PCA/ACA CONFERENCE, INDIANAPOLIS, IN, USA – 28^th of March – 1^st of April, 2018

This year, I had the fortune of receiving funding from the IAAS to attend two major events in my field of study: the PCA/ACA Conference in Indianapolis and the EBAAS Conference in London. The months of March and April thus turned out to be a very busy but truly inspiring time for me. I had just returned from academic research travels in mainland Europe when I boarded a plane for Indianapolis. There, I attended and spoke at the 2018 Pop Culture Association and American Culture Association Conference in the J.W. Marriott Hotel on the 28th – 31st of March.

With hundreds of panel presentations, roundtables, special sessions, film screenings, local tours, keynote speaker events and special awards ceremonies to choose from, and thousands of people attending, it was of course tough to make decisions about which talks to attend. Each of the many subject areas of the association represents one aspect of popular culture and was chaired by an expert in the field so there was something for everyone. As outlining and summarizing all the panels I attended during my week in Indy would go beyond the scope of this report, I want to highlight a variety of particularly salient panels and events.

On Wednesday, the conference kicked off early for me with an entire day devoted to American literature, culture and film. Our chair, Dr. Corey Taylor, Associate Professor at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute in Indiana, guided us through a seven-panel journey from Sex and Protest in Early American Literature to Modernist Reconsiderations, African American Intertextuality, African American Literature and Current Events, Reimagined Bodies, Consumerism, Labor, and Gender to Crises of Identity and Language.

The second panel, “American Literature: African-American Intertextuality”, was my time to shine. First up, before MaryLynn Saul spoke about “Man of Two Faces: Hybridity and Liminality in Sympathizer and Invisible Man”, Laura Elaine Thorp’s talk about “A black charred body on the black, charred ground: The Treatment of Black Male Bodies in ‘Going to Meet the Man’ and ‘Get Out’” and Christopher Mullin paper on “The Multifaceted Role of Silence in Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Sherman Alexie’s Reservation Blues Cody”, I presented my paper entitled “The Same Old Story? Shifts in Representations of African Americans in Slave Narratives, Neo-Slave Narratives and Cinematic Slave Narratives”.

My paper was a cross-generic exploration of the shifting representation of African Americans through the last three centuries and followed the development of the form from historical manuscripts to fictional retellings to cinematic iterations. More specifically, my analysis expanded Henry L. Gates Jr.’s concept of Signifyin(g), which I combined with elements of adaptation theory and intertextuality. Intermedial/intertextual variations of slave narratives reveal the reconfiguration of different elements in different media, demonstrating the self-reflexive nature and persistent relevance of the slave narrative as commemoration of the black experience and commentary on slavery and its present-day legacy.

The talk further incorporated American literature and films, offering rich multi-layered visual imaginings of the slave narrative, which have yet to be fully examined, new perspectives on how cinematic slave narratives developed over the last 100 years, and insights into how they influence society. My discussion of Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation (2016), specifically, marked an original extension of existing research in American Studies. Moreover, the research for this talk provided an opportunity to test the value of Signifyin(g) as a model to analyze and critique African-American film. My analysis revealed that Parker’s film can be seen as a continuation of the Signifyin(g) tradition and demonstrates the self-reflexive nature and persistent relevance of the slave narrative as commemoration of the black experience and commentary on slavery and its present-day legacy. Thus, I established a new understanding of Parker’s work—as well as of the intertexts upon which he signifies—as a locus for corrective ideological expression and as a new rhetorical and experiential space. Moreover, I showed how it constitutes a powerful discursive system to invite the re-evaluation and application of Gates’ theory of Signifyin(g) to film. I demonstrated how Parker breaks with Gates’ Signifyin(g) exclusively on black texts, and showed how, instead, Parker is Signifyin(g) on and revising black and white narratives. I revealed how the film connects the deep undercurrent of racism in America’s past to the pervasive effects of institutionalized racism today.

After a full schedule of American literature and film, as a “First Time Attendee” (everyone received an attachment to their name badge signaling whether they were newcomers or long-time attendees), I soaked up every possible social event and opportunity as well. Among them, the “Grand Reception/Student Mixer and Welcome For Everyone Event.” I was able to make valuable new connections and discuss my research with international scholars from fields across all the represented academic disciplines who met in Indy to share and explore the world together.

