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CFP: Alternative Realities: New Challenges for American Literature in the Era of Trump

Posted on by Jennifer Daly

Call for Papers

Alternative Realities: New Challenges for American Literature in the Era of Trump

Friday 13 – Saturday 14 December 2019

Clinton Institute for American Studies, University College Dublin

Watching the televised debates between then-presidential candidates John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1959, and reflecting on the growth of televisual media and the gradual transformation of politics into spectacle, Philip Roth observed that “the American writer” was now challenged “to understand, and then describe, and then make credible much of the American reality,” at a time when the actuality was “constantly outdoing our talents”. After the election of Donald Trump in 2016 it feels like, once again, reality is outpacing fiction, with the Trump presidency inaugurating a new stage in the process of aestheticization in which politics and entertainment converge as never before. This paradigm shift—which is not exclusive to the US, but that is especially acute given Trump’s celebrity status and his leadership style—has been sharpened by the disruptive impact of new and social media in the public sphere, bringing to the fore concomitant concerns about the derealization of political and cultural discourses. In a context where the relationship between fact and fiction has been deeply destabilized, writers are challenged to make sense of this new “American reality” that is troubling core assumptions about the purpose and value of literature.

This conference seeks to bring together scholars in literary studies and adjacent fields to consider literary responses to the new American realities.

We are delighted to confirm as Keynote Speakers:

Aleksandar Hemon

novelist, author of Nowhere Man and The Lazarus Project

Professor of Creative Writing at Princeton University

 

Karen E. Bender

novelist and short-story writer, author of Refund, The New Order, Like Normal People

Distinguished Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Hollins University

 

Chris Beckett

novelist and short-story writer, author of America City and Dark Eden

Arthur C. Clark Award winner 2013

 Topics may include (but are not confined to):

  • Narrative strategies and innovations in the literary representation of American reality
  • Intersections between fiction and non-fiction
  • Fictional subversions of the “real”
  • The valence of realism in contemporary American literature
  • Literary criticism in the age of “Fake News”
  • Politics of representation, dissent, and resistance
  • Genre and gender in contemporary American fiction
  • Diasporic, minority, immigrant, and Native American literatures
  • Right-wing/conservative American literature
  • The resurgence of American protest poetry
  • The currency of dystopian and counterfactual literature
  • The role of irony, satire and parody in the era of Trump
  • The demands of writing the contemporary
  • Reading publics and the role of fiction
  • Shifting economies in the publishing industry
  • The currency of prior literature for making sense of the present

Please submit the paper title, an abstract of 300 words, a short bio and contact details to dolores.resano@ucd.ie and catherine.carey@ucd.ie. We also welcome applications for full panels of 3-4 papers. We will soon update information on www.ucdclinton.ie/, but don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions you may have.

The deadline for paper and panel proposals is 1st September 2019. (Note – we will make decisions on paper/panel submissions on a rolling basis to help facilitate participant’s planning for conference attendance).

2019 W.A. Emmerson Lecture

Posted on by Jennifer Daly

The IAAS is delighted to announce that Dr Aoileann Ní Éigeartaigh will deliver this year’s W.A. Emmerson Lecture.

You can listen to a recording of Dr Ní Éigeartaigh’s talk here:

 

Dr Ní Éigeartaigh is a Lecturer in Literature and Cultural Studies in the School of Business and Humanities at Dundalk Institute of Technology. Her research interests include American Literature, Irish Literature, and Cultural Studies. Aoileann is also a former chair of the Irish Association for American Studies.

Her lecture, “Liminal Spaces and Contested Histories in the novels of Juan Rulfo and George Saunders”, will take place at 4.30pm on Thursday, March 28th in room L4 in the Department of Business & Humanities, Dundalk Institute of Technology. Tea and coffee will be available from 4pm.

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 events. Information on previous lectures can be found here. The lecture is free and all are welcome to attend.

Aoileann NíÉigeartaigh (centre) with IAAS Chair David Coughlan

 

 

2019 Annual General Meeting of the IAAS

Posted on by Jennifer Daly

The Annual General Meeting of the IAAS will take place during this year’s Annual Conference at University College Cork (April 12 & 13). All members are encouraged to attend if possible as your input helps to shape the future direction of the Association. The minutes from previous AGMs are available here. 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:

  • Chair
  • Secretary
  • Postgraduate & Early Career representatives
  • President
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) in advance of the AGM.

