Call for Proposals for Vol. 3, Issue 1 Shirley Jackson Studies–Jackson & Adolescence

Posted on September 9, 2024 by Miranda Corcoran

“Her life is controlled, possessed, by a shifting set of laws that make your garden-variety savage initiation rite look like milk time in the nursery school.”–Shirley Jackson, “On Girls of Thirteen”.

Shirley Jackson wrote extensively about the experiences of teenagers and young people across her considerable body of work. In her humorous domestic fiction, she, like many post-war adults, looked on in bemused wonder at the strange rites and rituals of the newly-formed teenage demographic. In her novels and short stories, she described young people navigating the often tumultuous, occasionally traumatic, passage from childhood to adulthood (The Road Through the Wall, Hangsaman, “Louisia, Please Come Home”). Her depictions of teenage girls, in particular, are often deeply complex and surprisingly nuanced, especially within the context of a culture that frequently dismissed female adolescents as greedy, frivolous, superficial and ridiculous. Multifaceted and possessed of a striking emotional and intellectual depth, her adolescent characters run the gamut from the clever, resourceful narrator who outwits the Devil himself in “The Smoking Room” to the murderous Merricat Blackwood in We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

The depth and variety of Jackson’s treatment of adolescence is perhaps all the more surprising when we consider that she was writing in age when the teenager was still a comparatively new cultural phenomenon, with the term “teenager” only emerging in the first half of the 1940s. In those years, teens became a flash point in a range of debates and discourses generated by everyone from parents and educators to manufacturers and advertisers. An increasingly powerful consumer base and an emblem of America’s post-war prosperity, adolescents were also a source of anxiety as various authorities fretted over their rebellious attitudes, peer-focused social lives and byzantine dating practices.

In this issue, we seek to explore Jackson’s interventions in the construction of the American teenager and how her work interrogates this nascent cultural icon. In doing so, we will investigate how Jackson employed the adolescent as an avatar through which to explore broader questions of gender, power and family dynamics. We are also interested in considering how Jackson’s fictional adolescents anticipated many later trends in the development of Gothic, horror and YA fiction through her engagement with archetypes such as teenage witches, juvenile delinquents and awkward, directionless young adults.

Possible article topics include, but are not limited to:

The representation of teenagers in Jackson’s domestic stories
Jackson’s teenagers and magazine market
Jackson and young adult fiction, film and/or television
The figure of the adolescent or youth as inflected by race, class, gender, sexuality, etc.
Adolescents and family/community power dynamics
Adolescence and the post-World War II American context (advertising, popular culture, music, media, moral panics)
Gothic childhood/adolescence

Abstracts of 500 words plus short author bio should be sent to shirleyjacksonstudies@gmail.com by November 30, 2024. Upon acceptance, completed articles of 6,000-8,000 words will be due by May 30, 2025 with revisions to follow.

Extended Deadline: Emily Dickinson International Society Conference, 2022

Posted on November 4, 2021 by Sarah McCreedy

Extended Deadline

The 2022 Emily Dickinson International Society Conference, “Dickinson and Foreignhood,” and the Dickinson Critical Institute in Seville

The Emily Dickinson International Society is extending its deadline until November 20 for proposal submission to its international conference, “Dickinson and Foreignhood,” and to its Critical Institute, both to take place at the College of Philology, University of Seville, Spain. The conference will go from Tuesday, July 12, to Thursday, July 14. The Critical Institute will be on Monday, July 11.

The Dickinson Critical Institute helps graduate students and early career scholars develop their work in collaboration with established Dickinson specialists. For more information about the Critical Institute in Seville, please see the conference website (https://edisforeignhoodconference.org/). To apply to the Institute, submit a one-page cv and a 500-800-word description of your project to Eliza Richards (ecr@email.unc.edu) and to Karen Sánchez-Eppler (kjsanchezepp@amherst.edu) no later than November 20. Use the subject heading “[Last Name] Dickinson Institute Application,” and attach your application materials as Word or pdf documents. Decisions on acceptance will be made by December 15.

