagues, including three former chairs: Frank Thistlethwaite, Dennis Welland, and Peter Parish. The chair was also sad to report the deaths of Alan Conway and Duncan MacLeod.
4. Consultation with professional and academic bodies, including the Commission on the Social Sciences, the Arts and Humanities Research Board, the Higher Education Funding Council, the British Academy, the Economic and Social Science Research Council, the QAA, and the Standing Conference on Arts and Social Science
5. The launch of the Area Studies Network
6. Several conferences and projects, including the AMATAS project, the EAAS conference in 2002, the BAAS postgraduate conference at Sheffield.
7. The short term award and other prizes, to be announced at the Conference Dinner1
8. Promotions, appointments, and other successes for BAAS members2
9. The success of journals related to American Studies, particularly the Journal of American Studies, and American Studies On Line, with newly or soon to be launched journals such as Comparative American Studies, Journal of Transatlantic Studies, and Atlantic Studies: Literary, Cultural and Historical Perspectives on Europe, Africa and the Americas.
10. Thanks to the members of BAAS who volunteer their time, particularly on the BAAS Committee. Special thanks were extended to the Treasurer, Secretary, and subcommittee chairs, as well as Janet Beer, Mike McDonnell, Celeste-Marie Bernier, and Nick Selby whose current terms of office were completed (JB and NS were subsequently re-elected to their positions).
11. A welcome to the Transatlantic Studies Association who joined BAAS in Aberystwyth.
12. Thanks to the US Embassy for support of postgraduate attendance, STAs and other proposals.
13. Final thanks to the organizers of the conference, including the conference subcommittee chair, Mike McDonnell, the conference convenor, Tim Woods, his colleagues on the faculty at Aberystwyth, and Moira Shearer and the Aberystwyth conference office

The Secretary announced that the Committee wished the membership to consider whether we should bring forward a formal amendment to the Constitution to restrict BAAS prizes (including STAs and Essay prizes) to BAAS members. The Secretary stressed that an amendment could not be proposed for this year, but only for the 2004 meeting, and that the Committee, having had long discussions about the issue, wished to gauge the full membership’s feelings on the matter. Arguments for and against the restriction were both expressed. Arguments for restrictions included ensuring that our members benefited from our generosity; arguments against included the fact that all research in American Studies strengthens the discipline, whether or not the researchers were formal members of the organization. A proposal to restrict the prizes was passed by a 2 to 1 majority. The Secretary will discuss an appropriate wording of the amendment with Charities Commission and will bring forward the formal amendment next year.

Conferences: Mike McDonnell thanked Tim Woods and Moira Shearer and the administrative staff at Aberystwyth for their efforts at organizing the 2003 conference, and he extended an invitation to members to give feedback on the conference, directed to the Secretary, Heidi Macpherson. Next year’s conference, organized by Sarah MacLachlan, will be held at Manchester Metropolitan University from 15 to 18 April. The following year, Cambridge will host the 50th anniversary conference. The Committee is currently looking for future bids for future conferences, with Nottingham a possibility for 2006. The Chair of the Conference subcommittee will circulate announcement inviting bids. MM closed by thanking the association for an enjoyable three years on the committee.

Publications: Janet Beer gave a summary of the past year’s activities within the publications subcommittee. The EUP BAAS paperback series, edited by Simon Newman and Carol Smith, with assistance from Nicola Carr at EUP, continues to produce good quality paperbacks. The editors are always keen to see new proposals. This year also saw a new editor of BRRAM, Ken Morgan. BRRAM has a higher profile on the website and a number of important projects underway. Members who are aware of good archives should contact Ken Morgan, Carolyn Masel, or Janet Beer with that information. The Journal of American Studies has a new cover, a new reviewers’ database, and two new members on the editorial board, Professor David Seed, and Professor Walter Hoelbling. The website has been redesigned, with many new links and resources, and is currently receiving up to 120 hits a day. ASIB, edited by Graham Thompson, continues to be a source of important information, and US Studies On Line has recently published a selection of papers from the last BAAS postgraduate conference. JB closed by offering thanks to Jay Kleinberg (editor of JAS), Ken Morgan, Simon Newman, Carol Smith, and Graham Thompson.

Development: Simon Newman reported on the year’s activities, noting the central place of the essay prize and the STA prizes, as well as introducing the new Ambassador’s prize. BAAS has sponsored several conferences, including a schools conference, several postgraduate conferences, and work of the Scottish Association, and welcomes proposals in support of conferences year round. As Chair of the subcommittee, SN responded to the HEFCE review of the RAE. Plans for the 50th anniversary celebration are continuing, and members are urged to contact Jenel Virden with ideas. SN offers thanks to Jude Davies for representing BAAS on the area studies network and LTSN.

Libraries and Resources: Ian Ralston, the new library and resources subcommittee meeting chair, began by thanking Iain Wallace, who has now retired, for his long service to committee. He extended thanks as well to Richard Bennet, Duncan Hayes and Kevin Halliwell. IR reported that the newspapers holdings database on the website (which is also available by link as American Resources Centre website) has been a popular resource for American Studies scholars. Looking to next year, he reported that plans exist for a new seminar workshop, directed at lecturers, postgraduates, and librarians. He is also keen to enhance membership of committee. PD reported that the library newsletter is free to members who request it; interested parties should contact Ian Ralston or Nick Selby.

EAAS: Jenel Virden made her first report as EAAS representative. She attended her first EAAS meeting Athens, from 20-23 March for meeting, at no cost to BAAS. Next year’s meeting will be held at the conference in Prague from 2-5 April. One issue for EAAS was the selling of mailing lists, which was a much debated topic. JV also reported that the conference proceedings from Graz is soon to be published. The next EAAS newsletter is in press and should be better than the former one which suffered from deadline problems. The latest newsletter will have the Prague workshops listed, and BAAS members can propose papers to those workshops. The EAAS website and logo are being redesigned. The 2005 meeting will be held in conjunction with the 50th anniversary celebrations at Cambridge; the 2006 venue is still uncertain. The Russian Association has been included in EAAS. As a final note, JV recorded that BAAS members have been successful in putting forward proposals for the Prague conference, with 3 stream lectures and 6 workshop proposals to be chaired or co-chaired by British scholars.

AOB:
1. Jude Davies reported on the AMATAS project for Alan Rice. The project has now finished. Outcomes included the delivery of 23 workshops, a booklet by Neil Campbell, and 2 conferences (one on 911 at Winchester May 2002, and one featuring George Ritzer, at UCLAN, in January2003). Copies of the final report of project are available.
2. Sue Wedlake reported that April 2005 is centenary of Senator Fulbright’s birth. The Embassy will be organizing some events, and hopes to link these events to BAAS’s 50th anniversary. Members are invited to contact Sue Wedlake with ideas.
3. BAAS records its thanks again to Tim Woods, Martin Padget, Mike Foley, and Helena Grice for their help in organizing the 2003 conference.

Notes

1. This year the Association awarded ten Short Term Awards. Joanne Hall of Nottingham University took the Marcus Cunliffe Award; Joy Cushman of Glasgow, received the newly established Peter Parish Award in History; the Malcolm Bradbury Award went to Jonathan Sanders of Cambridge; and Sandra Scanlon of Cambridge was the winner of the John Lees Award. Other Awards went to Lincoln Geraghty of Nottingham; Clodagh Harrington (London Metropolitan); Bradley Jones (Glasgow); Catherine Martin (Sussex); Catherine Morley (Oxford Brookes); and Sarah Silkey (UEA). Two postgraduate essay prizes were awarded: to John Fagg of Nottingham, and to Jennifer Terry of Warwick. And the winner of this year’s Arthur Miller Prize, donated by the Arthur Miller Centre at the University of East Anglia, is Robert Cook, of Sheffield University.

2. Other member successes in the past year include Professor Tony Badger, becoming Master of Clare College, Cambridge; Professor Janet Beer, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences, and Pro-Vice Chancellor of Manchester Metropolitan University; Professor Douglas Tallack, Chair of the international Universitas 21 steering group; Richard Carwardine, Rhodes Professor of American History, Oxford; Desmond King, Mellon Professor of American Politics, Oxford; Simon Newman, Dennis Brogan Professor American Studies, Glasgow; Mark Jancovich, Professor of Film Studies, Nottingham; John Owens, Professor of American Politics, Westminster; Neil Wynn, Professor of American History, Gloucestershire; Jon Roper, Reader in American Studies, Swansea; Sharon Montieth, Reader in American Studies, Nottingham; Peter Ling, Reader in American Studies, Nottingham. Professor Janet Beer is a member of the QAA advisory group on subject benchmarking; Dr. Jenel Virden, became of member of the Board of examiners for ESRC training; Dr. Jude Davies and Dr Sarah MacLachlan were Fellows at the Salzburg Seminar. Jude Davies was also nominated by BAAS to the Board of the Learning and Teaching Support Centre in Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies. Professor Philip Davies was elected to the Committee of Academicians of the Academy of the Social Sciences. Mark Newman won both the Lillian Smith Book Award of the Southern Regional Council, and the American Studies Network Book Award. The Cambridge Donner Book Prize was awarded to Professor John Dumbrell.

BAAS Requests

BAAS Database of External Examiners

The Secretary of BAAS, Heidi Macpherson, holds a list of potential external examiners. If individuals would like to put their names forward for this list, please email her on hrsmacpherson@uclan.ac.uk. Include the following information, in list form if possible:

Name and title
Affiliation with complete contact details including address, telephone, fax, and email Externalling experience (with dates if appropriate)
Current externalling positions (with end dates)
Research interests (short descriptions only)

By providing this information, you agree to it being passed on to universities who are seeking an external for American Studies or a related discipline. Should you wish your name to be removed in the future, please contact the Secretary.

Any university representative interested in receiving the list should also contact the Secretary. BAAS only acts as a holder of the list; it does not “matchmake”.

Paper copies can also be requested by sending a letter to:

Dr. Heidi Macpherson
BAAS Secretary
Department of Humanities (Fylde 425)
University of Central Lancashire
Preston PR1 2HE

EAAS News

There have been some problems with the posting and receipt of the EAAS newsletter by BAAS members. This is currently under discussion and debate with the EAAS executive. In the meantime, may I take this opportunity to encourage BAAS members to keep the EAAS website on their web bookmarks and to check it regularly for news on forthcoming events. The website has been recently revamped and is now updated frequently. You can locate it at http://www.eaas.info

At the website you can find a copy of the most recent newsletter from October 2003, which gives you a full listing of the workshops for the upcoming conference at Prague. The Prague conference will take place from 2-5 April 2004. You can download conference and hotel registration forms as well. The deadline for registration has been extended to 20 February.

The EAAS newsletter also has details on the EAAS Travel Grants for 2004-2005 for study in the United States for postgraduates in the humanities and social sciences currently registered for a higher research degree at any European university. The deadline for submission of applications is 1 March 2004.

Postgraduate Thesis Database

The new American Studies Research Portal (www.asrp.info) maintains a database of American Studies postgraduate research students along with their thesis topic. Each year, in the spring edition of American Studies in Britain, we will include a list of postgraduate researchers taken from this database.

PhD Student Researchers

Alford, Matthew
University of Birmingham
Thesis Title: Nuclear Crises, anti-Americanism, US Foreign Policy

Asaf, Siniver
University of Nottingham
School of Politics
Thesis Title: WSAG and Crisis Decision-making during the Nixon-Kissinger Years

Ball, Dewi I.
University of Wales,Swansea
Department of American Studies
Thesis Title: The United States Supreme Court and the Unilateral Abrogation of Native American Sovereignty
Research Interests: Native American Politics, History and Law, International Relations, Politics.

Barber, Matt
University of Exeter
Thesis Title: American Politics in Hollywood Cinema
Research Interests: An examination of depictions of the White House and the US President in Hollywood cinema and US TV with particular emphasis on the debates surrounding the relationship between popular culture and historical studies.