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.

CFP:Special issue: ‘Horrific bodies: Surveillance, screens and screams’

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Call for Papers

Special issue: ‘Horrific bodies: Surveillance, screens and screams’ Edited by Susan Flynn, University of the Arts, London and Antonia Mackay, Oxford Brookes University

Body horror concerns narratives in which the corporeal uncanny is produced through the destruction or annihilation of the natural human body. The contemporary screen contains countless examples of horrified and terrified bodies; watched, tracked, analysed, transformed and degenerated, these ‘horrific’ bodies speak to the angst of the current social, cultural, political and technological world in which we reside. The practices of surveillance, both diegetic and non-diegetic, offer new versions of modern horror; while the horror genre itself has been generously theorized and analysed, its intersection with practices of surveillance opens up new avenues for discussion and the possibility for radical critique of representational systems. Surveillance, of and within horror narratives, offers a particular nuance to our readings of the genre, and the critique of surveillance itself may help us to excavate how we construct notions of gender, race and power, as well as the psychological terror and fear of surveillance itself. The focus of this special edition of Northern Lights, therefore, is the intersection between the horror genre and practices of surveillance, and this edition seeks to promote emergent approaches to screen analysis.

Notions of surveillance have long captivated the creative imagination and been envisioned at multiple sites, through narratives, images and performances. Whilst surveillance studies as a field of enquiry ostensibly concerns the production of new theoretical and empirical understandings of human behaviour vis-à-vis a burgeoning field of technological development, the project of this issue of Northern Lights is to employ cultural surveillance studies to better understand the human, psychic and bodily affects/effects and manifestations of the practices of surveillance. Operating within the paradigm of cultural studies, we seek to delve into the realm of surveillance as it is portrayed on screen so that we may explore the critical juncture at which surveillance renders bodies ‘horrified’.

The ubiquity of surveillance within horror narratives, one might argue, is perfectly placed to draw attention to cinematic processes, while at the same time, denaturalizing the human body. The editors are particularly interested in transgressive visions of surveillance from within the horror genre that also consider the ways in which the surveillant field emerges from beyond the lens. Areas of exploration may include architecture and horror (haunted houses for instance) as sites of surveillance; the body as a corporeal manifestation of visibility from within the discourse of slasher and gore narratives; the use of omnipotent watching as a dystopian motif in contemporary cinema (and its links to political and cultural change); and the manifestation of surveillant practices in horror that stem from geographical or topographical positions (prisons, schools, suburbia, cities, etc). Recognition of the prevalence of surveillance not only in our past but also in our future requires that we acknowledge the ubiquity of surveillance in our cultural products and psyche and attest to the manipulation of the gaze present in on-screen horror. We seek new and original approaches that move beyond traditional theories of surveillance, and of horror.

Potential topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Radical readings of horror through surveillance

• Feminist horror criticism for the digital age

• The new horror of digital interference

• The corporeal, biotechnology and the digital

• Slasher films and surveillance

• Contemporary psychological terror

• The abject and the corporeal

• Architectural constructions of the ‘horrific’

• The watching of othered bodies from within a transgressive surveillant lens

• Television series and use of the nostalgic as a lens by which to critique the contemporary

• Postcolonial readings of film that speak of the viewing of racial bodies and their ‘use’ and ‘appropriation’ within the horror genre

• Spoof horror and B-movies and their application of surveillant lenses from within the skewed and comedic

• Transitional spaces and the borders and territories of the horrific (motels for instance)

• Movement and the supernatural as a means by which to transgress the lens

Abstracts of 400–500 words, together with a brief biographical note, should be submitted by 10 February 2019.

Please email these directly to s.flynn@lcc.arts.ac.uk

Complete papers of 6500–7000 words are due on 1 July 2019.