The EDIS International Conference “Dickinson and Foreignhood” takes its cue from “A South Wind – has a pathos” (c.1864), where the poet refers to “much not understood – / The fairer – for the farness – / And for the foreignhood.” These lines represent the unknown as more beautiful when distant and unfamiliar, or foreign. The conference seeks to develop knowledge of how Dickinson understood the foreign, how she has been understood as foreign, and how foreign peoples have understood her.

The Program Committee welcomes all work on configurations of the foreign, broadly understood, in Dickinson’s writing, including:

• Conceptions of the foreign (or what we might call otherness) in Dickinson’s culture and historical moment

• Discussions of race, ethnicity, class, disability, gender, sexuality, and other categories that have historically been associated with alienation and cultural disenfranchisement

• Dickinson, geography, navigation, and foreign travel

• Parts of Dickinson’s environment, culture, or identity that seemed foreign to her

• Immigration, emigration, and exile

• Dickinson’s reception abroad

• Dickinson, foreign languages, and translation

• Lyric alienation and the poetics of estrangement

• Invasion, contagion, and infection as encounters with the foreign

Finally, regardless of theme, all proposals engaging serious scholarship on Dickinson’s work are welcome. Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words, along with a brief biography of 100 words maximum, to Jefferey Simons (dickinsoninseville@dfing.uhu.es) and to Cristanne Miller (ccmiller@buffalo.edu) before November 20. Please specify if you plan to present virtually rather than in person. The conference Program Committee will respond by December 15.

For further information, please see the websites of the conference (https://edisforeignhoodconference.org/) and of The Emily Dickinson International Society (http://www.emilydickinsoninternationalsociety.org/).

CFP: Cormac McCarthy International Conference

Posted on October 27, 2021October 27, 2021 by Sarah McCreedy

Call for Papers

Cormac McCarthy

International Conference

CFP Beyond the White House: The First Lady in Film, Fiction, and Culture

Posted on June 16, 2021 by Sarah McCreedy

This edited collection seeks to explore the representation of the First Lady in a range of different texts and media. The collection aims to examine the President’s wife in a purely cultural context by investigating the ways in which she has been represented, embodied, characterised and commemorated in film, fiction, memoir, photography and portraiture, television, theatre, education, museum studies, fashion, and social media.

Beyond the White House is an original work that makes use of cultural interpretation to reconfigure the figure of the First Lady as a culturally authoritative individual possessing the ability to sway, change, inspire, and manipulate public attention and opinion. Moving away from biographies and histories, this is the first volume of its kind to consider the representation of the First Lady figure through the prism of popular culture – and therefore consider her impact upon ‘cultural politics’ – and the first to regard her as a strategically important socio-cultural figure.

Removed from the patriarchal hierarchy of White House politics and expectations, the First Lady emerges as a force of her own; she subtly carves out cultural agency and gender identity despite her (in)visibility in the public eye. Simply by being the ‘First Lady of the United States’ she possesses what MaryAnne Borrelli has labelled the “performance of descriptive representation” (Women and the White House: 229). The relationship between the woman and the office is paramount; the existence of the title ‘First Lady’ permits popular culture to tolerate or reject not only political and cultural manoeuvring, but also issues of gender, race, self, location, fashion, identity, satire, memory, authority, and even pedagogy. The office of the First Lady is what the woman makes it, and in Beyond the White House she has become a commanding cultural icon.

Possible topics might include (but are not limited to):

The First Lady in film and on television (both fictional First Ladies and representations of real First Ladies, such as in the new First Ladies series from Showtime)
First Ladies in fiction (this might be retellings of the stories of real First Ladies, or new fictional First Ladies)
First Ladies and self-representation, life-writing and memoir (i.e. Becoming by Michelle Obama, Hard Choices by Hilary Clinton)
First Ladies in education; how the role of FLOTUS is represented and taught in classrooms
The First Lady on display; exhibitions, curatorship and portraiture of FLOTUS
Photography and portraiture of the First Ladies (in magazines, photoshoots and journalism as well as official portraiture)
First Ladies on stage and in theatre
Fashion and the First Ladies (from inaugural gowns to Melania’s ‘I really don’t care’ jacket)
Self-representation and social media; FLOTUS on Twitter and Instagram.

