Archival Report from Bianca Scoti, Eccles Centre Postgraduate Award in North American Studies Recipient

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The resources at the British Library allowed me to explore home decor and domesticity in American women’s magazines at the turn of the Twentieth century, says Bianca Scoti, recipient of an Eccles Centre Postgraduate Award in North American Studies. These sources highlight the new and creative ways in which notions of luxury and gentility were negotiated and incorporated by the American middle class.

[/dt_quote][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]I feel fortunate to have been granted an Eccles Postgraduate Student Award, which gave me the opportunity to make use of resources at the British Library that are invaluable for my research. I am a doctoral candidate in American Studies at the University of Glasgow carrying out a thesis on Persian rugs in American homes during the Gilded Age. Rugs and carpets played a central role in transforming houses into elegant yet comfortable homes.   My findings at the British Library allowed me to explore discourses related to home decor and domesticity in American women’s magazines at the turn of the[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Twentieth century such as The Ladies’ Homes Journal, Harper’s Weekly or Harper’s Bazar. Additionally, I consulted volumes on home decorating advice such as Edith Wharton’s The Decoration of Houses. These sources inform a section of my thesis that addresses the ways in which advice literature and home decorators wished to ‘educate’ Americans on incorporating the elegance of the ‘Orient’ into their homes.

Amongst numerous types of floor coverings, Oriental rugs, Persian in particular, have fascinated decorators, authors of advice books and American consumers as they were often regarded as the embodiment of the mystery and sophistication of the Orient. During my month long stay in London over the summer, I had the opportunity to further explore the American home as the site where Gilded Age middle-class home-makers expressed their taste and desires, what it meant for them to purchase Persian rugs and the ways in which these rugs informed issues of domesticity and comfort that were the building blocks of the American middle-class home. In particular, in the middle-class domestic space, Persian rugs can be read as a hybrid space where conflicting ideas about home and middle class life-style came together. I look at these objects, not only as material manifestations of refinement and cosmopolitanism, but as symbols of the strategies that the middle-class adopted to construct its identity through the appropriation of objects and ideas that were once prerogative of the elites.

Furthermore, I analyzed the advertisements of Persian, or more generally, Oriental rugs that featured in the magazines I researched.  These sources will provide evidence for another section of my thesis that focuses on the imagined sites of consumption, such as novels, serialized novels in magazines, pictures and advertisements that inspired American home-makers when decorating their homes. This part of my research looks at the ways in which the advertising and manufacturing world tapped into ‘orientalist’ stereotypes that linked Persian rugs to the ideas of mystery and sophistication that were associated with the ‘Orient’.

Whilst tempting the readers with the allure of the exotic, these advertisements highlight another central theme in my research, the tension between authenticity and imitation. Persian and other Oriental rugs were at the centre of a debate amongst authors of domestic advice books and interior decorators: while some praised authentic Oriental rugs for their quality and durability, others advocated the purchase of imitation Oriental rugs manufactured in the United States because cheaper, therefore available to a wider number of families, but also because they lacked the ‘barbaric’ qualities of the items manufactures in the remote ‘Orient’.

These sources were augmented with the visual record of the images and photographs of home interiors that accompanied the articles in the early twentieth century American women’s magazines that I was able to find at the British Library. These have provided me with a wealth of material for my analysis of the American middle-class’ problematic relationship with notions of luxury and gentility but are also evidence of the new and creative ways in which these were negotiated and incorporated into the middle-class’ home and life style.

Bianca Scoti is a fourth year part-time doctoral candidate in American studies at the University of Glasgow and a member of BAAS and The Glasgow American Studies Postgraduate Research Group.  With her research on Persian rugs in American homes during the Gilded Age, she investigates the meanings behind the purchase of this class of commodities. Ultimately, Scoti aims to illustrate how Persian rugs unveil the American middle-class’ tension between a quest for sophistication and the desire to express a class identity.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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[/dt_banner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row margin_top=”15″][vc_column width=”1/2″][dt_quote]My four week fellowship was a revelation, says Steve Hewitt, recipient of a 2015 Eccles Centre Fellowship. The British Library’s sources on Fenianism and political violence in Canada have been invaluable for my forthcoming monograph.[/dt_quote][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]

First, I would like to thank the Eccles Centre and Eccles Centre staff, Phil Davies, Cara Rodway, and Phil Hatfield, for the tremendous opportunity that this fellowship has represented. I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of my time at the British Library and also the opportunity that was provided to give a talk about my project which is a history of terrorism and counterterrorism in Canada. In particular,

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]the questions posed to me in response the talk have raised important issues that I intend to incorporate directly into my research and final monograph.

This entire 4 weeks has been a revelation. I had never previously conducted research at the British Library before the fellowship. Now, I cannot imagine not working there every day as I have been for the past few weeks. My time spent has been extremely useful in relation to me beginning to frame the key aspects of what is a rather large research project. Specifically, I had the opportunity to read and think, something that is rarely available over such a sustained period of time.

During my time at the British Library, I read numerous books as starting points for what will be different chapters in my eventual monograph. Especially useful was the sustained period of time reading about and thinking about Fenianism and Fenians and what they represented in terms of political violence directed at Canada in the 19^th century. In addition to useful secondary sources, I accessed a number of microfiche containing rare 19^th century reports and other documents related to Fenianism and the assassination of Canadian parliamentarian, Thomas D’Arcy McGee. It was through this work that I envisioned how I will begin my book as I discovered that the first killing through political violence in Canadian history occurred just over 100 metres from where the most recent killing through political violence, the October 2014 attack in Ottawa, took place.

In addition to the work on Fenianism, I spent days reading and thinking about two other major incidents of political violence in Canadian history, the attacks of the Front de Liberation de Quebec across the 1960s and culminating in the 1970 October Crisis kidnappings, and the Air India bombing in 1985 in which 329 people were killed by a bomb planted by Sikh nationalists. The British Library had several key texts, in particular the English translation of Louis Fournier’s comprehensive history of the FLQ, which are not available at my home university. This detailed reading has allowed me to think in depth about these incidents and what they represent in terms of both Canadian history and the history of international terrorism.

Steve Hewitt is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Birmingham. He is the author of a number of books and articles related to security and intelligence in the past and present in a US, Canada, and UK context. Currently, he is working on a history of terrorism and counter-terrorism in Canada.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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“A prolific and exceptional researcher as well as a beautifully eloquent and brilliantly erudite writer”:

A selection of Professor Judie Newman’s publications, 1984-2016.

[/dt_teaser][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row margin_top=”15″][vc_column][vc_column_text]It is with profound and heartfelt regret that the Department of American and Canadian Studies at the University of Nottingham announces the retirement as of September this year of Professor Judie Newman O.B.E., a world-renowned scholar of nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first century American literature, Postcolonial literature and the literature of slavery, among much much more.

Professor Newman was brought up and educated in Thurso, Caithness, Scotland. She gained Honours MA in English Language and Literature (1972) and in French Language and Literature (1974) at the University of Edinburgh. She worked at the University of Metz, (1972-3), then gained a Carnegie fellowship for doctoral study (Clare College, Cambridge, PhD American literature 1982). From 1976 to 1999 she was Lecturer, Reader, and then Professor of American and Postcolonial Literature, School of English, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, moving in 2000 to the Chair of American Studies at the University of Nottingham. She is a recipient of the Arthur Miller Prize in American Studies, a former Chair of the British Association for American Studies, a Founding Fellow of the English Association, and an Academician, Academy of Learned Societies in the Social Sciences.