Northern Lights: Film & Media Studies Yearbook is published by Intellect. Please refer to the style guide here: https://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/MediaManager/File/intellectstyleguide2016v1.pdf

Report from Early Career travel bursary winner Tim Groenland

Posted on by Jennifer Daly

The theme of the 15th annual conference of the European Society for Textual Studies, held in November in Prague, was “Editor as Author; Author as Editor”. Since my research focuses on the work of literary editors, the conference featured high on my wish list for 2018 – and with the help of an ECR Bursary from the IAAS, I was fortunate enough to get there.

The main purpose of my visit was to talk about (or, as I like to say in funding applications, “disseminate”) my research. My book The Art of Editing: Raymond Carver and David Foster Wallace (forthcoming from Bloomsbury! available to preorder now!) examines two case studies of notable editorial interventions, and my presentation focused on the first of these. In Gordon Lish’s infamously severe revisions of Carver’s stories, the editor’s unusually heavy hand makes him, in the opinion of some critics, a “co-author” of sorts. I presented some examples of these edits, ultimately arguing that Lish’s role remains an editorial one; the phrase “co-author”, I believe, suggests a kind of collaborative dynamic and vaguely distributed agency that doesn’t accurately reflect the conflict visible in the manuscripts.

The conference offered a wonderful opportunity to speak with scholars with a similar interest in editorial theory and practice. My co-panellists were Elisa Veit, who discussed the blurring of authorial and editorial lines in editions of work by the Finnish/Swedish novelist Henry Parland, and Hans Walter Gabler (a pretty noted editor himself, most famously of the 1984 edition of Ulysses), who spoke about the theoretical problems involved in fulfilling an author’s intention in the Anglo-American tradition of “eclectic editing.” I saw a range of presentations that probed the border of author- and editorship. These included: Wim van Mierlo, who spoke about the limits of authorship, considering how collaborations like those of Eliot and Pound challenge assumptions of solitary creation; Susan Greenberg, whose new book A Poetics of Editing brings a much-needed overview of the practice of editing across multiple domains and calls for the establishment of “Editing Studies” as a distinct field; and Dariusz Pachocki, who spoke about censorship in Polish magazines of the post-war era such as Kultura and detailed how their editors wielded a degree of gatekeeping influence comparable to that of US editors.

One of the attractions of the conference, in fact, had been the range of papers focusing on American writers and editors. Bruce I. Weiner, for example, discussed Edgar Allan Poe’s editorial role at Graham’s magazine and Poe’s conceptualisation of editorial work in his “Chapter on Autography.” Gabler’s presentation explored the decisions made in editions of Stephen Crane’s novels; elsewhere, Jude Davies analysed editorial decisions made in editions of Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie, examining the development of the editorial dynamic in the era of the “social text.” American literary history is full of examples of contested texts, editorial skirmishes, and posthumous editions, and I was able to learn about several case studies that I had been only dimly aware of. Overall, the visit was an enjoyable and generative one, enabling the kind of interdisciplinary thought and conversation only possible in a conference setting.

Finally, it seems appropriate to add a word on the nature of (and necessity for) this award. The IAAS’s Early Career Bursary is a recent creation, devised to address the grim realities of contemporary post-PhD employment. Conditions for early career researchers are, to borrow a phrase favoured by the 45th US president, “not good”. Today’s early career researcher (or, if you like, “precarious researcher”; I’ve seen the former phrase criticised for its ageist connotations and the way it risks avoiding/normalising the enormous problem of casualisation in universities) is required to absorb many of the institutional hassles facing all 21st-century academics – the bureaucracy, the out-of-hours unpaid administrative work, the astonishingly intricate funding applications – often while maintaining the teeth-grinding financial anxiety of a PhD student and enjoying an even lower level of job security than a current White House staff member.

These days the institutional structures providing a pathway from PhD to full employment seem creaky to say to the least, and actively hostile to anyone without a good helping of luck and privilege. Until these structures are reformed, bursaries such as this one will be not only helpful but very necessary in supporting research by academics without permanent employment. I thank the IAAS Prizes Subcommittee for their generosity.

 

Tim is currently a Lecturer/Assistant Professor in American Literature at the School of English, Drama and Film, University College Dublin, Ireland. His new book, The Art of Editing, is available to preorder from Bloomsbury now.