While I attended a variety of panels from different fields, as a researcher in African-American Studies, it was of special interest to me to attend all the panels dedicated to African-American culture, literature and film. Since my research explores the representation of the African-American slave experience, including the representation of slavery, gender and identity on screen, I joined the panel track in this field on Thursday. With Dr. Elgie Sherrod, Associate Professor at Virginia Common Wealth University, as an outstanding and inspiring chair, I spent all of Thursday attending sessions on “Sanctifying Home”, “From Hip-Hop Neo-Slave Narratives to Hooping for Justice, Past, Present & Future”, “Queering Masculinity in African American Culture and Representation of Black Men”, “Body Image Politics: Disrupting oppressive representations of Black Women and Girls” and “Survival Songs: African American Music Remixed and Repurposed”. Together with an excellent group of dedicated researchers, I discussed my own work in the context of the tragic events and racial tensions that have begun to characterize our times. These talks included deconstructing and reflecting on police brutality and discrimination of minorities in the US, voter Suppression (J. Rozema), the policing of African culture and communities, accountability, James Baldwin’s work and ‘The Technology of the Self ‘ (Tyrone Simpson), ‘The “Other” American Life: African-American Media Gaze (Chih-Ping Chen), ‘Queering Masculinity in African American Culture, American Cinema and Television’ (David Mood), Blaxploitation films (D’Ondre Swails), African-American stereotypes, black identities, the representation of the body and black women, Beyoncé (Aquila Campbell) and so much more. Apart from excellent scholarship, what inspired me most was the atmosphere and passion of these scholars and their willingness to engage, share and open up dialogue about such difficult topics as, among numerous others, the shootings of black teenagers. Thursday was truly a different conference experience and a day that ended with lots of hugs and the continuation of conversations we had all day over wine and food.

On Thursday evening, the conference team had arranged for me to meet with my mentor Michael Mardsen, former Dean of the College of Arts and Science, at Northern Michigan University and former Academic Vice President, and his wife Mary. The PCA/ACA’s mentor program is a brilliant idea, as participants are very compassionate and encouraging. New presenters and attendees like myself were paired with more seasoned veterans like Michael to help make my experience at the conference more fruitful, productive and enjoyable. For me, as a mentee, the program provided me with the opportunity to network and provided a friendly face throughout my time in Indy. After dinner, we attended this year’s keynote together, which was less academic but incredibly entertaining: Paula Poundstone, one of America’s best-known contemporary comedians, authors, actors, special correspondents and commentators. With her famous sharpness, observational humor, criticism of society and culture and her spontaneous interaction with the audience, she poked fun at academia and academics, interweaving the dialogue with her routine featuring anti-Trump sentiments and a discussion of life in our fast-paced world.

On Friday, after another full day of conferencing, I met again with my mentor and his wife to visit the Eiteljorg Museum’s “Reel West Exhibit”. We joined a tour of the new exhibition as the conference coincided with the opening of the exhibition of the Hollywood West—only one of the many activities organized for the attendees by the PCA/ACA conference team.

This conference was indeed an excellent opportunity for me to publicly reflect upon the work of eminent scholars in my field, while ensuring that my own research establishes its place in this field. My participation at PCA/ACA thus helped me establish dialogue with interdisciplinary and international researchers in the US, meet new colleagues and expand my international network. The feedback I received has encouraged me to engage in further critical reflection on and development of my PhD project.

My sincere thanks and appreciation go to the IAAS for their financial support which enabled me to attend this truly thought-provoking conference.

Caroline Schroeter is a final year PhD candidate and recipient of the UCC PhD Excellency Scholarship. Her upcoming publications include “From Griffith to Parker: Constructing race and the history of the US South” (Kentucky UP, 2018). She is the Editor-in-Chief for Aigne Journal and an Editor for Alphaville.

EBAAS 2018 was a hugely anticipated event for scholars of Americana. With events at Kings College London, the British Library, and University College London, the 2018 conference had four action packed days of round tables, panel talks, networking lunches, receptions drinks, and even a theatre show. EBAAS is the largest opportunity in Europe this year to listen to cutting edge research specific to your own interests and engage with scholarship in the wider field. It also provided the space and time to meet other scholars and enjoy the facilities of the host institution’s city. It was, therefore, a great pleasure to receive an IAAS Bursary towards my attendance at the conference and it gave a welcome boost of confidence before setting off to the busy capital.