As testament to Professor Newman’s stellar contributions to her intellectual fields over the decades, she was awarded the OBE in June 2012 for services to scholarship.

A prolific and exceptional researcher as well as a beautifully eloquent and brilliantly erudite writer, Professor Newman’s publications are vastly wide-ranging, intellectually expansive and theoretically cutting-edge. Covering a breath-taking array of timeframes, national contexts, intellectual concerns and thematic issues, she has published numerous monographs over the decades which have all augured a sea change in scholarship. These include: Saul Bellow and History (Palgrave Macmillan, 1984), John Updike (Palgrave Macmillan, 1988), Nadine Gordimer (Routledge 1988), Nadine Gordimer: Palabra, Sexo y Consciencia en Africa (1997), The Ballistic Bard: Postcolonial Fictions (Hodder Education, 1995); Alison Lurie (Editions Rodopi B. V., 2000); Nadine Gordimer’s Burger’s Daughter: A Casebook (Oxford University Press, 2003), Fictions of America: Narratives of Global Empire (Routledge, 2007); ed. with Celeste-Marie Bernier, Public Art, Memorials and Atlantic Slavery (Routledge 2009. 2010); and Utopia and Terror in Contemporary American Fiction (Routledge 2013, 2014). Leading the intellectual vanguard, she was the first scholar to edit Harriet Beecher Stowe’s lesser known yet hauntingly powerful tale of black revolutionary heroism, Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (Edinburgh University Press, 1992, 1999, 2014). Among Professor Newman’s numerous forthcoming publications is her co-edited volume (with Celeste-Marie Bernier and Matthew Pethers) titled, Edinburgh Companion to Nineteenth-Century Letters and Letter Writing (forthcoming Edinburgh University Press, 2016) for which she has written a seminal essay on Louisa May Alcott. In addition to her superlative array of book publications, she has written over one hundred essays on a breathtaking number of topics including slave narratives and neo-slave narratives, Black Atlanticism, Utopia and Dystopia, and in addition to excavating and examining a vast array of works written by Anglo American, African American, Jewish American, Chinese American authors.

Professor Judie Newman’s stellar accomplishments are by no means restricted to her inspirational and seminal contributions to national and international research arenas in her role as the leading Professor of American Studies of her generation. In addition to her exemplary achievements in research, she is a world-class teacher who has committed her career to inspiring, motivating, supporting and caring for students. Always a source not only of intellectual dynamism, inspirational leadership and visionary expertise, Professor Newman is an exceptionally kind and generous colleague who provides any and every support by freely offering her advice and also by acting as an exceptional mentor, advisor and friend.

As the UK Higher Education landscape shifts and turns in a myriad of constellations, words fail to express the fundamental honour it has been to have the privilege of working alongside Professor Newman. The corridors of the Trent Building will never be the same without Professor Newman’s joyful, whistling, inspirational presence and so this is a perfect reason, if any were needed, to entice her back at any and every opportunity. We will miss you.

Celeste-Marie Bernier is a Professor of African American Studies at the University of Nottingham, UK, and Associate Editor of the Journal of American Studies (Cambridge University Press). Currently Celeste is a Visiting Professor at the North American Institute, King’s College London.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row margin_bottom=”15″][vc_column][dt_banner image_id=”6902″ min_height=”270″][/dt_banner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][dt_quote]The BAAS Visiting Fellowship allowed me to dedicate valuable time to my new project on the transatlantic interest in the life and culture of the South, says Christian O’Connell, recipient of the 2015 BAAS Visiting Fellowship to UCL’s Institute of the Americas.[/dt_quote][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Between January and March of this year, I was able to spend two days per week at UCL’s Institute of the Americas. The BAAS/UCL-IA Visiting Fellowship allowed me to begin work on a new research project that explores the manner in which the American South has been represented on British television over the last half decade. It focuses on a number of documentaries, such as Trevor McDonald’s ‘The Mighty Mississippi’ (2012), TV chef Rick Stein’s ‘Tasting the Blues’ (2012), the comedian Hugh[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row margin_bottom=”15″][vc_column][vc_column_text]Laurie’s ‘Down By the River’ (2011), and the series ‘Stephen Fry in America’ (2009), which I believe are all indicative of the current popular transatlantic interest in the life and culture of the South. They reproduce and maintain myths and stereotypes of the region that scholars of the South have been working hard to dispel. Importantly, they also demonstrate that the South is maintained and experienced as a construct through heritage tourism within an international context, not just within internal American discourses of heritage and identity.

The fellowship was therefore a great way to dedicate time to a new project, something which is not easy immediately following a PhD. Quite early on I gave a paper on my initial findings and early thoughts, which gave me a good basis from which to continue the project. The Institute has a very vibrant academic community, and while there I was able to get to know and draw on the experience of excellent scholars like Jonathan Bell and Iwan Morgan, as well as all the academics that regularly attend the Institute of Historical Research’s seminars. Being in London also offers a number of possibilities given the amount of resources available through the various university libraries but also the British Library, Senate House and the Institute of Historical Research. Being in London also allowed me to attend numerous events, such as the talks by Jeanne Theoharis and Tim Stanley. Overall, it was a great experience which I would recommend to all early career scholars who need some time and space to devote to a new or existing project.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row margin_top=”15″][vc_column][vc_column_text]Christian O’Connell is a Senior Lecturer in American History at the University of Gloucestershire. Primarily a cultural historian, his research examines the transatlantic diffusion of African American culture in Europe. His first book Blues, How Do You Do? Paul Oliver and the Transatlantic Story of the Blues will be published by the University of Michigan Press in August 2015. He has also been recently awarded the Fulbright-Elon Scholar Award, for which he will be teaching and researching at Elon University in North Carolina between January and May 2016.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row margin_bottom=”15″][vc_column][dt_banner image_id=”8521″ bg_color=”rgba(0,0,0,0.18)” min_height=”270″][/dt_banner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][dt_quote]At the Center for Puerto Rican Studies in East Harlem I was one of the first scholars to examine the still unprocessed 17 boxes of material on Charas, one of the oldest and most respected grassroots Puerto Rican community development organizations in New York City, says Timo Schrader, recipient of the 2015 Elizabeth and Elisha Atkins Postgraduate Travel Award.[/dt_quote][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]My project offers the first in-depth urban cultural analysis of the network of community activism in Loisaida (part of the Lower East Side). This community organized itself to fight against postwar urban deindustrialization, housing disinvestment, and gentrification, which negatively affected low-income areas. By recreating the urban history of sustainable activism in Loisaida and focusing on the initiatives and projects of key community organizations, I demonstrate how they sought to reclaim urban space, educational space, and cultural space. I argue that[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]analyzing the interplay of sustainable activism, community organizations, and space in a small urban neighbourhood such as Loisaida, provides three crucial insights: (1) the necessity for community organizations to adapt their activism to changing needs of the community, (2) the importance of neighbourhood control over both physical and non-physical (spiritual, cultural, educational) space, and (3) Puerto Ricans’ ideas about and practices of their ‘right to the city.’

