Archival Report from Catherine Bateson, Eccles Centre Postgraduate Fellowship recipient 2015

[vc_row margin_bottom=”15″][vc_column][dt_banner image_id=”13146″ bg_color=”rgba(0,0,0,0.17)” min_height=”270″][/dt_banner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][dt_quote]The British Library’s American Civil War archives provided me with excellent sources that support my doctoral research into the Irish experience of the conflict and sentiments expressed in accounts, letters and contemporary song lyrics, writes Catherine Bateson, Eccles Centre Postgraduate Fellow 2015. A scrapbook of over two hundred American Civil War song-sheets revealed a wealth of songs about Irish military service, home-front experiences and hopes for an independent Ireland.[/dt_quote][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]In January 2016, I undertook a research trip to the British Library supported by postgraduate fellowship funding from the Eccles Centre. My visit focused on primary and rare secondary sources in the Library’s American Civil War archives. It helped my research into the Irish experience of the conflict and sentiments expressed in accounts, letters and contemporary song lyrics.

The main focus of my research was a collection of over two hundred ballads gathered in a scrapbook of American Civil War song-sheets. These individual songs were bound together, making the Library’s collection incredibly rare. They form the foundation of my doctoral project as some thirty songs relate to Irish soldiers who fought in the[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]conflict. They complement other Civil War Irish American song-sheets and songsters I have researched in American, Irish, English and Scottish archives. They sing about Irish military service, views of the war, home-front experiences and hopes for an independent Ireland. The sources are also works of art; publishers decorated lyrics with intricate designs including drawings of soldiers, flags and African American minstrel caricatures. These were occasionally dyed in yellow, red and blue, and a few still retain vivid colouring. As song-sheets are ephemeral, their survival makes them special items in Civil War archives.

The Library also holds larger scrapbooks of Confederate musical song scores, including a collection entitled Celebrated Songs of the Confederate States of America. This contained a copy of the Confederate anthem The Bonnie Blue Flag, first written in 1861 by Ulster-Scotsman Harry Macarthy and set to a popular eighteenth century tune. Macarthy, the song and tune’s histories connect to my research into Irish music’s transmission across the Atlantic. This particular version of the song is unusual as it was part of a collection printed in London during the war and ‘Dedicated to the Confederate Exiles in Europe’. The collection also contained another song entitled Our Queen Varine, dedicated to Varina Davis, wife of Confederate president Jefferson Davis. While not relevant to my research specifically, it was an intriguing archive discovery. The songs hints at British and Confederate ties during the Civil War when the possibility of British recognition of Confederate sovereignty was a contemporary concern.

Other research at the Library included finding more Macarthy productions, including a one-act minstrel play, Deeds of Darkness, written in 1876. A ‘moral and laughable Ethiopian Extravaganza’, the piece reveals the continuance of popular racist minstrel shows in post-bellum America and provides evidence of Macarthy’s post-war career. My research had only traced the Ulster-Scot migrant’s pre-war and wartime professions, and it was interesting to find evidence of his post-Civil War activities. I also researched the histories of other Irishmen important to the history of Irish American Civil War songs and music. This included analysing works by and about General Thomas Francis Meagher, commander of the Union Army’s Irish Brigade, who became the subject of several Irish wartime verses. Furthermore, I studied works by and about Charles G. Halpine. Originally from County Meath, Halpine served in the Union Army and wrote popular stories and songs from the perspective of fictional Irish solider Miles O’Reilly. His writings offer a particular satirical and lyrical commentary of the conflict.

A week of reading Irish American Civil War archives relevant to my research into Irish wartime experiences and sentiments expressed in song and music has provided me with excellent sources that support my doctoral project’s findings. It has also generated new avenues of enquiry for further research. Many thanks to the Eccles Centre for awarding the postgraduate fellowship and providing assistance in making my trip to the British Library’s American archives possible and successful.

Catherine Bateson is a second year History doctoral student at the University of Edinburgh, researching songs produced about the Irish during the American Civil War and the sentiments they expressed. She analyses the topics these songs sang about, how they maintained a transnational diasporic cultural heritage through the use of Irish tunes, and what these sources suggest about 1860s Irish American identity formation. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row margin_bottom=”15″][vc_column][dt_banner image_id=”13140″ bg_color=”rgba(0,0,0,0.17)” min_height=”270″][/dt_banner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][dt_quote]The generous BAAS Founders’ Travel Award funded my final archival trip for my first monograph that discusses how the now largely-forgotten Paris Commune became, for writers and readers across virtually all classes and political persuasions, a critical locus for re-occupying both radical and mainstream memory of revolution and empire, writes J. Michelle Coghlan. During my trip I was also able to conduct early research into two new projects on African-American anarchist and labor activist Lucy Parsons’ Life of Albert Parsons, and the rise of food writing and the making of American taste in the long nineteenth century.[/dt_quote][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Generous funding from the BAAS Founders’ Travel Award allowed me to spend three weeks in the United States in March 2016 conducting archival sleuthing towards the completion of my first monograph and the launch of two new projects, as well as enabling participation in two major conferences in my field. In a nutshell: it was quite a trip!

