Popularizing STEM | Science and Technology in 21st-Century US Popular Culture 15-19 November 2021 (hybrid format conference)

Confirmed keynotes: Gerry Canavan, Charles Adler, Stina Attebery, André Brock, Emily Cox- Palmer-White, J. Jesse Ramírez.
Follow further updates on Twitter or the official conference website!

In 1959, British physicist and novelist C.P. Snow delivered a lecture in which he highlighted the increasing intellectual separation between the humanities and the sciences—the emergence of “two cultures.” While his arguments were clearly anchored in British society, he nevertheless suggested that this emerging chasm was “a problem of the entire West.” To present the argument in a perhaps even more exaggerated manner than Snow did: Not even the most highly educated humanities scholars can comprehend basic physics, while what we today would refer to as STEM professors don’t read “highbrow” literature. Snow came to understand that the situation was not quite as black-and-white as he suggested, which is why he anticipated the emergence of a “third culture” a few years later.

Of course, much has happened in the sixty-plus years since Snow’s iconic lecture. And, indeed, scholars such as Rachel Holland have diagnosed the emergence of a “third culture” and, along with it, third-culture cultural objects. In her recent book Contemporary Fiction and Science (2019), Holland argues that the increasing presence of science in fiction (and, by extension, popular culture) “is, in part, a response to the upsurge in interest […] in popular science.” Holland identifies a “new strand of fiction” that engages with “elements of popular science in a number of ways. These include: researching and relaying information gleaned from scientific publications; challenging or promoting ideas presented by science writers; exploring the moral and ethical implications of these ideas; and testing the limits and capabilities of the novel in relation to scientific discourse.” As some of the elements in this list suggest, science is a tool of power; science is purported to be objective and, hence, often serves as a purveyor of Truth. As such, it has been (ab)used in a variety of ways in the course of history–among others, scientific curiosity drove (and technology made possible) the exploration and colonization of foreign lands, science explained the inferiority of non-white peoples, iconic Nazi doctor Josef Mengele experimented on humans in the name of scientific progress, etc.

Holland’s elaborations also indicate that science and technology have taken an integral place in global society—and the ongoing pandemic has brought this process to the fore. Due to the proliferation of science and technology on television, in films, video games, and other popular media and the attendant use of YouTube and other platforms by STEM fields, it is important to study the dynamic and complex interrelationship between science & technology and popular culture. Indeed, science & technology has infiltrated popular culture. However, this is not a one-way street! “The cultural products that scientific discoveries and developments sparked have become significant parts of the discourse surrounding science,” as Steven Gil rightfully stresses in the opening editorial of the Journal of Science & Popular Culture.

We are particularly interested in presentations that seek to engage with questions of intersectional discrimination in STEM representations in popular culture, spanning from cultural products aimed at dissemination and debate on STEM to texts such as films, TV series, comics and graphic novels, genre fiction, video games, new media narratives.

Suggested fields of analysis might include but are not limited to:

  • STEM dissemination in popular culture: storytelling strategies, (in)accuracy, multimedia programs and projects promoting access, flexibility, and adaptability in STEM education and knowledge, deconstructing the existing barriers within the field and building equality in legitimacy
  • Interrelationship between STEM and Popular Culture: Using popular culture to teach/educate on STEM (i.e., in STEM programs) and teaching about STEM via popular culture
  • Economic discourses and the challenges of capitalism related to STEM in US popular culture and media
  • Representation of STEM in popular culture aimed at children and young adults
  • Intersectionality versus marginalization in the dissemination and communicationof science and technology
  • STEM and Gender Studies :  the portrayal of masculine, feminine, and gender non-conforming individuals in STEM-centered popular media narratives
  • Science, tech, and race/ethnicity: Afro(Latinx), Indigenous, and Chicana Futurism(s), minority perspectives, alternative narratives, borderland spaces
  • Digital technology and virtual realities as safe spaces for marginalized groups
  • The use of science and technology in depictions of the future as critiques or reevaluations of current realities: tech-noir and sci-fi utopias, dystopias, post/apocalyptic scenarios, and retrofuturism 
  • Cyborgs, AI, and the human: representations, conflicts, and horrific developments
  •  Health and technology: care robots and the representation of disabilities, human aging, biomedical issues
  • Representations of surveillance, biometrics, and biological citizenship
  • Tech, science, and the (non)human body: narratives related to experimentation,bioethics, artificial monstrosity, transhumanism, biopunk
  • Pop depictions of STEM: (in)accuracy, “prediction” of future technologies, breaking down the science and tech behind superhero narrativesDeadline for submission: August 31, 2021.Submit your abstract proposal (~ 300 words) at popmec.stem@gmail.com as an attachment, including name, affiliation if any, and contact email. Depending on the proposals and participants’ response, an editorial project might originate from the conference.