Thanks to both the Elizabeth and Elisha Atkins Postgraduate Travel Award (British Association for American Studies) and the Postgraduate Transatlantic Travel Grant (European Association for American Studies), I was fortunate enough to travel to New York City for two months from 20 June to 20 August 2015. I found a room in Brooklyn’s iconic Bed-Stuy neighbourhood from which it only took me between 20 to 40 minutes to my research sites. Mainly I visited New York University’s Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, the Centro Archives and Library, the New York Public Library, as well as some community organizations in Loisaida.

I spent two weeks in the impressive Elmer Bobst Library, which houses Tamiment, to examine the Ronald Lawson Research Files for the Tenant Movement in New York City. This collection includes vital organizational and personal documents about the community organization Interfaith Adopt-a-Building (AAB), to which I devote an entire chapter in my thesis. This organization was at the forefront of turning abandoned and decaying buildings on the Lower East Side into newly renovated and affordable homes for lower income earners. The documents in this collection includes interviews with key leaders of the organization as well as details on specific projects and their overall working ethic: sweat equity as a means to home ownership.

At the New York Public Library’s Schwarzman building, I examined the holdings of the Vincent Astor Foundation’s archives, which holds letters and forms pertaining to AAB and another primary organization in my thesis, The Real Great Society or RGS (the foundation funded AAB and RGS for several years). This helped me to get a picture of the financial requirements for the largely self-help initiatives of AAB and RGS.

Finally, I went to the biggest Puerto Rican archive in the US: the Center for Puerto Rican Studies in East Harlem. They hold collections on key organizations such as Charas, Seven Loaves, El Puerto Rican Embassy, AAB, and RGS. I was one of the first scholars to fully examine the still unprocessed 17 boxes of material on Charas, which operated for almost 40 years in Loisaida and kept records dating back to their beginnings in the mid 1960s.

I will return to New York City in 2016 to conduct additional interviews with people active in the organizations as well as curate an exhibit on Charas at the Loisaida Center—a project that I’m working on with the director of that center. This key research trip would not have been possible without the support of BAAS and EAAS and the material I found will enrich my research, which I look forward to presenting at the prestigious American Historical Association Annual Meeting 2016 in Atlanta.

Timo Schrader is a Ph.D. student at the University of Nottingham and recipient of the Vice Chancellor’s Scholarship for Research Excellence, researching the history of Puerto Rican community activism in Loisaida in the post-World War II decades. He is also the Associate Postgraduate Director of the Centre for Research in Race and Rights (C3R) at the University of Nottingham.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row margin_top=”15″][vc_column][ultimate_carousel slides_on_desk=”1″ slides_on_tabs=”1″ slides_on_mob=”1″][dt_teaser image_id=”8516″ lightbox=”true”]This banner, which is seen hanging on the fence of the former Charas community center, protested the auctioning off of the community center in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The protest “Save Charas” is still ongoing with occasional events and marches on City Hall. Source: Charas, “Save Charas,” from Charas Papers, Centro Library and Archives, Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Hunter College, City University of New York.[/dt_teaser][dt_teaser image_id=”8517″ lightbox=”true”]This large banner, held up by the friendly archivists at Centro, was used to protest the US Navy base on the Puerto Rican island Vieques where civilian David Sanes Rodríguez was killed by a bomb dropped close to him by Marine fighters in 1999. The US abandoned the base in the aftermath of the protests. Source: Charas, “Peace for Vieques,” from Charas Papers, Centro Library and Archives, Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Hunter College, City University of New York.[/dt_teaser][dt_teaser image_id=”8518″ lightbox=”true”]This poster by Juan Sanchez was created as part of a larger collection used in protests in the late 1980s and early 1990s on the Lower East Side. It highlights the issues of gentrification and displacement that affected many Puerto Ricans on the Lower East Side and in other urban neighborhoods throughout the US. Source:  Juan Sanchez, “¿Dónde Está Mi Casa?” Your House Is Mine, edited by Andrew Castucci and Nadia Coën (New York City, NY: Bullet Space, 1993), from New York Public Library Print Collection, New York Public Library.[/dt_teaser][/ultimate_carousel][/vc_column][/vc_row]

British Association for American Studies

Minutes 281st

Minutes of the 281st meeting of the Executive Committee, held at Northumbria University, Thursday 9 April 2015 at 2.00pm.

1. Present: Sue Currell (Chair), Jenny Terry (Secretary), Theresa Saxon

(Treasurer), Katie McGettigan, Zalfa Feghali, Rachael Alexander, Uta Balbier, Sinéad Moynihan, Cara Rodway, Bevan Sewell, Bridget Bennett, Doug Haynes, Joe Street, Nick Witham, Martin Halliwell.

Apologies: Rachael McLennan

In attendance: Jenny Terry

2. Minutes of the Previous Meeting.

These were accepted as a true record and will now go on the website.

3. Matters Arising

None

4. Review of Action List

The Chair asked the Exec to comment on the status of their Action List duties. Reported by Sue: communication with members of BLARS about changes had taken place earlier in the year. All other Action List duties will be addressed under the relevant section below.

5. Chair’s Business (SC reporting)

(a)        Chair’s activities, meetings and correspondence

• 12 December 2014, Sue Wedlake’s retirement party, U.S. Embassy.
• 19 December 2014, Journal of American Studies Editorial Board Meeting, Kings College London.
• 18 February 2015, UKCASA meeting at SOAS with Area Studies REF talks from Bruce Brown, Chair of Panel D and Peter Gatrell, Chair of Area Studies Sub-Panel.
• On behalf of BAAS Sue submitted an application to become a member of the Foundation for Science and Technology. The Foundation provides a support service to learned and professional societies. Around 140 societies subscribe to receive a Newsletter. Keith Lawrey is the Learned Societies’ Liaison Officer for the Foundation and he prepares Guidance Notes on a range of administrative issues of interest for the administrators of learned and professional societies who are members of the Foundation. Keith provided guidance to BAAS regarding charities law etc. to be discussed with the executive under Secretary’s business and was consulted about the new editor contracts between BAAS and the JAS editors.

(b)        Achievements, announcements and events of note to BAAS members 

• December 2014. Former ASIB editor Kal Ashraf passed his PhD, University of Sheffield. ‘Beyond Authentication: African American Speech Representation (AASR) in Brown, Chesnutt and Hurston.’
• IAAS Treasurer and Membership Secretary and former Treasurer to the EAAS, Tony Emmerson died in December 2014.
• Professor of American History (retired from Sussex University), Rupert Wilkinson died just before Christmas 2014.
• Martin Padget (Aberystwyth) has been offered a fellowship in the Tanner Center for the Humanities at the University of Utah for 2015-16.
• Launch of SAVAnT (Scholars of American Visual Arts and Text).
• Clodagh Harrington of De Montfort University has become (PSA) American Politics Group Chair.
• Jo Gill has been awarded a Leverhulme Fellowship for research on Modern American Poetry and the Architectural Imagination. £42,000 over 16 months, starting 1 September 2015.

