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Job: Teaching Associate in American Studies, University of Nottingham

Posted on by Jennifer Daly

Teaching Associate in American Studies

University of Nottingham – American and Canadian Studies

Hours: Full Time

Contract Type: Contract/Temporary

Salary: £28,965 to £37,394

Closing Date: 27 August 2015

Ref: ARTS171515

Applications are invited for this fixed term, part-time post based in the Department of American and Canadian Studies (ACS). ACS has a thriving undergraduate programme, with around 400 students currently registered on Single Honours and Joint Honours programmes of 3 or 4 years’ duration, the latter incorporating a year abroad at one of the School’s 22 partner universities in the  U.S. and Canada.

The role holder’s responsibilities will be to co-teach and contribute to core American History modules, to teach a further module on the American Civil War in semester 2, and to supervise undergraduate dissertations across the year.

Applicants should have a PhD in American Studies or cognate field with a focus on US History. They should also have the ability to deliver modules to large (50+) and small groups, using lectures, seminars and tutorials, as appropriate. A Proven track record in university teaching and experience of convening modules is also essential.

This post is available from 1st September 2015 on a fixed term contract basis to 30 June 2016.   Hours of work are 25 per week.

Informal enquiries may be addressed to peter.ling@nottingham.ac.uk or susan.billingham@nottingham.ac.uk. Please note that applications sent directly to this email address will not be accepted.

CFP: Heidelberg Center for American Studies 13th Annual Spring Academy Conference

Posted on by Jennifer Daly

Heidelberg, Germany, March 14-18, 2016

Call for Papers

The thirteenth HCA Spring Academy on American History, Culture, and Politics will be held from March 14-18, 2016. The Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCA) invites applications for this annual one-week conference that provides twenty international Ph.D. students with the opportunity to present and discuss their Ph.D. projects.

The HCA Spring Academy will also offer participants the chance to work closely with experts in their respective fields of study. For this purpose, workshops held by visiting scholars will take place during this week.

We encourage applications that range broadly across the arts, humanities, and social sciences and pursue an interdisciplinary approach. Papers can be presented on any subject relating to the study of the United States of America. Possible topics include American identity, issues of ethnicity, gender, transatlantic relations, U.S. domestic and foreign policy, economics, as well as various aspects of American history, literature, religion, geography, law, musicology, and culture.

Participants are requested to prepare a 20-minute presentation of their research project, which will be followed by a 40-minute discussion. Proposals should include a preliminary title and run to no more than 300 words. These will be arranged into ten panel groups.

In addition to cross-disciplinary and international discussions during the panel sessions, the Spring Academy aims at creating a pleasant collegial atmosphere for further scholarly exchange and contact.

Accommodation will be provided by the Heidelberg Center for American Studies.

Thanks to a small travel fund, the Spring Academy is able to subsidize travel expenses for participants registered and residing in developing and soft-currency countries. Scholarship applicants will need to document the necessity for financial aid and explain how they plan to cover any potentially remaining expenses. In addition, a letter of recommendation from their doctoral advisor is required.

APPLICATIONS WILL BE ACCEPTED: August 15 ‐ November 15, 2015

SELECTIONS WILL BE MADE BY: January 8, 2016

PLEASE USE OUR ONLINE APPLICATION SYSTEM: www.hca‐springacademy.de

MORE INFORMATION: www.hca.uni‐heidelberg.de

FOR FURTHER QUESTIONS: springacademy@hca.uni‐heidelberg.de

CFP: Edited Collection: Spaces and Surveillance: States and Selves

Posted on by Jennifer Daly

Edited Collection: Spaces of Surveillance: States and Selves

Editors

Dr. Susan Flynn, University of the Arts London

Dr. Antonia Mackay, Oxford Brookes University & Goldsmiths, University of London

Call for Chapters

Proposals submission deadline: 1st November 2015

Notification of acceptance: 1st December 2015

Full chapters due: 1st April 2016

Planned submission: June 2016

Introduction

The unique character of our time is increasingly defined as one of surveillance – a period of being watched and policing ourselves and others. Coupled with this, technologies have permeated throughout our lives, both internally and externally, challenging our understanding of privacy, subjectivity and the notion of the individual. Have these developments impacted upon our understanding of geographical and bodily spaces? Has this changed our ability to understand selves, others and what it means to be ‘real’?