My first stop on this whistle-stop tour was Penn State University, where I attended the biennial meeting of C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists conference and delivered a paper entitled “‘Splendid Failure’: the Print Culture of Radical Postbellum Pasts” as part of a larger panel on the topic of radical literary histories of the long nineteenth century which was chaired by Prof. Bridget Bennett and included papers by John Funchion, Michael Drexler, and Eric Lott. The[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]discussion sparked by the panel, as well as conversations at the newly-formed Archives Caucus cluster lunch, gave me a fantastic opportunity to brainstorm how to get a new project that’s been percolating on the back burner for some time now—a digital critical edition of African-American anarchist and labor activist Lucy Parsons’ Life of Albert Parsons—more firmly off the ground. Attendance at the conference also gave me a chance to meet with a group of C19 Americanists who share my interest in Transatlanticism, Franco-American style, and talk through ways we might concretely collaborate in future.

I then headed to New York City, where I was able to spend a week digging into a variety of materials related to late nineteenth and early twentieth-century anarchism, as well as a variety of pamphlets and broadsides related to the memory-culture surrounding the Paris Commune in the United States, at the Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University. The former will provide an invaluable springboard towards my new Lucy Parsons project, while the latter allowed me to tie up some final loose ends related to my forthcoming monograph, Sensational Internationalism (Edinburgh UP, 2016), which recovers the now largely-forgotten story of the Paris Commune’s spectacular afterlife as specter and spectacle in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century American culture. In putting 1871—and, more particularly, the Paris Commune’s “audacious internationalism”—back on the map of American literary and cultural studies, my book contributes to the conversation begun by the seminal work of Michael Rogin and Larry J. Reynolds to recover the influence of the European uprisings of 1848 on the literary imagination of writers like Emerson and Melville and the literary history of the American Renaissance as well as more recent work to trace what Anna Brickhouse has termed the lingering “Franco-Africanist shadow” on American literary and cultural history in the wake of the Haitian Revolution.  But Sensational Internationalism offers another angle on that story of distant uprisings resounding at home: namely, how a foreign revolution came back to life as a domestic commodity, and why for decades another nation’s memory came to feel so much our own. Chronicling the Commune’s returns across a surprisingly vast and visually striking archive of periodical poems and illustrations, panoramic spectacles, children’s adventure fiction, popular and canonical novels, political pamphlets, avant-garde theater productions, and radical pulp, my book argues that the Commune became, for writers and readers across virtually all classes and political persuasions, a critical locus for re-occupying both radical and mainstream memory of revolution and empire, a key site for negotiating post-bellum gender trouble and regional reconciliation, and a vital terrain for rethinking Paris—and what it meant to be an American there—in U.S. fiction and culture.

My next stop was Washington, D.C., where I spent a fruitful three days exploring the Paul Avrich anarchist collection in the Rare Books and Special Collections room at the Library of Congress, where I was able to consult a number of different editions of pamphlets that Lucy Parsons edited and published, including the 25^th anniversary edition of The Famous Speeches of the Eight Chicago Anarchists in Court (1911), a limited-run biographical sketch of Voltairine de Cleyre which Emma Goldman published in 1933, and ephemera and other materials related to de Cleyre, Goldman, and Parsons in Chicago, all of which will provide invaluable context for my digital critical edition and material towards further work I’d like to do on anarchist women’s activism, a project I’m tentatively entitling “Radical Circles.”

Finally, my trip concluded in Princeton, NJ where I participated in the Critical Consumption: The Future of Food Studies conference organized by Prof. Anne A. Cheng and delivered a talk entitled, “Archiving the Senses,” which considers the matter of the senses in nineteenth-century American literary studies and, more generally, taste as an under-valued aesthetic register and under-historicized sensory one. Both the Q and A after my panel and the energizing two days of talks and keynote addresses enriched my thinking and helped me think more deeply about my new book project, Culinary Designs, which explores the rise of food writing and the making of American taste in the long nineteenth century.

In short, I am very grateful to BAAS for giving me the opportunity to embark on archival research and scholarly conversation that would have been unthinkable without this whirlwind trip.

Michelle Coghlan is Lecturer in American Literature at the University of Manchester. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row margin_top=”15″][vc_column][ultimate_carousel title_text_typography=”” slides_on_desk=”2″ slides_on_tabs=”2″][dt_teaser image_id=”13132″ lightbox=”true”][/dt_teaser][dt_teaser image_id=”13133″ lightbox=”true”][/dt_teaser][/ultimate_carousel][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row margin_bottom=”15″][vc_column][dt_banner image_id=”13127″ bg_color=”rgba(0,0,0,0.16)” min_height=”270″][/dt_banner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][dt_quote]By accessing the British Library’s unrivalled holdings in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British literature I was able to map a much broader novelistic engagement with colonial America than that familiar from a handful of much-discussed texts like Aphra Behn’s Oronooko (1688) and Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders (1722), writes Matthew Pethers, Eccles Centre Fellow 2015. The archives also turned up some unexpected, and previously unheralded, gems such as access to the first extant novel to incorporate an American setting, Charles Croke’s Fortune’s Uncertainty (1667).[/dt_quote][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Having just embarked upon a project intended to offer an empirical and theoretical reshaping of the Anglo-American literary canon through the recovery of a long-neglected but culturally significant canon of novels written about the New World before the Revolution, my recent Eccles Centre Fellowship proved to be an ideal means of finding my feet amid a potentially elusive and intimidating mass of sources. So far my research has been dedicated to establishing the contents and parameters of five key genres of colonial-era American-set fiction – the Robinsonade, the Transportation Novel, the Plantation Novel, the Captivity Novel, and the Loyalist Novel – each of which offers a distinct spin on a set of shared questions about the transformations that life in America wrought upon British social identities, sexual relations and racial[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]categories. In seeking to map a much broader novelistic engagement with colonial America than that familiar from a handful of much-discussed texts like Aphra Behn’s Oronooko (1688) and Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders (1722), I was fortunate to have access to the British Library’s unrivalled holdings in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British literature. Digging around in the outer reaches of the BL’s catalogue not only allowed me to fill in some important holes in my corpus by offering me books whose titles I’d previously only encountered as footnotes in secondary sources, it also turned up some unexpected, and previously unheralded, gems – such as Charles Croke’s Fortune’s Uncertainty (1667), a fascinating tale of a young rake’s deportation to Virginia as an indentured servant that now stands as perhaps the first extant novel to incorporate an American setting.