(c)        New BAAS logo

On 18 February 2015 Sue met with Katie McGettigan to discuss new logo designs as part of ongoing efforts to achieve the best outcome possible. Following several versions of a new BAAS logo being circulated around the executive committee and further efforts to find something suitable, Sue commissioned a new designer with more expertise in that area to try and find a solution. This has resulted in the logo, which will be launched at this April’s conference.

(d)        American Studies Survey

With current changes in Higher Education, the as yet unclear implications of the results of REF2014 (for Area Studies and beyond), and the nature of REF 2020 not yet being confirmed in any detail, it is difficult to gauge the big picture for American Studies programmes, activities and research. Sue proposed a survey to enable the collection of statistics, experiences and suggestions from colleagues nationally. This would capture input not just from Heads of Department but also Early Career researchers etc. It could also include American Studies admissions data. This might suggest ways in which BAAS could offer support, information, and / or advocacy in the future.

Sue tabled a possible model survey (titled ‘Demographic Review of American Studies’). There was a discussion of whether this survey could provide the grounding for a broader ‘state of the nation’ report and operate as a helpful sounding board. If one outcome of it was to be a REF-centred report, it was noted that the timing of the survey would be important. The last such data gathering exercise was conducted in 2010.

(e)        BAAS Archive

Sue put forward the possibility of funding some work on the BAAS archive in the future. This could highlight the archive as a resource and an important part of the history of the field.

6. Secretary’s Business (JT reporting)

(a)        Narrative Report

Thanks were noted to Jo Gill for covering most of the Secretary’s business while Jenny Terry was in the States September to December 2014. Jenny has dealt with various correspondence since the last meeting. The Sutton Trust had been in touch about participation in their annual Fulbright event to promote study in the US and study of the US to talented State School students. As the date this year clashed with the BAAS conference, none of the committee had been able to attend but an alternative American Studies speaker had been found. In terms of record keeping and the archive, members were reminded to pass on copies of material to Jenny.

(b)        2015 Elections

Jenny requested that members promote attendance at the AGM in conference panels etc. There will be a reshuffle of executive and sub-com roles and the election of a Vice-Chair after the AGM.

(c)        Proposed changes to the Constitution

A hardcopy was tabled. The proposed changes to the Constitution have been made available to the membership for six weeks online prior to the AGM. Only one comment had been received from beyond the executive committee; this related to the amendment to (8) regarding former chairs. Agreed: the regular BAAS electronic newsletter will give notice to all members when executive committee minutes have gone up online, removing the need for separate circulation to former chairs. After discussion, it was agreed that if any of the proposed constitutional changes proved divisive at the AGM they could be voted on piecemeal but that the changes all had the recommendation of the committee.

(d)        Electronic / postal election model

Depending on the vote on the changes to the constitution, further detail regarding an electronic election process may need to be worked out. One model (first circulated in February) was discussed. We need to ensure that the elections, in whatever format, continue to generate interest. Agreed: come back to models or suggestions for the process after the AGM.

(e)        Move to Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO)

In the Autumn Sue and Theresa met with Keith Lawrey, the Learned Societies’ liaison officer and legal advisor. As well as the establishment of a trading arm (to be detailed under Treasurer’s business), a change in the charitable status of BAAS was advised for reasons of legal protection for executive members and as the most appropriate category of registration with the Charity Commission. In theory the change from unincorporated association to a CIO (Charitable Incorporated Organisation) is simple but in practice the Charity Commission requires us to place our existing constitution within a given template, meaning that we would have to vote on a new constitution to take this step, and also to dissolve and reform and reregister BAAS with the changed status. Our current constitution has a specific clause governing the dissolution of BAAS. It was decided not to rush this step for the 2015 AGM but to take the process forward in due course. Keith Lawrey will be invited to come and speak to us about it at the next meeting. He can also assist with the Charity Commission template; we are advised our current constitution could go within this intact. The paperwork will require the physical signature of every trustee.

(f)         Changes to Sub-com Standing Orders

A copy of the changes to sub-com membership agreed in November was tabled. A further boost to the membership of Conferences looks necessary in light of these changes. Agreed: the Postgraduate Rep will join the Conferences sub-com in future; this will fit well with the work of organising the annual Postgraduate Conference.

7. Treasurer’s Business (TS reporting)

(a)        Bank Accounts (as at 07/04/2015)

General Deposit: £21,905.56

Current:  £43,356.65

Plus:

Dollar Account: $3375.42

(b)        Membership Figures (provided by Louise Cunningham)

Members on fully paid sheet (total = 425)

Individuals – 193. The breakdown of this figure is 6 without JAS, 187 with JAS

PG – 196 (133 without JAS, 63 with)

PR (Retired) – 27 (15 without JAS, 12 with)

PS (schools) – 8

Noted: These reduced figures reflect the data from after a wholesale process of checking the membership database and membership payments. Theresa suggested that we might wish to differentiate between those paying for JAS online only and those paying for print in future.

(c)        Narrative Report

• CUP / Journal of American Studies
• Bertoli Mitchell, our publishing advisors, have been paid according to terms (for the first six months). JAS Editors have been paid.
• Contracts for the JAS Editorial Assistants and USSO Editors are being drawn up. For personal tax allowance purposes, in the future it would be beneficial for an explanatory letter from the Treasurer to accompany all contracts as they are sent out.

• BAAS Publications Ltd

Our trading arm has been set up. The first VAT return is due at the end April; the accountants will complete most of this but the incoming Treasurer (with TS) will need to provide all relevant information.

• BAAS Publications bank account

This is now set up. It is worth noting once more that BAAS (the association) is the sole shareholder of the trading arm.

• Annual Accounts

Copies of the accounts for the year end 31 December 2014 tabled. These will go into the annual return to the Charity Commission once signed off with the accountants.

• Membership Database

Louise Cunningham has assisted Theresa in going through the database, chasing outstanding payments and clearing out obsolete profiles. This needs to be monitored regularly; the number of current members has dropped as a result of the updating process. Noted: some members are still paying at pre-2010 rates and they will be chased. Noted: Paypal on our website now shows the handling fee; this was always taken – there is no change in the charge – it just shows up now.

(vi)       Warm thanks were offered by all to Theresa for stepping in as Treasurer during 2014-15 and for all her invaluable work this year.

8. Development Subcommittee (ZF reporting)

(a)        Membership of the Subcommittee

ZF confirmed the membership of the Subcommittee would change (pending ratification of changes to the BAAS Constitution at the AGM). If the proposal to dissolve BLARS is approved at the AGM, the role of Library and Resources Representative will be taken up by an ordinary member of the Executive. This will ensure continuing representation and presence in terms of library issues. ZF and SC expressed thanks to MC for his work with BLARS. ZF will conduct a handover with the incoming Early Career Rep. The subcommittee name is changing to Development and Education.

(b)        Conference Funding Scheme

The application form for those seeking funding from BAAS to organise conferences has been revised. The form will be going back online on the website and guidance will instruct applicants to send it to a new conference support email address. As well as being administered by the Conferences Subcommittee from now on, the key changes that have been made include clearer guidelines on what BAAS would like to see prioritised in such applications, including: a clear plan for subsidizing PG attendance, schools attendance, etc, and not primarily to defray costs for visiting speakers, catering, or publicity. Applications must demonstrate clear plans to publicise BAAS, JAS, and USSO, and cannot be made retrospectively. Applications will now have two closing dates (1 April and 1 November, to be reconfirmed), and will be far more competitive. The maximum budget set for conference support every year will be £1500, with an additional £500 for the PG conference and a separate pot of money allocated for activities BAAS has traditionally supported such as ‘Congress to Campus’. The next deadline for applications will be 1 November 1 2015, in time for the Exec meeting to be held at the PG conference.

