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Thank you, Dara!

Posted on by Jennifer Daly

At the Annual General Meeting of the IAAS on April 28th, Dr Dara Downey stepped down from the Executive Committee upon the completion of her term as Vice Chair. Dara has been a central figure in promoting and developing the activities of the association over many years and her contribution to American Studies in Ireland is greatly appreciated. In her time on the Executive Committee, Dara has served as an Ordinary Committee member, as Treasurer, and as Vice Chair. She also served on the editorial board of the Irish Journal for American Studies. During her term as Vice Chair, Dara oversaw a significant reorganisation of the Prizes Subcommittee and of the many bursaries the association awards.  A supportive and encouraging colleague, as well as a stellar academic, we wish Dara all the best in her future endeavours!

Report: Ciarán O’Rourke, recipient of an EBAAS Conference Bursary

Posted on by Jennifer Daly

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

Report: Cathal Smith, winner of the Early Career Travel, Research and Conference Bursary

Posted on by Jennifer Daly

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

Elections to the Executive Committee of the IAAS

Posted on by Jennifer Daly

Several positions will be up for election at the Annual General Meeting of the IAAS which will take place on April 28th during the annual conference at UCD. Below is a brief description of the various roles to give you some idea of what each involves. If you are interested in standing for any of these positions, please contact the association’s Secretary (dalyj5@tcd.ie) by April 26th.

Vice-Chair

The main work of the Vice-Chair is the efficient running of the Prizes Sub-Committee. This involves advertising IAAS prizes and bursaries, identifying external reviewers, managing applications from IAAS members, and ensuring that the awards process is impartial and fair. They also work closely with the Chair and the rest of the Executive Committee to develop new initiatives to benefit IAAS members.

Secretary

The Secretary maintains up-to-date membership lists and is the main point of contact for the IAAS, managing communications through regular mailings and the association’s social media channels. They are also responsible for taking minutes at committee meetings, and run the elections at the Annual General Meeting.

Treasurer

The Treasurer is responsible for the association’s finances and manages all of the association’s accounts. They prepare budgets and accounts, and report to the committee throughout the year, process payments and invoices, and monitor the association’s financial position to ensure that all commitments can be met.

EAAS Representative

The EAAS representative is the association’s representative on the board of the European Association for American Studies.

Ordinary Committee Members

Ordinary Committee Members have no fixed responsibilities on the Executive Committee but can bring any issues or ideas to the committee that they feel might have a positive impact on the association.

 

*** All of these positions are two-year terms, apart from the EAAS representative who is elected to a four-year term ***

Lecturer in Modern & Contemporary Literature (Maternity Cover)

Posted on by Web Intern

Birkbeck, University of London – Department of English and Humanities
Location: Bloomsbury
Salary: £37,169 to £42,483
Hours: Part Time
Contract Type: Fixed-Term/Contract
Placed on: 28th March 2018
Closes: 1st May 2018
Job Ref: 12479

Job Description

The Department of English and Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London invites applications for a fixed-term 0.6 Lecturer A in Modern and Contemporary Literature.

The Department offers world-class research and teaching across a range of critical and creative fields from the early medieval period to the twenty-first century. The successful candidate will cover the teaching and administrative duties of Dr Caroline Edwards whilst she is on maternity leave. Candidates will be expected to contribute to teaching across our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in English & Humanities including BA modules such as Writing London, Science Fiction, Contemporary Tragedy and MA options such as Reading the Contemporary and A Time for Revolution. They will supervise Final Year Projects and Dissertation students and act as convenor of the well-established MA Contemporary Literature and Culture.

Candidate Requirements

Ideally, applicants should have a PhD in a relevant subject area or be close to completion, with teaching experience at HE level. Teaching experience at undergraduate degree level is essential. Teaching & convening experience at postgraduate degree level is desirable. You will be able to demonstrate a commitment to the development of innovative approaches to teaching, as well as undertaking appropriate administrative duties.

About the Department

For further information about the department, please visit the following website: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/english/

Further Information

Salary: Grade 7 of the College’s London Pay Scale which is £37,169 rising to £42,483 pro rata per annum.

This post is part-time, 21 hours per week (0.6 FTE) and fixed term to July 2019. The salary quoted above will be pro-rata for this part time post and is on the College’s London Pay Scale and includes a consolidated Weighting/Allowance which applies only to staff whose normal contractual place of work is in the Greater London area. The initial salary will be dependent on the skills and experience of the successful applicant. The appointment is subject to a probationary period of 3 years. Birkbeck also provides a generous defined benefit pension scheme, 31 days paid leave, flexible working arrangements and other great benefits.