As it happened, during the Fellowship my eventual fate, like Croke’s hero Rodolphus, was to follow the path of the indentured servant to the colonies, since I soon became immersed in multiple examples of the Transportation Novel, as well as the scattered but substantial literature surrounding it. In addition to roman â clef like the anonymous Memoirs of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman Returned from a Thirteen Years Slavery in America (1745) and Virtue Triumphant; or, Elizabeth Canning in America (1757), both based (very loosely) on sensational court cases and their aftermath, for example, I was able to find a host of autobiographies, tracts and ballads dealing with indentured servitude – ranging from The Vain Prodigal Life, and Tragical Penitent Death of Thomas Hellier (1680) to The Sufferings of William Green (1775). Crucially, this plethora of material enabled me to comprehensively situate the Transportation Novel within wider cultural debates over indenture and to fully comprehend the distinctive agenda of this form, which presents, among other things, a much more optimistic and individualistic take on indenture than its counterparts in other genres. It was very much the depth and breadth of the British Library’s archive that allowed me to develop such a fully-rounded angle on the texts I am concerned with. Indeed, my Fellowship has already borne fruit in an essay on the various cultural representations of indenture during the colonial period that is forthcoming in The Cambridge History of American Working-Class Literature.

Since completing my Fellowship I have continued to draw on my research at the British Library as I begin to wrestle with the analytical questions raised by the category of the Transportation Narrative (an issue I have written about for BAAS on U.S. Studies Online), and I have already made invaluable headway in investigating the wider cultural reception of many of the novels I have been working on thanks to the material I gathered from eighteenth-century newspapers and magazines while at the BL. Much work remains to be done: on the material production and circulation of the “colonial American novel”; on the different ways in which these novels were apprehended in Britain and America; on their relation to a wider body of colonial writing; on the careers of their authors (some of whom had first-hand experience of the New World); and on the implications of this corpus for current models of transatlanticism, fictionality and book history. As I chart these various paths I am sure that the British Library will again prove indispensable.

Matthew Pethers is an Assistant Professor of American Intellectual and Cultural History at the University of Nottingham. He has published widely on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American literature, history and print culture, including articles in Early American Literature, History of Science, and American Studies, and book chapters in John Neal and Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture (Bucknell University Press, 2012), The Materials of Exchange Between Britain and North East America, 1750-1900 (Ashgate, 2013), and New Directions in the History of the Novel (Palgrave, 2014). He is a co-editor of the forthcoming Edinburgh Companion to Nineteenth-Century American Letters and Letter-Writing.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row margin_bottom=”15″][vc_column][dt_banner image_id=”12349″ min_height=”270″][/dt_banner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][dt_quote]The Eccles Centre fellowship has greatly enriched my transatlantic PhD project which examines the impact of the Jacobite uprising of 1745-46 on British imperialism in North America in the years preceding the American Revolution, says Nicola Martin, Eccles Centre Postgraduate Award in North American Studies recipient 2015.[/dt_quote][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]I undertook a ten day research trip at the British Library, generously funded by the Eccles Centre for American Studies. The purpose of the trip was to consult a number of manuscript materials for my PhD project, which considers the impact of the Jacobite uprising of 1745-46 on British imperialism in North America in the years preceding the American Revolution. The project examines the process of militarisation and, particularly, pacification in the Scottish Highlands and considers how this affected the way that[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]British army officers and government officials approached and countered military threats in North America. It seeks to show what cultural preconceptions existed in the minds of members of the British imperial elite and how these were altered by militarisation in two separate fringes of the British Empire.

I consulted a wide range of manuscripts from several collections in the British Library including the Haldimand, Hardwicke and Newcastle Papers. As the project is concerned with the experiences of the British army, the Haldimand Papers were of particular interest as they document the military experience of Henry Bouquet during the French and Indian War in North America and Sir Frederick Haldimand during the same period and later commanding in various colonies and acting as Commander-in-Chief during the absence of Thomas Gage. The papers of these two officers provide a vast trove of correspondence between various army officers in the colonies and members of the British government in Whitehall. This provides a detailed account of the militarisation of North America and the encounters of a number of military officers in different colonies with colonial settlers, Native Americans and French Canadians. In particular, Haldimand’s correspondence during his time stationed in the Floridas and upon his temporary promotion to Commander-in-Chief of the forces in North America illuminates the hardening attitudes of many in the British army and government towards the disaffected colonists.