CFP: White Supremacy in the United States: Politics, Economies, Histories, Affects, and Poetics

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Call for Papers

White Supremacy in the United States:
Politics, Economies, Histories, Affects, and Poetics

The online journal Current Objectives in Postgraduate American Studies (COPAS), dedicated to publishing the work of early career researchers in American Studies in Germany and beyond, turns twenty in 2019. In 1999, when COPAS published its first issue, Gloria Anzaldúa was revising her article “The New Mestiza Nation,” which opens with an observation that sounds all too familiar twenty years later:

[W]e face a backlash and a dangerous regressive state inside and outside of education. The visibility of hate groups, the KKK, neo-nazis and other white supremacy groups has increased in the last few years. They proclaim that racial/ethnic others, working-class people, people of color are taking over their white territory and are using affirmative action to drive them out of jobs. […] They denounce the wave of multiculturalism on campuses, referring to it as a new tyrannical form of being ‘politically correct.’ When some of us criticize racism or homophobia in the academy they respond by pointing the finger at us and shouting their right-wing buzzwords like political correctness to silence dissenting voices.[1]

Heeding Anzaldúa’s subsequent call to counter this backlash, we dedicate our anniversary thematic issue to investigating the United States and American Studies under the auspices of the concept of ‘white supremacy.’ As a seismograph of German postgraduate American Studies research, COPAS invites contributions on white supremacy as a central organizing principle of American society and culture, past and present, from all academic disciplines concerned with American Studies.

We understand white supremacy as a pervasive formation that comprises institutional, political, economic, social, symbolic, physical, affective, and epistemic structures. White supremacy enables, maintains, and naturalizes oppression and dominance, which unfold from the violent making of ‘America’ as colonial modernity and persist through various permutations until today.[2] With recent political developments in North America and Europe where nationalist-populist and outright racist political powers have been on the rise, white supremacy has once more proven to be, as Michael Epp argues, “perhaps, the most enduring form of public feeling, cultural practice, and political aspiration in the history of the United States.”[3] On the one hand, longstanding racist practices such as blackface live on in contemporary American culture because they cater to desires of antiblack domination.On the other hand, the interventions of counterpublics by Black people and people of color are delegitimized as unwarranted outbursts of anger. In light of the “affective turn”[4] in American Studies and other fields, this COPAS issue thus proposes the need to analyze the ways in which notions and practices of white supremacy are intertwined with not only feeling but the politics, economies, histories, and poetics of whiteness. Thereby, we follow Claudia Rankine’s analytic axiom that “to name whiteness is to name dominance.”[5] Critical questions arising in this context, among many others, are: What does it mean to feel, to sense, and to experience white supremacy? Which emotions does white supremacy engender and how? How does systemic white supremacy construct individuals’ affects and how do these affects relate to the distribution of economic, social, and symbolic capital? How do affects of ‘white guilt,’ ‘white power,’ and ‘redemption’ shape public discourse, legal policies, and the representations of US history? Who writes, interrogates, confronts, and deranges those (hi)stories of whiteness and how?

We seek article proposals that range from historical, political, and cultural perspectives to transnational and comparative approaches. Theoretical pieces as well as case studies are welcome, particularly with regard to the ways in which institutionalized white supremacy is connected to intersecting discourses of gender, sexuality, queerness, transness, class, age, ethnicity, origin, and disability. Additionally, this call is open to creative submissions (such as poems or short stories) and to proposals that engage with the ethics of doing American Studies from certain positionalities and localities. Topics may include but are not limited to the following fields of inquiry:

  • white supremacy and cultural expression (e.g. film, literature, photography, performing arts, music, and social media)
  • Antiblackness and other racist and discriminatory discourses and practices (against e.g. Black, Indigenous, LatinX, and ‘undocumented’ people) as well as their transnational ramifications
  • racial capitalism as well as intersections of white supremacy and class (e.g. discourses of ‘white trash’ and the persistence of a ‘white elite’)
  • the entanglements of white supremacy, settler colonialism, and genocide
  • social justice movements and their concepts of and actions towards a just and free society
  • white supremacy and questions of gender and sexuality (e.g. femonationalism, homo­nationalism, queer liberalism)
  • the body politics of white supremacy (e.g. scientific racism, ableism and ablenationalism, eugenics and genetic testing)
  • white supremacy, globalization, and environmental destruction