The closing date for completed applications is midnight on 1 May 2018.

Interviews will be held on Friday 8 June 2018.

For further information on this opportunity contact Dr Heike Bauer, Assistant Dean (email; h.bauer@bbk.ac.uk).

Birkbeck welcomes applicants from all sections of the community. The College is committed to improving the gender and cultural diversity of its workforce, holding an Athena SWAN award and membership of WISE, operating the Disability Confident and Mindful Employer schemes, is a Stonewall Diversity Champion and is working towards the Race Equality Charter Mark.

Apply.

CFP: Resistance and Recovery across the Americas

Posted on by Web Intern

Deadline for submissions: April 15, 2018
Full name/name of organization: Society for the Study of American Travel Writing
Contact email: kfslr00@tamuk.edu

The Society for the Study of American Travel Writing invites proposals for the Society for the Study of American Women Writers 2018 Triennial Conference in Denver, Colorado. November 7-11, 2018.

In keeping with the Conference Theme: “Resistance and Recovery across the Americas,” the SSATW seeks proposals that examine the ways American women travelers use their writing to critique society, the nation, and the injustices they experience or observe as travelers.

Whether traveling in America or abroad, women travelers are uniquely positioned

  • to observe the lives of people they visit,
  • to comment on the restrictions to travel for women,
  • to think about the social, economic, and political forces at work in the locations visited and in the nation as a whole,
  • to comment on the effects of patriarchal and racist institutions and modes of thinking or behavior on women who travel or reside in the locations visited,
  • to observe an environment under the pressure of expansion and development,
  • to comment on the tourist industry–its modes of transportation and accommodations as well as the narratives it supports,
  • to redefine the traveling self as gendered.

For a fuller description of the SSAWW Triennial Conference, please see the SSAWW website at ssawwnew.wordpress.com.

Please send abstracts of 250-300 words and a brief cv to Susan Roberson (susan.roberson@tamuk.edu) or Andrew Vogel (vogel@kutztown.edu) by April 15, 2018.

CFP: Pirates and the American South

Posted on by Web Intern

Deadline for submissions: August 15, 2018
Full name/name of organization: Kristopher Mecholsky (Louisiana State University)
Contact email: kmecho1@lsu.edu

Given their contribution to the historical development of the coastal south and the Americas in general, pirates are relatively absent in the present southern literary canon and its criticisms. As the Companion to Southern Literature mentions with some surprise, “southern writers…seem not to have cared much about pirates…[particularly] given the fact that some of the most notorious pirates worked the coastal regions of the Southeast.” And yet, nineteenth-century fiction about the American South was flooded with pirates.

This CFP seeks essays for a planned edited collection that will augment papers delivered at a panel on pirates in southern fiction at the 2018 Society for the Study of Southern Literature. Proposed essays should address gaps in criticism about piracy in southern fiction (both broadly understood) from all periods. Proposals about historical approaches to piracy and the American South are also encouraged. From the cultural echoes of Sir Walter Scott’s The Pirate to Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Gold-Bug” and Joseph Holt Ingraham’s Lafitte: The Pirate of the Gulf and more—and encompassing the cultural role of pirate fiction in triangulating gender, colonial, racial, economic, and nationalistic attitudes with respect to Mexico, the Caribbean, and the entire coastal American South—the proposed collection will form the first substantial critical exploration of pirates in southern literature. Possible topics include (but are certainly not limited to) the following:

  • Jean Lafitte in literature and film
  • Mark Twain and piracy
  • the relationship between Bahamanians and Floridians (esp. the Conchs), particularly in fiction
  • the relationship between the Scottish & British literary world and the American South
  • authors from outside the traditional South who wrote about pirates in it
  • pirates in twentieth-century fiction and film about the South
  • the role of pirate myth in the coastal Carolinas, Georgia, and the Gulf coast states
  • the economics of piracy in the development of colonial America
  • how pirate fiction represents, navigates, and negotiates the intersectional complexities of slavery
  • the role of piracy in the relationship between the Caribbean and the American South
  • 19th-c. dime novels about pirates in and around the South
  • piracy during the Civil War (e.g., the Confederate privateer ships Jefferson Davis, Savannah, and Petrel)
  • Rev. Joseph Holt Ingraham’s fiction and the South
  • buried treasure motifs in ficiton of the American South
  • piracy in stage dramas
  • gender and piracy
  • race and piracy
  • sexuality and piracy

Please send abstract proposals (up to 500 words) to Kristopher Mecholsky at kmecho1@lsu.edu by August 15, 2018. Formal proposals to publishers will then go out; accepted proposals will be expected to submit a finished essay (~6,000 to 8,000 words) by April 15, 2019. Feel free to send queries with any questions regarding proposals (including feedback on ideas) at any time.