The conference will take place on the days 15-19 November 2021 in mixed format:

  • ONLINE | panels and main keynotes
  • IN PRESENCE at Universidad de Alcalá, historical campus, Friday 19 November |2 keynotes + workshop/seminars. If it will be feasible considering the changing COVID-19 related measures, we will allow selected panels to be carried out in person (if their participants wish to do so)Participation fees:
  • FREE for PopMeC members (membership yearly fees: 12€ students / non-tenured / unwaged / retired, 20€ regular)
  • Non-members: 15€                                                                 

 

The conference is organized by the PopMeC Association for US Popular Culture Studies, in collaboration with the Instituto Franklin-UAH located in Alcalá de Henares (Madrid, ES) and the academic research project Fiction Meets Science.Organizing committee: Michael Fuchs and Anna Marta Marini (coordinators), Laura Álvarez Trigo, Paula Barba Guerrero, Paul Mitchell, Dina Pedro, Erika Tiburcio.
On-site organization: Francisco Sáez de Adana, Ana Serra, Carlos Herrero (Instituto Franklin- UAH).

Call for general submissions:  The Society of Americanist Review

Following the publication of our second annual volume, the editors of SOAR are pleased to announce that we will begin to move to a twice-annual publication schedule! In support of this goal, we invite the submission of general interdisciplinary scholarship relating to the culture of the United States. The journal publishes work in a variety of formats, including research articles; forum, discussion, memorial, and state-of-the-field essays; dialogues and interviews; reports on programs, organizations, and pedagogy; as well as book, exhibit, and media reviews. Submissions undergo a rigorous multi-tiered peer review process that includes the journal’s editorial staff, advisory board members, and external reviewers. 

For more information about how to submit to SOAR, see our submission guidelines. Submissions can be made directly through our website.

Deadline for submissions: September 01, 2021. 

 

Find out more about our mission and editorial board here. Check out our second volume “The Resistance” here.

 

For general inquiries, please contact the editors at: americanist@psu.edu

 

 

 

Wastelands

34TH EUROPEAN ASSOCIATION FOR AMERICAN STUDIES CONFERENCE

Madrid 6-8 April 2022

Organized by the UNED (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia)

with the collaboration of the Universidad Complutense.

 

The year 2022 marks the centenary of the publication of T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land. The title of the conference alludes to Eliot’s work and the main themes in it, expanding the idea of the wasteland to the study of the United States. Hence, the overarching theme of the conference is open to all kinds of reflections around the concept of “wasteland” and waste. EAAS 2022 invites proposals that address the concept of waste in U.S. culture, history, and politics.

 

Proposals may address (but are not restricted to) the following topics:

WASTELANDS IN THE ANTHROPOCENE

  • Environmental waste (water, land, e-waste, etc.).
  • Anti-Waste: degrowth philosophy.
  • “Zero waste” movement and consumerism.
  • Food waste.
  • Wastelands as devastation of spaces.
  • Waste of resources (human, natural, economic, etc.).

 

THE ETHICS OF WASTE

  • Moral waste: deterioration of democracies and other values. Empty discourses (political, cultural, etc.).
  • Wasted opportunities (land of opportunities, American dream).
  • Waste as a “negative store”, as opposed to the archive; forgetting, destruction, and latent cultural memory.
  • Waste of information: useless and redundant data, technology, media, etc.

 

CORPOREAL WASTE

  • Illnesses and pathologies.
  • Age: The Growing Land.
  • Emotional wastelands: real or metaphorical
  • Pandemics and other physical threats.