Barker, Emily
University of Essex
Department of Literature
Thesis Title: Detective and Crime Fiction in the US
Research Interests: American Gothic; Southern Writing; Folklore; Urban myth

Belcher, Jean
University of Wales, Swansea
Department of History
Thesis Title: The Influence of America on Thomas Paine during 1775
Research Interests: Thomas Paine and the politics of America during the era of the American Revolution

Blohm, Gary
University of Exeter
Thesis Title: Subjectivity and Place in the Works of Charles Bukowski and Raymond Carver (strictly provisional title)
Research Interests: The thesis examines the internal and external components of subjectivity in the two writers’ work. Beginning with Bukowski’s brutal upbringing and the marginalisation of the working classes during the Depression, the role of Place (ie Los Angeles) is added to a study that utilises work on narcissistic personality disorder to establish his alter ego’s position in society and his corresponding mindset. Likewise, Carver is studied in the context of place – geographically and in a social sense – to analyse his fictions of the banal in his urban, small-town and suburban locations. The thesis concentrates on the work ethic and the centrality of occupation in self-perception. Beyond the Depression, the thesis focuses on the time span between the 1960s to around 1990.

Buley, Benjamin
London School of Economics and Political Science
Department of International Relations
Thesis Title: The War on Terror and the American Way of War

Butler, Owen Robert
University of Nottingham
School of American and Canadian Studies
Thesis Title: The Know-Nothing Party in the South
Research Interests: Nineteenth Century, Antebellum era especially and 1850s in particular
Cain, Mark
University of Newcastle upon Tyne
Thesis Title: Innovation and Tradition in Postwar American Poetry

Chochinov, Jennifer
University of Warwick
Department of History
Thesis Title: Escaping the Bugaboo?: American Exchange Students in W. Germany, and W. German Exchange Students in America, 1950-1968

Clerk, Sigrid
University of Dundee
Thesis Title: Moravian Missionaries and the Delaware Indians mid to late 18th century. (not fixed)
Research Interests: The influence of the Moravian missionaries on the Delaware Indians in the Ohio Valley in the mid to late 18th century.

Cohen, Rachel
Brunel University
School of International Studies
Thesis Title: Identity and Memory: Jewish Women in America as Activists and Feminists 1960-1990

Crosthwaite, Paul
University of Newcastle Upon Tyne
Department of English Literature, Language and Linguistics
Thesis Title: Time, History, and World War II in Contemporary British and American Fiction
Research Interests: World War I threatened the technological, scientific, and historical certainties of modernity, prompting modernist literary disruptions of linear time that challenged the laws of causality on which the modern project was founded. World War II, in many ways the first truly global war, provoked radical mutations of these strategies. My project resituates the British and American novels I discuss within a wider intellectual movement—including Paul Virilio, Zygmunt Bauman, and Adorno and Horkheimer—that views World War II as a crisis of modernity. Critical studies of the novelists I discuss frequently invoke the so-called New Physics to account for the texts’ temporal disruptions; I suggest that the metaphorical use of quantum mechanics is itself a response to the war—specifically the graphic instantiation of this previously mysterious paradigm in the form of the atomic bomb. Ultimately, I aim to establish the centrality of World War II to the study of the postmodern movement in fiction. I divide the writers I concentrate on into four groups, according to how directly they experienced warfare: first, John Hawkes, Joseph Heller, and Kurt Vonnegut, all of whom saw active service; second, J.G. Ballard and Michael Moorcock, who, though child civilians during the war, were nonetheless subject to the conflict; third, Philip K. Dick and Thomas Pynchon, who were children in the USA; finally, Martin Amis and Ian McEwan, who were born after the war. I consider how the time elapsed between war and composition itself inflects the temporal structuring of the novels.

Cunnell, Howard
University of London
Thesis Title: Condemned Men: Masculinity, Race & Identity in Contemporary American Prison Writing

Dagg, Mary
University of Kent
Department of History
Thesis Title: Rethinking Roe v Wade in Historical Context
Research Interests: I am using Roe v Wade as both a focus for the career of Justice Blackmun, and as a turning point in the histories of the pro-choice and pro-life movements. I am also looking at the effect that abortion has had on American politics at both state and national levels.

David, Claire
University of Birmingham
Thesis Title: A reassessment of Raymond Carver’s work using psychoanalytical theory (working title only)

de Rouvray, Christel
London School of Economics and Political Science
Department of Economic History
Thesis Title: Economists writing history: economic history in the post-war era
Research Interests: Economic History; Twentieth Century American Intellectual Thought;

DeVaney, Charles
University of Westminster
The Centre for the Study of Democracy
Thesis Title: The effects of the Civil Rights Act on representation local government

Deverick, Dave
University of Nottingham
School of American & Canadian Studies
Thesis Title: Ulysses S. Grant as military commander
Research Interests: My PhD compares Grant’s strategic and tactical ability with that of his Civil War contemporaries. However, I have an interest in American history in general, and especially African- American history. My MA thesis compared the roles of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson in passing civil rights legislation.

Doughty, Ruth
Keele University
Thesis Title: Scoring a Black Aesthetic: Music in the Films of Spike Lee

Duguid, Scott
University of Edinburgh
Thesis Title: Norman Mailer and cultural politics
Research Interests: Postwar American literature, art, and culture; Modernism/Postmodernism; Race/ethnicity (particularly black-Jewish relations) Theory (Adorno, Jameson) The American public; intellectual Censorship

Edwards, Paul
University of Nottingham
School of American and Canadian Studies
Thesis Title: The Pre-History of Post-Modernity: Victor Gruen and the Development of the Shopping Mall
Research Interests: Examining the intellectual and cultural development of the shopping mall in 1950s and 60s America through the work of the architect Victor Gruen.

Esbester, Mike
University of York
Department of History
Thesis Title: Safety First on British Railways, 1913-48
Research Interests: I am looking at the transfer of the ‘Safety First’ movement from the railways in the USA to those of Britain, c.1913-48. This was concerned with educating railway employees to work ‘safely’ and was achieved through a series of ‘informal’ articles, written in a ‘man-to-man’ style. In addition, I am examining the return trade in safety education, from Britain to the USA, and the tensions between the two.

Falconer-Salkeld, Bridget
University of London
Institute of United States Studies
Thesis Title: The MacDowell Colony: a musical history of America’s premier artists’ community

Farrington, Holly
University of Middlesex
Department of American Studies
Thesis Title: Bringing me to where I am: jazz autobiography in context

Fearnley, Andrew
Cambridge University
Department of History
Thesis Title: Houses and Churches: Culture and Community in 1930s Cleveland.
Research Interests: My work focuses upon the first black theatre, Karamu House, in a place – the urban midwest – and at a time – 1930s-1940s – when cultural pursuits are seemingly neglected by historians, particularly those of African American history. Through archival research and oral interviews with those who can remember Karamu House’s projects, I seek to provide a greater appreciation of how black communities functioned and what their priorities and outlook were.

Felton, Mark
University of Essex
Department of History
Thesis Title: Resistance in Exile: Sitting Bull and the Hunkpapa Sioux in Canada 1876-1881
Research Interests: Aboriginal-white relations in the United States and Canada during the 19th century.

Gemelos, Michele
University of Oxford
Thesis Title: Twentieth-century British writing and New York City

Geraghty, Lincoln
University of Nottingham
School of American and Canadian Studies
Thesis Title: Living with Star Trek: American Culture and Star Trek Fandom

Grant, Elizabeth
University of Birmingham
Thesis Title: The Greek Picnic: Race, Place and Memory in Post-Industrial Philadelphia

Hadji Haidar, Hamid
University of Essex
Department of Government
Thesis Title: Rawls’ Political Liberalism and Mill’s Perfectionist Liberalism
Research Interests: American Political Thought; British Political Thought

Hardie, Kirsten
University of Brighton
Department of Communication Arts
Thesis Title: But Who is Betty Crocker?

Harvey, Jack
University of Glasgow
Department of English
Thesis Title: Marilyn Hacker’s editorship of The Kenyon Review
Research Interests: Marilyn Hacker; The Kenyon Review;

Hibberd, Lynne
University of Birmingham
School of American and Canadian Studies
Thesis Title: Who’s Cracking the Whip? Subversive representations of gender, domesticity and sexuality in film musicals of the 1950’s.

Hilditch, Lynn
Liverpool Hope University
Department of American Studies
Thesis Title: Lee Miller: Photography and Surrealism

Horton, Laurence
University of Essex
Thesis Title: Cognitive approaches to domestic policymaking: the 1995 federal government shutdown

Hunt, Kevin
University of Nottingham
School of American Studies
Thesis Title: Text Messages: The Changing Function of Words, Letters and Figures In American Art
Research Interests: My thesis is a conceptual study beginning with the self-conscious application of text in nineteenth century American art, which then moves on to examine how text (including titles) changes its function in relation to form and content against the backdrop of Realism, Modernism, and Postmodern. In doing so my intention is, in part, to examine how the concept of periodisation is problematic when it comes to positioning certain American artists or artistic styles/movements.

Iijima, Mariko
University of Oxford
Department of Modern History
Thesis Title: The Coffee Industry and the Multiethnic Society In Kona, Hawaii

Jones, Brad
University of Glasgow
Thesis Title: How the Revolution changed, and helped create, a new, Trans-Atlantic political culture of loyalty to the Crown. (working title)
Research Interests: Time period—18th century as a whole, with focus on Revolutionary period. Location—the British Atlantic World, including Canada, the Colonies, British West Indies, Scotland and England itself. More exact location(s)—New York City, Halifax, Nova Scotia ,Kingston, Jamaica, Charleston, SC, London and Glasgow.

Kilkelly, Emma Louise
University of Exeter
Department of English
Thesis Title: African-American identity expressed through music, in the literature of Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin (extremely provisional title)
Research Interests: Articulating African American thought: Music and Mental Illness in Invisible Man and Coming Through Slaughter. Jazz & Mental Illness 1920s & 1930s American Culture/Literature

Knox, Simone
University of Reading
Department of Film, Theatre and Television
Thesis Title: Postmodernism and Popular Media Culture

Lewis, Christopher
University of Birmingham
Thesis Title: MACV-SOG Covert Operations Program on the Ho Chi Minh Trail,1964-72
Research Interests: I have specialised in research into covert operations during the U.S. commitment to Southeast Asia (1950s-1970s),but I am hoping to read for my PhD. in the near future, and hope to look into the emergence of the Department of Homeland Security within the

Long, Emma
University of Kent
Thesis Title: The Supreme Court, Education, and the Establishment Clause,1947-1997

Maddra, Sam
University of Glasgow
Department of History
Thesis Title: ‘Hostiles’: The Lakota Ghost Dance and the 1891-92 Tour of Britain by Buffalo Bill’s Wild West.

Maes, Lean
University of Newcastle upon Tyne
Department of English
Thesis Title: Trauma and Gender in Jewish-American Women’s Holocaust Fiction

Mata, Tiago
London School of Economics and Political Science
Department of Economic History
Thesis Title: Trajectories of Dissent: the history of Radical Political Economics and Post Keynesian Economics

McClean, Josephine
University of Ulster
School of History and International Affairs
Thesis Title: The ambiguous effect of the transcontinental railroad on American life during the latter half of the nineteenth century.
Research Interests: Transcontinental Railroad 1863-69; Emigration and Immigration; Irish Diaspora; Ethnic Conflict; Employment of Immigrants; Westward Expansion; Native America; Film representations of Nineteenth Century America; Literature

McDonald, Brian
University of Edinburgh
Thesis Title: Fictional Liberalism, Novel Democracy: The Postwar American Novel and the State of American Liberal Democracy

McLoughlin, Kate
University of Oxford
Department of English
Thesis Title: Martha Gellhorn: the War Writer in the Field and in the Text
Research Interests: Martha Gellhorn (1908-98), American war reporter, particularly her Second World War writing; war writing (journalism and fiction) -particularly in the 20th century; reportage; 20th Century prose (British and American) – particularly the novel.

