Revolutionary Pasts: Representing the Long Nineteenth Century's Radical Heritage

How did activists remember, represent and reassess the revolutionary heritage of the ‘long nineteenth century’? On 4–5 November 2016, our conference on ‘Revolutionary Pasts’ will examine this question. The event is hosted by Northumbria University’s ‘Histories of Activism’ research

group, with support from the Society for the Study of Labour History (SSLH) and Durham University’s Centre for Nineteenth Century Studies. See the programme here.

Attendance of this event is free, but all guests are asked to register by 26 October via this link.

If you have any questions, you can contact the organisers (Daniel Laqua, Charlotte Alston and Laura O’Brien) either directly or via historiesofactivism@gmail.com.

HOTCUS Annual Postgraduate Conference: ‘Winning minds and hearts: constructing national identity in US history'

Historians of the Twentieth Century US, Friday 9th September 2016, Northumbria University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne
Keynote speaker: Dr Simon Hall (Senior Lecturer in American History, Leeds University)

On 1 February 1943, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt asserted that ‘Americanism is a matter of the mind and the heart.’ Just a year after he approved the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans, FDR’s statement about the inclusivity of American identity highlights one of the key questions scholars face when writing the history of the United States: what do we actually mean when we talk about US national identity?

The distinction between what is and isn’t American has dominated the history of the twentieth century United States, from the Hollywood Blacklists of the 1950s and protests in the streets of Selma, Alabama in 1965, to clashes between construction workers and anti- Vietnam War protesters in New York City and debates over U.S. military strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan. In these instances and many others, the process of defining national identity remains central to our understanding of U.S. history.

This conference will explore the constructions and limitations of American national identity in the twentieth century. Panels and twenty-minute paper proposals are invited from postgraduate students and early career researchers on the constructions and manifestations of Americanism in the last century.
Topics for papers or panels might include:

• Political and policy history
• Citizenship, identity and immigration
• Domesticity, home and national identity
• The cultural and intellectual history of Americanism
• ‘Un- Americanism’ in the 20th Century
• Protest history
• Gender and Sexuality
• Memorialization, commemoration and national identity
• Border Cultures in the U.S.
• Labour history, workers’ rights in U.S.
• Presidential history
• National identity in film, media, and journalism
• Local and regional history
• Foreign, military and diplomatic history

The conference will primarily be formed of traditional academic panels, with a keynote lecture from Dr Simon Hall. An interactive workshop on postgraduate and early career issues and concerns will also feature, with discussions of grant applications, teaching, and publishing.

Abstracts for papers or panels (300 words per paper) and a brief bio (100 words) should be submitted to hotcuspostgrads@gmail.com by Friday July 15th 2016. For more information/queries please contact the HOTCUS postgraduate secretary, Megan Hunt (megan.hunt@northumbria.ac.uk).
Supported by the British Association for American Studies.

Two Centuries of Peacemaking Conference, 7 and 8 June 2016

From the Histories of Activism blog:

 We are delighted to announce details of the ‘Two Centuries of Peacemaking’ conference, which will be held at Newcastle University and Northumbria University on 7 and 8 June. This event asks big questions about the direction and vitality of the peace movement over 200 years. It is a forum where scholars and activists will reflect on the past, present and future of the peace movement. Participants will consider the shifts that occurred in the peace movement, addressing issues such as conscientious objection and the importance of feminist/women’s activist roles, the geographical and historical coordinates and influence of the civil rights movement, King’s distinctive nonviolence, global peace movements, and much more.