The Western world is central to these concerns, foregrounding and championing surveillance technology through Facebook, Google, Apps designed to pinpoint locations, phones which can track your movement; and this accumulation and commercialisation of ‘personal data’, in the wake of a post 9/11 mentality, the gathering of information seems to be pertinent and radically modern influence on our society and culture. Surveillance and technologies take many forms from the relationships between public and private, to the use of art, film, and literature as reflections of sociocultural concern. The aim of this volume is to bring together literary, cultural and artistic studies to provide a multidisciplinary text aimed to generate answers to fundamental questions: how surveillance and technology has changed the literary, the visual and the subjective.

Recommended Topics

Topics may include but are not limited to:

  • Is there a need for Cultural Studies to address surveillance?
  • How does surveillance affect our conceptions of the global West?
  • What is the significance of space in creating identity?
  • Are there ethical concerns in how surveillance is used in culture?
  • How is meaning created in this environment?
  • Can artefacts challenge our understanding of technological influence on the body and selfhood?
  • Can technologies and surveillance shift notions of nationalism?
  • How does the presence of multiple ‘gazes’ affect cultural narrative?

Submission Procedure

Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit a 350-500 word chapter proposal clearly explaining the mission and concerns of their proposed chapter, on or before 1st November 2015. Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by 1st December 2015. Full chapters will be requested on or before the 1st April 2016. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis. Contributors may also be requested to serve as reviewers for this project. Please submit proposals as Word documents to both antoniamackay@brookes.ac.uk and susan.flynn.1@ucdconnect.ie using the subject line “Spaces of Surveillance”

Publisher

This edited collection has received initial interest from a number of prominent publishers. Contributors will receive full details and submission guidelines on acceptance of their proposal.

Inquiries

Inquiries may be directed to: antoniamackay@brookes.ac.uk or susan.flynn.1@ucdconnect.ie

CFP: International Arthur Miller Centennial Conference

Posted on by Jennifer Daly

International Arthur Miller Centennial Conference

University of Extremadura, Cáceres,

Spain November 19-21, 2015

Deadline for proposals: September 30, 2015

Plenary speakers: Christopher Bigsby (Director of the Arthur Miller Centre for American Studies, University of East Anglia, UK, pending confirmation); Matthew Roudané (Georgia State University), Félix Martín Gutiérrez (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), and Ramón Espejo Romero (Universidad de Sevilla).

The Department of English of the University of Extremadura (Faculty of Arts and Letters) will host the International Arthur Miller Centennial Conference, in Cáceres, Spain on November 19-21, 2015.

The conference aims to provide a forum for academic reflection into any aspect of the life and works of Arthur Miller. We welcome contributions from a wide spectrum of critical perspectives on the playwright’s prolific output of dramatic and non-dramatic works, spanning more than six decades. From the perspective of the 100th anniversary of his birth on October 17, 1915, Miller’s role in American literature and culture and his significant contribution to the reshaping of American theatre will be reassessed.

This three-day conference will feature 4 plenary lectures, panels of concurrent paper sessions, 2 roundtable sessions, staged readings, and photographic and book exhibits. Themes that could be addressed include, but are not restricted to:

  •  Miller’s reception abroad: influence, affinities and translations into other languages.
  •  Miller’s literary contemporaries
  •  The influence of European theater on Miller’s drama
  • The “seductive” influence of Miller’s works on other American and European playwrights
  • The lasting legacy of Miller and his connection to and influence on other playwrights
  •  Miller as a playwright/short story writer/novelist/essayist
  •  The staging and performance of Miller’s plays in Europe
  •  The transposition of Miller’s playscripts to the screen
  •  Fact and fiction in his plays
  •  Miller in Spain and Spain in Miller
  •  Intertextuality in Miller
  •  Linguistic/stylistic studies of Miller’s plays
  •  The intersections of race, class and gender in Miller’s plays
  •  Miller’s politics and ideology
  •  Teaching Miller: Text, subtext and context

The official conference languages will be English and Spanish. It is anticipated that selected papers from the conference will be published.

Please send abstracts of no more than 250-300 words (in Microsoft Word or rtf formats) for proposed 20-minute papers by September 30, 2015, accompanied by a short biographical note not exceeding 150 words, institutional affiliation, and contact details to all the following emails. Notification of acceptance will be sent by October 7th .

Luis Girón Echevarría, Conference chair (luigiron@unex.es ; luisgironechevarria@gmail.com )

Bernardo Santano Moreno (santano@unex.es)

Mª Carmen Galván Malagón (mcgalvan@unex.es)

Diana Villanueva Romero (dvillanv@unex.es)

For further information, please visit the Conference website (under construction) or contact the organizers: https://internationalarthurmillerconference2015.wordpress

CFA: Senior editors at EJAS

Posted on by Catherine Gander

Call for applications:  European Journal of American Studies Senior Editor for History, Politics, IR and Social Science.