(C)       Website and communications

KM showed the executive the new website, which now includes a Members’ Area, fast direct access to JAS, and more useful and accessible information about BAAS and related activities. This had a ‘stealth launch’ on 7 April 2015. Members can edit their profiles and promote publications, for example. There are networking opportunities via the ‘groups’ function and there could also be a closed group for executive members. Reported: Michelle Green has been hired as BAAS’ Online Editorial Assistant. Her responsibilities will include compiling and curating material for the website and ASIB in its new form. There will be an archived, quarterly digest on the website. Thanks were offered to KM for all her excellent work on this and for liaising with Clear&Creative to create a great new website. Agreed: all Subcommittee Chairs and BAAS Officers will receive training on how to work with the website.

(d)        Schools

Cara Rodway reported that just one Schools Conference had taken place this year (in Reading on 2 March 2015), although three had been hoped for. This ‘Congress to Campus’ event is now available online as a podcast via the BAAS – ASIB youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5UNjTuVWNk45zAy6Ny1vyeNaI6cjJjP5.

In the future the Early Career Rep could work with the Schools Rep on the BAAS Visiting Speakers series.

9. Postgraduate Business (RA reporting)

RA reported that the 2015 PG and Early Career conference will be co-organised by Glasgow and Strathclyde in collaboration with HOTCUS (HOTCUS will have an adjacent event). There had been interest from several institutions and the joint bid from Glasgow and Strathclyde was successful. The theme will be “Collaboration in America and Collaborative work in American Studies.” Plenary speakers are still to be confirmed (suggestions would be welcome), as well as the final date for the conference. CFP is to be circulated in May. In order to encourage IAAS members to attend, some postgraduate travel bursaries will be offered.

10. Publications Subcommittee (BB reporting)

(a)        Journal of American Studies

The new editors Celeste-Marie Bernier and Bevan Sewall are in post after handover from Scott Lucas. As noted under 7 (c), other contracts for editorial assistants will follow. Submissions to JAS are up, including from the US. The Editors will seek to further involve the editorial board in handling submissions in future.

(b)        USSO

USSO has featured 150 blog posts now and attracts an impressively high number of hits. It is a finalist in the UK blog awards for 2014. Michelle Green and Ben Offiler will be looking to streamline processes and activities in the future. A set of job specifications for their roles might be helpful due to the number and variety of their responsibilities.

11. Conferences Subcommittee (SM reporting)

(a)        U.S. Embassy funding

BAAS applied to the U.S. Embassy for conference funding.

(b)        Conferences

• Queen’s 2016

• SM visited Belfast on 2 February 2015 and met with the committee (Philip McGowan, Catherine Gander, Andrew Pepper) and members of the Visit Belfast team.
• Some accommodation will be provided on campus, but not all. The on campus accommodation will be £37 per night, B&B. That, and all other accommodation options, will be bundled together on to one website, which will be linked via the conference registration page. All the accommodation options will be only a five min walk from the conference venues. Visit Belfast to handle accommodation and travel enquiries.
• SM visited several campus venues (for keynotes; panels); all look fine. Rooms have been booked.
• Receptions: Thursday 7 April will be at Belfast City Hall (it will also “provide wines and soft drinks from its own stock up to a maximum of £500”); Friday 8 April to be hosted at Queen’s by Canterbury Christchurch; Saturday 9 April: Titanic Belfast will be the venue for the banquet, where one of the keynotes will also take place in a more casual setting.
• Keynotes have been confirmed as Deborah Willis (NYU; JAS speaker), John Howard (KCL; Eccles) and Richard Ford, the novelist (QUB speaker in Q & A format).
• The poster and CFP are done and will be in this year’s conference packs. 1 November 2015 deadline for proposals.
• Conference email now live – baasiaas2016@qub.ac.uk– with conference website details to follow. Twitter account now live @IAAS2016BAAS

• CCCU 2017

Lydia Plath will be co-opted as conference organiser at Canterbury Christchurch. SC asked that the January executive meeting be held there in 2016. Nothing further to report.

• BAAS/EAAS 2018

The joint organising group for London is likely to consist of:

Eccles/BL: Phil Davies, Cara Rodway

ISA/UCL: Iwan Morgan, Nick Witham

KCL: Uta Balbier, Clare Birchall

BAAS: Sinéad Moynihan, Martin Halliwell

12. Awards Subcommittee (UB reporting)

Uta Balbier offered thanks to those who served on judging panels this year and also to Louise Cunningham for all her work in facilitating the Awards process. Uta and Doug Haynes will present the awards together at the banquet, with Phil Davies presenting for Eccles. Recipients will be photographed for the website. This year we are awarding two additional prizes. These are PG essay prizes in association with JAS; the recipients will have the opportunity to submit their work for publication in JAS. Agreed: the executive’s approval for this initiative.

There was a strong field for the GTA competition. Interviews took place in London in January. We still need to promote awards further. Doug suggested contacting alumni of the GTA scheme for some copy for a promotional feature on the website; we should also make sure potential applicants understand what being a ‘GTA’ means and the benefits. Given the withdrawal of the GTA place at Virginia, it would be good to build links with a replacement institution.

A stronger steer for applicants to the Postgraduate Travel Award would be constructive. The awards are intended to support research trips. KM and RA suggested that the PG conference could have a session on applying for funding. This could also be linked into a USSO feature on the dos and don’ts of funding applications.

In future, applications for all our awards are likely to be made via the website and we need to build capability for that. All executive members should try to promote the various student schemes and encourage high quality applicants.

13. EAAS (MH reporting)

Matters relating to EAAS were dealt with under 11 (Conferences) above.

14. Any Other Business

Recognition of the work of BAAS committee members

BB raised concerns about the ‘unrecognised’ nature of the valuable and extensive work being done by those involved in BAAS. This kind of leadership, citizenship and committee work on a national level, is often not taken account of by the institutions where we work. We should try to further raise the profile of such contributions (in terms of workloading, promotions, prominence etc.). Letters are sent to institutions by the Chair when new members join the committee or take up office; could consider also copying HR departments in? Some institutions make a workload allowance for organising the BAAS annual conference, others do not.

15. Date of next meeting

The next meeting of the Executive Committee of the British Association for American Studies will be held at the Institute of the Americas, UCL, on 19 June 2015. Sub-coms will commence at 11.30am and the main Exec at 1.00pm.

