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.

COVID-19 UPDATE: CONFERENCE POSTPONED
It is with no small amount of sadness that we can now confirm IAAS2020 will not run on 3-4 April.
Given the situation with COVID-19, we could not ethically or intellectually justify going ahead with the conference under the current circumstances.
We are hoping to reschedule the conference for November, to run in conjunction with the PG conference as a large, group effort of celebration and solidarity. We will let you know more about this in due course.
If you would still like to be a part of the conference, please bear with us.
If you require a refund, please get in touch via the conference gmail.

With heartfelt thanks for your understanding and your collegiality.

Catherine Gander and the IAAS2020 team.

Dr Nerys young

‘Captive City, Captive Audience: Film, Television and the Kefauver Crime Hearings’

The IAAS is delighted to announce that Dr Nerys Young will deliver this year’s W.A. Emmerson Lecture. Due to Covid-19, this lecture was postponed. We are now very happy to announce that it will take place online on September 9th at 6pm.

Dr Nerys Young is a Lecturer in American History at Ulster University. Her research interests include screen politics, mass communication, journalism, American Politics and public affairs. She is the current Treasurer of the Irish Association for American Studies.

The W.A. Emmerson Lecture is named in honour of Tony Emmerson, one of the IAAS’s founding members, and is a highlight of the association’s annual events. Information on previous lectures can be found here.

WATCH THE LECTURE

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.

Melissa Baird, Queen’s University Belfast

The Postgraduate (PhD) Travel and Research Bursary enabled me to travel to the United States for two weeks to gather sources from several different archives relating to my thesis which examines Irish-American responses to the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland from 1967-1972.

On this trip I spent the first week in Washington D.C., viewing the Ancient Order of Hibernians Collection held at the Catholic University of America, and the Department of State files on Ireland from 1963-1975, held in the National Archives at College Park, Maryland. The second week I spent in New York City, visiting the special collections held at St John’s University, New York University, and the American Irish Historical Society. At St John’s University, I reviewed the papers of Paul O’Dwyer, an Irish- American lawyer, and Hugh Carey, a congressman from New York.

In New York University, I visited the Tamiment Library to explore the Archives of Irish America, especially the papers of Judge James Comerford, who was a leading figure in New York Irish-American social circles, and oral histories interviews from Paul O’Dwyer. In the American Irish Historical Society, I reviewed their holdings of their journal The Recorder and the papers of another Irish-American organisation, The Friendly Sons of St Patrick. This bursary was an enormous help in allowing me to complete this trip and gain access to these sources. This material will massively inform my understanding and analysis of this topic, from which I will now be able to write at least two chapters of my PhD, detailing both the responses from Irish Americans at the grassroots level as well as Irish Americans involved in lobbying the United States, Irish, and British governments.

 

Jennifer Gouck, University College Dublin

 

The PCA/ACA national conference (17th-20th April, Washington Marriott Hotel) was my first experience of a large international conference, as well as my first time presenting a paper in the United States. With an attendance of around 5,000 delegates, the sheer size of this conference was the most difficult thing to wrap my head around. Indeed, its size was both its attraction and its downfall; with over 100 areas of interest, choosing which panels to attend was almost overwhelming. The stamina required for this conference, both mental and physical, was also astounding as panels ran back-to-back from 8am until around 9pm each day. This meant that I occasionally felt I was missing what looked to be a fascinating panel because although the mind was willing, the flesh was weak.