 

LITERARY AND CULTURAL REPRESENTATIONS OF WASTELANDS

 

  • ‘Wasteland” as an image of decadence, crisis, and postwar.
  • Barrenness vs. fertility, hopelessness vs. regeneration.
  • S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and its literary / cultural influence.
  • Literary representations of wastelands.
  • (Audio)visual representations of wastelands.
  • Ruins, trash, in painting, music, film, and other artistic representations.

 

SUGGESTED FORMATS:

EAAS 2022 accepts abstracts and proposals including individual papers, complete panels, workshops or talkshops.

Paper proposals should be 300 words maximum. Individual papers should be 15 minute presentations.

Panel proposals should include a description of the panel as a whole and the abstracts of three individual papers.  Full panels have 1 h. 30 minutes.

Workshops or Roundtables of 4-5 participants with shorter statements and discussion on a given research topic or common theme. Presentations for workshops will be uploaded one month in advance of the conference to encourage intellectual exchange.

Workshop and Talkshop proposals should include a title and a brief description of the theme. Workshops and talkshops have 1 h. for questions or debate.

We strongly encourage and will give preference to panels that reflect the diversity of our field in terms of gender, ethnicity, and institutional affiliation. We encourage the participation of scholars from different institutions and countries.

Presentations are restricted to one paper per participant at the conference.

 

SUBMISSIONS:

Submissions are made through the webpage of the conference: https://eaas2022.com/

 

DEADLINE for submissions: September 30

Notification: October 31

Contact: conference@eaas2022.com

 

This edited collection seeks to explore the representation of the First Lady in a range of different texts and media. The collection aims to examine the President’s wife in a purely cultural context by investigating the ways in which she has been represented, embodied, characterised and commemorated in film, fiction, memoir, photography and portraiture, television, theatre, education, museum studies, fashion, and social media.

Beyond the White House is an original work that makes use of cultural interpretation to reconfigure the figure of the First Lady as a culturally authoritative individual possessing the ability to sway, change, inspire, and manipulate public attention and opinion. Moving away from biographies and histories, this is the first volume of its kind to consider the representation of the First Lady figure through the prism of popular culture – and therefore consider her impact upon ‘cultural politics’ – and the first to regard her as a strategically important socio-cultural figure.

Removed from the patriarchal hierarchy of White House politics and expectations, the First Lady emerges as a force of her own; she subtly carves out cultural agency and gender identity despite her (in)visibility in the public eye. Simply by being the ‘First Lady of the United States’ she possesses what MaryAnne Borrelli has labelled the “performance of descriptive representation” (Women and the White House: 229). The relationship between the woman and the office is paramount; the existence of the title ‘First Lady’ permits popular culture to tolerate or reject not only political and cultural manoeuvring, but also issues of gender, race, self, location, fashion, identity, satire, memory, authority, and even pedagogy. The office of the First Lady is what the woman makes it, and in Beyond the White House she has become a commanding cultural icon.

 

Possible topics might include (but are not limited to):

 

  • The First Lady in film and on television (both fictional First Ladies and representations of real First Ladies, such as in the new First Ladies series from Showtime)
  • First Ladies in fiction (this might be retellings of the stories of real First Ladies, or new fictional First Ladies)
  • First Ladies and self-representation, life-writing and memoir (i.e. Becoming by Michelle Obama, Hard Choices by Hilary Clinton)
  • First Ladies in education; how the role of FLOTUS is represented and taught in classrooms
  • The First Lady on display; exhibitions, curatorship and portraiture of FLOTUS
  • Photography and portraiture of the First Ladies (in magazines, photoshoots and journalism as well as official portraiture)
  • First Ladies on stage and in theatre
  • Fashion and the First Ladies (from inaugural gowns to Melania’s ‘I really don’t care’ jacket)
  • Self-representation and social media; FLOTUS on Twitter and Instagram.

 

 

Please send 300-500 word abstracts, a short bio to Dr Anne-Marie Evans (a.evans@yorksj.ac.uk) and Dr Sarah Trott (s.trott@yorksj.ac.uk ) by 16th July 2021.

