“This is America”: Reimagined Pasts and Speculative Futures
Thursday 14th November, at University of Sussex, Brighton & Online
The British Association for American Studies Postgraduate Symposium 2024
Sankofa is a Ghanian theological concept that encourages us to recognise the “the unique moment of the present while reaching back in history and looking toward the future” (Alaina Morgan 2023). However, this concept is not unique to African and African American culture, as its theorisation of how we consider the interlinked and liminal existence of our individual and collective pasts, presents and futures can be seen in many of the texts, theories and ideas that are researched within the scholarly realm of ‘American Studies’.
Representations of America’s past and future take many different forms, from the alternative histories found in science fiction and fantasy to the fragmentation of oral histories, personal accounts and other primary sources. American history is also highly curated and rationalised, including the selective American history and literature syllabi that can be found both within the United States and abroad, and the augmented representations of racial and minority histories that we see within American popular culture and discourses. A reimagined past might place a zombie outbreak within the context of the American Civil War, such as Justina Ireland’s Dread Nation, or simply seek to contribute to the decolonisation of American curriculums, discourses, and archives, by reinserting forgotten events, figures and ideas into the scholarly canon and imagination.
Similarly, the theorisation and portrayal of American futures is a longstanding feature of literature, film and popular culture, as well as philosophical, economic and social deliberation. Dystopias, apocalypses and disasters dominate popular culture’s representation of America’s future, providing warnings against present day conflicts, issues and events, whilst also commenting on major topics within contemporary American society, such as climate change, police brutality, continued indigenous marginalisation, women’s bodily autonomy and the ongoing threat of pandemic. Novels such as Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower, set in 2024, provides an prescient companion to the upcoming United States Presidential election, especially considering its depiction of political, religious, and social upheaval. However, not all depictions and predictions of America’s future are negative, with American activists, scholars and theorists providing us with new texts, praxis and frameworks that allow us to consider how America might facilitate positive, preventative, and meaningful change.
The 2024 BAAS Postgraduate Symposium aims to interrogate the diverse and interdisciplinary ways that ‘American Studies’ scholars approach the idea of American futures and pasts. It will consider how the idea of America’s past is constructed, distorted, and reinvented through genre devices, tropes and re-imaginings, as well as oral histories, archival curation or narratives of American exceptionalism. Alongside these considerations of the past, this symposium will also analyse representations of America’s possible futures, whether this be in the form of speculative utopias, apocalypses and disasters, or philosophical, theoretical and cultural predictions about what comes next. This symposium considers American futures and pasts not only within the context of the United States, but also the continent more widely, including a diverse range of historical, cultural, racial and societal contexts and ideas.
The 2024 BAAS Postgraduate Symposium invites proposals from postgraduate researchers at all levels and across all disciplines that address the diverse interpretations, possibilities and liminality that can be found in the depictions and theorisation of America’s past and/or future. We invite panels and individual papers on the topic of Reimagined Pasts and Speculative Futures, encouraging your own unique interpretations of what this means to you and how it resonates within your own scholarly thought. We welcome contributions from all realms of American Studies, including, but not limited to: history, speculative literature, film, visual culture, philosophical reflections, postcolonial and de-colonial analysis, collections and museum studies, American feminisms, literary and historical studies, and music studies.
We welcome the submission of individual papers as well as proposals for complete panels of three researchers. Applications from groups of three or four researchers for roundtable discussions are also welcome. For panel and roundtable proposals, please also include a statement of up to 250 words on the aims of the collective submission, alongside the individual papers. Papers should be around 15 minutes long, and roundtables will consist of five-minute introductions by each researcher followed by 45 minutes of discussion. Interdisciplinary paper, panel, and roundtable proposals are encouraged. This will be a hybrid symposium, so we also welcome the submission of individual papers or complete panels from researchers wishing to attend online. We especially encourage researchers from across Europe and beyond to submit and attend, as part of ongoing efforts to expand the EAAS community of postgraduates.
All presenters attending in-person will receive a contribution toward their costs of attendance.
The deadline for submissions is 30th September 2024. Please send proposals including a title, an abstract of no more than 250 words and a short biography of no more than 300 words to Riziki Millanzi at riziki.millanzi@baas.ac.uk. If you have any questions or queries about the symposium, please get in touch.