We are organising this conference as 2016 is an anniversary year that encourages us to contemplate our understanding of peace and the paths towards it. Firstly, it is the centenary of Britain’s enactment of conscription during World War One, reminding us of those who rejected military service and became conscientious objectors. Secondly, June 2016 is the bicentenary of the establishment of the (London) Peace Society. Alongside the formation of the New York Peace Society, its appearance is commonly seen as the beginning of the modern peace movement. Thirdly, 2016 is the start of a year of activities that commemorate the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s visit to Newcastle, where he accepted an honorary doctorate in November 1967. His impromptu address, which fused together the issues of poverty, war and racism, has inspired research at the city’s two universities and informs the work of the Martin Luther King Peace Committee which seeks to honour King’s legacy by ‘building cultures of peace’.  >>> read more on the Histories of Activism blog

Undergraduate History Dissertation Conference, March 9

On Wednesday, 9 March, historians at Northumbria University are organising their first dissertation conference for undergraduate students. The programme is available here. Sixteen final-year students will present their research findings, relating to projects that will be submitted towards the end of April. The event is open to students, staff and others who are interested in finding out about the work done by History students at Northumbria University. Guests can register for free online.

Following on from the student presentations, Dr Sasha Handley from the University of Manchester will give a keynote lecture. Dr Handley is a specialist in the cultural and social history of the early modern period. Her talk is entitled ‘Voices from the Margins: Ghost Stories in Early Modern England’, and she will also outline her own research trajectory as part of the lecture.

The event will conclude with a drinks reception. During the social part of the conference, a jury comprised of Northumbria academics will also announced awards for the papers that were deemed to be of the highest quality in each of the two conference strands.

The event is coordinated by Dr Daniel Laqua, Programme Leader for the BA History. He is working together with a team of second-year students (Ashleigh Speight, Ceara Crowe, Ellie Gilhooley, Jack Hope and Katie Hewitt) who have volunteered to help prepare the conference.  Dr Laqua stresses the rationale for the organisation of the event: ‘Our History Dissertation Conference will be beneficial for different groups. Of course, for the students who are speaking at the event, it’s a chance to share their research and gain further feedback on their work. However, there’s also something in it for other students – for instance, we’re expecting that many second-year undergraduates will come along to gain ideas for their final-year projects.’

The conference has been made possible through the support of Northumbria University’s Teaching Quality Enhancement Fund (TQEF). The event is the second major initiative that Northumbria historians have launched to promote the research of its undergraduate students: back in October, the History team inaugurated an online repository for excellent final-year dissertations.

CFP: American Studies Association of Norway, 2016 Conference

CFP: “Fear and friendliness in the United States”
American Studies Association of Norway Oslo, Norway
Oct. 28-30, 2016
Conference venue: Scandic Helsfyr, Oslo

The American Studies Association of Norway (ASANOR) is a professional, academic organization for people who are actively interested in American Studies. ASANOR is pleased to call for proposals for its 41st annual conference in Oslo, 28-30 October 2016.

President Obama's 2012 victory speech, Chicago.

Conference theme: “Fear and friendliness in the United States”

The USA has a culture of fear, but American culture is also a culture of friendliness. In a sense, the USA is torn between fear and friendliness; closeness and openness; and pessimism and optimism. This tension is visible in many areas. The election and reelection of president Barack Obama on the one hand evoked fear of a socialist, foreign take-over of America, but also was an expression of friendliness towards talented people despite their ethnic and class background. In Fargo, the widely acclaimed film and TV-series, the niceness of the Upper Midwest is contrasted with the harshness of big city crime. The graphic novel turned into hit TV-series The Walking Dead explores how a group of survivors balance fear of strangers with friendliness towards fellow human beings in a post-apocalyptic era.

The tension has deep roots in American history. Alexis de Tocqueville noted Americans’ enduring optimism, but just a few years later, nativist sentiments drew on people’s fear of the new and unknown. Sinclair Lewis' novel Main Street (1920) explored how friendly Midwesterners fostered a narrow culture where outsiders remained outsiders. During the 20th century fear was sometimes

used in the name of defending a free and open republic: the Asian Exclusion Act of 1924 and the hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee in the McCarthy Era excluded alien elements that were a perceived threat to American freedoms. Today, fear of Islamic terrorism lead presidential candidate Donald Trump to call for a temporary ban on Muslims from entering the United States.