“Music in American Nineteenth Century History”

 

Co-editors: J. M. Mancini and Billy Coleman

 

Abstracts Due — 30 September 2021

Draft Papers Due — 30 May 2022 

Symposium – mid-June 2022 (tentative)

Full Papers Due for peer review — 30 September 2022
Planned publication — mid-2023

 

In the nineteenth-century United States, music was everywhere: at work, leisure, and prayer; in places of worship and in the home, on the battlefield and on the path of reform; in times of joy, in times of crisis, and in times of mourning.  And yet in comparison to literature or art and material culture, music and musical practice remain largely unsung within nineteenth-century US historiography.  Thus until recently most historians ignored music–or considered its analysis beyond the bounds of historical inquiry.  As a result, music has only begun to be treated as integral to the nineteenth-century experience, or analysed through a historical lens that sees and hears the world first and foremost through historical processes–social, economic, political, cultural, environmental–rather than through practices, parameters, and personnel derived from and internal to the world of music.  

 

Nonetheless, recent developments suggest that nineteenth-century American history is undergoing a musical turn.  The aim of this special issue is to build on this momentum by bringing together members of a growing, but disparate community of historians; musicologists; and historically-minded interdisciplinary scholars, for a timely conversation on music and nineteenth-century American history spanning the Revolution to the invention of recorded sound. Possible topics include:

 

  • What relationships existed between the many profound social transformations of the nineteenth century (e.g., emancipation; mass education/literacy; conquest; mass migration) and musical change?
  • How did the many forms of transregional encounter that characterised the nineteenth-century US (empire/conflict, migration, commerce, evangelism, reform) interact with musical exchange, both inside the US and globally? 
  • How can historians make sense of the many diverse settings for nineteenth-century US music, and the transformations that occurred both within those settings (congregations; domestic spaces; townscapes; military contexts; commercial stages; etc.) and in terms of overall shifts (e.g., the displacement of music-making in informal settings to performance in dedicated, often commercial spaces?) 
  • How did the gendering of music relate to broader historical trends?
  • How did technological rupture–from mass print to recorded sound–transform musical practice and the place of music in American life?  
  • How did music contribute to the construction of race and concepts of racial difference across the long nineteenth century?
  • What was the relationship between music, nation-making, and nationalism in nineteenth-century America? How did it evolve over time and space?
  • How did music practices, or perceptions of musical power, map onto different political ideologies or partisan-based identities?
  • How can historians think through the many binary relationships in nineteenth-century American music such as sacred/secular, commercial/non-commercial, signed/anonymous, individual/communal, private/public, written/oral, recorded/unrecorded, formal/informal?
  • What historiographical trends have shaped the incorporation of music into nineteenth-century American history over time? What new methodological opportunities may offer the most constructive paths forward?
  • How can scholars leverage recent technological and metahistorical developments to make historical music available to listeners and usable in the history classroom?

 

We seek submissions of 300–500 word abstracts proposing articles for consideration for publication, with full manuscripts to follow. In addition to the abstract, please advise us of your interest and capacity to participate in a symposium event for workshopping drafts (whether in-person or in a hybrid digital format).  Please also advise us of your potential interest in, and any musical or technical skills you may be willing to contribute to, a possible soundtrack album aimed at facilitating the use of this research in the classroom. Acceptance of an abstract does not mean acceptance of a paper and submitted papers will proceed through American Nineteenth Century History’s usual peer-review process.

 

Please send abstracts and all queries to J. M. Mancini (JoAnne.Mancini@mu.ie) or Billy Coleman (colemanw@missouri.edu) by September 30, 2021.

 

The IAAS Postgraduate Symposium

“Parallel Lives in America”

Virtual Event via Zoom

13th-14th of November, 2020

Last year, the Irish Association for American Studies’ Postgraduate Symposium, titled “The Land of the Unfree”, sought to interrogate the legitimacy of democracy in America. One year on, in the midst of a global pandemic, this legitimacy has not only been interrogated, but put on trial.

In the U.S., the COVID-19 pandemic has both exacerbated and exposed already existent crises: social, political and economic, among others. Referred to by The New York Times as “The Pandemic Inequality Feedback Loop”, research has shown that individuals of lower economic strata and minority groups are both more likely to contract the virus, and to die from it. From bulk buying to wide-spread job losses, the concerns and priorities of American citizens have existed on a wide spectrum according to relative levels of privilege and oppression.