CFP: T.S. Eliot and Psychoanalysis:

Posted on by Web Intern

Deadline for submissions: April 3, 2018
Full name/name of organization: Modernist Studies Association (MSA) 2018
Contact email: charlessumner@hotmail.com

Eliot scholars might look askance at the idea that his poetic vision was at any point influenced by psychoanalysis. Just two months before The Waste Land was published, after all, he ridiculed psychoanalysis as “a dubious and contentious branch of science” and predicted an imminent demise for what he dubbed the “psychoanalytic type” of novel. Still, there is plenty to suggest his appreciation for the literary critical and poetic powers enabled by psychoanalysis. The Waste Land was first published in the Criterion’s inaugural issue, and as editor of the journal Eliot also included a review by Hesse identifying Freud as a major influence on German poetry and declaring his “psychology of the unconscious” a good foundation for artistic development. Further still, Eliot procured for a later number in that first volume Jacques Rivière’s essay advocating the concept of sublimation as a tool for literary criticism. As for his own remarks, he declares in “A Brief Treatise on the Criticism of Poetry” that poetry is indeed a valid object of study for psychoanalysis and, in “Ulysses, Order, and Myth,” that “Psychology (such as it is, and whether our reaction to it be comic or serious), ethnology, and The Golden Bough have concurred to make possible what was impossible even a few years ago. Instead of narrative method, we may now use the mythical method.” This remark shows grudging respect for Freud’s project but presents it nevertheless as an exegetical key to myths which are themselves integral to understanding contemporary history and culture.

This panel will seek to establish the ways Freudian psychoanalysis informs Eliot’s literary criticism and poetry. Papers detailing the ways that Eliot’s work foreshadows psychoanalytic developments later in the century – Lacanian theory for example – are also welcome.

Please send a 300 word abstract along with a brief bio to charlessumner@hotmail.com.

CFP: Family Portraits: Representing the Contemporary North-American Family

Posted on by Web Intern

Deadline for submissions: April 23, 2018
Full name/name of organization: Université Jean Monnet, Saint-Etienne
Contact email: marie1.moreau@univ-lyon2.fr

Family Portraits: Representing the Contemporary North-American Family

Thursday 27 and Friday 28 September 2018

International conference

Université Jean Monnet, Saint-Etienne (CELEC)

The sixties and the seventies marked a turning-point in the evolution of family. Major sociocultural changes undermined certain patterns of gender roles around which traditional families, and the American society at large, were organized. When the Food and Drug Administration approved the first oral contraceptive back in 1960 and the Supreme Court ruled in favor of legal abortion in 1973 (Roe v. Wade), women were given the right to break free from the normative gendered imperatives of the traditional family. Because the cult of domesticity gradually declined, and the crisis imposed the necessity to move from single-income to dual-income families, an unprecedented number of women – wives and mothers included – joined the workforce in the seventies. This shift in social values combined with new legal developments in family law (California for instance adopted the no-fault divorce in 1970) caused a major upheaval in North-American family structures. New behaviors within the family (how couples relate to marriage; the rise of divorces and remarriages; the decrease in the birthrate; the delaying of marriage and parenthood) have delineated new family forms. Today, married couples with children are no longer the norm; they coexist with other family structures such as single-parent, blended, and homoparental families, unmarried parents or childless couples. To adapt to these new realities, a lexical evolution necessarily ensued. Concepts like “living apart together” or “three-parent families” started to spread in order to define new family forms and reflect the changes that have occurred over the past forty years.

Contemporary family was also labeled as “deinstitutionalized” (Andrew Cherlin) or “declining” (David Popenoe). Its plural modalities are evidence of its constantly changing nature. Though broken and splitting apart, is family at threat? Is it doomed to fail because of the erosion of traditional forms? Many observers sound alarmist as to the future of family. According to sociologist John F. Conway, the Canadian family is “in crisis”; as for the media, some predict “The Slow Death of ‘Traditional’ Families in America” (The Atlantic) or go as far as comparing it to “An Endangered and Disappearing Species” (CNSNews). However, in 2010, 98.2% of American respondents told the researchers of the World Value Survey that family was “important” or “very important” in their lives. On social networks, family hashtags have been flourishing (more than 250 million #family). One of the goals of this conference will be to examine and question this gap between a deep attachment to the family unit – whether real or fantasized – and the proclaimed death of family.