Given that my research into the Manic Pixie Dream Girl in Young Adult literature, media, and culture is interdisciplinary and cross-media, I wanted to make the most of the variety of strands available to me and increase my knowledge of the fields in which I have less experience. On Wednesday 17th, I attended panels on the Netflix era of television, on YA novel adaptation, on femininity, masculinity, and empowerment in magazines and literature, and on animation and Disney (I’ll admit the last one was out of pure curiosity rather than for my academic enrichment). Thursday morning kicked off bright and early at 7am with the Graduate Student Breakfast. Although I was feeling nervous, this mixer proved to be a great opportunity to network, and I met a number of PGRs from across the United States and from across several disciplines. It was here I learned that keynote speaker, April Ryan, would be juggling several commitments that evening. As keen Americanists, readers will no doubt have noted that Thursday 18th April was the day the Mueller Report was released to the American public. Thus, though scheduled to speak at the PCA/ACA Grand Reception, Ms Ryan’s occupation as a White House correspondent meant that she would also have to participate in a segment for news channel CNN. To facilitate this, April gave her speech to the PCA/ACA delegates before dashing to the news trucks parked in the Marriott’s driveway to give her report. She then returned to the ballroom for a Q&A session. Needless to say, the delegates, the majority of which were US residents, were abuzz for most of the day. The deep anger amongst those present was palpable, and the Mueller Report dominated nearly every panel, regardless of its theme.

The following day, I presented on a panel entitled “Children’s and YA Literature and Culture IX: Changing Gender Role(model)s.” Using Franco Moretti’s argument in ‘Conjectures on World Literature’ (2000) that literature can be considered a planetary system, my paper argued that the Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG) trope can be read in a similar way. I suggested that the Manic Pixie is not purely an invention of the twenty-first century but is instead a constellation of canonical literary and cinematic tropes which have evolved through patriarchal storytelling practices over thousands of years.

For me, attending and presenting at this conference was an enriching experience both academically and personally; I was able to travel to a part of the world I had never visited before, meet with upcoming scholars in the field of Children’s and YA Literature, and get a feel for scholarly developments ‘across the pond’. I would like to extend my sincere thanks to the IAAS for this award. I have been involved with the Association since 2015 and their support has allowed me to take up more opportunities than I ever could have managed alone. I thank them not only for their financial support but also for the community’s genuine interest in my personal progress as well as in my research. Special thanks also go to Dr Patricia Kennon of Maynooth University who also supported me financially and gastronomically on this trip by buying me lunch on several occasions. I hope to pay this kindness forward in future.

The IAAS Postgraduate Symposium
“The Land of the (Un)Free: Interrogating Democracy in America”
University College Cork
23
rd  November, 2019


This year, the Irish Association for American Studies Postgraduate Symposium welcomes proposals for papers that interrogate Democracy in America – in how it is constructed, understood, and the extent to which it is successfully enacted. Inspired by current events and political trends within the United States, from the strict abortion laws imposed in Alabama in February, to the on-going humanitarian crisis at the U.S.- Mexico Border, we seek papers that engage with and respond to the paradoxical relationship between the American ideal of democracy, and the actual practice of that democracy. We invite papers that consider the gulf between democratic principles and fundamentally unconstitutional behaviours, with a particular emphasis placed upon undemocratic and authoritarian actions that have both historically shaped America and continue to resurge in the Trump era.

“The Land of the (Un)Free: Interrogating Democracy in America” is a one-day interdisciplinary symposium that seeks to provide an opportunity for Postgraduate Students and Early Career Scholars to share their ideas and contribute their individual voices to the inclusive academic community of American Studies across the island of Ireland.

We welcome proposals for fifteen-minute papers which engage with the concept of democracy within the field of American Studies, encompassing Continental American perspectives (Canada and South America) as well as those related to the United States. Proposed topics may include, but are by no means limited to:

  • Representations of American democracy, American people, and American culture in literature and film
  • Historical insights and social/political considerations regarding democracy and attacks on democracy, political polarisation and democracy
  • New perspectives on Alexis De Tocqueville’s Democracy in America 
  • The relationship between American exceptionalism and democracy
  • Philosophical conceptions of democracy and their application in the U.S. context
  • Explorations of democracy in American music, comics, popular culture
  • Issues of gender, sexuality, class & race in relation to American democracy
  • Democracy in visual culture

The deadline for submissions is Friday, 11th of October 2019. Proposals for papers should include a title, an abstract (max. 300 words), and a short biography. For more information, or to submit a proposal, please email postgrad@iaas.ie

The deadline for bursary applications is Monday, 4th November, 2019.
There are two bursaries available for symposium presenters. Application forms and information can be found at https://iaas.ie/funding-opportunities/. References are *not* required for this bursary application process.