The 2020 postgraduate symposium, taking place in the IAAS’ 50th year, therefore endeavours to investigate “Parallel Lives” in America. In this context, “Parallel Lives” signify the juxtaposition of the wealthy with the poor, those with power to those who are oppressed, and those who discriminate to those who are discriminated against. As the #BlackLivesMatter movement has shown, exposing and resisting the discord between parallel ways of living is essential for social change, particularly in a world where our lives have become more interconnected than ever before.

While this conference takes inspiration from the present moment, we are particularly interested in historical roots, parallels and contemporary repetitions, and welcome transhistorical papers and panels.

To be conducted over the course of Friday and Saturday afternoon on the 13th-14th November, the interdisciplinary symposium will be run as a virtual event via Zoom. Participants will be invited to complete a webinar registration to be able to join the symposium.

300 word proposals for ten-minute papers, along with a short academic biography, are welcomed from PGRs and ECRs working in the field of American Studies across disciplines including literature, history, film, politics, music, art and media. The deadline for submissions is Friday, 9th October, 2020.

The IAAS is committed to the development of postgraduate and early career researchers. Therefore, the symposium will also feature workshops specifically designed for these scholars.

Paper topics may include but are not limited to:

  • Racial/gender/social/economic inequalities in the U.S.
  • The intersectionalities of equality and inequality
  • Widening socio-economic discrepancies in times of American crisis
  • Narratives of resistance, counternarratives
  • Protest literature and movements, particularly #BlackLivesMatter
  • Documenting Protest
  • The role of art and the artist in social change

For more information, or to submit a proposal, please email us at: postgrad@iaas.ie

 

The following Calls for Papers have been announced this month:

27th Biennial Conference of the Nordic Association for American Studies

“What Happened? Continuities and Discontinuities in American Culture”

Uppsala, Sweden, May 20-22, 2021

Deadline – 15 September 2020.

https://naas2021.com/.

The 27th biennial conference of the Nordic Association for American Studies (NAAS) will take place on May 20–22, 2021, in Uppsala, Sweden. The conference also serves as the 11th biennial conference of the Swedish Association for American Studies (SAAS).

Please see the CFP for more information on this years’s theme ”What happened? Continuities and Discontinuities in American Culture.” Although we encourage panel and paper proposals that engage with this theme, we welcome proposals on any topic related to American studies. The deadline for submission is September 15, 2020.

The conference will take place at Uppsala University, Sweden’s first university, located some 70 kms north of Stockholm, easily accessible by train or by flight to Stockholm-Arlanda airport. The conference is open to scholars and students from all countries, but we offer lower registration fees to members of NAAS (Nordic Association for American Studies), EAAS (European Association for American Studies), and ASA (American Studies Association in the U.S.)

 

Humboldt University in Berlin

“Doing Southern Studies Today”

Berlin, January 14-15, 2021

Deadline – 1st August 2020.

In the field of Southern Studies, the first twenty years of the 21st century were defined by attempts to formulate and visualize the future of Southern Studies, as evidenced by publications such as Suzanne W. Jones and Sharon Monteith’s South to a New Place: Region, LiteratureCulture (2002), Jon Smith’s Finding Purple America: The South and the Future of American Cultural Studies (2013), or Zackary Vernon’s Ecocriticism and the Future of Southern Studies (2019) – to name only a few. The “future,” most publications propose, lies beyond traditional narratives of Southern exceptionalism and sectionalism that promote a specific “sense of place” that cannot be found outside the South. A more dynamic and global understanding of the South needs to be implemented if Southern Studies wants to contribute to a critical engagement with current and past cultural and social developments, in and outside the U.S. Despite the expansion of the scope of Southern Studies though, the ‘old’ questions remain: What and where is “the South”? What is “southern”? While “sense-of-place”-regionalism, a rather essentialist and nativist approach to being “southern,” is outdated, the concern with the “place of ‘place’” in Southern Studies remains.