Secretary: Dr. Jenny Terry / Email: j.a.terry@durham.ac.uk / Phone: 01913 342570

[vc_row margin_bottom=”15″][vc_column][dt_banner image_id=”6921″ min_height=”270″][/dt_banner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][dt_quote]The generous financial support of BAAS has allowed me the opportunity to explore Yale University’s Eugene O’Neill Collection and his extended period of sobriety, which was particularly formative for the author’s late-career works, says Grant Gosizk, recipient of the 2015 Malcolm Bradbury Award.[/dt_quote][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]The work conducted during this research trip supports my Ph.D. dissertation ‘Addicts on the American Stage,’ a piece which explores a shift in the dramatic representation of addiction in American theatre after the repeal of Prohibition in 1933.  At this time playwrights departed from the didactic moralism of the temperance movement’s theatrical propaganda and moved towards a depiction of the addict as a symbol of nationalized political and social anxieties. Through chronological author-centric case[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row margin_bottom=”15″][vc_column][vc_column_text]studies, I investigate the various manifestations of addiction in American stage drama and suggest that after Prohibition and prior to the War on Drugs, the addict was an important symbol of American life.  Working within the catalogs of Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and Sam Shepard some of America’s most popular Broadway dramas are read as historical documents in this transition.  The generous financial support of BAAS’s Malcolm Bradbury Award has allowed me the opportunity to explore one of these author’s archives in depth: The Eugene O’Neill Collection at the Yale University Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library.

Yale University’s Eugene O’Neill Collection maintains the most extensive body of literary ephemera relating to O’Neill and his work. This includes sensitive documents pertaining to the author’s personal, spousal, and filial relationships to addiction, as well as the drafts, proofs, and stage designs of the author’s most popular addict-centric plays.  While much research has been conducted to uncover the autobiographical addiction narratives of O’Neill’s work, particularly those of his childhood under the maternal care of a morphine addict or of frequenting Greenwich flop houses as an alcoholic young-adult, far less attention has been paid to an extended period of sobriety in the author’s life, one which was particularly formidable for the author’s late-career works.

Between 1926 and 1953 O’Neill maintained sobriety, but addiction was never far from his mind. For, throughout this period O’Neill’s son, Shane, developed a criminal heroin addiction, his oldest son committed suicide after a long battle with alcoholism, his third-wife suffered from Bromide toxicity, and  his second-wife developed alcoholism.  Often overlooked, this gap in criticism not only neglects an enormous portion of the author’s biography, but fails to recognize the ways in which these daily experiences with addiction informed various formal and philosophical approaches to the subject in O’Neill’s highly acclaimed late-career works, particularly The Iceman Cometh and Long Day’s Journey Into Night.  It was with this period which I was primarily concerned.    

In the Agnes Boulton Collection, one of the three archival bodies composing the O’Neill library, and that which preserves the correspondence and ephemera of the author’s second wife, I uncovered detailed documentation of Eugene O’Neill’s alcoholic rehabilitation which had previously only been referenced to peripherally in biographies on the author.  These records showed that in 1926, under Boulton’s recommendation, Eugene O’Neill attended several sessions with the psychoanalyst G.V. Hamilton with hopes of curing his alcoholism.  Here, in addition to being prescribed Bromide – a minor-tranquilizer later discovered to be highly addictive and toxic – O’Neill was encouraged to read Freud’s Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis and The Psychopathology of Everyday Life.  Meticulously kept expense reports from the period show that O’Neill filled this prescription and read several of Freud’s publications over the next few years.  While the author belittled Freudian readings of his plays, this strong association between Freudian psychoanalysis and addiction invites, and perhaps validates, readings of formal symmetry between O’Neill’s late-career representations of addiction and Freudian metapsychology.

Research into the Carlotta O’Neill archive, O’Neill’s third-wife, proved similar fruitful.  For, according Carlotta’s correspondence and financial records, O’Neill financially supported many of his childhood friends, those who, unlike O’Neill, never moved beyond their days as alcoholic Greenwich bohemians.  Paying for funerals, picking up bar-tabs, and covering rent for a number of the alcoholic leftists who O’Neill associated with in his youth for nearly twenty years kept memories of dypsomania and New York’s addict culture indelible, even in the authors most sober years.

Likewise, much of my research into O’Neill’s unpublished correspondence has offered an alternative narrative to popular perspectives of the author, which often portray him as a solitary creative, willfully outside the social circles of the mid-twentieth century intelligentsia.  Rather, unpublished letters from Theodore Dreiser, Hart Crane, Arthur Davies, Marjorie Stevens, William Faulkner, Therése Bonney, and George Bellows begin to trace the contours of a playwright who was far more central, at least for a period of time, to the American tastemakers and intellectual elite.

I am currently in the process of incorporating these findings into my dissertation and will be seeking publication soon after.  Many thanks to BAAS for their generous support and Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library for their cooperation, for without them this research would not have been possible.

Grant Gosizk is a second year Ph.D Candidate at the University of Kent’s Centre for American Studies and School of English.  His dissertation explores the afterlife of temperance drama, and particularly the representation of addiction, in post-Prohibition America theatre.  Other research interests include masked performance, and the interactions between visual cultures and literature in twentieth century America. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][ultimate_carousel slides_on_desk=”2″ slides_on_tabs=”1″ slides_on_mob=”1″][dt_teaser image_id=”6917″ lightbox=”true”]Agnes Boulton,  ‘Eugene’s Drinking.’  n.d.  Box 4, Folder 149.  YCAL 122, The Agnes Boulton Collection of Eugene O’Neill. Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library.  Yale University Libraries. New Haven, CT.  June 20, 2015.
[/dt_teaser][dt_teaser image_id=”6918″ lightbox=”true”]O’Neill, Eugene. ‘Sitting on steps of 34 Pequot Avenue with Marion Welch.’  ca. 1912.  Box 6, Folder 188.  YCAL MSS 122, The Agnes Boulton Collection of Eugene O’Neill.  Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library.  Yale University
Libraries.  New Haven, CT.  June 20, 2015.[/dt_teaser][/ultimate_carousel][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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“She may be the only seven-year-old to have asked her mother to explain the medieval feudal system”:
In Memory of Lois Green Carr (1922-2015)

[/dt_banner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”8770″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Lois Green Carr, preeminent historian of colonial Maryland, died peacefully at her home on June 28, 2015. She was 93 years of age.

Born on March 7, 1922 in Holyoke, Massachusetts to Donald Ross Green and Constance McLaughlin Green, Dr. Carr was a third-generation historian. She may be the only seven-year-old to have asked her mother to explain the medieval feudal system, an early hint of her lifelong intellectual curiosity. After graduating from Swarthmore College in 1943, Dr. Carr obtained her M.A. from Radcliffe College in 1944. In 1968 she earned her Ph.D. in History from Harvard, with her dissertation County Government in Maryland, perhaps the lengthiest (more than a thousand typed pages) and most detailed study of local colonial government.

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After moving to Annapolis in 1954, Dr. Carr joined the Hall of Records (now Maryland State Archives) staff as a junior archivist in 1956. In 1967 she became Historian for Historic St. Mary’s City (HSMC), a position she retained for 45 years. She continued to work primarily at the state archives where she had ready access to the documentary records vital to her research. Her great passions were historical research and public history. She saw St. Mary’s City as her classroom, where the public could learn about the past by experiencing it in new ways. Dr. Carr founded the research program at HSMC; participated in the development of every exhibit at the museum, including numerous seventeenth-century reconstructions; and provided the key historical evidence for identifying the Calvert family members buried in lead coffins discovered under the 1660s Brick Chapel. Of them all, she perhaps had the greatest role in creating the Godiah Spray Tobacco Plantation, directly based on the research later published as Robert Cole’s World.