One consideration of my current research is the importance of trade, and particularly government control over trade, as a method of pacification in Scotland and North America. Studying correspondence from the period after the Jacobite uprising and the papers of the Commission of Forfeited Estates in the National Records of Scotland highlighted that the annexing of forfeited estates in the Highlands and the appointing of a committee to manage them and introduce industry and manufactures was a key aim of the British in order to ensure long-term peace in the region. A number of documents within the Hardwicke Papers supported this point, emphasising that such a plan was the quickest and easiest way to ensure peace in the Highlands and to improve that region. As well as confirming the importance of a well-regulated trade in the Scottish Highlands, my research at the British Library also illuminated that members of the British imperial elite at home and in North America were convinced that a well-regulated trade was similarly important for ensuring lasting peace in the North American backcountry. The importance of regulating and controlling trade there is stated numerous times in various manuscripts and collections and this will allow me to draw connections between attitudes and policy in Scotland and those in North America, particularly with regards to Native Americans.

One interesting and unforeseen connection between Scotland and North America uncovered during my research at the British Library was found in the Haldimand Papers in a series of letters from Thomas Gage, Commander-in-Chief of the British forces in North America, to Henry Bouquet in October 1764 during Pontiac’s War. Gage questions what the fate of colonists who have conspired with the Native Americans should be and notes that in Scotland during the Jacobite uprising those who were rebelling against the British crown were treated as traitors to their country and tried by the civil courts. He suggests that, similarly, those in North America currently rebelling against the crown ought to be treated in the same way. However, it is clear in his correspondence that Gage is only referring to those settlers who have been fighting with the Native Americans and not the Native Americans themselves. The Native American tribes fighting the British were treated as guilty by association so that not only the fighters but whole villages were killed or had their houses destroyed. Despite Gage’s claim that all the rebels in Scotland were treated as traitors and tried by civil courts many Highlanders were in fact treated similarly to the Native Americans and assumed to be guilty through association. This meant that many, including women and children, were killed or lost their homes without facing trial. As a result, this is a very valuable letter which documents a previously unexplored connection between events in Scotland and North America. Additionally, it provides useful evidence that will be further explored as to how the eighteenth-century rules of warfare regarding different types of combatants were interpreted by military officers at that juncture.

In addition to the documents themselves, which were valuable resources for my project, the experience of researching at such a prestigious institution has certainly contributed to my development as a researcher. Discussing my research with one of the curators of American materials at the library during an earlier trip gave me the opportunity to focus on the documents that would prove most relevant for my research and encouraged me to think more widely about my topic in order to discover some interesting manuscripts I may have previously passed over. Having a set period of time to examine the many relevant materials I had picked out honed my ability to quickly analyse a large amount of material and find the relevant information from it. Not to mention ten days pouring over eighteenth century letters improved my eye for deciphering awkward handwriting! These skills will be of much use moving forward with both my PhD and future research as I have large volumes of material in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom still to examine.

I thoroughly enjoyed my research at the British Library and look forward to detailing my findings in my dissertation. Additionally, I will be using some of the evidence discovered at the British Library to support my thesis in an upcoming conference paper I will be giving to the European Association for American Studies in April. At that conference I will be part of an Eccles Centre panel considering transatlantic experiences of empire and I am delighted that my involvement with the Eccles Centre will carry on to that conference.

Nicola Martin is a PhD student in the department of History at the University of Stirling.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row margin_bottom=”15″][vc_column][dt_banner image_id=”12342″ min_height=”270″][/dt_banner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][dt_quote]The Eccles Centre fellowship supported my monograph on early American print culture and political caricature between 1790 and 1830, says Allison M. Stagg, Eccles Centre fellow 2015. There has been scarce scholarship on late eighteenth- and early nineteenth- century political American caricature and my research sifts through largely uncatalogued and rare material, including the caricatures themselves, letters, diaries, and newspapers.[/dt_quote][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]I am grateful to the Eccles Centre for awarding me a Visiting European Fellowship in North American Studies in 2015. The fellowship enabled me to travel from Berlin to London in early January 2016 and to spend a dedicated period of four weeks at the British Library. The fellowship supported my primary research on early American print culture; I am at present completing a monograph on early American political caricature prints published between 1790 and 1830. My research is focused on analyzing primary documents and sifting through largely uncatalogued and rare material, including the caricatures themselves, letters, diaries, and newspapers. It was for this[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]purpose, to work on early American newspapers, that I was awarded the fellowship.

There has been scarce scholarship on separately published late eighteenth- and early nineteenth- century political American caricature, despite their frequent inclusion as illustrations in modern texts on history, politics, art, and geography. Satirical images from this period provide important yet heretofore unrecognized models that can better inform scholars on national identity and artistic exchange. This research void contrasts sharply with topical publications on late eighteenth and early nineteenth century European caricatures. Recent scholarship, such as Diana Donald’s The Age of Caricature: Satirical Prints in the Reign of George III (1996) and Vic Gattrell’s City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth Century London (2006) explore the dynamic and complicated relationships found in British satirical print culture and high art, social classes, and politics, demonstrating that images had the potency to impact, rather than merely reflect, cultural tensions. Recent research, found primarily on English and French caricature, underscores the importance of an analytic study on American satirical print culture, and affords the occasion for a comparative study between political satirical prints published in America and Europe directly after the American Revolution.

My current research project connects historical, political, and art history scholarship by critically examining early American satirical prints, concentrating primarily on iconographical cues and historically specific circumstances, which have been frequently misidentified or misconstrued. To do this, newspapers and other primary documents are required. Over the course of my fellowship, I returned to the newspapers in the BL collection in order to locate specific information on caricatures. This also included using the Readex database of early American newspapers, an invaluable tool for any scholar working in early American print culture. The database allows for researchers to enter keywords to better locate relevant newspapers, narrowing time spent combing through the physical object or pointing you in new, previously unknown direction of enquiry. Advertisements and published editorials are particularly relevant to my research as they provide a wealth of information on early American caricatures. I have been able to find dates of publication, the price for sale of an individual caricature, and artist’s names for caricatures from this period.

