The British Association for American Studies is pleased to maintain a list of news and events from across the American Studies community.
The items below include news from BAAS itself and submissions from other institutions and organisations. You will find posts organised by category below. Each week, the news and events submitted to BAAS, are included on the Weekly Digest mailing. You can sign up to receive the weekly mailing by completing this form.
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BAAS and the Journal of American Studies are pleased to announce that they will be recruiting for the following roles at JAS in Summer 2026, for start dates of 2 January 2027. All appointments are for a four-year period.
However one defines or measures it, political violence is on the rise in the USA. But why? Join Kate Ballantyne, Shannon Carter and Luca Trenta for a discussion of the descent into - or resurgence of - political violence.
Baptist methodically navigates the Black experience, demonstrating that music serves as both a crucial repository of collective memory and a mechanism of resistance. Through detailed explication and analysis, Baptist reveals how political movements have been shaped by pivotal events—including murders, protests, and elections—where song and music were employed to articulate Black 'spiritual strivings,' mediating the complex interplay between personal identity and political action." ~Maurice J. Hobson, author of The Legend of the Black Mecca: Politics and Culture and the Making of Modern Atlanta
Lisa Marie Cacho raises the stakes of critical cultural analysis by purposing it toward a rigorous, activist-intellectual interpretation of law and the state, reframing jurisprudence as an insidious extension of police power. This is a book about stories at war with each other: Complex Innocence honors those targeted and stolen by deadly state violence by centering their testimonies, grounded analyses, and historical truth-telling as dynamic sites of knowledge production that resist and confound institutionalized erasure." ~Dylan Rodríguez, University of California, Riverside
"A very impressive piece of historical scholarship. Enhances the understanding of how national identity became claimed and contested in a special way." —Stephen J. Whitfield, author of The Culture of the Cold War
“Offers an original contribution to American, folklore, and fantastic studies. The selections analyzed are eclectic but the argument that surfing, pirates, John Henry, and rags-to-riches stories actually do have something in common is convincing. All are expressions of the American colonialist impulse and all involve transformative (perhaps ritualized) violence. An important, provocative study.” - Brian Attebery, author of Fantasy: How It Works
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