We seek proposals for papers and panels addressing the role of fear and/or friendliness in American culture and in relation to other cultures. Each paper should last for no more than 20 minutes. As an interdisciplinary academic organization, ASANOR wishes to include presentations from a wide range of disciplines.

Topics include, but are not limited to:
• Film and popular culture • Literature • Race and ethnicity • National politics • Crime • Regionalism • Immigration • Religion • Legal issues • Foreign relations • Nationalism

Invited speakers:

Keynote speaker
Professor Amy Louise Wood (Illinois State University) will deliver the keynote address. Her current research investigates ideas about criminality at the turn of the 20th century, which wavered between fear and friendliness toward the criminal, and the effect of these ideas on prison reform. Professor Wood has previously published the book Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890-1940 (University of North Carolina Press, 2009) for which she received the Lillian Smith Book Award and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award in History.

Panel on academic publishing
Michelle Houston, commissioning editor with the Edinburgh University Press, has been invited to participate on a panel on academic publishing along with scholars in the field (tbd).

Panel on writing for/speaking to a general audience
We have also invited a group of scholars to share their experiences on writing for and speaking to a general audience. How can we as Americanists explain current events to the average Norwegian?

Proposals for Individual Papers
Please provide the title and an abstract (300 words max.) of the paper you are proposing: your name, institutional affiliation, and email address; and a brief biographical statement (100 words max.). Please include the biographical statement at the end of your abstract. Proposals for Panels Please provide a description (700 words max) of the topic of the panel and each panelist’s contribution; the title of the panel and titles and abstracts for individual papers; and a brief biographical statement (100 words max.) about each panelist. Please include the biographical statements at the end of the abstracts.

Please send proposal and CV to Dr. Hilde Løvdal Stephens at hildelovdal@gmail.com and associate professor Alf Tomas Tønnessen at toenness@hivolda.no by April 15, 2016.

Conference organizers: Hilde Løvdal Stephens, Alf Tomas Tennessean, and Mia Jønnum

Northumbria Hosts International Conference for British Association of American Studies

American studies at Northumbria University attracted an international array of delegates for the 60th Anniversary conference of the British Association for American Studies (BAAS) between April 9-12. Current BAAS chair, Sue Currell of the University of Sussex, was delighted with the conference which attracted over 250 people: “It seemed very fitting to look back on 60 years of the British Association for American Studies while being hosted by one of the newest and most ambitious American Studies programmes in the country. As we approach another US election, I think the success of the conference speaks volumes about the vitality and significance of research and teaching on American topics around the UK.” 

The opening plenary was well-attended lecture given by Guardian journalist Gary Younge that featured in the newspaper the following day. The full transcript will be published in a forthcoming collection of essays on voting rights in the United States to be edited by Dr Henry Knight Lozano and Dr Joe Street both of Northumbria University. Current political events in the US were also central to another plenary lecture delivered by Professor Dana Nelson from Vanderbilt University, who spoke about the politics of Presidential power. Professor Nelson updated the audience on the findings of her 2008 book Bad for Democracy, to include observations on the current Obama administration. American literature Professor and Guardian columnist, Sarah Churchwell, also gave a lively guided tour of the world of F. Scott Fitzgerald as it appeared in The Great Gatsby. Speakers were sponsored and supported by the Journal of American Studies and the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library. The audience and participants included members of the public as well as representatives from the cultural affairs office of the US Embassy, who generously supported postgraduate student attendance at the conference.

Alongside numerous academic panels in a wide variety of subjects of significance to American studies scholars, there were publishing workshops and representation from over 20 international publishers. Delegates also took the opportunity to visit the University’s library holdings in American materials, including the papers of the Black Panther Party and the Records of Students for a Democratic Society.  Local hotels and the local economy also benefited from such a large influx of extra guests as delegates took advantage of visiting the city, many for the first time. Sue Currell noted that “The annual conference is central to sustaining the network of scholars who are researching the history, culture and politics of America in the UK. BAAS is very grateful to the hosts at Northumbria University for creating such a welcoming and successful event to celebrate our Anniversary: there is no doubt in my mind that everyone who attended is now looking forward to the nearest opportunity to come back.”