While a fellow, I spent the majority of my time going through advertisements in Philadelphia newspapers, attempting to locate dates publication for a number of caricatures believed to have been published during the War of 1812. I am happy to report that several discoveries were made and I am pleased to include these in the final book manuscript.

My short time at the British Library was wonderfully productive and I only wish that my fellowship was for a longer duration. The British Library has an outstanding collection of objects necessary for my own research, but it is really the members of staff that makes the BL completely unique. I have yet to find a better place to work. Thanks are due to Matthew Shaw and Phil Davies for their generosity and obvious joy at talking about American subject matter, and to the all the wonderful staff members in the Rare Books reading room. Five years ago I completed my Ph.D. at University College London and as a graduate student, I researched and wrote the majority of my dissertation in the Rare Books reading room. It was such a pleasure to walk into the reading room as an Eccles Fellow, and have many of those staff members that had been so present during my Ph.D. welcome me back. Many thanks to the Eccles Centre for providing these funding opportunities to scholars working on American topics.

Allison M. Stagg holds an IPODI postdoctoral fellowship in the department of Art History at the Technische Universität Berlin.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row margin_bottom=”23″][vc_column][dt_banner image_id=”12335″ bg_color=”rgba(0,0,0,0.17)” min_height=”270″][/dt_banner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][dt_quote]As an Eccles Centre Fellow in 2013, I was able to benefit from the wide range of resources available at the British Library for my research on US intelligence activity and American diplomacy in South Asia, says Paul McGarr. Researching this nexus of the on-going ‘War on Terror’ required many costly and time consuming research visits to libraries across the United States, but this need was obviated by the British Library’s extensive suite of digital primary materials.[/dt_quote][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]As an Eccles Centre Fellow during 2013, I was able to benefit from the wide range of resources available at the British Library for the study of American foreign policy in a transnational context. My research project, which has since resulted in the publication of peer reviewed articles in prominent journals such as Diplomatic History and History, book chapters with Bloomsbury, Manchester University Press and Georgetown University Press, and a forthcoming monograph, involved examining aspects of the interrelationship between US intelligence activity and American diplomacy in South Asia, a nexus of the on-going ‘War on Terror’. Alongside broad considerations of the political, economic and cultural implications of intelligence[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]and security connections forged between the United States, India and Pakistan, from late 1940s to the present, I wanted to explore how relationships conceived by American intelligence agencies and South Asian governments for the purposes of promoting regional stability and democracy, evolved into justifications for conflict and repression. Moreover, there was the challenge of evaluating why Americans had come to think of intelligence primarily in terms of surveillance, personal freedom and civil liberties, while in South Asia, it is associated with covert action, subversion and grand conspiracy. My overall objective was to assess whether, in an age when the United States has championed democracy promotion, neo-imperialist labels attached to American intelligence activities in the Indian subcontinent can be considered reflective of a collective South Asian cultural neurosis.

Access to the Library’s exceptional collections of literature addressing the evolution of American intelligence activity after 1947, and more particularly that within South Asia, proved invaluable in providing the research with firm conceptual anchors. From a North American perspective, I was able to access a wide range of primary sources illuminating key aspects of the post-1945 US foreign policy. Notably, the need to undertake many costly and time consuming research visits to the National Archives at College Park, Maryland, and Presidential Libraries across the United States, was obviated to a considerable extent by access afforded to the Library’s extensive suite of digital primary materials. The on-line Declassified Documents Reference System, Digital National Security Archive and Foreign Information Broadcasting Service Records, yielded especially rich and significant insights into the impact of American intelligence activity on wider US representation in, and relations with, the Indian subcontinent. Equally, digital access to records of Congressional hearings and other legislative documents enabled my work to reflect upon broader legislative and public voices, and contrast these with official government narratives.

Crucially, the Library’s collections also facilitated the incorporation into my work of a strong and distinct sense of South Asian agency. The diverse private papers and institutional records contained within the India Office Records, offered up priceless perspectives on shifts in the subcontinents political and cultural responses to Western intelligence activity, from the British colonial period through to the present. Likewise, the Library’s comprehensive holdings of South Asian newspapers, published in India and Pakistan, and in English and vernacular languages, provided a means of evaluating how intelligence issues were covered in the subcontinent, and the sociopolitical significance that they came to occupy in public discourse.

My research has benefited immeasurably from the opportunities opened up by an extended period of work at the Library. The breadth and depth of secondary and primary materials available for consultation, and the expert assistance and sage advice offered by Philip Davies and the staff at the Eccles Centre, proved crucial in transforming an embryonic research project into a series of published articles, edited chapters and a forthcoming book. Moreover, my fellowship has left me with a far deeper and more nuanced understanding of the innumerable ways in which the resources of the Library and the Eccles Centre (both intellectual and material) can serve as a catalyst for original research and knowledge exchange in the field of American Studies.

