BrANCH (British American Nineteenth Century Historians) Teaching Packs
Iain Flood (Newcastle University)
The BrANCH website hosts a selection of essays that deal with important subjects on the AQA curriculum. The subjects were carefully selected to apply the expert knowledge of BrANCH postgraduate researchers to topics for which A Level students may lack adequate resources.
Lydia Davis Cluster
Julie Tanner (Queen Mary, University of London)
The Lydia Davis cluster has been published online by Post45. It contains creative and critical contributions from eleven writers, including Lydia Davis herself.
Teaching American History: Secondary School Teachers Panel at the 2019 BrANCH (British American Nineteenth Century Historians) Annual Conference
(BrANCH)
The award enabled teachers from local secondary schools to attend the 2019 Annual BrANCH Conference at the University of Edinburgh and participate in the association’s first Teaching American History Panel.
American Politics Group / BAAS Colloquium (19 November 2021)
Phil Davies (APG)
The 2021 American Politics Group/British Association for American Studies Colloquium was a web-based event, open to all, and free of charge. It formed the closing day of the Eccles Centre’s Autumn Congress to Campus programme. Brief introductions from Dr Cara Rodway (Chair of BAAS), and the co-chairs of APG (Dr Andrew Wroe and Professor Philip Davies) were followed by three one-hour panels, each addressing current issues in US politics.
American Studies Awareness programme
Rebecca Stone, Kate Barnett, Emily Brady, Emma Hall
This project received a grant from the BAAS Development Fund to develop a range of online resources whose aim was to promote the myriad positive benefits of studying American Studies as a subject. The project focussed particularly on engaging with American Studies alumni around the UK and encouraging them to share their stories as to why they chose to study American Studies, what they had enjoyed about their experience, how it impacted them and the doors it had opened in terms of opportunities, experience and future employment. The interviews were collated into written profiles and recorded audio/video clips, and graphics for use on BAAS Social Media and hosted on the BAAS website.
US Politics Today A Level Conference
Cara Rodway (Eccles Centre / British Library)
The ‘US Politics Today’ is a long standing conference aimed at KS5 (A level and equivalent) school students studying US Politics. It offers students access to Former Members of Congress (one Republican, one Democrat) who are able to offer personal insights and revealing anecdotes into the experiences of law-making and government, and up-to-date analysis of American politics by experts that students would not otherwise have access to from their textbooks. The BAAS Development Fund grant covered the speaker fees and 2 days of travel expenses of the 5 experts who contributed to the programme, and whose contribution was central to making the conference an exciting and highly valued educational experience. The Conference reached over 500 students over 2 days.
The experts this year were:
– Prof Philip Davies (De Montford University)
– Dr Laura Smith (University of Oxford)
– Dr Emma Long (University of East Anglia)
– Prof Andrew Moran (London Metropolitan University)
– Josephine Harmon (University College London)
Special Seminar – Black Matrilineage, Photography and Representation
Emily Brady (Rothmere American Institute, University of Oxford)
An online seminar where four speakers were able to present their work:
– Lesley Deschler Canossi and Zoraida Lopez-Diago (co-editors of Black Matrilineage, Photography and Representation and co-founders of Women Picturing Revolution)
– Qiana Mestrich, Photographic artist, based in New York
– Jonathan Michael Square, Academic and curator at Parsons School of Design
BrANCA Biennial Symposium
The 5th BrANCA Biennial Symposium on May 13 and May 14th 2022 focused on the theme – “Opening Up” and was designed as a post-pandemic prompt to sharing work after a time where doing so was harder than ever before. The conference aimed to provide a forum for sharing work and for scholars to speculate on future new directions for the field. To encourage participation the event ran as a hybrid event and used BAAS funding to underwrite costs for Postgraduates to attend.
2022 APG / BAAS Colloquium
Philip Davies and Andrew Wroe (American Politics Group)
The 2022 American Politics Group / BAAS Annual Colloquium took place on Friday 11th November 2022. The event took place only 3 days after the critically important 2022 US mid-term elections, and aspects of the midterms were interrogated in each of the colloquium sessions.