This conference aims to bring together scholars who want to share their work on “the South” and “doing Southern Studies” in an uncommon place: Berlin – a place outside “the South.” We don’t expect definite answers to the ‘old’ questions (although we welcome them). We rather want to explore the trajectories of Southern Studies in and outside the U.S. We owe our title to Scott Romine and Jennifer Rae Greeson who claim that “[d]oing Southern Studies is unmasking and refusing the binary thinking – ‘North’/‘South,’ nation/South, First World/Third World, self/other,” it is “thinking geographically, thinking historically, thinking relationally, thinking about power, thinking about justice, thinking back” (2016: 4). We take their definitions as this conference’s objective and seek an exchange of these thoughts. We are particularly interested in papers that tackle the South as a “multiplicity of communities” (Gray 2002: xxiii), factoring in race, gender, sexuality and ethnicity; the role (or rather the problematic exclusivity) of whiteness in Southern Studies; imaginations of “the South” in popular media; the Global South and the possible transnational routes of Southern Studies. The first confirmed keynote speaker is Martyn Richard Bone (University of Copenhagen), author of The Postsouthern Sense of Place in Contemporary Fiction (2005).

 

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words and a short biographical info to conference organizers Evangelia Kindinger (Humboldt University in Berlin) and Greta Kaisen (Humboldt University in Berlin) at doingsouthernstudies@gmail.com. The deadline for paper proposals is 1 August 2020.

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Department of English Language and Literature

National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

in collaboration with the Hellenic Association of American Studies (HELAAS)

invites you to participate in the international conference:

AFTER POSTMODERNISM: AMERICAN STUDIES IN THE 21ST CENTURY

December 17-19, 2020

EXTENDED DEADLINE FOR PROPOSAL SUBMISSION: 06 MARCH 2020

There is a shared sense among a large majority of historians, philosophers, critics and artists that we are now living in a new global moment:  our contemporary era may or may not have started with the fall of the Berlin Wall, in 1989; may or may not have established itself in the wake of the 9/11 attacks; but it is painfully clear that, in the new millennium, a new debate on the “post-postmodern” has opened up. If the Jamesonian taxonomy no longer has the same explanatory power, what is the new dominant cultural logic of post-postmodernism? If, to quote Jameson again, postmodernism was a “radical break or coupure” with modernism, which is post-postmodernism’s cultural imaginary, its strategies and features? However early it may be to describe the nature of post-postmodernism, we can discern three loosely bounded interpenetrating strands: some scholars recognize a heightened degree of intensity and mutation of tendencies and techniques already present in postmodernism, others see a renewed engagement with history and a return to realism. Still, there are those thinkers who have observed a decisive break with the postmodern period and have struggled to mark its contours in the new socioeconomic order, a notable feature of which is the shift or questioning of the paradigm of the American global hegemony. Nevertheless, complicating the study of the cultural shifts that are underway in our current condition is the abundance of terms and tendencies that proclaim to be postmodernism’s successors.

The conference “After post-modernism: American Studies in the 21st century” takes as a point of departure the words of Ben Lerner’s narrator, that “the world [is] rearranging itself” (10.04) and invites both panels and papers that address fresh and original questions relevant to studying the post-postmodern condition. It seeks to investigate questions about changing literary patterns, innovative/shifting cultural practices, and new trends that have risen in the first two decades of the twenty-first century or, to put it simply, what comes after postmodernism. 

Possible topics could cover

  • The post-nationalist turn in American Studies
  • American Literature and the posthuman turn
  • Aspects of autofiction in contemporary art, literature and popular culture
  • New literacies and American fiction
  • New Media literacy and authorial practices
  • Post-exceptionalist American fiction
  • Deterritorialization and American migrant literature
  • American literature and Ecoglobalist presences
  • Post theory and the ‘novelizations’ of literary theory
  • Writership/readership in the post-postmodern

Please send 300-word abstracts to Dr. Dora Tsimpouki (tsimpouki@enl.uoa.gr), along with a short (150-word) biographical note by our NEW deadline for abstracts: March 06, 2020.