Please send your submission to copas@dgfa.de. For scholarly papers the submission deadline for 500-word-proposals is January 1,2019. Members of the editorial team will review all proposals and inform applicants about the outcome by January 30, 2019. Upon acceptance, full articles of about 5,000 to 8,000 words length will be due June 15, 2019. The articles will be peer-reviewed. Creative submissions are also due January 1, 2019. In addition, we kindly ask authors of creative submissions to send us a brief artist’s statement (1000-1500 words) by June 15, 2019. Open access publication is scheduled for November 2019. Please see https://copas.uni-regensburg.de/ for our editorial policies and submission guidelines.

We look forward to your submission!

[1] Anzaldúa, Gloria E. “The New Mestiza Nation.” The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader, edited by AnaLouise Keating, Duke UP, 2009, p. 203.

[2] Sexton, Jared. “The Social Life of Social Death: On Afro-Pessimism and Black Optimism.” InTensions Journal, vol. 5, 2011, pp. 1-47.

[3] Epp, Michael. “Durable Public Feelings.” Canadian Review of AmericanStudies, vol. 41, no. 2, 2011, p. 179.

[4] Clough, Patricia Tincineto. “Introduction.” The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social, edited by Patricia Tin­cineto Clough and Jean Halley, Duke UP, 2007, p. 1.

[5] Rankine, Claudia. “The Racial Imaginary in Contemporary Art.” American Counter/Publics. 65thAnnual Conference of the German Association for American Studies, 27 May 2018, Seminaris CampusHotel, Berlin.

CFP: American Ambiguities: Is NOW the Era of our Disconsent?

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GSNAS 12th Annual Graduate Conference Presents May 22–24 | 2019

A M E R I C A N  A M B I G U I T I E S  I S  N O W  T H E  E R A  O F  O U R  D I S C O N S E N T ?

CALL FOR PAPERS

Whatever happened to consensus? In the wake of World War II, the United States came to occupy what many proponents of American exceptionalism have long asserted to be a unique place in modern world history. Official and quotidian versions of postwar American selfunderstanding became dominated by narratives of a nation dedicated to such liberal values as “freedom” and “justice,” both at home and abroad. With the cultural and legislative strides made by radical social movements of the 1960s and 70s, however, this narrative began to unravel. In light of this, American identity has since found itself in a state of persistent ambiguity. But what if this ambiguity was already present at America’s founding? What if this crisis of identity is to be located in the ambiguities of the Enlightenment itself, but has only recently become perceptible? What can we see when we look closely at the ambiguous image that is America?

The 12th annual Graduate Conference hosted by the Graduate School of North American Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin will explore the interdisciplinarity of American ambiguities and consider their relevance across numerous fields of research. How are ambiguous ideals of American freedom simultaneously modes of exclusion for certain groups? What effects have these ambiguities had on policy-making and public discourse? How have they been depicted through old and new literary and visual forms?

As an interdisciplinary institution, the Graduate School welcomes abstracts for individual 20- minute presentations from cultural studies, economics, history, literature, political science, and sociology, as well as other related fields of research. We especially encourage graduate students (MA & PhD) and early career scholars to apply. We hope to read proposals ranging in period from the colonial era to the present. Talks may explore, but are by no means limited to, the concept of ambiguity in the following contexts:

• formations of identity politics

• the rise of (science) skepticism and political echo chambers

• the crisis of journalism in a “post-truth” society

• attitudes towards social solidarity • judicial and constitutional interpretation

• the aesthetics of ambiguity in American literature, film, visual and popular culture

• the revival of socialist economic models

• the inheritance of the Enlightenment and theories of liberal consensus

Abstracts should be limited to 300 words and include the author’s name, email address, institutional affiliation (if applicable), discipline, and a biography of no more than 100 words. The deadline is January 31st, 2019. The conference committee will confirm the receipt of abstracts via email and will notify selected participants by the end of March.

For submissions and further information, please visit our website

http://www.gsnasconference2019.com

CFP for Transatlantic Studies Association Annual Conference

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Transatlantic Studies Association
18th Annual Conference
University of Lancaster
8-10 July 2019

Call for Papers

Submissions are invited for the 2019 Transatlantic Studies Association Annual Conference.