Paul McGarr is Assistant Professor in American and Canadian Studies at the University of Nottingham.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row margin_bottom=”15″][vc_column][dt_banner image_id=”13012″ bg_color=”rgba(0,0,0,0.11)” min_height=”270″][/dt_banner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][dt_quote]As the newly elected postgraduate representative for BAAS I hope to build on the success of my predecessor Rachael Alexander by developing the networking and professional development opportunities for postgraduates via U.S. Studies Online and events, writes Katerina Webb-Bourne. I am currently working on a manifesto that addresses the immediate needs of the wider postgraduate community, so please get in touch with any concerns, problems or suggestions, or just to say hello, over at @baas_pgs.[/dt_quote][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Over the past two years l have thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to attend the annual BAAS and BAAS PG conferences. These events have given me the chance to hear thought provoking research papers and be a part of the open, lively, and ever-evolving dialogues in American Studies. At King’s College London, where I am a PhD candidate, our American Studies department was recently restructured and has become a virtual Institute. After the loss of this focal point for our studies, the PhD cohort I am part of formed a student research group. Organisations such as these are important spaces for facilitating academic discussion but in particular they provide PhD students with invaluable social support networks that help[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]individuals through what can be a challenging and isolating experience. There are many similar networks to ours across universities in Britain, where PGs and ECRs would further benefit from being in dialogue with each other, and by being affiliated with BAAS. I ran for the role of postgraduate representative to engage with and connect networks of postgraduates, meet individual members, and to help the American and Canadian Studies community at BAAS continue to grow.

In my new role, I would like to begin my first term by thanking everyone at the annual conference at Queens University in Belfast for making me feel welcome and supported after the election. In the next few months I will be supporting the organising committee at Leeds University, hosts of the next BAAS PG conference. I am hoping to build on the success of my predecessor Rachael Alexander who together with the previous year’s committee, and in collaboration with HOTCUS, put on a tremendous event at the University of Glasgow. Throughout this year I will also be attending Executive Committee meetings and sitting in on the Conferences Subcommittee, where I hope I can best represent the concerns of postgraduates and raise any pertinent issues.

Currently, I am working on putting together a manifesto that addresses the immediate needs of the wider postgraduate community. In order to do this I would really like to hear from ACS students and academics, through U.S. Studies Online and the @baas_pgs twitter account. I am really looking forward to working with the new co-editors of U.S. Studies Online, Jade Tullett and Todd Carter, as well as the ECR representative, Ben Offiler. I think U.S. Studies Online has proved to be an invaluable resource and forum for highlighting the work of PGs and ECRs, voicing the issues academics are currently facing, and promoting American Studies events. Digital spaces are important for introducing researchers to one another, and I think that profiles like the 60 seconds interviews on U.S. Studies Online are great for ‘meeting’ academics before conferences. I would like to help further develop this digital infrastructure to link student networks together before events take place, and to encourage members to attend BAAS conferences to make the vital contributions and connections that keep our ACS community so vibrant.

I do not wish to speak for all postgraduates but I believe that concerns over finding a job, building a successful CV, and meeting the expectations of academic employers loom larger than ever over those about to complete their PhDs. I feel the advice of early career researchers who have tackled or are facing the challenges of getting published, choosing to pursue research posts or teaching jobs, and developing their next projects, is crucial. I think ensuring that professional development sessions continue to be on the BAAS programme, and the events it sponsors, will be a key facet of my role as postgraduate representative. However, I would also like to see these sessions expand not only to address the practical concerns of employment but also to acknowledge the pressures and stresses individual researchers can experience. Conferences and online journals provide postgraduate researchers with diverse opportunities to present their work, but most often they are the indispensable spaces where academics connect with one another.

I am keen to see that BAAS goes from strength to strength and continues to provide postgraduates in the ACS community with that confidence boost which comes from sharing ideas in a supportive environment.

Please get in touch with any concerns, problems or suggestions, or just to say hello, over at @baas_pgs!

Katerina Webb-Bourne is a Ph.D. candidate at King’s College London. Her research explores the racial politics, gender dynamics, and commemorative practises of the Black Indian community of New Orleans.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row margin_bottom=”15″][vc_column][dt_banner image_id=”11970″ min_height=”270″][/dt_banner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][dt_quote]The British Library’s rich collections helped me connect EBONY writer Lerone Bennett Jr to EBONY’s broader influence as a major source for and producer of black history, says James West, recipient of the Eccles Centre Postgraduate Award 2015.[/dt_quote][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Thanks to the generosity of BAAS and the Eccles Centre at the British Library, I was able to make a number of research trips to the British Library during the second and third years of my PhD (2014-2015). My thesis focused on the role and writing of Lerone Bennett, Jr. at EBONY magazine during the decades following World War II, and the magazine’s impact as a ‘history book’ for millions of readers. As one of the first researchers to access Bennett’s papers at Emory[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]University, and the first researcher to explore his archives at Chicago State University, my thesis helped to shed new light on Bennett’s influence as a journalist and historian who moved between ‘professional’ and ‘popular’ forms of black historiography. More broadly, it challenged scholars to reassess EBONY’s potential as a serious historiographical and intellectual outlet for writers and activists such as Bennett, David Llorens, Hoyt Fuller and Era Bell Thompson.