Please send 300-500 word abstracts, a short bio to Dr Anne-Marie Evans (a.evans@yorksj.ac.uk) and Dr Sarah Trott (s.trott@yorksj.ac.uk ) by 16^th July 2021.

CFP: Special Issue of American Nineteenth Century History

Posted on May 20, 2021May 20, 2021 by Sarah McCreedy

“Music in American Nineteenth Century History”

Co-editors: J. M. Mancini and Billy Coleman

Abstracts Due — 30 September 2021

Draft Papers Due — 30 May 2022

Symposium – mid-June 2022 (tentative)

Full Papers Due for peer review — 30 September 2022
Planned publication — mid-2023

In the nineteenth-century United States, music was everywhere: at work, leisure, and prayer; in places of worship and in the home, on the battlefield and on the path of reform; in times of joy, in times of crisis, and in times of mourning. And yet in comparison to literature or art and material culture, music and musical practice remain largely unsung within nineteenth-century US historiography. Thus until recently most historians ignored music–or considered its analysis beyond the bounds of historical inquiry. As a result, music has only begun to be treated as integral to the nineteenth-century experience, or analysed through a historical lens that sees and hears the world first and foremost through historical processes–social, economic, political, cultural, environmental–rather than through practices, parameters, and personnel derived from and internal to the world of music.

Nonetheless, recent developments suggest that nineteenth-century American history is undergoing a musical turn. The aim of this special issue is to build on this momentum by bringing together members of a growing, but disparate community of historians; musicologists; and historically-minded interdisciplinary scholars, for a timely conversation on music and nineteenth-century American history spanning the Revolution to the invention of recorded sound. Possible topics include:

What relationships existed between the many profound social transformations of the nineteenth century (e.g., emancipation; mass education/literacy; conquest; mass migration) and musical change?
How did the many forms of transregional encounter that characterised the nineteenth-century US (empire/conflict, migration, commerce, evangelism, reform) interact with musical exchange, both inside the US and globally?
How can historians make sense of the many diverse settings for nineteenth-century US music, and the transformations that occurred both within those settings (congregations; domestic spaces; townscapes; military contexts; commercial stages; etc.) and in terms of overall shifts (e.g., the displacement of music-making in informal settings to performance in dedicated, often commercial spaces?)
How did the gendering of music relate to broader historical trends?
How did technological rupture–from mass print to recorded sound–transform musical practice and the place of music in American life?
How did music contribute to the construction of race and concepts of racial difference across the long nineteenth century?
What was the relationship between music, nation-making, and nationalism in nineteenth-century America? How did it evolve over time and space?
How did music practices, or perceptions of musical power, map onto different political ideologies or partisan-based identities?
How can historians think through the many binary relationships in nineteenth-century American music such as sacred/secular, commercial/non-commercial, signed/anonymous, individual/communal, private/public, written/oral, recorded/unrecorded, formal/informal?
What historiographical trends have shaped the incorporation of music into nineteenth-century American history over time? What new methodological opportunities may offer the most constructive paths forward?
How can scholars leverage recent technological and metahistorical developments to make historical music available to listeners and usable in the history classroom?

We seek submissions of 300–500 word abstracts proposing articles for consideration for publication, with full manuscripts to follow. In addition to the abstract, please advise us of your interest and capacity to participate in a symposium event for workshopping drafts (whether in-person or in a hybrid digital format). Please also advise us of your potential interest in, and any musical or technical skills you may be willing to contribute to, a possible soundtrack album aimed at facilitating the use of this research in the classroom. Acceptance of an abstract does not mean acceptance of a paper and submitted papers will proceed through American Nineteenth Century History’s usual peer-review process.

Please send abstracts and all queries to J. M. Mancini (JoAnne.Mancini@mu.ie) or Billy Coleman (colemanw@missouri.edu) by September 30, 2021.