McNally, Karen
University of Nottingham
School of American and Canadian Studies
Thesis Title: Reading Sinatra Through the Social and Cultural Concerns of Post-War America

Mellor, Michael
King’s College London (University of London)
Thesis Title: Anthropoetics of American Literature
Research Interests: Ethnopoetics (Gary Snyder, Jerome Rothenberg), Ethnographic Metafiction (William Vollmann), Anthropologically influenced fiction (Alejo Carpentier, DeLillo, Burroughs, Gaddis)

Miller, James
King’s College London (University of London)
Thesis Title: James Baldwin and the articulation of alterity in Cold War American literature
Research Interests: I am concentrating on the period 1945-80. The reception of French Existentialism in Cold War America is a major part of my thesis as is Civil Rights. Other authors who are discussed in great detail in addition to James Baldwin include Richard Wright, Norman Mailer, Ralph Ellison and the Beat Generation, especially ethnic encounters/ encounters with ‘otherness’ in Beat writing.

Munro, Stephanie
University of Lancaster
Department of Women’s Studies and English
Thesis Title: The Anti-Slavery Writings of Lydia Maria Child,1830-1867

Nelson, Michael
University of London
Thesis Title: U.S. Foreign Policy towards China’s Entry into the World Trade Organization from 1981 to 2001

O’Connor, Dan
University of Warwick
Thesis Title: Public Privates: Writing Transsexulity in the Anglo-American Twentieth Century
Research Interests: Film, History, Philosophy, Politics, Popular Culture, Sociology; My project focuses upon written accounts of transsexuality – an entirely new way of being human which emerged in the second half of the twentieth century. Whilst there had always been men and women who acted as the opposite gender, the medical technologies had not existed to enable them to become the opposite sex. Advances in cosmetic surgery and hormonal therapies permitted men to become women and women to become men at the bodily level. My research explores both the way transsexuals themselves saw this transformation and the way mass-media related to it. My major sources are the published autobiographies of about 40 transsexuals, and the newspaper, television and fiction (film, lit) accounts of people who changed their sex. My aim is to explore how both Britain and the US had similar popular languages of sexual difference which were expressed through the pop-culture icons of the time. It was this language which the transsexuals had to try and make their changing bodies speak, and which the media tended to judge in terms of its success.

Omry, Keren
Goldsmith’s College (University of London)
Department of English and Comparative Literature
Thesis Title: Adorno, Jazz, and Ethnicity in African-American Literature of the Twentieth Century

Ormrod, James
University of Essex
Department of Sociology
Thesis Title: The Multi-Dimensional Discourse on Outer Space Colonization.
Research Interests: I am studying the citizens’ Pro-Space Movement. This is largely a US phenomenon and most of my research has been/will be conducted in the States.

Panay, Andrew
University of Aberdeen
Department of Sociology
Thesis Title: Vanishing White American’s: The Captivity Scenario in American Culture

Peacock, James
University of Edinburgh
Thesis Title: Paul Auster and the Puritan Tradition
Research Interests: Looks at Paul Auster’s position within a literary tradition which includes the American writers of the nineteenth century (Poe, Hawthorne etc.) but goes back further to the concerns of the early Puritan settlers. Also pursuing ongoing research into the influence of Quakerism on American literature

Perl, Shoshana
London School of Economics and Political Science
Department of International Relations
Thesis Title: Transatlantic Trade Disputes: The Helms-Burton Act as a Two-Level Game
Research Interests: GATT; WTO; US Trade Policy;

Pethers, Matthew
King’s College London (University of London)
Department of American Studies
Thesis Title: Print Culture and the Public Sphere in Late Eighteenth-Century America

Pirolini, Alessandro
University of London
Thesis Title: The cinema of Preston Sturges between classicism and post-modernism.
Research Interests: Currently working on a series of multimedia lessons on film language. Previous researches include: Europeans in Hollywood, the cinema of Ernst Lubitsch, the cinema of Rouben Mamoulian.

Pollard, Finn
University of Edinburgh
Thesis Title: In Search of this new man, the American” : Concepts of American National Character,1782-1832
Research Interests: Focused on literary concepts of American national character in this period – key figures – Washington Irving, Hugh
Henry Brackenridge, James Kirke Paulding. Also interest in Henry Adams

Prannzo, Diane
University of Essex
Department of Sociology
Thesis Title: Love, Justice and Knowledge-Child Custody decisions in the US, Sweden and England

Quillin, Bryce
London School of Economics and Political Science
Department of International Relations
Thesis Title: Understanding Degrees of Compliance with the Basel Accord,1988-2000
Research Interests: US economic regulation; Financial regulation; US firms’ non-market strategies; Pensions/retirement markets; Social security policy

Quinn, Adam
London School of Economics and Political Science
Department of International Relations
Thesis Title: Bush Administration Foreign Policy in Intellectual Historical Context: The Balance of Power, Alliances and Liberal Internationalism.
Research Interests: US foreign policy The history of the USA since 1789 American political ideology Twentieth century international history

Reid, Chad
Thesis Title: Early American History of the Book; Colonial Newspapers; Intellectual Working and Labour Class History

Robson, Victoria
London School of Economics and Political Science
Department of Government
Thesis Title: Ethnic Interest Groups and Foreign Policymaking: the case of the Arab Americans
Research Interests: Interest Groups; Lobbying; U.S. foreign policy; Arab Americans; Agenda setting;

Rosen, Elizabeth
University College London (University of London)
Department of Language and Literature
Thesis Title: Contemporary Apocalyptic Literature and Film: The Postmodern Evolution of the Apocalyptic Paradigm.

Rubenson, Daniel
London School of Economics
Department of Government
Thesis Title: Community Effects on Political Participation: The Role of Social Capital, Heterogeneity and Government Competencies
Research Interests: My PhD compares political participation across a large set of American cities. I analyze how social and political context influence individuals’ propensities for taking political action. Other research interests include: elections and electoral systems; political behaviour; racial diversity; local government and politics; the application of multilevel modelling to political science problems.

Sahin Gencer, Sultan
University of Nottingham
Thesis Title: Actresses and the 90s Hollywood: an interpretation of the industrial power perceptions

Sami Gorgan Roodi, G
University of Sussex
School of English and American Studies
Thesis Title: America in the Plays of the Great Depression
Research Interests: American Drama and Literature in the Great Depression

Schiller, Neil
Liverpool Hope University College
Department of American Studies
Thesis Title: The historical present: notions of time, history and cultural lineage in the writing of Richard Brautigan
Research Interests: Richard Brautigan; American counter-culture; Beat Writers; postmodernist engagements with notions of time and history; Historicism; Eastern philosophies; Western philosophies

Stevens, David
University of Reading
Department of Film and Drama
Thesis Title: Between Old Hollywood and New Hollywood – Forms in Transition 1967-76 (working title)

Stoneman, Paul
University of Essex
Thesis Title: The Origins, Role and Maintenance of Political Trust

Thompson, Brock
King’s College London (University of London)
Thesis Title: An Un-Natural State: Same-Sex Desire in Arkansas, The Depression through the Clinton Era
Research Interests: Queer Theory; Gay and Lesbian Studies; Southern American Studies; Twentieth Century America; Social Movements and Social Change

Tsakona, Anna Elisabeth
University of Cambridge
Department of History
Thesis Title: Anti-Americanism in Europe: the case of Greece

Wood, Jayne
University of Leeds
School of English
Thesis Title: Conceptualising and Contextualising the Literary Career of Louis Bromfield (1886 – 1956)
Research Interests: Late nineteenth and twentieth century American literature and culture; Twenties and Thirties; Modernism; Regionalism; Midwest; Realism; ‘Lost Generation’; Americans in Paris; Suburbia.

Woolf, Paul
University of Birmingham
School of American and Canadian Studies
Thesis Title: US imperialism and literature; nineteenth-century detective fiction; US television; British television.

Zumoff, Jacob
University College London (University of London)
Department of History
Thesis Title: The Communist party in the United States and the communist international, 1919-29

News from AMATAS

AMATAS has just been awarded Transferability Funding to take the Americanisation and the Teaching of American Studies Project into the English Subject Area. The project has played a significant and timely role in the development of the teaching of American Studies in Britain into a more Transnational and Intercultural paradigm. Through workshops, conferences, journalism, teaching materials and a forthcoming collection of essays (McKay, Davies and Campbell eds. Issues in Americanisation and Culture) the project has foregrounded American popular culture’s role as a soft tool of American power for good and ill and cultural theory as the most apt means with which to interpret it. Throughout the project we concentrated on popular culture, but found students in American Studies and cognate areas wanted to link the ideas to their understanding of Literary Texts.

So having completed its work in American Studies the project has been awarded money to work with the English Subject Centre to use its expertise to generate similar intercultural and transnational ideas in the areas of literature and media. This is a particularly timely intervention as during the Centre’s conference English: The Condition of the Subject in July 2003 a clarion call was made by Catherine Belsey to end the “Apartheid between English and Cultural Studies” (THES July 18).

The project will work principally with academics already running modules on American Literature to show the enhanced possibilities of an intercultural and Transatlantic approach to their syllabi. The project launched with sessions at the Subject Centre Event on Teaching American Literature on October 24th 2003 and material from that event can be found on the Landscapes of Americanisation section under Workshops on these web pages. Other materials from this event will be added to the resource section during 2004.

We plan to hold two regional events: one in Bristol at the University of the West of England on March 12 2004 (see details below) and one in the Midlands/North in September. At these events workshops will present options on ways in which the teaching of American texts can be enhanced by cultural theory and an intercultural approach. Workshops will range from Disneyfication through the Titanic’s Transatlantic Resonances to Theories of Americanisation. We will also gather curriculum and resource materials on the theme of Americanisation and the Transatlantic with special reference to the teaching of English over the next year to add to the resources on the website. We are hoping to use our website to highlight interesting curriculum developments and articles in the Transatlantic field – if you have materials you feel would be of use to the project please contact the project manager (address below).

Our aims for the project are the following:

1) To foreground the intercultural and the Transatlantic in English Studies courses with American content.

2) To consider literary representations of related questions of power, desire, resentment towards the USA.

3) To use cultural theory to underpin our work within English Studies.

If you want any more information on this new phase of the project or indeed if you want to talk to issues the project raised in American Studies please feel free to contact the Project Manager:

Dr. Alan J. Rice
Senior Lecturer in American Studies and Cultural Theory
Project Manager for the Americanisation Project (AMATAS)
Dept. of Cultural Studies
University of Central Lancashire
Preston
PR1 2HE

E-Mail: arice@uclan.ac.uk
Tel:01772 893036
Fax 01772 892924
AMATAS website www.amatas.org

The University of The West Of England And AMATAS Present A One-Day Conference

Teaching Close Encounters? English and American Literary and Cultural Interactions

FRIDAY, MARCH 12, 2004 10-4

Keynote Participants:
Susan Manning, University of Edinburgh “Transatlantic Literary Relations”
Madge Dresser, University of West of England, Bristol “Civil Rights in Bristol”
Alasdair Pettinger, Independent Scholar “Jim Crow in Britain”

Introductions/Workshop sessions from the AMATAS team including:
Neil Campbell, University of Derby “Landscapes of Americanisation”
Jude Davies, King Alfred’s College, Winchester “City Sites”
Heidi Macpherson, UCLAN, Preston “Transatlantic Literatures”

AMATAS (Americanisation and the Teaching of American Studies) is a highly successful HEFCE-funded project now in its second phase. In conjunction with the University of the West of England at Bristol and with the active support of the English Subject Centre, it is organizing a one-day conference whose focus is on the teaching of American Literature and American Studies in English Departments. The aim of the day is to explore ways in which a range of teaching material can be devised and adapted to meet the needs of a range of students including some who may be studying only a small number of modules in this area. Themes will include the situation of American Literature in the contemporary world of “Transatlantic,” “Circum-Atlantic,” or “Post-national” studies, and the exploitation of the local and familiar (in Bristol, slavery and civil rights) to stimulate students actively to participate in extending knowledge and bridging gaps. Delegates will be encouraged to bring along exemplar material for a session entitled “Texts and Contexts” where teaching ideas around the Transatlantic will be work-shopped.