I am originally from the UK but I still get a shock of surprise and awe when standing before the bustling bridges spanning the Thames River. King’s College London was the central site for much of EBAAS. The venue was perfectly situated for visiting scholars, with easy transport routes and accommodation. With a brief walk, attendees could enjoy the river promenade that leads straight to the Tate Modern, the Globe Theatre, and the Borough Market. At the University the friendly registration crew were quickly on hand to provide all the paraphernalia of the day, including lanyards, tote-bags, and EBAAS refillable drinks bottles. They were also very good at giving directions. The Eccles Centre had provided a printed copy of Gary Gerstle’s plenary lecture, given at EAAS in 2016, as an added bonus. A conference App, including times and details of talks, provided an easy paper-free programme that allowed a personal timetable selection across the day.

With up to twelve consecutive panels on at a single time, EBAAS offered a little something for everyone. The sign of a good panel is one which sticks in the mind and for me this was ‘A Woman’s Place is in the Resistance’, with three postgraduate speakers – Maria Elena Carpintero Torres-Quevedo, Niki Holzapfel, and Vicki Madden. Their papers traversed the topics of recovery narratives, women’s newspaper writing, and multiple personality disorder in fiction, with interesting discussion in the question and answers section that looked at the intersections of their work. Nicola Holzapfel’s paper on stunt journalist Nellie Bly is of interest in my own research and gave insightful consideration of how Bly’s self-mythologizing disrupted the burden of predefined female identity. The plenary talk, ‘As Seen From Above: American Poetry in the Jet Age’, by Professor Jo Gill was excellent. She offered an engaging, easily accessible, and new reading of poetry by John Updike, Georgia O’Keefe and Carl Sandburg, among others. In the subsequent reception drinks at the British Library, a number of people commented on Gill’s talk and we were all equally enthralled by Updike’s poetry which many, myself included, were unaware of.

The roundtable I participated in considered Wharton’s under-studied 1907 novel and was entitled ‘Edith Wharton’s Protest Novel? Rethinking The Fruit of the Tree’. The book deals with issues of industrial reform, euthanasia, and the social identities of the New Woman and New Workingman. The work has received a mixed reception among reviewers and scholars. It was a pleasure to be asked by fellow postgraduate Anna Girling to be part of the roundtable. We met ‘digitally’ after both appearing on Episode 3 of the Modernist Podcast early in 2017. The panel brought together the eminent Wharton scholars Dr Donna Campbell, Dr Laura Rattray and Dr Stephanie Palmer, and panel chair Dr Michael Collins. The ten minute papers each posed interesting questions about Wharton’s negotiation of industrial reform and her incorporation of contemporary social debates. Dr Campbell looked at the comparative intertextual sources between Wharton and Jack London’s Iron Heel, and Dr Palmer considered gender identities and the industrial novel. Dr Rattray talked about Wharton’s recently discovered 1901 play ‘The Shadow of a Doubt’ and how Wharton repurposed the storyline of euthanasia in her later novel. Anna Girling looked at forms of cultural inheritance and wealth in the novel, and my own paper traced contemporary sources that provoke a form of gendered social reading. After the papers, there was a lively discussion of the novel with audience members during which the subjects of melodrama, literary heritage, and the progress of Wharton as a writer were examined. The roundtable was an ideal format to debate a novel which remains perplexing and unwieldy. The ability to talk alongside and discuss Wharton with such engaging and knowledgeable scholars has been invaluable. My thanks and appreciation goes to IAAS for their financial support in this wonderful opportunity.

– Gaby Fletcher is a PhD candidate at NUI Galway

Thanks to the financial support and generosity of the IAAS, I had the privilege of travelling to this year’s EBAAS conference in King’s College London – the largest UK-based conference of its kind to date. As a PhD student and early-career scholar with budding Americanist aspirations, being able to attend the conference with IAAS support proved an invaluable opportunity for me to contextualise my own research interests (concerning the cultural politics of William Carlos Williams, and other mid-century American poets) and to gain an insight into the diverse and stimulating field that is American Studies today. Certainly, the conference programme reflected the remarkable range and depth of research being conducted by scholars of the Americas (mainly on this side of the Atlantic divide); indeed, with over a dozen parallel panels per discussion slot, and 3-5 such slots per day, one of the happy challenges facing conference participants like myself was that of having to choose between panels of easily equal interest and promise – “Filmic Framings of Environmental Space” vying with “American Literary Naturalism and Social Protest” for the attention of at least this movie-buff-cum-poetry-addict with an ecological bent…

