Author: Sarah McCreedy

IAAS ECR Funding Workshop – Tuesday, 17th January

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Irish Association for American Studies ECR Funding Workshop (presented by the IAAS ECR Caucus)

Tuesday 17th January, 12:30-14:00

Zoom registration link: http://shorturl.at/lEY59

A virtual workshop aimed at postgraduate students and (self-defined) early career
researchers, with an emphasis on American Studies. Will feature information on the funding
landscape in Ireland and beyond, strategies and tips for building proposals, and brief guides
to particular postdoctoral schemes.

Presented by Dr Tim Groenland and Dr Caroline Dunham-Schroeter, with guest speakers Dr
Dolores Resano (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow, UCD Clinton Institute for American
Studies) and Dr Gillian Moore (IRC Postdoctoral Fellow, Trinity College Dublin).

 

 

Reading Shirley Jackson in the Twenty-First Century II: The House that Jackson Built

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Reading Shirley Jackson in the Twenty-First Century II: The House that Jackson Built
Wednesday, 14 December 2022, 4:30 – 8pm

An online symposium organised by the School of English, Trinity College Dublin, in association with the Trinity Long Room Hub.
‘The House that Jackson Built’ is the second online symposium dedicated to exploring the status of Shirley Jackson’s writing in the work of scholars, creative practitioners, and the general public. Over the past two decades, Jackson’s reputation has undergone a truly remarkable transformation. Despite being one of the most prominent (and commercially successful) American authors of her era, critical interest in Jackson’s work declined in the decades immediately following her death in August 1965. While her works of horror and Gothic fiction have long been held in high esteem by genre aficionados, she was, for quite some time, unfairly considered by many to be a relatively ‘minor’ writer. However, the twenty-first century has seen an explosion in the level of critical and public interest in Jackson’s work, and she is arguably one of the most significant American writers of the present day, as well as her own.
PROGRAMME:
4:30-4:40: Welcome/Ground Rules
4:40-5:40: Panel 1: Jackson’s family: Laurence Jackson-Hyman, Barry Hyman, Gretchen
Hyman and Miles Hyman
5:40-5:50: Break
5:50-6:50: Panel 2: Folk Horror: Kevin Corstorphine and Faye Ringel
6:50-7:00: Break
7:00-8:00: Panel 3: Fictional Impact: Ellen Datlow, Elizabeth Hand, and Paul Tremblay
‘The House that Jackson Built’ symposium brings together writers, academics, and members of Jackson’s own family and literary executors to celebrate her presence in and influence upon contemporary popular culture and thought, on the anniversary of her birth. All are welcome, and attendance is free, but pre-registration is required.

More information/registration available here: 

https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/whats-on/details/event.php?eventid=163419791

.

This event is organised by the IAAS Postgraduate Caucus Co-chair Janice Deitner (TCD Provost’s PPA holder, School of English), friends of the IAAS Dr Dara Downey (Former IRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow based in the Long Room Hub) and Dr Bernice Murphy (TCD School of English), as well as Dr Rob Lloyd (Cardiff University), and Dr Luke Reid (Dawson College).

IAAS Annual Conference 2023 – CFP announced

Posted on by Sarah McCreedy

 

Irish Association for American Studies

Annual Conference

“In/Security”

University of Limerick

Hybrid event: virtual and in-person

28-29 April 2023

The Irish Association for American Studies is an all-island scholarly association dedicated to promoting interdisciplinary American Studies in Ireland. It invites paper and panel proposals for its 2023 Annual Conference, which will take place 28-29 April at the University of Limerick. The hybrid event will be the first IAAS Annual Conference since 2019 to include an in-person element.

“There are others out there on whom my life depends, people I do not know and may never know. This fundamental dependency on anonymous others is not a condition that I can will away. No security measure will foreclose this dependency; no violent act of sovereignty will rid the world of this fact” (Judith Butler, Precarious Life xii).