A limited number of travel bursaries are available for members of staff in British Academic institutions – please email arice@uclan.ac.uk for details.

The conference will be held at the St Matthias Campus of the University of the West of England. For further information and registration details (attendance is free), please contact:
Dr Peter Rawlings
Associate Head of the School of English & Drama
UWE Bristol
Oldbury Court Road
Fishponds
Bristol BS16 2JP
E-mail: rawlings2000@aol.com

News From Centres

De Montfort University and the Eccles Centre for American Studies

De Montfort University and the Eccles Centre for American Studies: Congress to Campus week

Two former Members of the United States Congress, Lou Frey (R-FL) and Larry LaRocco (D-ID), visited the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library, and De Montfort University Leicester in the week beginning October 20th to take part in a a series of American Studies events. The visit was made possible by the ‘Congress to Campus’ programme, which supports visits by former Members of Congress to US universities and colleges. Formed in 1976, the programme had never before visited a location outside the USA.

The Eccles Centre for American Studies hosted a conference for 6th form students in the British Library Conference Centre. Students from all parts of the London region attended the conference to engage with Rob Singh (Birkbeck), Iwan Morgan (LMU), Philip Davies, and the visiting congressmen, in a day-long series of debates on aspects of US politics. The congressmen took part in every session of the Eccles Centre conference, and were in conversation with the students throughout the breaks. Questions and discussion took the event way past its scheduled closing time, and after we vacated the conference centre students continued to quiz the visiting congressmen in an impromptu open air seminar.

At De Montfort University the Congressmen acted as discussants for a research paper on US Congress presented by Dr Ross English of Reading University, and gave a public presentation on US/UK relations in co-operation with Professor John Dumbrell (Keele). In addition they spent one day working with undergraduate students and a range of lecturers during a day-long undergraduate conference on current US politics, and another day as the main attraction at a 6th for conference for teachers and students at schools in the Midlands. Colleagues and students from University College Northampton, Nottingham University and Leicester University joined De Montfort University students and faculty to take part in parts of this programme of events. On his last day in the UK, Congressman LaRocco joined Philip Davies to attend the opening sessions of the American Studies postgraduate conference being hosted by the Institute for US Studies in London.

The student and staff response to the week’s programme was very positive. Teacher/student feedback called the events ‘excellent’, ‘one of the best conferences I have attended in a long teaching career’, and having ‘terrific impact’. Substantial support for the visit came from the US Embassy, The Eccles Centre and the British Library, and De Montfort University. It is hoped that the lessons learned from this initiative will help the development of more international visits by Congress to Campus.

Philip Davies

Institute of United States Studies

University of London Establishes Institute for the Studies of the Americas

The Council of the University of London recently approved the merger of the Institute of United States Studies (IUSS) and Institute of Latin American Studies (ILAS) to form an Institute for the Study of the Americas (ISA). ISA will be a member of the University of London’s School of Advanced Study, established in 1994.

A strong intellectual argument for a new Americas-wide approach has recently been made by Professor Felipe Fernández-Armesto of Queen Mary, University of London. In his recent book The Americas: A History of the Hemisphere, Professor Fernández-Armesto argues that it is impossible to understand the history of North, Central and South America in isolation. ‘From the emergence of the first human civilizations through the arrival of Europeans and up to today, the land mass has been bound together in a complex web of inter-relationships – from migration and trade to religion, slavery, warfare, culture, food and the spread of political ideas.’ The fact that nearly 40 million US citizens are of Hispanic background and culture, the establishment of NAFTA in 1994, and the plan to set up a Free Trade Area of the Americas in the coming period all underline the importance of a regional as well as sectional perspective on the Americas.

The new Institute will be established with effect from 1 August 2004, under the direction of Professor James Dunkerley, currently ILAS Director. ISA will run separate MA programmes in United States Studies, Latin American Studies, and a new Comparative Studies MA. ISA will be dedicated to increasing the number of American studies PhD students within London.

ISA will be committed to playing a leading role in promoting American studies nation-wide and facilitating research. James Dunkerely commented that “the aim will be to serve and to strengthen the national networks of US scholars.” ISA will host IUSS’s recently launched American Studies Research Portal (www.asrp.info) and will organise a varied and wide reaching programme of lectures, seminars and conferences.

The Vice-Chancellor of the University of London, Sir Graeme Davies, stated that ‘the combination of free-standing and comparative postgraduate teaching and research on all sections of the hemisphere within a single institution is unique in Europe. It represents a major commitment to American studies by the University. The University has committed new resources to enhance the staffing complement in United States.’

Further information:
School of Advanced Study: http://www.sas.ac.uk/overview.htm
Institute of United States Studies: www.sas.ac.uk/iuss
Institute of Latin American Studies: www.sas.ac.uk/ilas

Forthcoming lectures, seminars and conferences organised by the Institute of United States Studies are now available to view on their website at www.sas.ac.uk/iuss/events_forthcoming.htm . They include:

Harry Allen Memorial Lecture – Wednesday 25 February 2004
Professor Hugh Brogan, University of Essex, “Tocqueville and American Freedom”
6pm, Senate Room, Senate House, Malet Street, London

Prokofiev in America Conference and Recital – Saturday 8 May 2004
Senate House, Malet Street, London
Please see website www.sas.ac.uk/iuss/events_forthcoming.htm for further information

Churchill in America conference – Tuesday 8 June 2004
With the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library and the Churchill Archives at the University of Cambridge
Keynote address: Professor David Cannadine, Institute of Historical Research
Panellists include: Corelli Barnett, Geoffrey Best, Lord Carrington, Roger Louis, Ronald Quinault, John Ramsden, and David Reynolds
Please see website www.sas.ac.uk/iuss/events_churchill for further information

Caroline Robbins Lecture – Thursday 17 June 2004
Professor A.E. Dick Howard, University of Virginia School of Law
6 pm, Senate Room, Senate House, Malet Street, London

Lecture – Tuesday 22 June 2004
Professor George Edwards, Texas A&M University, “Faulty Premises: The American Way of Electing Presidents”
6 pm, Room 329, Senate House, Malet Street, London

Lectures and seminars are free of charge to attend. Please register in advance by telephoning 020 7862 8693 or emailing iuss@sas.ac.uk

American Studies Research Portal

The Institute of United States Studies, University of London, is pleased to announce the launch of the American Studies Research Portal (ASRP). The ASRP website (www.asrp.info) is an online resource for American Studies scholars and students researching the United States.

The site contains a directory of American Studies academics and researchers in the UK, information on US-related library and museum collections in the UK, and details of British university courses and departments focused on the study of the United States. The Portal also offers information targeted specifically at postgraduate students and those thinking of applying for a doctoral degree, as well as a range of links to other online research materials and sources.

If you have any queries or feedback, please contact the ASRP administrator by emailing asrpadmin@asrp.info

Obituaries

Mary Eccles

Mary, Viscountess Eccles died, aged 91, at her home in New Jersey on 26th August 2003. Mary Eccles and her late husband, Viscount David Eccles, endowed the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library. She maintained a very active engagement with the Centre since it was opened. In mid-August I visited her with a report on the Centre’s recent work. She listened patiently, but was even more eager to discuss what was planned for the future.

She traced her family to the Mayflower through her ancestor Penelope White, who, in 1703, married Peter (Pierre) Crapaud, survivor from the wreck of a ship from Bordeaux. Allocated his surname by the community that saved and cared for him, Peter lived a long and prosperous life. The ten children produced by this marriage were the first step in the six generations to Mary Morley Crapo’s birth in 1912.

Entrepreneurial interests prompted Henry Howland Crapo, Mary’s great-grandfather, to move to Flint, Michigan in the 1850s, closer to his lumber interests, and where he could establish a successful farming venture among his growing business portfolio. While establishing a solid economic foundation for the family’s future, Henry also established a precedent for public service, serving as mayor, state senator, and Governor.

The family continued to have branches firmly settled in Michigan and Massachusetts. Mary’s father, Stanford Crapo, managed the Crapo farm, where he kept the horses that Mary learned to ride, and read to her the works of Shakespeare. She responded positively to her father’s instruction, attending Vassar before taking a doctorate at Columbia. She met her future husband, Donald Hyde, in the midwest, and in 1939 they eloped to Indiana for a quick and simple marriage ceremony.

Donald and Mary Hyde shared an enthusiasm for books. Mary’s interest was driven initially by her studies in Elizabethan drama, while Donald was more concerned with later periods. When Donald established a career as a lawyer in New York they were perfectly located to investigate the pleasures of book collecting. Donald’s early chagrin at the cost of this pursuit were mollified by Mary catering to his interests, with first editions of Boswell’s Life of Johnson, and of Johnson’s Dictionary.

The 1949 publication of Mary Hyde’s doctoral dissertation as Playwriting for Elizabethans, by Columbia University Press was Mary’s first volume in print. Her publishing life lasted until 2002, when the Grolier Club produced Mary Hyde Eccles: A miscellany of her essays and addresses, edited by William Zachs. During the half century between these books Mary wrote, edited and nurtured many publications.

From 1943 the burgeoning collection was housed at Four Oaks Farm, the working farm in Somerville, New Jersey that she and Donald made their home. Increasingly their collecting interests concentrated on Dr Johnson. The development of the collection that grew to fill the library at Four Oaks Farm was an act of dedication, scholarship and considerable investment. Soon they had formed a body of Johnson resources that was without equal.

With Johnson at its core, the library in New Jersey did not remain static. The Hydes worked with E.L. McAdam to begin the publication of the Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson with Diaries, Prayers and Annals (1958), and Mary’s research of the Johnson/Boswell materials produced The Impossible Friendship: Boswell and Mrs Thrale (1972), and The Thrales of Streatham Park (1976). Using a different part of the collection Mary wrote Bernard Shaw and Alfred Douglas: A Correspondence (1982) elucidating the letters that these two young friends of Oscar Wilde wrote to each other much later, when Shaw was seventy-four and Douglas sixty. Mary Eccles’ support and partnership was central to the five-volume Letters of Samuel Johnson (1992-4) edited by Bruce Redford.

After Donald Hyde died in 1966, Mary continued to develop, and to work in, the collection that they had founded together. Scholars were welcomed to visit the library, and found on this farm in New Jersey a place of scholarly help and refuge. Not all of these visitors were there for the Johnson materials. Four Oaks Farm, Four Oaks Library (1967), edited by Gabriel Austin, contained expert essays on the collections – Johnson, Boswell and Thrale, the Japanese materials, the Elizabethan quartos, Henry Fielding, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw. Fine bindings get a chapter to themselves, and attention is given to the autographs – hundreds of literary, political, historical, international figures.

Mary was engaged with many philanthropic efforts. She lent support to Johnson House, and to the restoration of Boswell’s home, Auchinleck. She helped protect the site of the Battle of Hastings, and she was an American Friend of the British Library. David Eccles’ prominent career as a Conservative politician had culminated in guidance of the legislative foundation of the British Library, when he was Paymaster General (1970-73), followed by five years as chair of the Library’s board. Mary and David’s common interest in books, and in each other’s national cultures, provided the foundation for an engagement that was announced at Viscount Eccles’ eightieth birthday celebration, and a marriage that continued happily for fifteen years until his death in 1999.