The European Journal of American Studies is the official journal of the European Association for American Studies, and can be accessed at http://ejas.revues.org

The editorial team is led by three Senior Editors, one covering Literature, Culture and the Arts, one managing the Journal’s interests in History, Politics, Social Sciences and International Relations, and a third co-ordinating the Journal’s web presence.

The current Senior Editor for History, Politics, IR and Social Science, Dr Jenel Virden, is standing down from this position. Members of EAAS will undoubtedly join the Officers and Board of the Association, and the remaining Senior Editors, Marek Paryz and Cara Rodway, in thanking Jenel for her work establishing the Journal on the international landscape of American Studies.

The Senior Editors are supported by Associate Editors, and work with Reviews Editor Theodora Tsimpouki to maintain a flow of work into the Journal’s webpages. The names of the current editorial team can be found at http://ejas.revues.org/9995.

The responsibilities of the Senior Editor for History, Politics, IR and Social Science are:
• In close co-operation with the other Senior Editors to establish, review and maintain a forward-looking strategy for the European Journal of American Studies.
• To identify a team of Associate Editors, and recommend their appointment to the President of EAAS.
• In co-operation with the other Senior Editors, to review and recommend to the President and the Board of EAAS regular updates to the membership of the Editorial Board.
• To engage with Associate Editors, the Editorial Board, EAAS Officers and EAAS Board members to solicit submissions to the Journal from an international range of conferences in American Studies and on American themesand through regular targeted and broad-based calls for papers.
• To encourage proposals for Special Issues of the Journal, and to work with the Guest Editors to ensure the delivery of these Special Issues.
• To delegate relevant actions to the Associate Editors and maintain close contact with them.
• In co-operation with Associate Editors and members of the Editorial Board to identify relevant experts and obtain readers’ reports from them.
• To receive and manage incoming submissions in the relevant disciplines, maintaining a database of submissions and ensuring the prompt progression of the submissions through the Journal’s refereeing and publication system.
• In co-operation with the other Senior Editors to prepare annual reports on Journal activities for EAAS Board meetings.
• In co-operation with the other Senior and Associate Editors, to pursue the indexing of the Journal in relevant indexes and to enhance the journal’s scholarly visibility.
• In co-operation with the other Senior Editors to keep under review the long-term strategy for the Journal, including issues such as the best submission processes, the most appropriate long-term internet platform, and the most useful outreach strategies for the Journal.
• To perform any other relevant duties as required by the Officers and Board of EAAS.

The current term for the Senior Editor for History, Politics, IR and Social Science runs to 2018, with the opportunity to renew at that date for a further 4 year term.

Applications should be no more than 4 pages long. Applicants should explain their vision and strategy for the European Journal of American Studies, explain the personal skills and resources that their appointment would bring to the Journal, and should include a brief CV in their 4 page document. Experience of web-based journal production and/or web-based publications may be an advantage. Applicants must be current members of a constituent organisation of EAAS.

Submissions should be made in the form of a Word document attached to a covering email and sent to president@eaas.eu no later than 12 midnight on Monday 19th October 2015.

Job: Lecturer in American Studies, University of Manchester

Posted on by Jennifer Daly

Closing date : 03/08/2015
Reference : HUM-06846
Faculty / Organisational unit : Humanities
School / Directorate : School of Arts, Languages and Cultures
Division : English, American Studies and Creative Writing
Employment type : Fixed Term
Duration : from 01/09/2015 until 31/07/2016
Location : Oxford Road, Manchester
Salary : £34,233 per annum
Hours per week : Full time

We are looking for a Lecturer in American Studies, with an emphasis on American politics, or American political culture and history to  direct an undergraduate course on American Political Culture at Level 2 in semester 1; this will include giving most of the lectures on the course and taking some seminars, with responsibility for graduate teaching assistants taking other seminars. In semester 2 you will teach seminars, and supervise long essays and dissertations, as directed by the Head of American Studies.

You will report directly to the Head of American Studies and work under the supervision of the Head of Division. You will be a committed teacher and strong communicator, and will collaborate closely with colleagues in the delivery of teaching and learning, taking a share of responsibilities for student progress and academic management.

The University of Manchester values a diverse workforce and welcomes applications from all sections of the community.