CFP: Transatlantic Studies Association Annual Conference

Posted on February 22, 2020 by James Hussey

Transatlantic Studies Association
19th Annual Conference
Centre for International Studies, ISCTE-IUL, Lisbon
6-8 July 2020

_________

Call for Papers

Submissions are invited for the 2020 Annual Conference

KEYNOTE LECTURES

Professor Andrew Moravcsik (Princeton University)

“Why meeting NATO’s 2% target would make Europe (and the West) less secure”

AND

Professor Anna Brickhouse (University of Virginia)
2020 Mayflower Lecture

“From Lima to Lisbon: Earthquake History in the Making”

Co-sponsored by the University of Plymouth:

‘Mayflower 400: Atlantic Crossings’

PLUS

A Roundtable discussion on:

Southern Transatlantic Connections and the Cold War

_________

The TSA is a broad network of scholars who use the ‘transatlantic’ as a frame of reference for their work in a variety of disciplines, including (but not limited to): history, politics and international relations, and literary studies. All transatlantic-themed paper and panel proposals from these and related disciplines are welcome.

The conference is organised around a number of subject themes, each of which is convened by members of the conference programme committee. If you would like to discuss your paper or panel proposal prior to submission, please contact the relevant programme committee members. This year’s subject themes are:

Diplomatic and international history
David Ryan, david.ryan@ucc.ie, Chris Jespersen, christopher.jespersen@ung.edu

Political and intellectual history
Joe Renouard, jrenoua1@jhu.edu, Ana Monica Fonseca, ana_monica_fonseca@iscte.iul.pt

Social, cultural and religious history

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

International Relations and Security Studies

Luís Rodrigues, luis.rodrigues@iscte-iul.pt, Joe Renouard, jrenoua1@jhu.edu

Literature, film, and theatre
Donna Gessell, donna.gessell@ung.edu, Finn Pollard, fpollard@lincoln.ac.uk

Business and finance

Thomas Mills, t.c.mills@lancaster.ac.uk, António Monteiro, asousamonteiro@gmail.com

Latin America in a transatlantic context

Robert Howes, robert.howes@kcl.ac.uk, Pedro Seabra, pedro.seabra@iscte-iul.pt

Ethnicity, race and migration

Kristin Cook, kc31@soas.ac.uk, Ana Lúcia Sá, ana.lucia.sa@iscte-iul.pt

Special subject theme:

‘Mayflower 400: Atlantic Crossings’

The TSA is pleased to join the University of Plymouth, England in welcoming proposals that seek to place the Mayflower voyage within an Atlantic context, and that offer an opportunity to better understand, interrogate and develop the political, religious, scientific and economic forces which shaped the Atlantic world in this historical moment and beyond. In commemorating ‘Mayflower 400’, we seek to uncover and enable voices and identities which forged, or were forged by, Atlantic crossings of many kinds. The 2020 TSA conference thus welcomes scholars focusing on the Mayflower voyage and its legacies, or on early America from historical/cultural/literary perspectives.

Other formats

In addition to the subject themes above, we welcome papers and panels on any aspect of transatlantic studies. Interdisciplinary papers and panels are particularly welcome, as are innovative formats, such as roundtables, workshops or multimedia presentations.

Submission Instructions

Panel proposals should constitute three or four presenters and a Chair (as well as a discussant if desired). Panel proposals should be sent by email as one document attachment to tsalisbon2020@gmail.com, and include:

300-word overview of the panel theme;
300-word abstracts for each of the papers;
100-word author biographies;
2-page CVs for all participants.

The subject line of the email for panel proposals should read: ‘TSA Proposal-[Last name of panel convenor]-[Subject theme]’ (state ‘Other’ if not falling under listed themes) (E.g. ‘TSA Proposal-Smith-Diplomacy and International History’).

Individual paper proposals should be sent by email as one document attachment, and include:

300-word abstract for the paper
100-word author biography;
2-page CV.

The subject line of the email for paper proposals should read: ‘TSA Proposal-[Last name of presenter]-[Subject theme]’ (state ‘Other’ if not falling under listed themes) (E.g. ‘TSA Proposal-Smith-Other).

Travel Grants

The TSA particularly welcomes proposals from new members and junior scholars. Travel grants are available to support early career scholars presenting a paper at the conference. As a result of funding from the Halle Foundation, the TSA is able this year to offer a number of additional travel grants to support early career scholars presenting a paper on any aspect of relations between the United States and Germany.