Transatlantic Studies Association
19th Annual Conference
Centre for International Studies, ISCTE-IUL, Lisbon
6-8 July 2020

_________

Call for Papers

Submissions are invited for the 2020 Annual Conference

KEYNOTE LECTURES

Professor Andrew Moravcsik (Princeton University)

“Why meeting NATO’s 2% target would make Europe (and the West) less secure”

AND

Professor Anna Brickhouse (University of Virginia)
2020 Mayflower Lecture

   “From Lima to Lisbon: Earthquake History in the Making”

Co-sponsored by the University of Plymouth:

‘Mayflower 400: Atlantic Crossings’

PLUS

A Roundtable discussion on:

Southern Transatlantic Connections and the Cold War

_________

The TSA is a broad network of scholars who use the ‘transatlantic’ as a frame of reference for their work in a variety of disciplines, including (but not limited to): history, politics and international relations, and literary studies. All transatlantic-themed paper and panel proposals from these and related disciplines are welcome.

The conference is organised around a number of subject themes, each of which is convened by members of the conference programme committee. If you would like to discuss your paper or panel proposal prior to submission, please contact the relevant programme committee members. This year’s subject themes are: 

  1. Diplomatic and international history
    David Ryan, david.ryan@ucc.ie, Chris Jespersen, christopher.jespersen@ung.edu
  1. Political and intellectual history
    Joe Renouard, jrenoua1@jhu.edu, Ana Monica Fonseca, ana_monica_fonseca@iscte.iul.pt 
  1. Social, cultural and religious history

Kristin Cook, kc31@soas.ac.uk, Constance Post, cjpost@iastate.edu

  1. International Relations and Security Studies

Luís Rodrigues, luis.rodrigues@iscte-iul.pt, Joe Renouard, jrenoua1@jhu.edu 

  1. Literature, film, and theatre
    Donna Gessell, donna.gessell@ung.edu, Finn Pollard, fpollard@lincoln.ac.uk
  1. Business and finance

Thomas Mills, t.c.mills@lancaster.ac.uk, António Monteiro, asousamonteiro@gmail.com

  1. Latin America in a transatlantic context

Robert Howes, robert.howes@kcl.ac.uk, Pedro Seabra, pedro.seabra@iscte-iul.pt

  1. Ethnicity, race and migration

Kristin Cook, kc31@soas.ac.uk, Ana Lúcia Sá, ana.lucia.sa@iscte-iul.pt 

Special subject theme:

‘Mayflower 400: Atlantic Crossings’


The TSA is pleased to join the University of Plymouth, England in welcoming proposals that seek to place the Mayflower voyage within an Atlantic context, and that offer an opportunity to better understand, interrogate and develop the political, religious, scientific and economic forces which shaped the Atlantic world in this historical moment and beyond. In commemorating ‘Mayflower 400’, we seek to uncover and enable voices and identities which forged, or were forged by, Atlantic crossings of many kinds. The 2020 TSA conference thus welcomes scholars focusing on the Mayflower voyage and its legacies, or on early America from historical/cultural/literary perspectives.

Other formats

In addition to the subject themes above, we welcome papers and panels on any aspect of transatlantic studies. Interdisciplinary papers and panels are particularly welcome, as are innovative formats, such as roundtables, workshops or multimedia presentations.

Submission Instructions

Panel proposals should constitute three or four presenters and a Chair (as well as a discussant if desired). Panel proposals should be sent by email as one document attachment to tsalisbon2020@gmail.com, and include:

  • 300-word overview of the panel theme;
  • 300-word abstracts for each of the papers;
  • 100-word author biographies;
  • 2-page CVs for all participants.

The subject line of the email for panel proposals should read: ‘TSA Proposal-[Last name of panel convenor]-[Subject theme]’ (state ‘Other’ if not falling under listed themes) (E.g. ‘TSA Proposal-Smith-Diplomacy and International History’).

Individual paper proposals should be sent by email as one document attachment, and include:

  • 300-word abstract for the paper
  • 100-word author biography;
  • 2-page CV.

The subject line of the email for paper proposals should read: ‘TSA Proposal-[Last name of presenter]-[Subject theme]’ (state ‘Other’ if not falling under listed themes) (E.g. ‘TSA Proposal-Smith-Other).

Travel Grants

The TSA particularly welcomes proposals from new members and junior scholars. Travel grants are available to support early career scholars presenting a paper at the conference. As a result of funding from the Halle Foundation, the TSA is able this year to offer a number of additional travel grants to support early career scholars presenting a paper on any aspect of relations between the United States and Germany.