Internationally recognized as one of the leading social and economic historians of the colonial Chesapeake region, Dr. Carr co-authored and contributed to numerous books, articles, and papers, including Robert Cole’s World: Agriculture & Society in Early Maryland; Maryland’s Revolution of Government 1689-1692; Colonial Chesapeake Society; and Maryland: A New Guide to the Old Line State. She attended and participated in many conferences and symposiums in the fields of colonial social and economic history. As HSMC’s first historian, in support of the programming needs of an ambitious young museum, Dr. Carr undertook original research on a broader range of subjects than professional historians typically address. She believed that public history museums should offer interpretations adhering to the same high standards for quality and originality as leading academic institutions. As a result, a number of the research reports she produced for HSMC became the basis for books and articles making major contributions to the fields of political, social, economic, and women’s history.

Although modest about her own achievements, Dr. Carr was widely recognized and admired by her colleagues. She was president of the Economic History Association in 1990-1991. In 1992 a conference in her honor, held at the University of Maryland at College Park, brought together leading colonial scholars whom she had known and worked with during her career. The HSMC awarded Dr. Carr its highest award, the cross bottony,[1] in 1995 and she was one of the first two recipients in 1996 of the Maryland Humanities Council’s Eisenberg Prize for Excellence in the Humanities. In 2000, Dr. Carr was inducted into the Maryland Women’s Hall of Fame and in 2001 she received an honorary degree from St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Her co-authored volume Robert Cole’s World received numerous awards. Today, many of the articles and books she helped produce remain essential reading for all scholars of early American history.

Dr. Carr’s intellectual creativity and enthusiasm attracted numerous young researchers to the study of colonial Maryland history, a group often characterized as the “Maryland Mafia,” with Dr. Carr as its godmother. Her passion was to write and teach history for a broad public audience through museum programs rather than in an academic institution, but through her generous mentoring of dozens of younger scholars, Dr. Carr played a major role in shaping research, writing, teaching, and interpreting the history of the region. Many scholars owe her an immense debt for her invaluable advice on all stages of a project from research design to polishing a final manuscript. A demanding critic, Dr. Carr pushed scholars to aspire to high levels of achievement.

She was a pioneer in the field of colonial history, especially in the use of probate records to reveal the contours of the lives of ordinary as well as prominent people of the past. Her research approach—integrating archival history with archaeology and architecture—was considered novel at the time. And she was in the forefront of using computers to manage and analyze large amounts of historical data. Dr. Carr designed and directed several long-term team history research projects which won support from the National Science Foundation and from the National Endowment for the Humanities. One notable product of the work undertaken for HSMC by Dr. Carr and her project colleagues is the career file that documents every known seventeenth-century St. Mary’s resident, part of the research files maintained among the collections of the Maryland State Archives and HSMC.

Dr. Carr served as a Senior Adjunct Scholar at the Archives from 1988 until 2005. In 1989, she assumed the position of Senior Historian of the Maryland Historic Trust, continuing to focus her work on St. Mary’s City, an activity she sustained even after her retirement in November 2005. She was an adjunct professor of history at the University of Maryland College Park from 1982 until her retirement, and was a visiting professor at St. Mary’s College of Maryland in 1971.

In addition to her passion for history, Dr. Carr loved her Quarter Landing neighborhood, listening to classical music, gardening, cooking, entertaining guests, and participating in a play-reading group with her husband, Jack Ladd Carr, who preceded her in death in 2010. The couple regularly attended Annapolis Symphony Orchestra concerts and Colonial Players productions. Visiting colleagues always received a warm welcome at her home and Annapolis friends gathered at her annual Christmas party.

Dr. Carr was also preceded in death by her brother, Donald Ross Green, and her sister, Elizabeth Langford Green. She is survived by her only child, Andrew Clark, of Baltimore, Maryland; a nephew, Mitchell Green, of Washington State; and a niece, Alice Green, of California. She leaves behind many friends and colleagues who loved, respected, and admired her for the work that contributed so much to our understanding of early Maryland.

Memorial Services celebrating her life will take place at two locations. There will be a service at 4 pm on September 19 at the reconstruction Brick Chapel at Historic St. Mary’s City with a reception following at the 1676 State House. Tours will be offered prior to the service at St. Mary’s City of the various exhibit sites Dr. Carr played a major role in interpreting. A second Memorial Service will be held in Annapolis at 1 pm on September 20 at the Maryland State Archives. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the Friends of the Maryland State Archives, (350 Rowe Boulevard, Annapolis, Maryland, 21401) or to the Carr Fund at the Historic St. Mary’s City Foundation (P.O. Box 24, St. Mary’s City, 20686) for support of the plantation exhibits directly based on Dr. Carr’s scholarship in Robert Cole’s World.

Footnote

[1] A “cross bottony” is a cross having each arm terminating in three rounded lobes, forming a sort of trefoil. From the religious point of view, the cross bottony can be used as a symbol of the Christian Trinity. A cross bottony which is heraldically “counterchanged” occurs on the flag of Maryland.

John J. McCusker is the Ewing Halsell Distinguished Professor Emeritus of American History and Professor Emeritus of Economics at Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row][vc_column][dt_banner image_id=”8626″ bg_color=”rgba(0,0,0,0.17)” min_height=”300″][/dt_banner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row margin_top=”15″][vc_column width=”1/2″][dt_quote]The 2016 joint BAAS and IAAS conference will interrogate precisely what we are doing as Americanists at this point in time, says IAAS Chair and conference organizer Philip McGowan, and what conferences like these are for.[/dt_quote][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]A generation has passed since the last joint annual conference of BAAS and its Irish counterpart the IAAS. In 1992 Stranmillis College played host to a joint conference of the two Associations; next year, between 7-9 April, Queen’s University Belfast has the honour of welcoming hundreds of Americanists to a city much changed since the pre-ceasefire days of the early 1990s.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row margin_top=”15″ margin_bottom=”15″][vc_column][vc_column_text]There’s a number of reasons why Belfast is an apt venue for 2016 and also why another joint conference is timely. For the last four years the two associations have been working very closely together, particularly on joint postgraduate initiatives and reciprocal funding support for research students to travel to the annual postgraduate conferences of each Association. 2016 will be another confirmation of the strong links that connect us as scholars on these islands.

As for 2016 itself, it marks a number of anniversaries, most notably the centenary of the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916. Meanwhile Americanists will mark the 240^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and there is no better place in the UK or Ireland to be for that event than Belfast. The Belfast News Letter was the first English language newspaper in Europe to publish details of the Declaration of Independence in 1776; in 1796, George Washington established a US Consulate in Belfast, appointing Belfast-born James Holmes on 20 May (coincidentally, Holmes’ brother-in-law Henry Joy was owner of the News Letter) as the first US Consul to Belfast. Other notable anniversaries with an American slant occurring next year include the centenary of the first appearance of James Montgomery Flagg’s Uncle Sam recruitment image in July 1916, and also the bicentenary of Uncle Sam’s first appearance in literature in Frederick Augustus Fidfaddy’s The Adventures of Uncle Sam, in Search After His Lost Honor.