If wishing to apply for a travel grant, applicants should indicate this in the body of the email when submitting their paper or panel. If papers are believed to qualify for Halle Foundation funding, this should be indicated. In addition to the materials requested above, travel grant applicants should include a brief statement explaining why it is important for them to attend the TSA conference, and an outline of the principal costs entailed. For further details about TSA travel grants, see the TSA website: www.transatlanticstudies.com.

Deadline for panel and paper proposals: 27 January 2020
All paper and panel proposals, and travel grant applications, should be sent to the conference email: tsalisbon2020@gmail.com.

NB: The working language of the conference will be English.

The Conference Location

On the right bank of the river Tagus, Lisbon is a city whose legendary history stretches back over twenty centuries. Lisbon’s exceptional light has charmed writers, photographers and filmmakers with the polychrome façade tiles serving to create a particular atmosphere. On foot, by tram, by boat or walking on the banks of the Tagus, and even on the metro – an open underground museum of contemporary Portuguese art – any means serves to reveal the cultural diversity of the Portuguese capital.

Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL) is a public university established in 1972. Pursuing teaching, research and community service activities, it plays a major role in educating qualified specialists and personnel, whose cultural, scientific and technical skills enable them to contribute to sustainable development both at the national and the global level.

Located in the central Entrecampos area of Lisbon, ISCTE is easily accessible by metro, train and bus. Lisbon Airport is a short drive away and has direct flights throughout Europe and to North and South America.

Contact details and further information

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

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

Secretary of TSA: Kristin Cook: kc31@soas.ac.uk

Local Organiser: Luís Rodrigues, luis.rodrigues@iscte-iul.pt

Extended CFP: IAAS PG Symposium

Posted on October 3, 2019October 6, 2019 by James Hussey

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

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

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

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

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

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

The deadline for bursary applications is Monday, 4th November, 2019.

There are two bursaries available for symposium presenters. Application forms and information can be found at https://iaas.ie/funding-opportunities/. References are *not* required for this bursary application process.

IAAS2020 CFP

Posted on September 22, 2019 by James Hussey

Counter-narratives and Hidden Histories

Irish Association for American Studies

50th Anniversary Conference

Maynooth University, Co. Kildare

3-4 April 2020

CALL FOR PAPERS

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

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

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

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

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

Individual submissions:

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

Panel submissions:

Please provide a brief description of your panel (3 presenters), along with the names and brief biographies of the proposed presenters, and an individual abstract (250 words) for each paper.

The composition of panels should be diverse whenever possible, and all-male panels should be avoided.

Roundtable submissions:

Please provide a brief description of your roundtable (between 4 and 8 presenters), along with the names and brief biographies of the proposed presenters, and an individual abstract for each paper (no more than 100 words).

The composition of roundtables should be diverse, and all-male roundtables will not be accepted.

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

** Bursaries are also available. **

Deadline for submissions: 1st November 2019

Please send submissions to: IAAS2020conference@gmail.com

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

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

CFP IAAS 2020

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

Posted on September 4, 2019 by James Hussey

CFP: 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 and short-story writer, 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(s)
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/audiences 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 and a short bio 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 our website, but don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions you may have.

The deadline for paper and panel proposals has been extended to 1st October 2019. Registration fee for participants is €120, reduced fee of €50 for postgrad students.

CFP: Heidelberg Centre for American Studies

Posted on July 18, 2019 by James Hussey

Call for Papers: The Heidelberg Centre for American Studies

The 17th HCA Spring Academy on American Culture, Economics, Geography, History, Literature, Politics and Religion will be held from March 23-27, 2020. The HCA invites applications for this one-week annual conference that provides twenty international PhD students with the opportunity to present and discuss their PhD subjects.

The HCA Spring Academy will also offer participants the chance to work closely in their respective fields of study. For this purpose, workshops held by visiting scholars will be held throughout the 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 related 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 to create a a pleasant collegial atmosphere for further scholarly exchange and contact.

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

Thanks to a small travel fund, the Spring Academy is able to subsidise 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 supervisor is required.

Start of Application Process: 15th August 2019

Deadline for Applications: 15th November 2019

Selections will be made by: January 2020

Please use our online application system: www.hca-springacademy.de

For more information, please see www.hca.uni-heidelberg.de

For further questions: ibahmann@hca.uni-heidelberg.de