Suffice it to say, then, that more than one tough decision had to be made as the conference took its course! Highlights of the discussions I did attend and enjoy, however, included: a politically exhilarating and historically illuminating discussion of “Prisons, Protest Culture & Radical Politics”, a sobering examination of American culture in the nuclear age (which of course continues to this day), an engaged appreciation of “Identity as Protest in US Women’s Writing”, as well as a trail-blazing survey of “American Poetry in the Jet Age” by plenary speaker Professor Jo Gill,  whose survey made the hardly obvious, but nonetheless culturally revealing links between ​Better Homes and Gardens​,Carl Sandburg, Georgia O’Keefe, Elizabeth Bishop, and John Updike effortlessly apparent. Attending these and other talks – which, once again, was enabled by my being awarded an IAAS bursary – was a pleasure and privilege.

I also had the opportunity to present a paper of my own, as part of a panel concerning “Illness and the Environment in American Literature and Cinema”, chaired by Dr. Pascale Antolin. My presentation examined the relationship between the natural environment and ideas of artistic production in both Jim Jarmusch’s film Paterson (2016) and the book-length poem of the same name by William Carlos Williams, with a particular focus on the contrasting imaginations of the Passaic river’s Great Falls presented in each work. While Jarmusch’s film is often cited by scholars and enthusiasts as a means of reminding readers of the contemporaneity and resonance of Williams’s poem in the 21st century, I attempted to show how, when viewed through a social, eco-critical, and comparative lens, Williams’s poem in fact emerges as the more historically probing and politically pertinent of the two works. I argued moreover that the distinguishing environmental ethics of Williams’s poem is directly linked to his medical training and outlook. As a PhD student still acclimatising to the regimen of conference presentations and research papers, being able to present these arguments and discuss them with fellow scholars was of immense benefit to me, and indeed has helped me to clarify some of the contexts and emphases of my PhD thesis (which examines Williams’s poetry as a whole). For this, and much besides, I am grateful to the IAAS and its committee members; without the travel bursary I was awarded, my attendance and participation would not have been possible.

Ciarán O’Rourke is a Ph.D student at Trinity College Dublin

During the course of my doctoral studies, which focused on a systematic comparison of mid-nineteenth-century American planters and Irish landlords, I became increasingly impressed by the importance of the many transnational connections between the two agrarian elites and their contexts. Perhaps the most notable of these connections were those that stemmed from mass migration from Ireland to the United States. In the half century before the American Civil War (1861-65) over two million Irish emigrants settled in the U.S. The exodus of these people had a dramatic effect on both their home and host countries. In Ireland, dislocated by the effects of economic depression and famines, emigration from rural districts helped to facilitate the widespread reorganisation of agriculture. In America, since Irish immigrants settled mostly in the urban centres of the U.S. Northeast and Midwest, their influx affected the balance of power between the ‘free  North’ and the ‘slave South,’ thereby exacerbating the antebellum sectional crisis that led to the secession crisis, the creation of the Confederacy, and the Civil War. My postdoctoral research project explores these developments in transnational perspective, thereby demonstrating historical connections between the causes of Irish emigration and the origins of the American Civil War.

In January 2018, in order to develop this project, I travelled to Washington, D.C., with the aid of an IAAS Early Career Travel, Research, and Conference Bursary. My two week trip included participation in the American Historical Association’s annual conference and subsequent research at the Library of Congress. At the AHA meeting, I delivered a paper that provided an overview of my research to date, arguing in particular that Irish immigration became increasingly worrisome to Southern planters during the course of the antebellum period, fuelling their paranoia about the long-term security of slavery within the United States and encouraging the rise of Southern nationalism. This paper was part of a panel I organised, titled “Race, Class, and Nation Building in the Euro-American World: Connections and Comparisons Between the United States, Ireland, Southern Italy and Russia, 1815-1900.” Chaired by Professor Peter Kolchin (University of Delaware), the panel also included Professor Enrico Dal Lago (NUI Galway) and Dr. Amanda Brickell Bellows (New York Historical Society), whose papers respectively explored similarities and differences between specific aspects of American, Italian, and Russian history. Professor Andrew Zimmerman (George Washington University) provided comments. As a whole, the panel demonstrated that the transnational connections that are the focus of my current research are part of a much wider constellation of parallels, contrasts, and links between nineteenth-century America and Europe, which have recently begun to be systematically explored by scholars and which should continue to provide fruitful ground for historical research for decades to come. The feedback that I received on my ideas was both constructive and stimulating. Additionally, attendance at the AHA allowed me to attend many panels on subjects related to my own and to converse with scholars working on complimentary issues or using similar methodologies and sources.