We are delighted to have lined up some excellent plenary speakers for next year’s event. John Howard (Professor of American Studies, King’s London), known to many in both Associations, will be the Eccles Centre plenary lecturer while the new editorial team of the Journal of American Studies (Celeste-Marie Bernier and Bevan Sewell) has secured Deborah Willis (Chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts, NYU) as their keynote speaker. Traditionally at the annual IAAS conference the keynote delivers the Alan Graham Memorial lecture in honour of one of the most significant influences on American Studies in Ireland. Alan Graham was a founding member of the IAAS in 1970 and was a pre-eminent member of the School of History at Queen’s University Belfast from the 1960s until his untimely death in the mid-1980s. In 2016, the Alan Graham lecture will have a slightly different feel to it as acclaimed novelist Richard Ford will read and take part in a question and answer session at Titanic Belfast before the conference’s closing banquet.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”8611″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” img_link_large=”yes”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1440401441662{margin-right: 30px !important;margin-left: 30px !important;padding-right: 60px !important;padding-left: 60px !important;}”]

Keynote speakers for next year’s joint BAAS and IAAS conference include Professor John Howard, Professor Deborah Willis and acclaimed novelist Richard Ford.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row margin_top=”15″ margin_bottom=”15″][vc_column][vc_column_text]As researchers and teachers predominantly working in the Arts and Humanities, we do find ourselves having to argue the case for our very existence as the twenty-first century reaches the middle of its second decade. One thing the 2016 conference will be doing is to interrogate precisely what conferences like these are for and what we are doing as Americanists at this point in time. For this conference we are looking to move away where feasible from what can be a rather rigid paper-after-paper panel format that conferences typically follow. Sessions that wish to discuss the teaching of American subjects or that would like to trial pre-circulating papers so that the formal presentations are shorter thus allowing more time for discussion are encouraged. Proposals for 20-minute presentations have been coming in steadily over the summer to the conference email address (baasiaas2016@qub.ac.uk). If you are thinking of offering a talk, your proposal should be a maximum of 250 words and include a provisional title. Moreover, proposals by two or more people sharing a common theme are warmly invited and we welcome panels that cross disciplinary boundaries or which are keen to develop a workshop theme across more than one session. The closing date for proposals is 1 November 2015.

While academic endeavor will be central to the three days next April, we do also hope that you will have time to enjoy what Belfast has to offer. Whether it is the weekend St George’s market in the city centre, tours of this historic city, our vibrant nightlife and the many galleries and museums within walking distance of Queen’s, or the iconic Titanic building itself there’s going to be plenty for you to do while you’re here. We’re really looking forward to what you will see on twitter hashtagged as #IBAAS16 and we hope to see you here come April.

Philip McGowan is the current Chair of the Irish Association for American Studies and teaches American Literature at Queen’s University Belfast.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][ultimate_carousel slides_on_desk=”3″ slides_on_mob=”1″][dt_teaser image_id=”6171″ lightbox=”true”]The poster for the 2016 joint BAAS and IAAS conference.[/dt_teaser][dt_teaser image_id=”8641″ lightbox=”true”]The grounds of Queen’s University Belfast.[/dt_teaser][dt_teaser image_id=”8643″ lightbox=”true”]Attendees will dine in Titanic Belfast, a monument to Belfast’s maritime heritage where the RMS Titanic was built.[/dt_teaser][/ultimate_carousel][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row margin_bottom=”15″][vc_column][dt_banner image_id=”6966″ min_height=”270″][/dt_banner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][dt_quote]As a result of my research in the British Library I can now demonstrate there was a level of debate within the British radical community during the 1812 Anglo-American War that has been previously entirely overlooked by historians, says Peter O’Connor, recipient of the 2015 Eccles Centre Postgraduate Fellowship.[/dt_quote][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]In June 2015 I completed a five day research trip to the British Library after being awarded an Eccles Centre Postgraduate Fellowship. The primary purpose of my visit was to build on the insights offered by my PhD which examined the British understanding of American Sectionalism between 1832 and 1863 (completed at Northumbria University in 2014) with a view to developing a new project analysing British popular opinion of the 1812 Anglo-American War.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row margin_top=”15″][vc_column][vc_column_text]My PhD research demonstrated a level of complexity within the Anglo-American relationship which has often been ignored. As part of the background reading for my project I became increasingly aware of a considerable black-hole when it came to scholarly analysis of the connection between the two nations during the 1812 war. Studies of the Revolutionary War are relatively common, as is work on the period after the 1830s, yet little exists (beyond military and diplomatic history) examining this crucial era of active military conflict between Britain and the US. I therefore decided to undertake an analysis of British public debate over the meaning of the war and to attempt to understand how popular discourse may have affected political policy.

I had already undertaken preliminary work on a number of major newspapers and the published output of writers of the era prior to my British Library visit. As a result I already had a firm grasp of mainstream British views regarding the war. The purpose of my British Library trip was to consult a number of radical political publications to understand how a community which was usually very sympathetic to the US interpreted the conflict. I spent the majority of my time examining Drakard’s Paper, The Champion, Independent Whig and the Public Cause. Studying the content of these publications for the duration of the war has demonstrated a level of debate within the radical community previously entirely overlooked by historians. Relatively abstract discussions about the relationship between democracy, monarchy and warfare run alongside more specific disputes relating to the implications of stop and search, trade policy and the status of Canada. These debates then feed into different concepts of liberty and the ways in which Britain or the US embodied the socio-political system which particular radicals saw as desirable.

As a result of my research in the British Library I am now in a position to take my project forward having established the fractures which the 1812 war created even among those who were most sympathetic to the US in Britain. I intend to continue to work with newspapers from the period but will be extending my research in the political sphere to consider the views of cabinet members such as Lord Liverpool and Lord Eldon alongside radicals like Sir Frances Burdett and William Cobbett. I also wish to examine the correspondence these figures had with their American colleagues to begin to establish how popular opinion influenced diplomatic discussion.

Peter O’Connor completed his PhD at Northumbria University in 2014 with a thesis entitled ‘”The Inextinguishable Struggle Between North and South”: American Sectionalism in the British Mind, 1832-1863.’ He has published work on the British legacy of Thomas Jefferson and the Presidency of John Quincy Adams and is currently working on a new project examining British responses to the 1812 Anglo-American War.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row margin_top=”15″][vc_column][ultimate_carousel slide_to_scroll=”single” slides_on_desk=”1″ slides_on_tabs=”1″ slides_on_mob=”1″][dt_teaser image_id=”6984″ lightbox=”true”]A sketch for the regents speech on Mad-ass-son’s insanity. G. Cruikshank fet. digital file from black and white film copy negative. Source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.[/dt_teaser][dt_teaser image_id=”6985″ lightbox=”true”]A Boxing Match, or Another Bloody Nose for John Bull. Source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.[/dt_teaser][dt_teaser image_id=”6987″ lightbox=”true”]Sir Francis Burdett, 5th by and published by Piercy Roberts, hand-coloured etching, published circa 1801-1807. Source: National Portrait Gallery, London.[/dt_teaser][dt_teaser image_id=”6986″ lightbox=”true”]William Cobbett Portrait. Photo credit: Museum of Farnham.[/dt_teaser][/ultimate_carousel][/vc_column][/vc_row]