Enquiries about the vacancy, shortlisting and interviews:

Dr David Matthews, Head of Division

Email: david.matthews@manchester.ac.uk

Tel: 0161 275 7973

General enquiries:

Email: hrservices@manchester.ac.uk

Tel: 0161 275 4499

Technical support:

Email: universityofmanchester@helpmeapply.co.uk

Tel: 01565 818 234

Date of external posting:     Wednesday 22 July 2015

This vacancy will close for applications at midnight on the closing date.

Interviews for this post will be held on 12 August 2015 – candidates must be available to attend the interview on this date as there is no possibility of arranging an alternative interview.

Further details can be found here.

Organisation of American Historians: award announcements

Posted on by Catherine Gander

The Organisation of American Historians (OAH) have announced two awards:

The Willi Paul Adams Award and the

David Thelan Award.

The Willi Paul Adams Award

DEADLINE: SUBMISSIONS MUST BE POSTMARKED BY MAY 2, 2016

The Willi Paul Adams Award is given biennially by the Organization of American Historians to the author of the best book on American history published in a foreign language. The award (formerly the Foreign Language Book Prize) is named for Willi Paul Adams, who was an active member of OAH in Germany and a tireless advocate of the internationalization of American history.

The OAH defines both “history” and “American” broadly. To be eligible, a book should be concerned with the past (recent or distant) or with issues of continuity and change. It should also be concerned with events or processes that began, developed, or ended in what is now the United States. We welcome comparative and international studies that fall within these guidelines. Authors of eligible books are invited to nominate their work. We urge scholars who know of eligible publications written by others to inform those authors of the award. Since the purpose of the award is to expose Americanists to scholarship originally published in a language other than English—to overcome the language barrier that keeps scholars apart—this award is not open to books whose manuscripts were originally submitted for publication in English or by people for whom English is their first language.

Each entry must have been published during the two year period July 1, 2013 through June 30, 2015. The award will be presented at the 2017 OAH Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana, April 6–9.  For more information on submission procedures, click on the link above.

The David Thelan Award

DEADLINE: APPLICATIONS MUST BE SUBMITTED BY MAY 1, 2017

The David Thelen Award (formerly the Foreign Language Article Prize) is given biennially by the Organization of American Historians to the author of the best article on American history written in a foreign language. The winning article will be published in the Journal of American History. David Thelen was editor of the Journal of American History (1985–1999).

To be eligible, an article may have already been published (during January 1, 2015 through December 31, 2016) or may be an original work that broadens the presentation of American history. The winning article will illustrate how the understanding of American history can be approached differently when it is conceived in the scholarly or public debates of a country other than the United States. Submissions should be interesting, compelling, and highlight a way of thinking or writing about the United States that offers a perspective most American readers rarely encounter. The award is open to roundtables, keynote addresses, conference papers, or other types of scholarship. The manuscript should be framed and communicated to people outside the U.S. and written in a language other than English.

For more information on submission procedures, click on the link above.

 

CFP: Reading Risk in Contemporary U.S. Fiction and Culture

Posted on by Jennifer Daly

Reading Risk in Contemporary U.S. Fiction and Culture

A Postgraduate and Early Career Researcher Colloquium

University of Birmingham, 02/10/2015.

Five days after 9/11, Republican Party activist James Pinkerton proclaimed that ‘the World Trade Center has been destroyed, but this has also been a crushing defeat for irony, cynicism and hipness. Here in New York, the city that gave the world Seinfeld, Sex and the City and Studio 54, the victors now are sincerity, patriotism and earnestness’ (Newsday, September 16th, 2001). Has Pinkerton’s claim come true? If traditional values like sincerity, patriotism and earnestness are ascendant, what space is left for texts that risk to contest or query the status-quo? Should we abhor risk as the cause of the financial crash, or pine for risky artistic practices that might instigate change? Do we need the texts we study to be risky?

We are pleased to announce that on 02/10/2015 the University of Birmingham will invite postgraduates and early career researchers to discuss these and other issues regarding risk, in whatever permutation, in contemporary U.S. fiction and culture. Speakers are invited to give 15 minute papers on topics including, but by no means limited to, the following –

•       Experimentation in contemporary fiction and culture
•       The role of risk in publishing and media development
•       Financial/economic risk in contemporary literature and culture
•       Risk taking, risk management, and neoliberalism
•       Eco-criticism and environmental risk
•       The body, epidemics, health and medicine
•       Humanities research and risky/risk-averse methodologies
•       Being ‘post-’ (theory, postmodernism, ideology, etc.)
•       Precarity and ‘at risk’ populations
•       Technology, surveillance, and pre-emption.