After the AHA conference concluded, I spent the remainder of my trip conducting primary research at the Library of Congress. One of my main aims was to find out more about antebellum Irish immigrants’ evolving attitudes toward the South’s ‘peculiar institution.’ To do so, I looked especially at many Irish American newspapers spanning from the early nineteenth century to the late antebellum period. These included the Shamrock, the Exile, the Irish American, and the Irish News. While the views on slavery articulated in these organs were heterogeneous, they provide clear evidence that the subject became increasingly central to not only the U.S. national conversation, but also to Irish American discourse as the antebellum period advanced. To compliment my interest in Irish American views of Southern slavery I also spent time in the Library of Congress investigating antebellum Southern slaveholders’ attitudes toward Irish immigration. As such, I examined the letters and diaries of several prominent planters, and I also read through a selection of Southern newspapers. While more research on this subject is necessary, it was apparent from the sources I consulted that the fact the free states were attracting more immigrants than the South was a serious concern to many planters in the decades before the Civil War.

Together, attendance at the AHA conference and research at the Library of Congress have provided me with new ideas, contacts, and sources, while also stimulating my desire to pursue promising new avenues of research. Ultimately, I hope that this project will lead to articles in suitable peer-reviewed scholarly journals on Irish immigrants’ relationship with Southern slavery and transnational connections between developments in Ireland and the antebellum U.S. sectional crisis. In turn, these articles will contribute to a monograph that will examine similarities, differences, and connections between American slavery and Irish landlordism. By helping to facilitate my recent trip to Washington, D.C., the IAAS Early Career Travel, Research, and Conference Bursary has aided with a step toward these goals.

Dr Cathal Smith is based in the History Department at NUI Galway

Annette Skade was the recipient of one our IAAS bursaries to assist with attendance at the postgraduate symposium.

As a researcher into allusion in the poetry of Anne Carson, the scope of my PhD naturally extends beyond the boundaries of the School of English, flowing into all areas of the Humanities, and so the IAAS Postgraduate Conference was of particular interest to me.  The IAAS Call for Papers for the Postgraduate Symposium “A More Perfect Union” had also grabbed my attention by posing the question “What is the state of this “more perfect Union” today? This was a Call For Papers very much for our times and called to mind Carson’s poem “Clive’s Song” which had appeared in The New Yorker early in 2017. I wrote the paper as a response to the call and the wide brief and time constraints allowed me to do one of the things I enjoy most: a close reading of a piece of poetry.

It was also a chance for me to read a paper before my post-graduate peers which was invaluable to me at this early stage of my PhD. I had given a paper in the DCU School of Humanities seminar series in September, and was due to give another at a The Politics of Space and the Humanities Conference  in Greece in December. The opportunity to speak at the IAAS symposium between these two events was a great help to me- a lesson in controlling my nerves and honing my skills in a more familiar environment before my first full Conference.

The day started with Sarah McCreedy’s thought-provoking paper on Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and continued to fascinate, giving me insights into American History, Literature, Film and Politics. Some papers, such as Shane Morrisy’s which responded  to “the Visual rhetoric of the WPA Posters” were of interest because they tied in with aspects of my own research,  others revealed  the political chicanery underlying American Politics in the twentieth century and at the present time. William O’Neill’s paper “Backyard Alliances: An examination of the US foreign policy relationship with El Salvador during the civil war 1977-1992, and the impact of migration to the US”  was a particularly pertinent examination of that period and context, while bringing us right up to date by showing the same rhetoric at play in the Trump era. Many of the concerns of this paper were also touched on in Anne Carson’s poem, which was the subject of my paper. Just one example of how academic boundaries are blurred at Symposiums such as this.

Of course, the conversations between papers as well as those at the Symposium dinner were an important part of the day and added greatly to my enjoyment of it. I was pleased to meet other postgraduates and academics working in the field of American Studies throughout Ireland.

I would like to thank the organisers of the conference, James Hussey and Sarah Cullen, for doing such a great job, Ciaran O’Rourke, who chaired my panel so well, and  the IAAS Committee for awarding me a bursary to attend. I look forward to the IAAS conference in April.

– Annette Skade