News & Events

We invite proposals for a two-day workshop that explores how the American Revolution reverberated in the emergence, expansion, and contradictions of settler republics across the Atlantic World. We take the 250th anniversary of 1776 as a point of departure and examine how the rise of settler republics – polities shaped by diverse populations asserting republican sovereignty through migration, land acquisition, and displacement – in North America, the Caribbean, Latin America, and Southern Africa produced new – and often deeply conflicted – forms of political community.

How can we meaningfully integrate discussion of sustainability and the environment into the teaching of American Studies? This online event will explore practical, pedagogical, and disciplinary approaches to teaching sustainability in American Studies, drawing on the recently released Green BAAS: Environmental Teaching Audit 2025.

This State of the United States event (12 March 2026) convenes two of the world’s most influential stewards of cultural memory to examine how archives, libraries, and museums underpin a functioning democracy. Dr Colleen Shogan (former Archivist of the United States) and Richard Ovenden OBE (Bodley's Librarian, University of Oxford) will explore how the decisions societies make about what to document, preserve, or overlook shape the civic imagination and influence national identity, especially in a period when history itself has become a fiercely contested terrain.

The Declaration of Independence, whose 250th anniversary Americans will observe in 2026, is the United States’ founding text, but it was also a transformational international text. This conference will explore some of the implications of that wider message. In addition to the response to the Declaration in Britain, Ireland, and Europe, we anticipate presentations that focus on North America’s Indian country, Haiti and the Caribbean, Sierra Leone and West Africa, and China and British India.

Join us for a hybrid panel hosted as a part of the dé'men minkanen project!

‘Imagine West’ is a new network for early career and doctoral researchers interested in the invention and disruption of ‘westness’ by literary and visual culture in the United States and around the world. We’re open to anyone in American Studies in the UK – there’s no need to be an expert on the West – and we’ll be talking about fiction, film and images as much as academic writing. Click 'read more' to join the network and learn more about our activities and opportunities. Or, email westnetwork-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk to subscribe to the newsletter.