The theme for the 2023 IAAS Annual Conference is “In/Security.” Inderpal Grewal argues that “constructs of security have come to dominate everyday life in the US imperial state” (Saving the Security State 2). Certainly, questions of security have dominated the US news agenda this year, from the inquest into the breach of the Capitol on 6 January 2021; to geopolitical threats of energy shortages, a cost-of-living crisis, cyber-attacks, and nuclear war; to the FBI’s retrieval of documents endangering national security from a former President’s home. Actual and perceived threats to security – personal, institutional, and technological – have increasingly become the norm in US politics, as allegations of voting fraud and campaigns of intimidation continue to reverberate across elections. Meanwhile, the rising risks of wildfires and storms are a reminder that climate change represents an existential threat to human society that requires us to act now to secure a liveable future.

This year, we invite proposals that consider security, safety, defence, and protection, as well as their opposites: insecurity, precarity, vulnerability, and danger. We will think about security at various scales, the various senses and feelings of terms like “security” and “safe,” and the different ways in which notions of security and its absence structure cultural, social, political, and economic discourses in the Americas.

We welcome papers from all disciplines in American Studies, broadly defined. Possible paper and panel topics may include but are not limited to:

  • Texts and events that dramatize questions of (in)security at various scales: personal, societal, national, global
  • Levels and forms of security forces, threats, risks, defences, protections, allies, and immunities
  • Senses (meanings and feelings) of security and insecurity, vulnerability, and precarity
  • Resource (food, water, energy, housing) security and insecurity, and the geopolitics of resource security
  • Securing the (environmental, biodiverse, just) future; risking the future
  • Financial securities and insecurities
  • Job security, precarity, safety nets, and their absence; welfare and wellbeing
  • Technologies of security – drones, doorbells, digital systems – and their ownership
  • Home security, domestic threats, and safe spaces; private security, personal safety, and safekeeping
  • Questions and definitions of care: carefree (secure, from the Latin securus, meaning without care), careless, and caregiving

The conference organisers welcome individual proposals or panel proposals. Individual participants should submit abstracts of no more than 300 words for a 20-minute paper. Panel proposals will normally consist of an overall proposal of 200 words, plus individual abstracts of no more than 150 words for each of 3 papers for 1½-hour sessions. However, proposals for innovative, alternative panel formats are also encouraged. All proposals should include a short academic biography (50-100 words) for each presenter. Please also indicate if you prefer to attend online or if you are able to attend in person. Priority for online presentations will be reserved for those with accessibility issues or those who are outside of Ireland. Due to limited capacity, we may not be able to meet all requests for online presentations.

Papers from all disciplines in American Studies are welcome, including literary studies, history, politics, economics, geography, science, philosophy, media studies, film studies, photography, art, music and dance, cultural studies, international relations, and others, and from any theoretical or practical perspective. The IAAS and the Annual Conference are dedicated to equality, diversity, and inclusion, and we welcome papers from under-represented groups. The deadline for submissions, to IAAS2023@ul.ie, is 31 January 2023.

All presenters at the Annual Conference must be members of the IAAS. More information is available here: https://iaas.ie/memberships/.

The 2023 IAAS Annual Conference will be hosted by University of Limerick and run by Tim Groenland, David Coughlan, and Clair Sheehan. For more information, contact us at IAAS2023@ul.ie.

2023 Research Fellowships at the Virginia Museum of History & Culture

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2023 Research Fellowships at the Virginia Museum of History & Culture

 

The Virginia Museum of History & Culture (VMHC) offers research fellowships of up to three weeks a year to promote the interpretation of Virginia and access to its collections. Thanks to a matching grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and generous gifts from individuals, fellowships carry a weekly stipend of $1,000 and $500 for local mileage. A week is defined as five days in the Mr. and Mrs. E. Claiborne Robins, Jr. Research Library, which is open 10am to 5pm, Monday through Saturday. The deadline for applications is Friday, January 27, 2023. For information about the research fellowships and how to apply for 2023, please visit the following page on the VMHC website: https://virginiahistory.org/research/research-resources/research-support

 

Contact Info:

 

Dr. James Brookes, Melanie Trent De Schutter Library Director

Virginia Museum of History & Culture

P.O. Box 7311

Richmond, VA 23221-0311

jbrookes@VirginiaHistory.org

Telephone: 804.342.9663

Recent Bursary Winner Report: Máiréad Casey, NUI Galway

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The International Gothic Association annual conference is one of the largest and most prestigious dissemination opportunity for an early career researcher in the fields of Gothic and Horror studies. I attended this conference shortly after submitting my PhD thesis. As such, it presented a unique and timely opportunity to connect with an international selection of scholars in my field. As this was the first event of its kind that I was able to attend in person since the covid-19 pandemic, it was a cherished opportunity to see new research, network, and meet scholars and publishers in my field in person.