Charles Brockden Brown Society Biennial Symposium (University of Nottingham)
Hannah Murray
The 14th Biennial Conference of the Charles Brockden Brown Society took as its theme “Crime, Justice and Cultures of Transgression in Early America” and featured papers on multiple aspects of the expression and representation of law-breaking in North American literacy, cultural and intellectual life between 1691 and 1830. Details of the conference’s full programme as well as photographs from its proceedings can be found on the Brockden Brown Society website and an extended review of the proceedings can be found in the Conference Reports section of the journal “Early American Literature”.
The funding from the BAAS Development Fund was able to provide financial support to the conference organisers who were able to support 2 US-based graduate students in travelling to Nottingham, pay a US graduate student to serve as a conference assistant, and offer childcare costs to potential participants.
Historical Perspectives on Gendered Violence
Elizabeth Barnes (Reading University), Elizabeth Evens (University College London), Grace Watkins (University of Oxford)
Together, Elizabeth Barnes, Elizabeth Evens and Grace Watkins shared research interests and a wish to connect with other historians. They applied for funding from the BAAS Development Fund to bring together scholars working on histories of gendered state violence in the United States to foster collaboration. Secondly they constructed an online resource for students, historians and a range of publics, to share the research of junior scholars. They have used their BAAS funding towards hosting a productive series of seminars in 2021-22, as well as a book launch for Anne Gray Fischer’s ‘Sex. Race. and Police Power’ in March 2022. They are creating their website with contributions from a range of junior scholars working in both the UK and the US.
Lydia Davis in Context
Lola Boorman (York University)
The funding provided by this BAAS Development Fund grant helped to facilitate a two-day, international workshop on the short story writer, Lydia Davis, including a range of scholars from the UK, US, Canada, France and Chile and from various career stages. The workshop involved discussion of pre-circulated chapters-in-progress, which formed the basis of a landmark edited collection on Lydia Davis. The BAAS Development Fund Grant was instrumental in providing the travel and accommodation costs and ensured that the majority of participants were able to attend in person.
USSO Podcast and Audio Visual Content
(USSO)
This grant was awarded to enable the USSO to purchase the necessary equipment to enable them to dramatically expand USSO’s audio and visual content, doubling their YouTube subscriber base. Over the Spring and Summer of 2023 this equipment was critical to launching their major new subseries ‘European Initiatives in American Studies’ which investigates careers, conferences and NGO’s working in American Studies in continental Europe, and supported the new programme of podcasts launched in the same year.
HOTCUS Annual Conference
(HOTCUS)
The 2023 HOTCUS Annual Conference were awarded monies from the BAAS Development Fund to support the attendance of PGR’s and ECR’s without permanent employment to attend the Conference which was held at Northumbria University in June 2023. The funding enabled the organisers to reduce costs for PGR/ECR attendees to the minimum possible, and offer travel bursaries for speakers without access to institutional funds. Secondly a proportion of money provided by BAAS was dedicated to providing childcare bursaries. PGR/ECR’s who attended online were also able to register for the event, free of charge.
Pro and Anti-War Voices
Joseph Rix & Wendy Toon (University of Worcester)
Facilitated by a BAAS Development Fund grant, PhD student Joseph Rix and Director of Studies, Wendy Toon co-organised a conference and exhibition entitled ‘Pro and Anti-War Voices’ designed to illuminate the positive and negative responses that “ordinary” people have had in relation to American Wars. The conflicts under discussion and on display ranged from the American War of Independence all the way up to the Vietnam War.
The Many Afterlives of Disco
William Rees (Exeter University)
This conference was awarded funding from the BAAS Development Fund to provide honoraria for 2 Keynote speakers: Frankie Elyse, (a Scottish DJ and owner of the Polka Dot Disco Club) and Musicologist, Louis Niebur of the University of Nevada. More information on the conference can be found here.