Access to the British Library’s rich collections proved vital to helping me connect an exploration of Bennett’s own role and writing to EBONY’s broader influence as a major source for and producer of black history. There were two main elements of the British Library’s collections which I took advantage of during my multiple research visits. Firstly, the Library holds a collection of Bennett’s book-length publications that is unrivalled in the UK. Between the early 1960s and the turn of the twenty-first century, Bennett authored or edited a broad range of texts which explored the black experience throughout American history. These included Before the Mayflower (1963), The Negro Mood and other Essays (1963), What Manner of Man: a biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1964), Confrontation: Black and White (1965), Black Power, USA: the Human Side of Reconstruction, 1867-1877 (1967), Pioneers in Protest (1968), The EBONY Pictorial History of Black America (1971), The Challenge of Blackness, (1971), The Shaping of Black America (1975), and Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream (1999). Crucially, all of these works were rooted in historical writing Bennett had originally published through EBONY magazine. By tracing the development of Bennett’s own black history philosophy through his published work, and connecting this to his contributions within EBONY, I was able to connect EBONY’s own turn towards black history during the post-war decades to a broader ‘Black History Revival’ identified by scholars such as Vincent Harding. This research was also supplemented by access to important historiographical texts from figures such as Pero Gaglo Dagbovie, August Meier, Elliott Rudwick and Manning Marable, which helped to contextualise the corporate, economic and ideological implications of this shift in black historical representation ‘from the margins to the centre of American politics and popular culture.’

Secondly, the Library’s fantastic Newsroom and its collections of microfilm, digital and print newspapers provided a veritable treasure trove of resources. Its rich American periodical collections allowed me to develop a far more comprehensive understanding of how EBONY’s developing historical coverage, and Bennett’s own influence as a prominent black historian and public intellectual, was documented and debated in the American media. Access to black newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Afro-American and the New York Amsterdam News helped me to connect Bennett’s writing within EBONY to his role within organisations such as the Institute of the Black World and Northwestern University. Similarly, many of Bennett’s most controversial articles in EBONY – such as his denouncement of Abraham Lincoln as a white supremacist in 1968 – drew reactions from major periodicals such as the New York Times and the Boston Globe. Assessing this coverage helped to further substantiate my call for a reassessment of Bennett’s impact and influence. These archival collections were vital to two chapters in particular – my third chapter which compared EBONY’s coverage of ‘Black Power’ during Reconstruction to the paralleling rise of the Black Power movement during the mid-1960s, and my final chapter which examined the magazine’s ambiguous relationship with the movement to establish a national holiday for Martin Luther King, Jr. during the 1970s and 1980s.

As a doctoral student studying in Manchester and living in Liverpool, the opportunity to spend a significant amount of time at the British Library allowed me to discover a plethora of archival and secondary material which would have been otherwise off limits. Certainly, I would not have been able to successfully link a close examination of Bennett’s role to a broader analysis of EBONY’s impact without the quality and range of scholarship provided by the Library. The generosity of BAAS and the Eccles Centre, the resources of the British Library, and the support provided by figures such as Cara Rodway and Philip Davies all played a major role in allowing me to complete my thesis. I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to immerse myself within the Library’s collections, and would strongly recommend more young Americanists to apply for this opportunity. And while you’re at it, join BAAS – they’re great and will give you money to do what you love!

James West has recently completed his PhD at the University of Manchester on “Ebony Magazine and the Making and Selling of Modern Black History”.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row margin_bottom=”15″][vc_column][dt_banner image_id=”12928″ min_height=”270″][/dt_banner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][dt_quote]As I enter my second year as Early Career Representative for BAAS, my next step is to complete the BAAS survey on the current state of American Studies in the UK launched by former BAAS Chair Sue Currell, writes Ben Offiler. Following on from the successful launch of the new Adam Matthew Digital essay prize, I am also engaged in a number of exciting discussions about how BAAS can further support ECRs in terms of professional development and access to institutional libraries and local archives.[/dt_quote][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]As I enter my second year as Early Career Representative for BAAS, it seems like a good opportunity to take stock and reflect on the past twelve months and look ahead to what I hope to achieve in the next year.

One area I have been particularly keen to build on is the range of opportunities available for early career researchers. As such, I was very pleased to be able to launch a new essay prize in collaboration with Adam Matthew Digital. The AMD-sponsored prize is open to postgraduates, early career researchers, and independent researchers. Because the prize consists of £500 plus one-year’s access to one Adam Matthew Digital archival collection chosen by the author, early career and[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]independent researchers may be prioritised as this unique prize offers access to resources they may not otherwise have. The inaugural BAAS Adam Matthew Digital Essay Prize was awarded to Dr Patrick Doyle (Royal Holloway, University of London) for his fascinating piece on “Replacement Rebels: Confederate Substitution and the Issue of Citizenship.” Huge thanks go to Laura Canfield at AMD for getting this prize off the ground and adding it to the already impressive roster of awards offered by BAAS; I am looking forward to continuing working with Laura throughout 2016 to build on this initial success.

At Executive Committee meetings and on the Development and Education Subcommittee, there have been a number of exciting discussions about how BAAS can further support ECRs, particularly in terms of visiting research fellowships and access to institutional libraries and local archives. I am looking forward to continuing to work closely with the new editors of U.S. Studies Online and the new Postgraduate Representative, Katerina Webb-Bourne, to support the professional development needs of ECRs.

I will also be looking to work with the new Schools Representative, Mike Simpson, to create opportunities for ECRs to engage in widening participation events, particularly among communities underrepresented at university and in American Studies. Besides the inherent value of trying to improve access to higher education, public engagement is becoming an increasingly important area for the modern academic, particularly when it can be translated into that wonderfully nebulous goal of ‘impact.’ In addition to the bureaucratic requirements involved in ‘impact,’ I think it is important for PGRs and ECRs to receive opportunities and proper guidance to maximise the cutting-edge and potentially transformative nature of their research beyond the academy.