            The theme of “Gothic Interruptions” was particularly relevant to my research on horror representations of political and feminist consciousness after The Great Recession. With the CFP asking “How do these Gothic circumstances, terrifying as they may be, lead to change, looking toward new futures?” IGA2022 provided an exceptional intersection of my research interests and expertise. Participating in the conference permitted me to locate my own work on contemporary American horror cinema within that academic conversation.

My PhD research analysed American gender politics in the post-recession era as mobilised around the issue of sexual violence and as seen through selected demon-possession films produced in that time. My paper, “Demon Girls, Interrupted: Sexual Violence and Raised Feminist Consciousness in American Horror Cinema” used the case study of the 2011 film Lovely Molly (Sánchez) as an example of how contemporary demon-possession narratives relate to a reactionary, “popular” misogynist backlash to feminism’s fourth wave, particularly towards feminist theory and activism relating to sexual violence, harassment, and misconduct. I had a wonderful experience presenting my paper on a panel with researchers that were engaged in feminist and horror research and received thoughtful and supportive feedback and questions from the panel chair and attendees.

 

Dr Máiréad Casey is an early career researcher with a PhD in Film and Digital Media from Ollscoil na Gaillimhe/University of Galway (formerly NUI Galway) under the supervision of Dr Conn Holohan. She currently teaches at Trinity College Dublin and can be reached at caseym4@tcd.ie

 

PopMeC: Animals in the American Popular Imagination Conference 2022

Posted on by Sarah McCreedy
We’re glad to share the details for PopMeC’s Animals in the American Popular Imagination virtual keynote talks:

Brett Mills: Jaws, from the Shark’s Point of View
Wednesday, September 7, 2022 at 6PM CEST

Christy Tidwell: Prehistoric Futurism: Dinosaurs, Kids, and the Future in the Jurassic Park Franchise
Thursday, September 8, 2022 at 6PM CEST

The talks will be held on Zoom. Registration is free / pay what you want at 

https://popular-animals.com/index.php/registration/

You can find a brief description of the talks and speakers on our official website
______________________

Animals in the American Popular Imagination | Conference 2022
Organized by

PopMeC

 and AACCP
Follow on Twitter

@POPanimals_2022

Facebook

official website

The W.A. Emmerson Lecture 2022

Posted on by Sarah McCreedy

 

The Irish Association for American Studies is delighted to announce that the esteemed Dr Dara Downey will be delivering our 2022 W. A. Emmerson lecture in person, in the Neill Theatre, Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute.

Dr Downey will be presenting on her current research, the highly anticipated literary biography of Shirley Jackson. Her lecture is titled: ‘Mainstreaming Shirley Jackson: Resurrecting a Cold-War Author in the Post-Trump Age’.

Dr Downey will be introduced by Dr Bernice Murphy, Associate Professor in the School of English, Trinity College Dublin, whose work on American horror and gothic narratives is widely acclaimed.

All are welcome to this event, although booking is required. Seating is limited, so please register for a seat at the lecture at your earliest convenience.

The IAAS code of conduct applies to this event and all IAAS events.

In the interests of public safety and in light of sharply rising COVID-19 numbers, the IAAS asks that all attendees wear masks to this event. To sign up for the event, click here. 

About the speaker:

Dr Dara Downey lectures in English in Trinity College Dublin and Dublin City University. She is the author of American Women’s Ghost Stories in the Gilded Age (2014), editor of The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies, and co-editor (with Ian Kinane and Elizabeth Parker) of Landscapes of Liminality: Between Space and Place (2016). She has published widely on American Gothic fiction and popular culture, on authors from Charles Brockden Brown to Tananarive Due, and is currently writing a literary biography of Shirley Jackson for Palgrave Macmillan’s Literary Lives series.