60 Anniversary BAAS Programme

The programme is now online for the 2015 British Association of American Studies meeting, 9-12 April, 2015, Northumbria University.  Download a copy of it here.

More on the conference:

The 60th annual conference of the British Association for American Studies (BAAS) will be hosted by the Department of Humanities at Northumbria University, Newcastle, 9-12 April, 2015.

The British Association for American Studies was founded in 1955. It exists to promote, support and encourage the study of the United States in the Universities, Colleges and Schools of the United Kingdom, and by independent scholars. The 2015 conference commemorates the 60th anniversary of the founding of BAAS and promises to be a hugely stimulating and enjoyable occasion. We look forward to welcoming you to Newcastle upon Tyne, the most vibrant urban centre in the North East of England.

The conference will begin after lunch on Thursday April 9, and will close after lunch on Sunday April 12.

We are delighted to announce our plenary speakers:

• Gary Younge. Author, broadcaster and award-winning columnist for The Guardian and The Nation.

• Dana Nelson. Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English, Vanderbilt University.

• Sarah Churchwell. Professor of American Literature and Public Understanding of the Humanities, University of East Anglia

More on BAAS here.  Listen to an interview with conference organizer Joe Street here.

States of Exception in American History, Cambridge Unniversity, May 15-16

The purpose of the conference is to explore the role of ‘states of exception’ in American political development.  ‘Exceptions’ will be interpreted broadly to include both suspensions of the rule of law in the face of emergencies, and jurisdictional grey zones in which persons or territories have been denied the full range of rights and obligations provided for under the Constitution. The conference will aim to weave together the different strands of research of contributors from the UK, United States, Canada, and France and includes a public lecture by Geoffrey R. Stone, University of Chicago Law School.  His topic: Perilous Times: The View from Inside the NSA.

This conference launches the Consortium on the History of State and Society (CHOSAS), a multi-year initiative involving the American University of Paris, University of Cambridge, University of Chicago, and University of Michigan.

The conference programme appears below.  We have also attached, for your convenience, a PDF version of the programme.  Please feel free to circulate it to colleagues and students who may be interested.

A link to the registration page can be found on the conference web page, accessible through this link:  States of Exception in American History

- - - - - - - -

University of Cambridge

Latimer Room, Clare College

15-16 May 2015

Friday 15 May

08.00-08.30 – Tea/coffee

08.30-08:45 – Introduction – Joel Isaac, University of Cambridge

08.45-10.45 – Session I: The Political Theory of Emergency

David Dyzenhaus, University of Toronto

Carl Schmitt in America

Nomi Claire Lazar, University of Ottawa

A Pox on Our Institutions? Quarantine and the Political Theory of Emergency

Chair and Commentator: Duncan Bell, University of Cambridge

10.45-11.00 – Tea/coffee

11.00-13.00 – Session II: States of Exception in the History of Political Thought

John Fabian Witt, Yale University

“To Save the Country": A Lost Theory of Emergency Constitutionalism

Stephen Sawyer, American University of Paris

Representation Beyond Politics: Democratic Norms, Terror, and Exceptional Circumstances in Ralph W. Emerson, Thomas Carlyle, and Louis Blanc

Joel Isaac, University of Cambridge

Constitutional Dictatorship in American Political Thought, 1919-1950

Chair and Commentator: Duncan Kelly, University of Cambridge

13.00-14.30 – Lunch

14.30-16.30 – Session III: Geographies of Exception

Paul A. Kramer, Vanderbilt University

Black Site Blues: Borders, Bases, War Zones, and Other Spaces of Exception in Modern US History