In 1991 they founded the David and Mary Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library. The establishment of this Centre neatly recognises the trans-Atlantic marriage of David and Mary, their mutual interest in the books and cultures of their two countries, and their mutual commitment to the British Library, which David had helped guide into being, and Mary had supported individually and through the American Friends, and later the American Trust. The content of the Centre’s activities appeared to have no obvious connection with their collecting interests. Gabriel Austin, for many years the librarian at Four Oaks, surmises that Mary wanted to help foster the understanding ‘that America had pulled away from England’, and to help maintain trans-Atlantic understanding even given that truth by supporting American Studies in the United Kingdom.

Philip John Davies
(This is an abbreviated version of an appreciation that will appear in Contemporary Review)

Kate Fulbrook

Kate Fullbrook, who has died at 52 from breast cancer, was an eccentric and outspoken English don who for two decades campaigned forcefully, tirelessly and often humorously on behalf of Britain’s new universities and of the value of a liberal education for all. She was also the author of several influential books.

She was born Kathleen Warrens in 1950 in Sheboygan Wisconsin, the daughter of an arc-welder father whose formal education ended at the age of eleven. Her parents dreamt of better things for their three children but only within limits. When with encouragement from her teachers Kate applied for university, she encountered determined parental opposition. So on the night of her high school graduation she decamped from the family home by a busy freight line and went into hiding for the summer.

That autumn she enrolled at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. It was 1968 and Madison was a noisy focal point of the social and political questioning unsettling Nixon’s America. Immediately at home in this hothouse of intellectual, cultural—and chemical—experiment, Kate quickly made friends in what for her was a wonderful new world. Her sensitive readings of texts and fluid prose attracted the attention of her English and Philosophy professors, who encouraged her to aim higher than the school-teacher she hoped to become. Meanwhile she earned top marks, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and played in an all-women rock band. But not without cost. Kate supplemented a partial scholarship (and eventually help from her parents) through working nightshifts at Burger Chef, cleaning toilets in a men’s dormitory and identifying zooplankton in the lakeside limnology lab.

Graduating from Wisconsin with highest honours, she learned that she was the unanimous first-choice of the English department for their federal government research studentships. But a month later she was told that her profile did not fit the requirements of the scholarships, something which Kate with her background found all too easy to believe. It probably had more to do with her known association with anti-Vietnam activists, notably Edward Fullbrook, whom she married in 1972. Kate’s self-confidence was shattered by this blow; apparently debarred from an academic career, she worked behind a cash-register for several years.

After a period of travel, and now in Europe, she found courage to give academia another go. An MA at Queen Mary College in London in 1976, was followed by a PhD at Newnham College in Cambridge. Before completing her dissertation, Kate was appointed to a lectureship at the College of St Mark and St John in Plymouth, where she taught English and discovered talents for academic diplomacy and effective representation of an undervalued area of higher education.

Her next job, as Principal Lecturer and subsequently Head of Literary Studies at Bristol Polytechnic, involved Kate in the complex, fraught processes of transition to ‘new’ university status in the early 1990s. It was in this context that she became a founder member (from 1989) of the Standing Conference on English in Polytechnics and Colleges of Higher Education (SCEPCHE). Following the merging of the polytechnic and ‘old’ university systems in 1992, Kate was a passionate advocate for solidarity and mutual support, a cause which she argued eloquently as joint Chair of the Council for College and University English (CCUE), the body formed to represent the subject nationally and internationally. That CCUE has become one of the strongest and least factional of the university Subject Associations is in no small part due to Kate’s determination, diplomacy and sheer good humour.

Those who worked with her remember her irrepressible gaiety – the way she would break into a song (always hilariously appropriate) from an old Busby Berkeley musical on the way to a meeting; the silly doodles, increasingly outrageous, on too-lengthy agendas. Deeply modest herself, Kate simply giggled at self-importance or pretension in colleagues. Sceptical of the claims of authority and establishment, she nonetheless learned to operate effectively within their structures; she took the hard decisions people in positions of responsibility have to take and she took the flak that goes with that without complaint and with absolute discretion. Not the least of Kate’s achievements (and one at which she used to marvel ruefully) was her success as an administrator, as Head of Literary Studies and later Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of the West of England in Bristol. Never forgetting both the new chances and the closed doors of her own early experiences, she found many unobtrusive ways of supporting students and colleagues, creating opportunities and encouraging the less confident.

Kate’s professional generosity was a by-word: it marked all her work for UWE, but was called on by institutions around the country: she was a tireless and much-valued external examiner, assessor, validator of degrees and programmes for both new and old universities. She wrote for The Guardian and the THES on the future of academic humanities; she did stints on the British Academy’s Research Board, as a member of the Quality Assurance Agency’s benchmarking Group for English, and as a panel member for American Studies in the last Research Assessment Exercise – all without compromise to the academic values and freedoms to think and write for which she stood and spoke up in the face of growing threat to universities of the accountancy culture.

These values are explored in all Kate wrote. She helped to found the Anglo-American literary journal Symbiosis, and embodied its transatlantic mission in her own life and work. Her special interest in, and commitment to, Modernist fiction by women produced her first two books, on Katherine Mansfield (1986), and Free Women: Ethics and Aesthetics in Twentieth-Century Women’s Fiction (1990). Important revisionist readings in Simone de Beauvoir, and Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre: The Remaking of a Twentieth Century Legend, written with her husband Edward, established them both as sought-after speakers at conferences on Existentialism.

But the moral commitment, the powerful political conscience, the great compassion which she brought to all her work are all there in the subjects and the title of her PhD on ‘Henry James and Matthew Arnold: Consciousness, Morality and the Modern Spirit.’ As graduate students pondering our futures, the meaning and the value of the profession we seemed somehow to have chosen, these were the touchstones of late-night conversations through litres of paint-stripper wine. It’s poignant, and precious, to remember now our eager embracing of James’s ‘The Middle Years’, where a writer faces the knowledge that he will not have an old age. At the end of the story he reflects on the nature of achievement:
‘It is glory – to have been tested, to have had our little quality and cast our little spell. The thing is to have made somebody care…. We work in the dark – we do what we can – we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.’

That modesty, that doubt, and that passion were Kate’s. With days to live, she involved herself in intense discussions with colleagues and friends (how often the one became the other) about a strategy document she knew she would not see implemented. And somehow, she found ways to laugh. From Wisconsin days to the final sad weeks in Bristol, Kate pushed herself to the limits of her always frail physical strength. It was a courageous life, and a deeply generous one; just, for Kate, and for the rest of us, far too short.

Susan Manning
[Kathleen Warrens Fullbrook, b. Sheboygan, Wisconsin, 7 September 1950; married Edward Fullbrook 11 September 1972; died Bristol, 23 July 2003.]

(This review will also appear in the Newnham College Roll letter)

Philip Taylor

Friends and colleagues will be saddened to learn of the recent death of Philip Taylor, Emeritus Professor of American History, who joined the University in 1963 as the first historian appointed to the new Department of American Studies. Born in Somerset in 1920, Philip read history at Cambridge, where he took a first, although like many of his generation, his studies were interrupted by four years of war service in armoured units in the Middle East and Northwest Europe. After completing a Ph.D. at Cambridge on Mormon emigration Philip held appointments at the Universities of Aberdeen, Iowa and Birmingham, where he taught European as well as American history and politics, although he always regarded himself as a specialist in the history of the United States.

At Hull, Philip Taylor made many important contributions to the life of the University, and played a key role in the development of American Studies programmes over two decades. During the 1960s, he published many articles on Mormon and emigration history, and followed these up with a prize-winning book, Expectations Westward on the emigration to the United States of nineteenth-century British Mormon converts. Philip then moved into the wider field of European migration as a whole, and in 1971, he published The Distant Magnet: European Emigration To The U.S.A, a major work which quickly became a classic in its field. Five years later came a shorter study of British emigration to its colonies based on sixty volumes of Parliamentary Papers. The University recognised the importance of this and later work by promoting Philip to a Senior Lectureship in 1966, a Readership in 1972, and awarding him a Personal Chair in 1983.

A diligent researcher, Philip Taylor was also a dedicated, if demanding teacher, who expected his students to read widely, and write with clarity and precision. He taught across a range of American history topics, but it is his courses on the American West and European Emigration to the U.S.A., which will be best remembered by students. To support teaching and research, Philip Taylor also played a leading part in building up the Brynmor Jones Library’s holding in American Studies, acquiring external funding, and working with Philip Larkin and colleagues to put together one of the finest collections of Americana in a British university Library.

Over the years, Philip Taylor undertook his share of University administrative work, serving on Salaries and Promotions Committee, and various postgraduate studies committees. He was also in his later years, Head of the American Studies Department. Outside the University, Philip was a foundation member of the British Association for American Studies, and served on the editorial board of the Journal of American Studies. He regularly gave papers at conferences on emigration history in Europe and the United States.

After his retirement in 1985, Philip devoted himself to research, and while continuing his research into emigration history, he turned more and more to the history of Boston. Philip could be seen working in the Brynmor Jones Library well into his eighties, and spent many summers working at the Boston Athenaeum and the libraries of the Massachusetts Historical Society and Harvard. Over the years, there appeared a book and many articles based on the diaries of a wide range of Bostonians from a domestic servant to upper class ladies and leading politicians. He also found time for a very self critical review article on the development of emigration studies in the twenty five years since the publication of The Distant Magnet, though he resisted many invitations to write a new edition of the book. In his last years, Philip Taylor came close to completing a large history of post Civil War Boston based on the reading and research of more than twenty years.

Philip Taylor had the formal good manners of many academics of his generation, and for most of his life his clothes came from the same gentleman’s outfitter he had frequented as a young man. Philip liked country walking, listening to classical music, especially opera, and reading crime fiction. He saw himself as a traditional historian, more concerned with narrative than theory or quantification, though his first appointment was in economic history. Although formal in manner, Philip Taylor was immensely kind and generous, especially with friends and younger colleagues. He treated everyone with the same kindness and consideration, and was unimpressed by rank or title. He read widely in many newer fields of historical research, as well as in such traditional areas as military history in which he was very well versed. Always ready to say something positive about a person or a point of view, Philip also remained committed to liberal values and high intellectual standards. Yet he was no elitist and welcomed the widening access to higher education which he experienced at Hull. What he thought of the changes which have occurred in British universities since his retirement, he had the tact and good sense to keep to himself.

Anyone interested in donating to a University of Hull post-graduate travel fund for research in the United States named in Professor Taylor’s honour should get in touch with Dr Jenel Virden, American Studies, University of Hull, Hull HU6 7RX J.Virden@hull.ac.uk

Esmond Wright

Esmond Wright (1915-2003) was a character. He was a television don long before the now escalating species had begun to evolve. An erudite professor of American history, a popular communicator and prolific author, he had an impressive professorial presence, a superb disarming charm, a wonderful firm resonance of voice and an ability to mix with high and low brow alike. A former army officer he was always a picture of impeccable elegance. Even in his late seventies his arrival at the American Embassy in London caused many female staff hearts to flutter. His birthday 5 November was somehow appropriate: he was colourful, sharp, lively and varied in his careers and pursuits. A graduate of the University of Durham he entered postgraduate School of History in the University of Virginia on the eve of the Second World War. There in 1940 he was personally introduced to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who happened to be the commencement speaker at his graduation, a meeting, understandably he never forgot. On his return to Britain he served in the armed forces mainly in the Middle East until his demobilisation in 1946. As the war drew to a close he married Olive Adamson, his loving supporter throughout their long married life. Arriving in Glasgow University he served in a History Department graced by several other war hardened colleagues, Jim Tumelty, Fred Corlett and Fred V. Parsons among them. Their active service was reputedly an excellent preparation for the rigors of the massive Ordinary classes of those post war years. The staff also included such later luminaries as Geoffrey Elton, Werner Mosse, Peter J. Parish and others.