Plenary guests confirmed include:

Professor Brian Ward (Northumbria University)

“The Beatles in Miami, 1964: Race, Class and Gender in the Atlantic World”

AND

Professor Kevin Hutchings (University of Northern British Columbia)

“Transatlantic Romanticism and British-Indigenous Relations: 1800-1850”

PLUS

A Roundtable discussion on:

Transatlantic Relations in the Age of a Rising China

 

Following its first trip across the Atlantic for last year’s annual conference at the University of North Georgia, the TSA is returning to the UK for its eighteenth annual conference at the University of Lancaster.

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 (indicated below). 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, Thomas Mills, t.c.mills@lancaster.ac.uk)

 

  1. Political and intellectual history

(Gavin Bailey, gjzbailey@gmail.com, Philip Pedley, p.pedley@lancaster.ac.uk)

 

  1. Social, cultural and religious history

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

 

  1. International Relations and Security Studies

(Luis Rodrigues, luis.rodrigues@iscte-iul.pt, David Ryan, david.ryan@ucc.ie)

 

  1. Literature, film, and theatre

(Donna Gessell, donna.gessell@ung.edu, Finn Pollard, fpollard@lincoln.ac.uk, Constance Post, cjpost@iastate.edu)

 

  1. Business and finance

(Thomas Mills, t.c.mills@lancaster.ac.uk, Philip Pedley, p.pedley@lancaster.ac.uk)

 

  1. Latin America in a transatlantic context

(Thomas Mills, t.c.mills@lancaster.ac.uk, David Ryan, david.ryan@ucc.ie)

 

  1. Ethnicity, race and migration

(Kristin Cook, kc31@soas.ac.uk, Gavin Bailey, gjzbailey@gmail.com)

 

Special subject theme:

 

Transatlantic Romanticisms

Proposals are welcome for 20-minute papers on any aspect of Romanticism in a transatlantic context. Possible topics might include (but are not limited to) comparative romanticisms, ecological romanticisms, romantic natural histories, romantic travel and exploration, romanticism and colonialism, romanticism and critical theory. Please send a 300-word abstract, 100 word author biography, and 2-page CV to Kevin Hutchings, University Research Chair, Department of English, University of Northern British Columbia (kevin.hutchings@unbc.ca).

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 / 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, 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. If wishing to apply for a travel grant, applicants should indicate this in the body of the email when submitting their paper or panel. 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.

All paper and panel proposals, and travel grant applications, should be sent to the conference email: tsalancaster2019@gmail.com

Deadline for panel and paper proposals: 20 January 2019

The Conference Location:

Lancaster’s transatlantic connections date back to the eighteenth century when the city was a significant port for trade with the West Indies. Today, Lancaster is a thriving market town with a wide selection of pubs, restaurants and shops. Situated in north-west England, Lancaster is surrounded by beautiful countryside, including the Forest of Bowland, the Yorkshire Dales, and the Lake District. Described by Woodrow Wilson as ‘a region … so irresistible in its beauty’ during one of his several visits to the area, the Lake District is home to Dove Cottage and the Wordsworth Museum. To the south of Lancaster are the cities of Manchester and Liverpool, with world-class museums including the People’s History Museum, and the International Slavery Museum. To the west lies Morecambe Bay, home of the art-deco Midland Hotel, the location for the conference dinner.

The University of Lancaster is located three miles outside of the city, amidst 560 acres of landscaped parkland. Home to the Ruskin Library and Research Centre, the campus also boasts a wide selection of shops, bars and eateries.

For convenience, delegates are advised to stay on campus for the duration of the conference. Delegates will be able to choose between campus Guest Rooms or the four star Lancaster House Hotel. Blocs of rooms have been reserved at both and will be bookable when registering for the conference via the TSA website: www.transatlanticstudies.com.

Lancaster is easily accessible by train, with direct connections from London (2.5 hours), Manchester (1hr 20 mins), and Edinburgh (2hr 20mins). Manchester Airport has direct flights from locations throughout North America and Europe.

Contact details and further information

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

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

www.transatlanticstudies.com