If wishing to apply for a travel grant, applicants should indicate this in the body of the email when submitting their paper or panel. If papers are believed to qualify for Halle Foundation funding, this should be indicated. In addition to the materials requested above, travel grant applicants should include a brief statement explaining why it is important for them to attend the TSA conference, and an outline of the principal costs entailed. For further details about TSA travel grants, see the TSA website: www.transatlanticstudies.com

Deadline for panel and paper proposals: 27 January 2020
All paper and panel proposals, and travel grant applications, should be sent to the conference email: tsalisbon2020@gmail.com.

NB: The working language of the conference will be English.


The Conference Location

On the right bank of the river Tagus, Lisbon is a city whose legendary history stretches back over twenty centuries. Lisbon’s exceptional light has charmed writers, photographers and filmmakers with the polychrome façade tiles serving to create a particular atmosphere. On foot, by tram, by boat or walking on the banks of the Tagus, and even on the metro – an open underground museum of contemporary Portuguese art – any means serves to reveal the cultural diversity of the Portuguese capital.

Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL) is a public university established in 1972. Pursuing teaching, research and community service activities, it plays a major role in educating qualified specialists and personnel, whose cultural, scientific and technical skills enable them to contribute to sustainable development both at the national and the global level.

Located in the central Entrecampos area of Lisbon, ISCTE is easily accessible by metro, train and bus. Lisbon Airport is a short drive away and has direct flights throughout Europe and to North and South America. 

Contact details and further information

Chair of TSA: Christopher Jespersen: christopher.jespersen@ung.edu

Vice-Chair of TSA: Thomas Mills: t.c.mills@lancaster.ac.uk

Secretary of TSA: Kristin Cook: kc31@soas.ac.uk

Local Organiser: Luís Rodrigues, luis.rodrigues@iscte-iul.pt

The Cormac McCarthy Society’s Eighth International Conference

Cormac McCarthy’s Irish Roots and Influences: Yeats-Joyce-Beckett-O’Brien-Celtic Myth and Lore

Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland – June 16-18, 2020

Call for papers

The Cormac McCarthy Society and the Department of English of Trinity College Dublin announce an international conference on Cormac McCarthy’s Irish literary influences to be held in the Long Room Hub at Trinity College in Dublin on June 16, 17 and 18th, 2020. Our hosts will be Stephen Matterson of the Department of English, Trinity College, and Steven Frye, President of the Cormac McCarthy Society.

We welcome submissions for papers for this conference. Our special areas of concern will be Cormac McCarthy’s roots in, allusions and indebtedness to Irish literature, religious practices, folklore and mythology as represented in his novels and screenplays, as well as in films of his work. We invite particular focus on McCarthy and William Butler Yeats, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. Discussions of the current political issues occasioned by the United Kingdom’s de facto Brexit revision of the Good Friday Agreement and possible rekindling of “the troubles” are invited as long as some organic connection with literary issues is maintained.

We also invite papers on all other areas of McCarthy’s work, especially with regard to Irish and Catholic literature worldwide.

For those of you who are submitting conference proposals for the first time, please check the existing critical literature to be sure that you are breaking new ground or, at least, looking at the existing texts or criticism in some new or novel way.

Please submit your one to one and a half page precis for papers with an approximately 20-minute reading time, or for three to four paper complete panel proposals. Submissions should be accompanied by brief one-paragraph author’s biography or CV. Full session times for panels will run about 90 minutes. All proposals must be submitted by no later than March 30, 2020. Proposals should be submitted to Stephen Matterson and Rick Wallach, conference co-directors, as Word.doc or PDF attachments at info@cormacmccarthy.com. We will make every effort to qualify your submissions within a short period of time so you can make your travel arrangements as early as possible.

We will be posting more information on accommodations at and near Trinity College, and the costs of conference registration fees, in the near future on our web site, www.cormacmccarthy.com,  and will contact all who submit proposals immediately by email as we firm up our plans. Please also direct any questions you have about the conference to info@cormacmccarthy.com.  Check our web site periodically for regular updates.