Esmond’s students still recall forty years and more on, his inimitable lecturing voice and style which kindled his listeners’ interest: with a gentle deft twist of his upraised right hand slowly descending he would seemingly invoke the latest trends and shifts in public opinion. His was a memorable lecture hall presence. An authority on the American Revolution or War of Independence, Esmond wrote numerous studies of the conflict from his Washington and the American Revolution, (1957 and later reissued in 1973) to his Fabric of Freedom, (1965) which was extremely well received in America; Benjamin Franklin and American Independence (1966). His books poured out: The Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution, (1966); The American Revolution, (1967); The War of American Independence, (1976); Red White and True Blue: Loyalists in the American Revolution, (n.d) to The Tug of Loyalties: Anglo-American Relations, 1765-85, (1975). But his two best works were undoubtedly his later books; Fire of Liberty (1983) also published as a Folio Society volume, and his acclaimed magisterial Franklin of Philadelphia, (1986) published by Harvard University Press. Not surprisingly he was awarded the Franklin Medal in 1988 and honoured by the American Philosophical Society. Fire of Liberty marvellously and seamlessly wove contemporary documents into a moving, gripping account of what was essentially a civil war. Even in the 1990s Esmond produced a traditional but very readable three volume chronological history of the United States. Unfortunately that last publication was to be marred by some controversy. Not surprisingly he had become the first Professor of Modern History in 1967 in preference to the Marxist Christopher Hill.

But Esmond was no ivory tower man. He took a lively interest in contemporary affairs writing on oil, modern studies, in popular style for History Today and even A Visitors Guide to Britain (in 1987 and 1988). He was a pioneer of American Studies, a founder member of the British Association for American Studies, a fitting role for Esmond, a professor Glasgow University which as early as the 1880s had produced the first history of American literature, then later the encyclopaedic commentator on all things American, Sir Denis W Brogan. Through his commitment to and networks in the schools in the west of Scotland, through visits and talks, One indication of his zeal was his immensely successful book on the modern world for schools. He laid the foundations for Modern Studies as a serious subject with conferences in and around Glasgow and an annual vademecum for teachers and sixth formers to which I contribued the annual essay on the United States. He also opened up the Civil War as a school certificate examination with annual conferences. Esmond’s Americanist successors in Glasgow the distinguished William R. Brock and Peter J. Parish. would continue that link. They with Pat Lucie or Bruce W. Collins would continue that tradition. In demand as an urbane chairperson in television discussions, Esmond established himself as a judicious arbiter. Such was his success that a departmental joke told of a History student asking to see the professor and being told to turn the television on this evening! His charm was such that he might have told you were fired but you would thank him profusely for the compliment. He did not suffer fools gladly nor give tenure readily.

He took great interest in one particular ailing student, Robert L. McLauchlan, later a member of the staff, a columnist well known to newspaper editors and the BBC. Esmond quietly helped him in many quiet ways to his academic success at Glasgow and Balliol. A close friend, Labour activist and fellow graduate of the late John Smith and Donald Dewar, Bob would, even amid his onerous teaching load, subsequently be one their speech writers as well as Jim Callaghan and later reputedly, Margaret Thatcher. Thanks to Esmond’s enthusiastic encouragement, Bob and I began our immensely popular course, Race and Colour in the Transatlantic World. which ran for many years. Esmond similarly encouraged me to develop a pioneering Modern America honours class and a Progressive Era special subject. His initiatives reinforced by his daily 10.a.m. informal gatherings of members of staff, were invariably quiet and understated. Esmond, like an army officer with his men, kept an unobtrusive sharp eye on research, reading and morale of his department and their students. Esmond was a realist. After appointing me in 1965 following my nightmare journey to Glasgow in impenetrably dense fog, he invariably claimed that he laid on the fog because if I had seen the city in those days I would have refused the job! The city has since changed out of recognition. In 1967 he was persuaded to stand as Conservative candidate in Pollock. He won and Reginald Maudling in celebrating his victory at the McCllelan Galleries introduced him as “the next Conservative Minister of Education.” That was not to be. Urban development meant a massive extension of the Pollok council estate and his defeat in 1970. It was the only time a professor has door-stepped me and asked for my vote! That education post would go to one Margaret Thatcher and the rest is history!

After a brief spell as visiting Professor at Strathclyde Esmond took up the prestigious post of Director of the Institute of United States Studies, London University from 1971 to 1983 when he would be succeeded by his former Glasgow colleague, Peter J. Parish. Publications continued to flow from his pen. At the same time Esmond became a major board member of the Automobile Association, the British Roads Federation, 1981-85, a vice –chairman from 1976 and then principal of Border Television from 1981 to 1985. He was also Principal of the Conservative Party College at Swinton, Yorkshire for many years. He latterly lived at Masham and in the Barbican. I shall remember his warmth, geniality and genuine academic interest. He was a gentleman of the old school and he remained active almost to the end. He will be greatly missed.

Bernard Aspinwall

Travel Award Reports

Marcus Cunliffe Travel Award

Joanne Hall, University of Nottingham

I would like to thank the board for awarding me the Marcus Cunliffe award; I feel honoured to have received the grant during the first year of my PhD. I would also like to state that the contribution it made towards my research on the representation of the female hobo in literature, history and film was invaluable. Furthermore, I want to take this opportunity to thank all those who helped me both before and during the research trip especially my supervisors at Nottingham, Professors Judie Newman and Maggie Walsh, all the hoboes who made their way to the 103rd annual hobo festival at Britt, Iowa, particularly Slim Jim, and all the staff in the special collections department of the University of Illinois at Chicago, particularly Mary Diaz—all contributed to the success of the trip.

The research trip began, as it ended: going through the many security checks at Chicago airport, which, for tragically obvious reasons, were admirably tight; however, once these had been navigated my two weeks became much more relaxed. The research trip was two pronged: one week was spent at the hobo festival in Britt, Iowa while the second week was spent researching the Ben Reitman special collection housed in the University of Illinois at Chicago. After resting in Chicago for one night I drove across the state boarder into Iowa, passing many fields of corn along the way.

My first port of call in Britt (a one street town with one bar, one café, and one souvenir tee shirt shop) was the local library where I was not only able to check my e-mails, but was also extremely happy to peruse many of the books by and about hoboes. After this I made my way to the Hobo Museum, located in the town’s abandoned theatre. The museum was crammed full with hobo memorabilia of every description ranging from the walking canes and hats of hoboes that had caught the westbound (died, to the layman) to pamphlets and other advertising paraphernalia from the Britt hobo conventions of 1899 and 1900. I would also like to add that I was able to pick up much invaluable material at the museum that I wouldn’t have had access to if I hadn’t made the journey to Britt. The museum’s curator (for the duration of the festival) Slim Jim, took the time to show me around the museum, and make me feel welcome in the town. I was also able to enter a make shift art gallery displaying the work of adopted local artist Leanne Marlow Castillo, who had devoted her talent to painting all of the hobo kings and queens. In the form of a photo album containing miniatures of her work I, again, was able to pick up material I wouldn’t have had access to without journey to Britt, and, fortunately, it was only the front and back cover of the album that was decorated by the artist’s grandson’s spilled soda.

The hoboes were friendly and eager to share their traditions; indeed, the museum was just the beginning of the sense of history I was to encounter. During the Thursday evening the current reigning king and queen of the hoboes, Red Bird Express and Lady Nightingale, lit a fire to honour all those hoboes who had caught the westbound; the previous kings and queens then all gathered together and crowned the oldest surviving hobo, Steam Train Murray, “grand patriarch of the hoboes,” a previously unheard of honour which he will hold for the rest of his life. After songs and entertainment performed by male and female hoboes, and those that had become their friends over the years, the evening concluding with dancing. As the week wore on the town became progressively more transformed, and on Saturday the sleepy town was overrun by thousands of tourists who had travelled to watch the hobo parade and eat some Mulligan Stew. The day also saw the crowing of a new hobo king and queen, who will reign for the coming year while acting as ambassadors. Needless to say, I gathered amazing documentary evidence.

I found my time spent with, around, and talking to Britt’s hoboes’ both enjoyable and educational. I coupled this time spent in ‘the field’ with some in ‘the lab,’ and for the second part of my research trip, which was library based, I travelled back to Chicago. It was there at the University of Illinois at Chicago that I was able to view the Dr. Ben L. Reitman collection—an important figure in my thesis who penned the text Sister of the Road: The Autobiography of Boxcar Bertha as told to Dr. Ben L. Reitman. In the vast and comprehensive collection I was able to research both Reitman’s private papers (including hobo correspondence) and his manuscripts. I was especially delighted to have access to his unpublished autobiography, Following the Monkey.

The time spent both in Britt and Chicago, and the material I gathered there, has been invaluable to my thesis, and so I would once again like to thank BAAS for their generous contribution.

Other Travel Award Reports

Sarah Silkey, University of East Anglia

I wish to thank the British Association for American Studies for their generous support of my PhD research. My dissertation focuses on the transatlantic dimension of Ida B. Wells’ anti-lynching crusade. It offers a new interpretation of her work. Although Wells has been the subject of numerous scholarly works, historians continue to downplay the importance of her 1893 and 1894 British anti-lynching campaigns. Historians have traditionally misunderstood the effectiveness of Wells’ British anti-lynching campaigns because they evaluated them solely in terms of their direct impact on American audiences—often underestimating the significance of the transatlantic networks she tapped and her influence in both Britain and the United States. My dissertation hopes to remedy this neglect by demonstrating that Wells’ campaigns initiated a dynamic and lasting transatlantic debate on the issue of lynching, one that had important repercussions within the United States.

The BAAS short-term travel award allowed me to consult the Southern History Collection at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The Southern History Collection at UNC-CH provided an opportunity to explore how local incidents of lynching were discussed in the correspondence and diaries of various Southern families. The Rare Books division of the UNC-CH library contained an original circular advertising one of Ida B. Wells’ first anti-lynching speaking engagements held in Washington, DC.

The Southern History Collection contains the microfilm copy of the Albion W. Tourgée Papers held by the Chautauqua Historical Society. The Tourgée Papers span sixty reels of microfilm and include a variety of clippings, correspondence, and original manuscripts from Tourgée’s many years of activism. There are a limited number of research libraries in the United States that hold this massive collection. UNC-CH is fortunate enough to keep a second copy of the Tourgée papers in the main library; this allowed me to continue working even after the special collections department closed and spend more time with each series of correspondence. As a result, I was able to conduct my research intensively over a short period of time and discover important evidence not identified in the collection’s index.

Tourgée was an important figure in late nineteenth century British and American racial reform circles. He supported Ida B. Wells’ transatlantic campaigns and corresponded with Catherine Impey, one of Wells’ British benefactors. The Tourgée Papers contain important letters from Impey written during the aftermath of a sexual scandal that drove a wedge in the early British anti-lynching movement. These letters and others within the collection shed light not only on the details of this scandal, but also on the transatlantic networks tapped by Wells’ campaign. The evidence I gathered will be of great importance in the completion of my thesis.

I am sincerely grateful to BAAS for making this trip possible. Thank you again for this opportunity.

Conference Reports

Foundations of Globalisation International Conference: Manchester, November 6-7 2003

An International Conference on the Foundations of Globalisation was held at the University of Manchester, 6-7 November 2003. Featuring 19 speakers covering a wide range of American philanthropic foundations’ global activities – including the Green Revolution, public health, economic development or ‘modernisation’ strategies, foreign policy and the Cold War, management ideas and theories – the conference was attended by over 30 delegates from the United States, Canada, France, Italy, the Netherlands and, of course, Britain. The Conference papers mainly assessed the roles of the Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller Foundations, although a number of papers also examined, in part, Phelps-Stokes, Russell Sage, and other smaller philanthropies while one paper (Nicholas Guilhot, LSE/CNRS) examined the relationship between 1990s philanthropies, such as Soros, with those of the early 1900s. In the final session of the Conference, delegates discussed how to take forward research in the area of foundations, the knowledge-networks which they have fostered, and their impacts on globalisation processes. It was decided that the papers/conference proceedings would be published, that the new academic network would be consolidated by future workshops and conferences, and that links would be forged with other relevant research groups. The Conference organisers –Bill Cooke, Inderjeet Parmar and Jonathan Harwood – aim to continue their work in these areas and to keep participants informed of progress. A number of provisional offers to host future conferences on foundations were made by Giuliana Gemelli (Bologna), Donald Fisher (British Columbia) and Giles Scott-Smith (Roosevelt Study Centre, Middelburg, Netherlands).

