We are delighted to announce our Summer Bursary Winners!
Our Early-Career Conference Bursary Winner was Dr. Alan Carmody, while our Postgraduate Conference Bursary Winners were Máiréad Casey and Bowen Wang.
Congratulations, all!
Bodies and Boundaries in Irish and American Literature, to be held in Dublin City University on September 05-06, 2023, entirely in person.
This conference intends to explore twentieth and twenty-first century literature through the lens of literary geography and theories on space, place and embodiment. Indeed, by using the different approaches of literature and geography to “think beyond taken-for-granted categories, levels, and terms” (Hones, 688), literary geography allows a discussion that redefines not only the genres but also how one experiences a text according to different spatialities and bodies.
Papers addressing the following themes are especially welcomed and encouraged:
- Literary geography in relation to Irish literature, American literature, or Irish-American literature (20th-21st centuries)
- The body as a boundary
- Bodies and boundaries in literature
- Fictional accounts on: race; sexuality; gender; disability; social status; the “future body”
- Ecocriticism
- Political/ non-political bodies
- Gendering bodies and boundaries
- Keynote speakers: June Caldwell, Nessa Cronin, Sophie White and Emilie Pine.
If you are interested in participating in the conference, whether by giving a presentation or organising a panel, please send an abstract (300 words maximum) and a short biography (100 words) to: laetitia.nebotdeneuville2@mail.dcu.ie . If you want to attend the conference, please send an email to the same email address. Please specify your home institution for both cases.
Deadline for abstract submission and attendance registration: May 22, 2023.
Full details here:
The Irish Association for American Studies is calling for nominations for the following
positions on the Executive Committee:
Postgraduate caucus co-chair x 2
ECR caucus chair or co-chair (x 1 OR x 2)
Vice Chair
Please note that in accordance with the ethos of the IAAS, the committee especially
welcomes nominations for members from under-represented groups, backgrounds, and
ethnicities.
Ideally, we are looking for executive committee members who have experience and
familiarity with our activities, ideals, and membership. There are many ways to get involved
with the IAAS, and new members are very welcome at Association events.
- Nominations must be made by a member of the IAAS
- Nominees must be members of the IAAS
- We accept self-nominations
- All nominations will need to be seconded by an IAAS member
- All executive committee members, aside from fulfilling duties specific to their role,
will be expected to attend all IAAS committee meetings throughout the year (there
are usually 5 meetings per annum) - The positions will be elected by members of the IAAS during the AGM (28th April
2023, University of Limerick) - Please email your nominations or any queries to our Secretary Dr Sarah McCreedy,
at info@iaas.ie by 14th April 2023.
Postgraduate caucus co-chair general responsibilities:
- Attendance at all IAAS committee meetings
- Attendance at IAAS events, where appropriate
- Assistance with widening the reach of the IAAS via own networks
- Working with their fellow Postgraduate caucus co-chair to provide a report at
committee meetings on activities and feedback from the Postgraduate members of
the IAAS - Running, with their fellow co-chair and with the support of the IAAS committee, the
annual IAAS Postgraduate symposium (October/November). - The term of the appointment is two years, renewable. It is usually recommended
that the PG caucus co-chairs are in their second+ year of postgraduate study.
ECR caucus chair or co-chair general responsibilities:
- Attendance at all IAAS committee meetings
- Attendance at IAAS events
- Working to implement initiatives aimed at benefitting the experience of American
Studies early career academics on the island of Ireland and beyond - Working to raise the profile and membership of the IAAS among early career
networks - Organising an ECR-focused panel/workshop/roundtable at the annual IAAS
conference - The term of the appointment is two years, renewable.
Vice Chair general responsibilities:
- Attendance at all IAAS committee meetings
- Attendance at IAAS events, and providing support where needed
- Submitting prizes and other relevant news reports at committee meetings
- Assistance with widening the reach of the IAAS via own networks
- Recruiting and chairing prizes sub-committee
- Prizes marketing and administration
- Contributing to prizes and bursaries judging where a casting vote is needed
- Liaising with winners and with Treasurer for announcements and payments, etc.
- Administering biannual Book Prize submissions
- Assisting Chair with administrative and leadership tasks
- Deputising for Chair when needed
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
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
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/
.
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).
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.
The IAAS are delighted to announce the winner of this year’s WTM Riches Essay Prize. Christina McCambridge, an MA student at Queen’s University Belfast, has been selected as the overall winner for her essay entitled “‘Music dismantles history’: A Postcolonial Reading of Musicality and Temporality in the Chamber Poetics of T.S. Eliot and Ishion Hutchinson.”
The WTM Riches Essay Prize is awarded annually for outstanding work in any area of American Studies by undergraduate students and students in the first year of postgraduate studies. More information, including past winners, can be found here.
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
Telephone: 804.342.9663
Heidelberg Center for American Studies 20th Annual Spring Academy Conference
Heidelberg, Germany, 20–24 March, 2023
*Call for Papers *
The twentieth HCA Spring Academy on American Culture, Economics, Geography, History, Literature, Politics, and Religion will be held from March 20-24, 2023. The Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCA) invites applications for this annual one-week conference that provides twenty international Ph.D. students with the opportunity to present and discuss their Ph.D. projects.
The HCA Spring Academy invites participants to work closely with experts in their respective fields of study and offers workshops held by visiting scholars.
We encourage applications that pursue an interdisciplinary approach and range broadly across the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Papers can be presented on any subject relating to the study of the United States of America. Possible topics include American identity, issues of ethnicity, gender, transatlantic relations, U.S. domestic and foreign policy, economics, as well as various aspects of American history, literature, religion, geography, law, musicology, and culture. Proposals should include a preliminary title and run to no more than 300 words.
Participants are requested to prepare a 20-minute presentation of their research project, which will be followed by a 40-minute discussion. The presentations will be arranged into ten panel groups.
In addition to cross-disciplinary and international discussions during the panel sessions, the Spring Academy aims at creating a pleasant collegial atmosphere for further scholarly exchange and contact.
Accommodation will be provided by the Heidelberg Center for American Studies.
Thanks to a small travel fund, the Spring Academy is able to subsidize travel expenses for participants registered and residing in soft-currency countries. Scholarship applicants will need to document the necessity for financial aid and explain how they plan to cover any potentially remaining expenses. In addition, a letter of recommendation from their doctoral advisor is required.
START OF APPLICATION PROCESS: August 15, 2022
DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS: November 15, 2022
SELECTIONS WILL BE MADE BY: January 2023
PLEASE USE OUR ONLINE APPLICATION SYSTEM: www.hca-springacademy.de
MORE INFORMATION: www.hca.uni-heidelberg.de
FOR FURTHER QUESTIONS: springacademy@hca.uni-heidelberg.de
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