My key priority for the next few months (apart from marking, of course) is to complete a survey of BAAS members on the current state of American Studies in the UK, which was begun by Dr Sue Currell during her tenure as Chair. Inspired by a fantastic workshop on Gender, Inequalities and Academic Careers at the University of Leeds last year (organised by Dr Kate Dossett, Dr Say Burgin, and Dr Gina Denton), the survey will also seek to address how these issues are experienced by and impact American Studies postgraduates, ECRs, and academics, as well as questions concerning the health and future of the field.

As the joint IAAS-BAAS conference in Belfast showed, the research undertaken by UK American Studies scholars remains vibrant in scope and innovativeness, as well as the community itself being friendly and supportive for scholars at all stages of their careers. So, as long as President Donald J. Trump doesn’t accidentally (or intentionally, for that matter) press the big red button in January, the next twelve months will hopefully be as fun and fruitful as the last twelve have been.

As always, please do get in touch (ben.offiler@baas.ac.uk) if you have any concerns, problems or suggestions that you think I should know about!

Ben Offiler is currently Lecturer in History at Sheffield Hallam University. His first book, US Foreign Policy and the Modernization of Iran: Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and the Shah, was published in 2015 by Palgrave Macmillan.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row margin_bottom=”15″][vc_column][dt_banner image_id=”7003″ bg_color=”rgba(238,238,34,0.05)” text_color=”#6b6b6b” min_height=”165″][/dt_banner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][dt_quote]As the new Chair of BAAS I want to ensure that the Association continues to provide for all its members the sort of nurturing and intellectually generous environment that has meant so much to me over the past three decades, writes Professor Brian Ward. It was at BAAS that I first found an intellectual home among people who saw the virtues of multiple, sometimes genuinely integrated approaches to the study of the American experience.[/dt_quote][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]The first BAAS conference I ever attended was in the mid-1980s at King Alfred’s College, the forerunner of the University of Winchester. At the time I was a postgraduate in history at Cambridge University, working on a thesis that explored the links among African American popular music, black consciousness and race relations during the civil rights and black power eras. That thesis bore all the hallmarks of my BA in American Studies from the University of East Anglia at a time when there really wasn’t much inter-disciplinarity in traditional history departments. More than a few eyebrows were raised as I gamely tried to argue that Motown songs were as revealing as Malcolm’s speeches[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row margin_bottom=”10″][vc_column][vc_column_text]and that James Brown meant a good deal more to most African Americans in the 1960s than H. Rap Brown. Still, I did manage to secure college funds to build a discography of esoteric rhythm and blues and soul records from a postgraduate tutor who was more used to disbursing money for additional palaeography instruction. I mention this only to note that it was at BAAS, amid the panels and pints of the annual conference, that I first found an intellectual home among people who saw the virtues of multiple, sometimes genuinely integrated approaches to the study of the American experience.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]Since UEA and Cambridge, my journey through academia has taken me from appointments at the Universities of Durham, Newcastle upon Tyne, Florida, and Manchester to my current post as Professor in American Studies at Northumbria University. My research and teaching have focused on the modern African American freedoms struggle, the history of the modern US South, popular music and the mass media, and Anglo-American cultural relations. I have a growing interest in the medical humanities and am unapologetically fixated on the 1920s and 1960s. I have published eight books, including Just My Soul Responding: Rhythm and Blues, Black Consciousness and Race Relations and Radio and the Struggle for Civil Rights in the South. My latest co-authored book, on Artists and Repertoire workers in the early US recording industry, should appear in the winter[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][dt_teaser image_id=”12879″][/dt_teaser][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]of 2016-17 and I am just starting another project on Martin Luther King’s 1967 visit to Newcastle scheduled for publication on the fiftieth anniversary of that event. I have also served on the Editorial Board of the Journal of American Studies and the Journal of Southern History and was a member of the Area Studies sub-panel for REF 2014.

At least as important as anything that I’ve written or done, I have been lucky enough to supervise a host of gifted doctoral students (18 completions and counting). I proudly bask in the reflected glory of their many achievements.

At the most recent BAAS conference in Belfast, co-hosted with the Irish Association for American Studies, I was elected chair of the Association and I thought again about the sense of belonging and encouragement that I have always experienced in BAAS. One of the Association’s prime functions is still to bring together and support diverse communities of British Americanists, teachers and students alike, regardless of their disciplinary backgrounds or institutional affiliations. Moreover, as the list of conference delegates, the range of submissions to the Journal of American Studies, and the global reach of US Studies Online all attest, the Association now enjoys unprecedented international profile and prestige. As chair, I look forward to working with many of you over the next three years. Above all, however, I want to ensure that the Association continues to provide for all its members the sort of nurturing and intellectually generous environment that has meant so much to me over the past three decades.

Brian Ward is Professor in American Studies at Northumbria University. He researches and teaches mainly on twentieth-century African American and southern history and culture, with a special interest in media, music, and transatlantic relationships. In addition to many articles and book chapters, he has published eight books, including Just My Soul Responding: Rhythm and Blues, Black Consciousness and Race Relations (1998), Radio and the Struggle for Civil Rights in the South (2004) and, most recently, three co-edited volumes on Creating and Consuming the American South (2015), The American South and the Atlantic World (2013), and Creating Citizenship in the Nineteenth-Century South (2013). Brian is currently completing a book about Artists and Repertoire men in the early American recording industry.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]