About the W. A. Emmerson Annual Lecture:

Beginning in 2014, the IAAS Lecture is an annual event, hosted at a third level institution on the island of Ireland, and presented by an invited member of the IAAS on a topic of their choosing. In 2015, the lecture was renamed the W. A. Emmerson Lecture, in honour of our much-loved late Treasurer. Broad in its remit, the IAAS Lecture appeals to both academic and non-academic communities, and promotes the long-standing interest in and connection to American culture in Ireland.

EAAS Scholars-at-Risk Programme

Posted on by Sarah McCreedy

 

 

The European Association for American Studies announces a new 15,000 EUR Scholars-at-Risk grant program. We will be offering grants of up to 2,000 EUR to scholars working within the field of American Studies who find themselves in a situation of precarity. Given the life threatening nature of war, in the 2022 edition of the grant, priority will be given to scholars with Ukrainian citizenship.  

 

The grant is intended to cover expenses related to travel and research stay at a foreign institution or related to home-based digital access to archives and other scholarly materials.

 

To apply for the EAAS Scholars-at-Risk Grant, an applicant needs to fill in this application form, describing their proposed projects which can be related to their research, teaching at a university in one of European countries and aiming at establishing new academic initiatives between the grantee and their host institution in Europe. The application has to include an estimated budget. Applicants seeking travel grants to foreign institutions are expected to submit an invitation issued by the host institution; applicants seeking funds for a home-based digital access to archives and other materials, are expected to submit a recommendation letter from their home institution.

 

EAAS cannot help the applicants in arranging visas for the countries in which their host institution is. 

 

An applicant can apply for this scholarship once per year.

 

The grants will be awarded three times per year. The deadline for applications for 2022 are: June 30, September 1, November 15. 

 

Please send the application form (with all the necessary documents included) by email attachment to the address: aleksandra.izgarjan@ff.uns.ac.rs.

The Alan Graham Memorial Lecture 2022: Professor Joy Porter, “Wildness and Indigenous American Futures”

Posted on by Sarah McCreedy

 

The IAAS was honoured to invite Professor Joy Porter to deliver the Alan Graham Memorial Lecture, 2022–the keynote talk for our annual conference. This is now available to watch on our Youtube channel.

 

“In wildness is the preservation of the world” said Henry David Thoreau, but was he right? Does the idea of the wild instead enshrine outdated thinking that works to prevent the West from addressing the wicked problems of a warming world? Is wildness better dispensed with? This lecture addresses these questions as the globe grapples with a series of profound and indeterminate risks created by humans themselves – war, unprecedented inequality and the extinction of the earth’s vital natural producers- the birds, amphibians, mammals, reptiles and fish that have declined 68% since 1970. It considers the role for wildness in the coming era of synthetic biology where nature will routinely be altered by humans at the genetic level and it explores the role that conservationists anticipate “wild” Indigenous peoples will play in helping to restore the biodiversity without which our species cannot survive.

 

The IAAS opened this event to the public, because of the generous sponsorship of the School of English at Dublin City University. No part of this talk may be reproduced without prior consent. Please contact info@iaas.ie.

 

Prof. Porter is PI of the Treatied Spaces Research Group at the University of Hull which co-ordinates a portfolio of externally funded research with the aim of making treaties and environmental concerns central to debates across disciplines, policy registers and public discourse. She is PI of the Brightening the Covenant Chain AHRC Standard Research Grant, is currently a Leverhulme Major Research Fellow, and is a Lead Editor of the Cambridge University Press Series : Elements in Indigenous Environmental Research. Her most recent books are Trauma, Primitivism and the First World War (Bloomsbury, 2021) and Native American Environmentalism (University of Nebraska Press, 2014). You can catch the collaborative exhibition Joy and her Group organised, featuring the work of Anishinabeg artist and researcher Celeste Pedri-Spade until July 2022 at the American Museum & Gardens in Bath, UK and digitally via the Treatied Spaces website. Joy is also PI Host 2020-24 for British Academy Global Professor Gregory Smithers’ project “Native Ecologies: Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Climate Change”.