One of the main contributions that the Conference made was successfully to demonstrate the breadth of American philanthropy’s activities and its global reach. Beginning from the early 1900s, the major foundations began an active global programme of health, disease control, food production, population control and other programmes. In addition, Rockefeller and Carnegie philanthropies built strong links with European and other institutions, principally with universities and research institutes, both in the social and natural sciences. In effect, the foundations began a process of building knowledge networks across the world, mainly to promote good causes but also to promote America’s national interests. Established by some of the most successful industrial capitalists of the early twentieth century, and with boards of trustees who were heavily connected with Wall Street banks and international law firms and educated in east coast private schools and Ivy league universities, the foundations were steeped in the east coast WASP establishment. Their domestic and international programmes reflected the concerns of US elites who wanted to use their financial power for the public good, to improve society and the world. Their approaches were always elitist, technocratic, “scientific”, and utilitarian – “to put knowledge to work”, as one RF officer said. They were well-connected with the State Department and other foreign policy agencies of the US state, as well as quasi-state research and propaganda organisations, such as the Council on Foreign Relations and the Foreign Policy Association. The foundations were, from their very beginnings, globalist in outlook. In their view, America should lead the world, exporting its values and institutions.

During the Cold War, the foundations promoted American hegemony in numerous ways, in alliance with official agencies of the American state. A paper by Ali Fisher (Birmingham) pointed out how the Rockefeller Foundation negotiated with both the State Department and British Americanists to set up the British Association for American Studies during the 1950s, while Wendy Toon (University College, Worcester) showed how influential were the foundations in the planning and execution of official policies during the postwar occupation of Germany and Japan. Scott Lucas (Birmingham) noted the numerous ways in which the foundations were overtly and covertly connected with the CIA and its notorious attempts to manipulate European and other intellectuals. Inderjeet Parmar’s (Manchester) paper showed the roles of Ford, Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations in Indonesian, Latin American and African higher education, specifically in building institutions favouring “modernisation” theories of economic development. Ann Vogel further examined the foundations’ roles in promoting higher educational institutions abroad, and introduced sociological networking techniques to enhance our understanding of the interlocked nature of American philanthropy. And John Krige (Georgia Tech.) considered the Rockefeller Foundation’s attempts after 1945 to ‘Americanise’ French science through its support for the CNRS.

Three papers also placed the foundations’ support for ‘Green Revolution’ programmes in the context of the Cold War. Nick Cullather (Indiana) analysed the ways in which justifications of the Green Revolution repeatedly had to adapt during the 1950s and 1960s to shifting ideas about third world population growth generated by demographers as well as to the critiques of high-tech agriculture developed by environmentalists. In addition to exploring a series of issues concerning the foundations’ underlying assumptions, their relations to U.S. government agencies, and their potential gains from the Green Revolution, Robert Anderson (Simon Fraser) emphasised the need for more research on the all-important ‘Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research’ which has supported the Green Revolution since the 1970s. Placing the Green Revolution against the backdrop of the growth of high-tech agriculture in both Central Europe and the U.S. since the late 19th century, Jonathan Harwood (Manchester) sought to clarify the foundations’ aims in championing the Green Revolution and concluded that despite frequent claims to the contrary, ‘solving the problem of world hunger’ was never seriously attempted.

Building on the question of Foundations’ role in constituting the Cold War order, Guiliana Gemelli (Bologna) presented a paper on the role of the Ford Foundation Ford in OEEC/OECD institutional development . Bill Cooke (UMIST) extended some of Gemelli’s earlier work on management education by tracing ideas used by the World Bank in its management of contemporary globalization processes, particularly those associated with change management, to foundation support of the Research Centre for Group Dynamics in the US and the Tavistock Institute in the UK. Thomas Cayet’s (European University Institute) presentation was also on the development of management ideas, but this time in the context of the inter-war period, where he pointed to the little recognized ambitions of proponents of scientific management for its possibilities in engendering progressive social change, and particularly to the engagement of the Twentieth Century Fund with this aim. In an impressive and well received paper Nicolas Guilhot (LSE/CNRS) contrasted present and past foundation philosophy and practice, skillfully dissecting the nature, role and functions of the philanthropy of George Soros and comparing it with the philosophies of Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and Henry Ford.

From one of the foundations, Courtenay Sprague (Carnegie Corporation) provided a case study of Carnegie, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and Ford foundations in reforming and challenging apartheid in South Africa, using organisations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and their legalistic techniques and strategies. Darwin Stapleton (Rockefeller University and Rockefeller Archive Center) examined Rockefeller public health fellowships’ role in globalisation. Both papers argued that the foundations’ activities constituted genuinely liberal programmes for political and social betterment. The Conference benefitted greatly from participation by one foundation insider and it is hoped that such intellectual exchanges will continue in the future.

The Conference was opened by three speakers who were, in effect, the pioneers of foundation studies – Robert Arnove (Indiana), Donald Fisher (British Columbia) and Martin Bulmer (Surrey). Their impact is still widely felt since they established many of the boundaries and modalities of the field and of the debate. In their Conference papers they reiterated their ideas, drawing upon subsequent bodies of theory and applying them to more recent developments, thus providing the Conference with a number of frameworks in which case studies could be situated.

The second major contribution of the Conference was to fill an important gap in the current literature and thinking about the early phases and origins of “globalisation”. If by this term is meant greater levels of integration between the knowledge/power networks of the world, with particular emphasis on those emanating from the metropolitan world centres such as the United States, then the foundations were shown by conference speakers to have made a vital contribution to its early history. The American foundations were linked with global power/knowledge strategies: building up existing research institutions, creating new ones, promoting particular kinds of knowledge and research (eg modernisation theories of economic development) and constructing powerful networks of individuals and institutions centred in the United States, both physically and in terms of American interests in global hegemony and Cold War competition. In the international knowledge economy, Rockefeller, Ford and Carnegie were the powerhouses that integrated national and international networks to promote the intellectual components of America’s global hegemonic strategy. In that regard, therefore, current-day global knowledge networks, such as those centred round the World Bank (the “Knowledge Bank”), were pre-figured by those built by the Big Three American foundations.

All in all, the Conference was a very successful first step in building a network of foundation scholars and practitioners. For that reason we are especially grateful to our sponsors for enabling us to meet the financial costs of the Conference: the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation at Warwick University, the Vice-Chancellors of UMIST and the University of Manchester, the Centre for International Politics in the Department of Government, the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, the Manchester School of Management, and the BISA International Political Economy Group.

Inderjeet Parmar

Conference and Seminar Announcements

CRISS CROSS: Confluence and Influence in 20th Century African American Music, Visual Art and Literature

Three Day International Conference June 18th – 20th, 2004

School of American & Canadian Studies, University of Nottingham

Call for Papers

Music is habitually cited as the core expressive form in African American culture, yet the question of what this has meant for both music and other art forms has rarely been addressed in detail. Focusing on the history of JAZZ and BLUES, our project will endeavour to explicate this situation. The central question we intend to confront is: what has been the nature and extent of the relationship between black music and other African American art forms, particularly PAINTING, POETRY, FICTION and FILM?

Following the success of our one-day ‘Jazzthetics’ colloquium in May 2003, we are now planning a three-day conference in June 2004.

Guest speakers will include Robin D.G. Kelley, John F. Szwed and Robert Farris Thompson.

Papers are invited on any aspect of the relationship between music and other facets of 20th century African American culture.

Please send abstracts (c.500 words) and a brief CV to graham.taylor@nottingham.ac.uk [please write ‘Conference proposal’ in the email subject field]. Or write to Dr. Graham Taylor, School of American & Canadian Studies, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, United Kingdom.

Closing date for proposals: 15th December 2003.

We hope to respond to proposals by mid-January.

We plan to publish a selection of the conference papers.

To see more about the Criss Cross project, including paintings and music by BILL DIXON, poems by MICHAEL S. HARPER and synopses of the papers presented at the ‘Jazzthetics’ colloquium, please visit our website at http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/american/research/crisscross/index.htm

Transatlantic Studies Association

Call for Papers

The Schools of History, Politics and American& Canadian Studies have agreed to act as joint hosts for the conference of the Transatlantic Studies Association at the University of Nottingham in July, 2005. In preparation for this event, it is hoped to put on a panel at the July, 2004, conference of the Transatlantic Studies Association in Dundee, consisting of three papers on aspects of Anglo-American Relations since World War II, to be offered by one member of each of the three Schools of History, Politics and American Studies. If you are interested in offering one of these papers, please contact Peter Boyle in the School of American & Canadian Studies, peter.boyle@nottingham.ac.uk

It would not be necessary to stay for the entire conference, July 12-15, 2004. It is quite acceptable to go for only the one day on which this panel will be held. But anyone who wishes to attend for the whole conference is very welcome to do so and will have a greater opportunity to see the sights of Bonnie Dundee and the beautiful countryside in neighbouring Perthshire.

The topic of one of the papers may be any aspect of Anglo-American relations since World War II, either political, historical or cultural.

This venture is part of a process which has been under discussion over the last year between some members of the three Schools to encourage greater cooperation. This was helpful in our successful bid for a Professor of American Government as one of the twenty new University chairs. It is hoped that there will be further such cooperative ventures, such as joint bids for large research grants.

Peter Boyle, University of Nottingham

Elections on the Horizon: Marketing Politics to the Electorate in the USA and UK

Monday 15th March 2004 at The Conference Centre of the British Library hosted by the Eccles Centre for American Studies and the Haworth Press Series in Political Marketing

Enquiries to: Philip.Davies@bl.uk or Jean.Petrovic@bl.uk

Conference Schedule:

9.00 Registration (tea and coffee)
9.30-9.40 Welcome by Professor Philip Davies (Eccles Centre)

9.45-10.55
Panel 1: The Presidential Primary Season
Montague Kern (Rutgers University)
Building an Echo Chamber in the 2004 US Presidential Primary Season: Engaging the Webizen in Marketing Campaigns on Candidate Centered and Political Party Websites and Email
Dennis W. Johnson (George Washington University)
First Hurdles: The Evolution of the Pre-primary and Primary Stages of American Presidential Elections

Panel 2: Marketing UK Political Parties
Dominic Wring (Loughborough University)
Brand ‘New’ Labour: Marketing and Contemporary Party Politics in Britain
Nigel Jackson (Bournemouth University)
You’ve Got Email: The Use of E-newsletters in the Development of Relationship Marketing by UK Political Parties

11.00-12.10
Panel 3: Marketing Policy in the USA
Conor McGrath (University of Ulster)
Grassroots Lobbying: Marketing Politics and Policy ‘Beyond the Beltway’
Kenneth M. Cosgrove (Suffolk University, Boston)
Consumer Marketing Techniques in the Bush Administration’s Advocacy for Waging War in Iraq

Panel 4: Insights into Political Marketing
Robert Worcester (MORI & LSE) & Paul Baines (Middlesex University)
Two Triangulation Models in Political Marketing
Darren G Lilleker (Bournemouth University) & Ralph Negrine (Leicester University)
Mapping a Market-Orientation: Can We Only Detect Political Marketing Through the Lens of Hindsight?