Elisabeth S. Clemens, University of Chicago

Neither Public Nor Private:  Delegated Governance as a State of Exception

Chair and Commentator: Andrew Preston, University of Cambridge

16.30-18.00 – Free (Pub) Time

18.00-19.30 – Public Lecture

Geoffrey R. Stone, University of Chicago

Perilous Times: The View From Inside the NSA

Introduction: Gary Gerstle, University of Cambridge

Saturday 16 May

08.00-08.30 – Tea/coffee

08.30-10.30 – Session IV: Experiences of Persons Without Rights

Linda K. Kerber, University of Iowa

Three Americans and the UN Conventions on Refugees and the Stateless

Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Graduate Center, City University of New York

Within the Walls of America’s Prison

Chair and Commentator: Nicholas Guyatt, University of Cambridge

10.30-11.00 – Tea/coffee

11.00-13.00 – Session V: Exceptions and Theories of State-Building

William J. Novak, University of Michigan; Steve Sawyer, American University of Paris; and James Sparrow, University of Chicago

Democratic States of Unexception:  Towards a New Genealogy of the American Political

Desmond King, University of Oxford, and Robert Lieberman, John Hopkins University

Facilitating Expansion or Enforcing Reversal? How States of Exception Shaped American Federal State Development

Chair and Commentator: Gary Gerstle, University of Cambridg

13.00-14.30 – Lunch

14.30-16.30 – Session VI: Reflections and Future Directions

Ira Katznelson, Columbia University and Social Science Research Council

David Runciman, University of Cambridge

Chair: Gareth Davies, University of Oxford

Taking the Past Into the Future: An Unconference Towards Innovation in Historical Studies

CALL FOR PROPOSALS
University of St Andrews, 4th-7th August 2015

How do you think historians can achieve greater impact? Do you think Open Access policies work as well as they could? Can communications technology open up new forums of debate and collaboration in academia? If you could improve one thing in the historical profession today - what would it be, and how would you do it?

Taking the Past Into the Future is intended to provide postgraduate researchers with the opportunity to proactively engage with the issues that will shape the academic careers of the future. Participants will be encouraged to experiment with radical ideas that are usually left unvoiced, before considering how positive change may be effected within real-world limitations.

We would like to invite postgraduate historians of any period to propose 'position papers' on any area of potential innovation within historical studies. These could include responses to current matters of academic policy, or completely new ideas. You could propose a model for a 'virtual conference', discuss the economics of funding historical research, argue for a PhD-by-historical-documentary: the (blue) sky is the limit.

Proposals should be no longer than 500 words and should answer the following questions:

* What is your proposed idea or innovation?
* What does it seek to improve (e.g: levels of engagement with history, career progression issues for
young researchers, quality of collaboration between different groups of historians)?
* In an ideal world, how would this innovation be implemented?
* How might the idea need to be adapted to work in the real world?

As an ‘unconference’, Taking the Past Into the Future will be a participant-driven meeting which emphasizes the importance of peer-to-peer discussion and collaboration in a supportive setting. It will be residential and small-scale. Participants will circulate their full position papers (2,000-3,000 words) in advance of the meeting. During the unconference the papers will be discussed and written up into proceedings which will be made freely available, deposited in institutional repositories, and shared with relevant policy-makers.

There will be a registration fee of £20, with generous sponsorship allowing a considerable subsidy, with accommodation for three nights and food provided. The unconference will be held in Hayston House, a Georgian farmhouse near St Andrews, and will be self-catered, with participants cooking together to allow further time for informal conversation and community-building.

The deadline for proposals is Friday 29th March. Please send proposals, and any questions, to unconference.past.future@gmail.com

For further information please see www.pastfuture.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk

Conference on Selma and the Voting Right Act, 1965-2015

“This act,” proclaimed President Johnson to Congress on August 6, 1965, “flows from a clear and simple wrong. Its only purpose is to right that wrong. Millions of Americans are denied the right to vote because of their color. This law will ensure them the right to vote. The wrong is one which no American, in his heart, can justify. The right is one which no American, true to our principles, can deny.” *

From 8th - 9th April, 2015 Northumbria University’s History and American Studies programmes will host a conference on “Selma and the Voting Right Act, 1965-2015.” 