The family ideal thus seems to have survived the major sociodemographic transformations and continues to thrive in the North-American imaginary, as contemporary fiction shows through the extraordinary amount of fictional autobiographies and family narratives. Indeed, family has often inspired North-American writers for, in many respects, it has concentrated all the anxieties of a fairly recent literature which has continuously questioned notions of origins and filiation. As a locus of suffering, misfortune, and neurosis, family is more than ever an obsession for contemporary writers. The Lamberts (Jonathan Franzen), the Lisbons (Jeffrey Eugenides), the Raitliffes (Rick Moody) or the Schells (Jonathan Safran Foer) have superseded the Angstroms (John Updike) or the Wapshots (John Cheever) but they remain families riddled with frustrations, secrets and trauma. So, how can we account for the fact that family narratives still endure and have even expanded in contemporary fiction? The approaching new millennium and the inaugural catastrophe of 9/11 that ushered in a new era led writers to turn to the family and portray it as either an idealized unit, a mere invention, or an alienating space. In this temptation to turn inward, how do writers negotiate family history and collective history? Isn’t this eagerness to fictionalize family – sometimes one’s own family – a sign of withdrawal, a reluctance to engage with the other? Does this phenomenon finally come along with a renewal of literary forms and practices? All those questions can be approached through the fiction of contemporary writers like Rick Moody, Jeffrey Eugenides, Nicole Krauss, Junot Diaz, Dave Eggers, Donald Antrim or Miriam Toews to draw up here a non-exhaustive list.

We welcome contributions addressing for instance the following topics:

– Family in contemporary novels, poetry and drama (fictional autobiographies, family narratives, autofictions)

– Family and its transformations; representation of identity and roles within the family

– Religion, class, ethnicity, territory: representations and stereotypes

– Staging the family on the public and political scenes

– Families on screen: in the movies, in TV shows (“Modern Family”, “Brothers and Sisters” etc.) or in reality shows (“Keeping up with the Kardashians”, “Hogan knows best” etc.)

– Staging family life in the visual arts

– Digital family identity et glamorization of family life on social networks (Instagram, family vlogs, parental blogs etc.)

– Family and words (family rhetoric, terminological evolutions, lexical creations etc.)

Papers may be presented either in English or French. Abstracts (around 300 words) along with a short biographical notice should be sent to Marie Moreau (marie1.moreau@univ-lyon2.fr) and Sophie Chapuis (sophie.chapuis@univ-st-etienne.fr) by April 23rd, 2018.

2018 Annual General Meeting of the Irish Association for American Studies

Posted on by Jennifer Daly

The Annual General Meeting of the IAAS will take place at 4.30pm at University College Dublin on April 28th. All members are encouraged to attend if possible as your input helps to shape the future direction of the Association. A number of positions on the Executive Committee will be open for election at this year’s AGM.

We are particularly keen to encourage nominations from members who have not yet had an opportunity to serve on the committee. The IAAS is run entirely on a volunteer basis, and it can only continue through the involvement of its members. We would also encourage members from disciplines that are currently under-represented on the committee (History, Politics, Film, Social Studies, Art etc) to consider putting themselves forward. The Association has seen remarkable growth in recent years. New voices and points of view need to be heard on the committee so that the Association can continue to be relevant for its members. If you are interested in standing for one of the vacant positions, please feel free to contact any members of the current committee for more information.

Positions open for election at this year’s AGM are as follows:

  • Vice Chair
  • Treasurer
  • Secretary
  • EAAS Representative
  • Ordinary Committee Member (2 positions)
Other positions may become vacant as a result of these elections. If you are interested in serving on the Committee you must be a fully paid-up member of the Association before submitting your nomination. If you would like to nominate another member of the Association for any of these positions, you must have their written permission to do so.

Nominations should be emailed to the Secretary (dalyj5@tcd.ie) by April 27th.

Should more than one nomination be received for any position, an election will be held during the AGM. Only members present at the AGM will be able to vote.

The minutes from last year’s AGM are posted on the IAAS website here.