12.15-13.00 Plenary Speaker
Gary Wasserman (Georgetown University & Banyan Advisors)
Gary Wasserman has served as National Issues Co-ordinator for a presidential campaign, legislative assistant in the House of Representatives, and as an evaluator and consultant for the USAID. As Senior Vice President with Bozell Sawyer Miller he oversaw state and local campaigns. He has advised many election teams, the latest being in a 2002 US Senate race in Idaho. His books include The Basics of American Politics (11th ed., 2004), and The Founding Family (2002).

13.00-14.00 Buffet Lunch

14.00-15.10
Panel 5: Campaign Funding in the UK and USA
Carl Stenberg (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
Public Funding of Elections in the American States: Lessons from Experience
Philip Harris (Manchester Metropolitan University)
Aucs versus Hobbits: An Analysis and Comparison of the Prospects for the Funding of Political Marketing in the US and UK Election Campaigns of 2004 and 2005

Panel 6: Candidates and Citizens in the UK and USA
Robert Busby (Liverpool Hope University College)
Not as Rich as You Think: Class, Rhetoric and Candidate Portrayal During National Elections in the US and UK
Barry Richards (Bournemouth University)
Political Marketing and the Emotional Citizen

15.15-16.25
Panel 7: The Republicans in 2004
Peter N. Ubertaccio (Stonehill College, Massachusetts)
Marketing Politics in a Candidate Centered Polity: The Republican Party, George W. Bush and the 2004 Presidential Election
Joseph Ben-Ur (University of Houston)
Satisfying Both Party Members and Party Sympathizers – Implications for the Republican Party in the 2004 US Presidential Elections

Panel 8: UK Parties and Demographic Constituencies
Janine Dermody & Stuart Hanmer-Lloyd (Gloucestershire University)
Re-Marketing the Labour Party to Young People: A Trust Building Process
Wendy Stokes (Richmond: American International University, London)
UK Parties and Women’s Votes

16.30-17.00 Closing address by Professor Bruce I Newman (DePaul University)

17.05-18.00 Wine reception in the British Library restaurant

New Members

Sean Albiez is subject leader for Poplar Culture and American Studies at the University of Plymouth. His research interests include Detroit Techno and post-soul African American cultural politics, contemporary country music, German/British connections in popular music, electronica in the USA, questions around nationalism and transcultural/national popular musical practices, American film and French popular music.

Justin Ashmore recently completed a PhD thesis on Congress’s role in detent policy during the Nixon Presidency. Research interests include US government, politics and foreign policy after 1945.

Julie Atkinson is a postgraduate at the University of East Anglia. Her research interests include American colonial history and politics in the 18th century New York City public sphere.

Caroline Bate is a PhD student at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth where she is working on cyberpunk science fiction, postmodern theory and the reimagining of emancipatory spaces and subjectivities.

Kiki Benzon is a PhD student at University College London. Her main research interestsare contemporary American fiction, chaos theory, psychoanalysis and Frank Zappa.

Kathleen Berry is a Mellon Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge working on a cultural labour history of US airline flight attendants.

Christopher Bigsby is Professor of American Studies at the University of East Anglia and founder and director of the Arthur Miller Centre of American Studies.

Jennifer Black is a PhD student at the University of Cambridge where she is working on women and politics in the American South, 1930-1950.

James D. Boys is PhD student at the University of Birmingham, examining the evolution and execution of foreign policy in the Clinton White House. He is co-editor of 49th Parallel and has served as an intern on Capitol Hill as well as working in the private sector in Manhattan.

Oliver Brown is an MA student at the University of Oxford. His research interest include processes of professionalisation in the Progressive Era, Gilded Age foreign policy, and Robert Archey Woods

Victoria Cook is a PhD student at the University of Central Lancashire where she also lectures part-time. Her latest publication is on Michael Ondaatje.

Nicholas Cull is Professor of American Studies at the University of Leicester. His research interests are US media history/politics, US foreign policy especially public diplomacy.

Howard Cunnell is PhD student at the Institute of United States Studies , University of London, researching representations of masculinity, identity and ethnicity in contemporary American prison writing.

James Dunkerley is director of the Institute of Latin American Studies. His research interests include 19th and early 20th century history, foreign relations and pan Americanism.

Trinidad Encarnacion is a postgraduate student at Queen’s University, Belfast. Her research interests are the interaction between 19th century American literature and culture.

Michelle Henley is a PhD student at Cambridge University researching masculinities in the Georgia and South Carolin low country 1750-1810.

Lynn Hibberd is distance learning tutor for Film Studies at the University of Stirling. Her research interests include American mainstream and independent cinema, particularly issues of genre, gender and sexuality.

Stephanie Lewthwaite is a PhD student at the University of Warwick, working on Anglo-led social reform work among the Mexican population of Los Angeles County 1880-1940.

Daniel McKay is interested in the projection and reception of American civilisation abroad.

Christopher McKinlay is a postgraduate at the University of Dundee. His research interests are race, slavery and free blacks in early Virginia; George Lincoln Rockwell and American Nazism; the American extreme right and the leaderless resistance philosophy.

Malcolm McLuaghlin is a PhD student at the University of Essex working on the subject of a racial massacre in East St. Louis in 1917. Research interests include race, class, labour history, violence and social movements in the 20th century.

Leen Maes is a PhD student at the university of Newcastle upon Tyne researching the Holocaust and trauma theory in Jewish-American women’s literature.

Ruth Maxey is a PhD student at University College London focusing on the ideas of memory and stereotyping in contemporary Chinese American and Asian British literature. Current research interests include history and memory in diaspora writing, American historical revisionism as explored by writers from traditionally marginalised groups, American autobiography and Asian American literature.

Catherine Martin is a DPhil student at the University of Sussex where she is researching American poetry from Ezra Pound to Robert Duncan and Susan Howe which is preoccupied with the relationship between memory and poetics.

Hazel Moffat is interested in immigration history and epistolary literature

Louise Munton is a Masters student at the University of Nottingham. Her research interests include postmodern literature, particularly the works of Don DeLillo; American and Canadaian gothic literature; science fiction and fantasy; US foreign policy post 1945; 20th century US culture

Adriana-Cecilia Neagu is Associate Professor of Anglo-American literature at Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu. Her research interests include literature and the New Humanism in the context of comparative cultural studies.

Catherine Mills is a PhD student at the University of Nottingham. Her research interests are contemporary American and Canadian women’s writing, especially Dionne Brand, M. Nourbese Philip and Michelle Cliff.

John Pound has research interests in early American political thought from the colonial era to the rise of Andrew Jackson.

Neil Sparnon is a research student at Anglia Polytechnic University, working on USAF airbases in East Anglia 1946-1964.

Matias Spector is a doctoral student at the University of Oxford, researching American foreign policy, US-Latin America relations and the Nixon/Ford presidencies.

Ross Spragg is a postgraduate student at Keele University. His research interests include the political/intellectual history and culture of 19th century America, especially the antebellum and Civil War era.

Duncan White is a research student at Kingston University. His research interests include placelessness and transience in contemporary American literature and art.

Sara Wood is a PhD student at the University of Birmingham, researching 20th century literature, African American culture and the role of music.

Paul Woolf is a postgraduate student at the University of Birmingham researching American writing about Britain, especially British cities and the British empire in the 19th century. Other research interests include American television and early detective fiction.

John Wrighton is a PhD student at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth researching contemporary American poetry.

Members’ Publications

George C Edwards and Philip John Davies (eds) New Challenges for the American Presidency. Contains contributions by other BAAS members, e.g. John Owens, John Dumbrell

R. J. (Dick) Ellis, Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig: A Cultural Biography of a “Two-Story” African American Novel. Rodopi: Costerus New Series 149, 2003. (www.rodopi.nl). Pp. 216. ISBN 90 420 1157 2

Barbara Wyllie, Nabokov at the Movies: Film Perspectives in Fiction (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003)

BAAS Membership of Committees

Executive Committee Elected:

Professor Philip Davies (Chair, first elected 1998, term ends 2004)
School of Humanities and Social Sciences, De Montfort University, Leicester LE1 9BH E-mail: pjd@dmu.ac.uk

Dr Heidi Macpherson (Secretary, first elected 2002, term ends 2005)
Department of Cultural Studies, University of Central Lancashire, Preston PR1 2HE
E-mail: hrsmacpherson@uclan.ac.uk

Dr Nick Selby (Treasurer, first elected 2000, term ends 2006)
E-mail: N.Selby@englit.arts.gla.ac.uk

Professor Janet Beer
Department of English, Manchester Metropolitan University, Geoffrey Marton Building, Roasamond St. West, Manchester M15 6LL
E-mail: J.Beer@mmu.ac.uk

Professor Susan Castillo (first elected 2001, term ends 2004)
Department of English Literature, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ
E-mail: S.Castillo@englit.arts.gla.ac.uk

Dr Jude Davies (first elected 2002, term ends 2005)
Department of American Studies, King Alfred’s College of Higher Education, Winchester, SO22 4NR
E-mail: Jude.Davies@wkac.ac.uk

Ms Catherine Morley (Postgraduate Representative, first elected 2002, term ends 2004)
School of Humanities, Oxford Brookes University, Gipsy Lane Campus, Headington, OX3 OBP
E-mail: c.morley@brookes.ac.uk

Dr Simon Newman (first elected 1999, term ends 2005)*
Director, American Studies, Modern History, 2 University Gardens, Glasgow University, Glasgow G12
E-mail: s.newman@modhist.arts.gla.ac.uk

Dr Ian Scott (first elected 2003, term ends 2006)
Department of English and American Studies, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL
E-mail: Ian.scott@man.ac.uk

Ms Carol Smith (first elected 2001, term ends 2004)
School of Cultural Studies, King Alfred’s College, Winchester SO22 4NR
E-mail: Carol.Smith@wkac.ac.uk

Dr Graham Thompson (first elected 2001, term ends 2004)
School of American and Canadian Studies, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD
E-mail: graham.thompson@nottingham.ac.uk

Dr Peter Thompson (first elected 2002, term ends 2005)
St. Cross College, St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3LZ
E-mail: peter.thompson@stx.ox.ac.uk

Dr Jenel Virden (first elected 2002, term ends 2007)* Representative to EAAS, Department of American Studies, University of Hull, Hull HU6 7RX
Tel: 01482 465638/303
Fax: 01482 465303
E-mail: J.Virden@amstuds.hull.ac.uk

Dr Tim Woods, Department of English, Hugh Owen Building, Penglais, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, Wales, SY23 3DY
E-mail: tww@aber.ac.uk

Ms Kathryn Cooper (Co-opted), Development Subcommittee
Loreto 6th Form College, Chicester Road, Manchester M15 5PB
E-mail: kathcooper@cwcom.net

Dr Jay Kleinberg, (Ex-Officio), Editor, Journal of American Studies, American Studies, Brunel University, 300 St Margarets Road, Twickenham, Middlesex TW1 1PT
E-mail: Jay.Kleinberg@Brunel.ac.uk

Mr Ian Ralston, (Ex-Officio), Chair, Library & Resouces Subcommittee, American Studies Centre, Aldham Robarts Centre, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool L3 5UZ
E-mail: I.Ralston@livjm.ac.uk

BAAS Sub-Committee Members

Development:
Professor Simon Newman (Chair)
Ms Kathryn Cooper
Professor Philip Davies
Ms. Catherine Morley (Postgraduate Representative)
Dr Ian Scott
Dr. Peter Thompson
Dr Iain Wallace

Publications:
Professor Janet Beer (Chair)
Dr Jay Kleinberg (JAS)
Dr Heidi Macpherson
Professor Ken Morgan (BRRAM)
Dr Carol Smith (BAAS Paperbacks)
Dr Graham Thompson (ASIB and website)
Dr Jenel Virden

Conference:
Dr Tim Woods (Chair)
Dr Susan Castillo
Dr. Jude Davies
Dr Sarah MacLachlan (2004 Conference Secretary)
Dr Michael McDonnell
Dr. Nick Selby

Libraries and Resources:
Mr Ian Ralston (Chair)
Dr Kevin Halliwell

Archive