LBJ signing VR Act, Aug '65. Courtesy of senate.gov.

Where do things stand half a century later? Two years ago Andrew Cohen, contributing editor at the Atlantic, reflected on the law's longer term meaning:

It is undeniable that the Voting Rights Act dramatically sped up the process of preserving and protecting the vote for minority citizens. How much has been achieved? "In some circumstances, minorities register to vote and cast ballots at levels that surpass those of white voters," noted a 2006 House Report which accompanied the act's renewal. But the law was -- and still is today -- a means and not an end. And in the same way that opposition to integration did not immediately end following the Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, opposition to minority voting rights did not magically disappear with the enactment of the Voting Rights Act. In many important ways -- right down to the argument that Section 5 is unconstitutional because it treats states unequally -- the conflict has never really gone away.*

Now, 50 years on, many other commentators and scholars are weighing in about the continued significance of the act and wondering if the right to vote is now in jeopardy as it seldom has been since the mid-1960s. (See here, here, and here.)  It is certainly a fitting moment to reflect on the law and its meaning and relevance for the US today. More on the event: 

Northumbria University are gathering together a range of elite scholars whose work probes the impact of the celebrated civil rights campaign in Selma, Alabama, and the passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act by the US Congress. The symposium will feature new assessments of the Selma campaign, the broader struggle for Voting and Citizenship Rights, and the subsequent transformations of southern and US politics. It will bring together scholars in the United States and United Kingdom from multiple disciplines and will spur new international collaborations that will provide original and exciting contributions to African-American and American history.

The conference will begin at 9am on Wednesday, 8 April and the symposium will conclude on Thursday, 9 April with a plenary lecture from the internationally-renowned journalist Gary Younge.

This event both closes the Selma symposium and opens the 60th anniversary conference of the British Association for American Studies (BAAS), which is also being hosted by Northumbria University. For more information about the BAAS Conference or to book your place, please click here.

Call for Papers: Firearms and Freedom: The Relevance of the Second Amendment in the Twenty-First Century

Herblock, “The Gunfather,” October 26,
1992.  Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Location: London, England
Date: June 11 2015
Deadline:  February 16 2015.

The Second Amendment is arguably the most controversial part of the American Constitution. Europeans discuss the issue often but the unique place of firearms to US history and culture is widely misunderstood. We hope to go beyond the usual presentation of the issue, exploring the roots of the modern discussion and placing it in the broader contexts of American history, politics and culture. We attempt to answer questions in relation to the Second Amendment. Why was it considered important enough to include in the Constitution? How was it interpreted in the nineteenth and early 20th centuries? How does it affect women and minority groups historically and today? Why do so many Americans sustain faith in the freedom to bear arms? Why does the discussion now appear as an un-bridgeable cultural divide?

Hosted at the British Library conference centre by the Eccles Centre and UCL Institute of the Americas, this one-day conference will be an interdisciplinary examination of the Amendment and its relationship with the concept of American freedom. We invite submissions of paper proposals, which should include a 300-word abstract and a brief CV.  Possible topics might include the National Rifle Association, the Black Panther Party, “gun culture”, the relationship of guns with American minorities, the role of women in relation to firearms, and the history of the Second Amendment, but we will consider papers on other related issues. We seek to explore the issue in as balanced a way as possible. All participants will be expected to make their conference contributions available to be considered for publication.

Please direct your paper proposals, confirmations of attendance, and any questions about the one-day conference to either:

Kevin.yuill@sunderland.ac.uk
joe.street@northumbria.ac.uk

American Studies Seminars and Events, Spring 2015

American Studies has an excellent lineup of seminars, roundtables, and conferences for this semester.  Stay tuned here for further details.