This event will bring together postgraduates and early career researchers working on contemporary U.S. fiction and culture to discuss their work in a welcoming and informal setting. There are no registration fees. Please send a 200 word abstract, along with a 50 word biographical note, to riskinUSfiction@gmail.com by August 20th. For more general queries or clarification, please contact Alexander Moran and Edward Jackson at the same email address.

Profile on David Deacon: recipient of IAAS PG Research and Travel Bursary

Posted on by Catherine Gander

s200_david_deaconEarlier this year, David Deacon, a PhD student at University College Dublin, was the first-place recipient of the IAAS Postgraduate Research and Travel Bursary.    Below, he reports on how the grant has facilitated his work, and offers us a fascinating insight into his research.

 

It is no secret amongst the dedicated community of Cormac McCarthy scholars that the reclusive novelist and playwright is well acquainted with Ireland. Much of The Road (2006) was certainly completed here, with select pieces of his written correspondence during this period appearing on headed paper from The Shelbourne Hotel, amongst other notable locations around the country. At the end of 2005, as the novel neared publication, he writes to his acquaintance and avid book collector, J. Howard Woolmer, stating, “I was in Ireland most of last summer and got quite a bit done. The place has changed a lot. Money will do that.” It seems he didn’t make much of our era of material prosperity. Perhaps a premonition of its imminent decline informed the mood that would bring us one of the most important novels of the decade. Nonetheless, the opportunity afforded to me by the IAAS Postgraduate Travel Bursary ensured a very valuable change in the trajectory of my own thinking and appreciation of McCarthy, quite distinct from those he was so unsure of ten years ago.

Prior to my visit to McCarthy’s archives in The Wittliff Collections, located at the State University of Texas, San Marcos, I attended and presented a paper at “God and the American Writer,” an American Literature Association conference held in San Antonio. The paper argued for the presence of “difficult atheism” flowing through the author’s later prose. This concept was informed by Christopher Watkin’s 2011 book, in which he suggested that atheism, materialism and secularism are being thought of anew in contemporary philosophy — an assertion that I transposed to McCarthy’s philosophical prose. The panel was chaired by Stacey Peebles, and saw lengthy and passionate discussion between all panelists, along with notable McCarthy scholars Steven Frye and Allen Josephs, who were in attendance.

The Wittliff Collections kindly facilitated my week long visit to McCarthy’s archive, where I began by immersing myself in the collection of letters between the author and J. Howard Woolmer, mentioned above. These letters afford the scholar a rare glimpse of the thought process and laconic humour possessed by the quasi-ascetic novelist, from reports of hunting bears with hounds, to dreading the cessation of his MacArthur grant in the mid-1980s because he’d “gotten used to eating regularly.” The visit also afforded me the opportunity to acquaint myself with the unpublished screenplay, Whales and Men, the only copies of which reside in the Wittliff Collections. In it, his protagonists muse upon the communicative abilities of whales, and as such McCarthy’s astounding knowledge of and obsession with linguistics becomes evident to the visiting researcher. The unique, intrinsic, and central capacity of language to human experience, and the manner in which it can convey meaning, whilst simultaneously expressing the utter lack of it available to our conscience when subjected to a postmodern critique, forms a recurrent theme and concern in the extensive notations on drafts. Wittgenstein receives several mentions, whilst his love of Plato, Aristotle, and Nietzsche are in plain sight throughout, reminding us of the philosophical erudition that informs all of his writing. It is this richness which will keep scholars visiting and revisiting the archive for the foreseeable future.

With assistance from the IAAS, I was able to explore and contemplate these sources. They will undoubtedly inform and enrich my own PhD thesis, in part investigating McCarthy’s appropriation of religious ritual and sentiment, creating a postsecular tension in his later writing. My sincere thanks go to everyone at the Association.

Profile on James Cronin: recipient of IAAS PG Research and Travel Bursary

Posted on by Catherine Gander

james croninJames G.R. Cronin, a part-time doctoral history student under the supervision of Professor David Ryan, Head of the School of History at University College Cork, was the recipient of an IAAS Postgraduate Research & Travel Bursary in May 2015, along with David Deacon of UCD.

James’s study focuses on the social criticism of American writer Thomas Merton (1915-1968). James is concentrating on Merton’s essays on war and peace specifically written to mobilize American public opinion against the arms race in the year prior to the Cuban Missile Crisis during October 1962. He is especially interested in exploring how Merton employed independent media networks of production and distribution to circumvent the normalizing discourses circulated by the mass media throughout American society at the height of the Cold War (1947-91). James has used the IAAS bursary to support his research at the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky. For information on this archive and the writings of Thomas Merton please visit http://merton.org/