Counter-narratives and Hidden Histories

Irish Association for American Studies

50th Anniversary Conference

Maynooth University, Co. Kildare

3-4 April 2020

CALL FOR PAPERS

As the IAAS turns 50 in 2020, we are delighted to announce that a special anniversary conference will be hosted at Maynooth University on 3rd and 4th April. In keeping with the Association’s ongoing ethos of providing space and opportunity to voices, stories, and bodies historically marginalised by dominant discourses, IAAS 2020 invites submissions on the theme of ‘Counter-narratives and Hidden Histories’.

Confirmed keynote speaker: Professor Amy Mooney (Columbia College Chicago; Terra Foundation for American Art Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford).

Abstracts for individual papers, panels, or roundtables are welcomed on topics related to this broad theme across all disciplines of American and Latin American Studies, including:

  • Anthropology
  • Art
  • Education and pedagogy
  • Film
  • History
  • Literature
  • Music
  • Politics and International Relations
  • Theatre and Performance Studies
  • Visual Culture

The conference will also host a special roundtable session on ‘Anti-racist Teaching and Scholarship’, and welcomes submissions of individual abstracts considering, for example, whiteness in academia, academia and activism, teaching ‘race’, and other related subjects.

Individual submissions:

  • Please provide an abstract of no more than 250 words, along with your name and a brief biography.

Panel submissions:

  • Please provide a brief description of your panel (3 presenters), along with the names and brief biographies of the proposed presenters, and an individual abstract (250 words) for each paper.
  • The composition of panels should be diverse whenever possible, and all-male panels should be avoided.

Roundtable submissions:

  • Please provide a brief description of your roundtable (between 4 and 8 presenters), along with the names and brief biographies of the proposed presenters, and an individual abstract for each paper (no more than 100 words).
  • The composition of roundtables should be diverse, and all-male roundtables will not be accepted.

 

** There will be concession rates for students, ECRs, and scholars on fixed-term contracts.**

** Bursaries are also available. **

 

Deadline for submissions: 1st November 2019

Please send submissions to: IAAS2020conference@gmail.com

Please send enquiries to: Catherine.Gander@mu.ie

For a downloadable PDF copy of this CFP, please see the following link

CFP IAAS 2020

The IAAS Postgraduate Symposium
“The Land of the (Un)Free: Interrogating Democracy in America”
University College Cork
23
rd  November, 2019

Call for Roundtable Participants:

In addition to accepting proposals for traditional fifteen-minute papers at this year’s Irish Association for American Studies Postgraduate Symposium, we will host a roundtable session entitled ‘Inception, Evolution, Completion: Navigating PhD Research in American Studies’.

The objective of this roundtable is for final year or recently graduated PhD researchers to share experiences of how their research, particularly in contemporary studies, may have changed direction or evolved in light of cultural developments: for example, how the #MeToo movement has impacted projects in Gender Studies, or how the #BlackLivesMatter movement has affected research in African-American Studies.

This session is intended to foster inclusive and lively discussion amongst postgraduate and early career scholars in the IAAS community, whilst also offering prospective postgraduate students the unique opportunity to gain an insight into how the PhD process functions in a variety of interdisciplinary and institutional contexts.

We invite roundtable participants to submit a proposal, including a brief description of their research – from its inception, to its evolution, to its completion – and why they think it may be beneficial to share their experience (300 words), by Friday, 18th October 2019. Potential participants are invited to contact postgrad@iaas.ie to express their interest, or to ask any further questions they may have.