Wed 28 Jan: Bruce Baker (Newcastle Univ), “The Politics of Ratproofing: Fighting Plague in New Orleans in the Progressive Era,” 5:00pm (new time), Lipman 033. Co-sponsored with the history programme.

Th 12 Feb: Clare Elliott (Northumbria Univ), “Atlantic Literary Sisters: The Peabodys, Alcotts and Brontës,” 5:30pm, Lipman 033.

Th 12 March: Doug Haynes (Univ of Sussex), “Terror, Transference, Telepathy: Don DeLillo and Gerhard Richter,” 5:30pm, Lipman 033.

Th 26 March: Religion in American History: A Roundtable, Northumbria’s US History Group with Newcastle University’s Americas Research Group, Newcastle University, Armstrong Building, Room 2.50, 3:30-6:45pm.

April 8-9: A Symposium on the 50th Anniversary of Selma & the Voting Rights Act.

April 9-12: British Association of American Studies Conference (60th Anniversary).

TBD: Alison Garden (Univ of Edinburgh), Early Career Visiting Scholarship.

US History Group Roundtable, March 26, 2014

To paraphrase Mark Twain, the death of religion, predicted with confidence by social scientists in the 1960s, was greatly exaggerated.  Today, scholars and journalists are asking how a recent upsurge in religious belief and practice relates to standards of tolerance/intolerance, ethnic identity, and political engagement. Literary critic and public intellectual Stanley Fish sensed the growing importance of religion in the wake of the 9/11.  "When Jacques Derrida died," Fish recalled, "I was called by a reporter who wanted to know what would succeed high theory and the triumvirate of race, gender, and class as the center of intellectual energy in the academy. I answered like a shot: religion."* Robert Townsend of the American Historical Association reported on this trend in 2009: "Specialists in religious history recently surpassed all other topical categories in our annual look at AHA members, raising interesting questions about what is attracting fresh interest in the field."

How has the focus on religion informed the study of US history?  What can we learn about the nation and its relationship with the West and the rest of the World by studying the beliefs, practices, and religious institutions of Americans?

On Thursday March 26, 2015 the US History Group at Northumbria and the School of History Classics and Archaeology at Newcastle will be co-sponsoring a roundtable on Religion in American History (Armstrong Building Room 2.50, 3pm - 7:30pm).  Historians and other scholars from the US and the UK will look into the recent surge in American religious history and discuss some of the most fruitful areas of recent research.  The participants lined up to take part include: Uta Balbier (Director and Lecturer in the Institute of North American Studies, King’s College London); Paul Harvey (Professor in History, University of Colorado); Randall Stephens (Reader in American Studies and History, Northumbria University); Sandra Scanlon (Lecturer in American history, UCD Dublin); and Matthew Sutton (Professor, Washington State University, Heidelberg University).  Their expertise encompasses history, politics, diplomacy, religious studies, music, pop culture, and race.

Matt Sutton will be delivering the keynote address for the event, which we be followed by a reception sponsored by Harvard University Press.  Matt will discuss the study of 20th-century conservative evangelicalism and fundamentalism, topics central to his recently published book, American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014).  

Over at Religion Dispatches/Salon Daniel Silliman interviewed Matt about his research and writing.  Matt speaks about the role religion has played and still plays in American life.  Here is a brief excerpt:

Daniel Silliman: How significant is apocalypticism in the history of American evangelicalism?

Matt Sutton: The idea that Jesus is coming back soon was a fairly radical and unconventional idea in the 19th century, but by the 21st century it’s the air American Christians breathe. The most recent polls said something like 58 percent of white evangelicals believe Jesus is going to return by 2050. They simply take for granted that there is going to be a Rapture and Jesus is going to come back.

I took those statistics and others like them and moved backwards in time. What I found in my research was that apocalypticism was central to fundamentalists and evangelicals. What made them most distinct, what set them apart from liberal Protestants is not what we’ve traditionally thought. It’s not questions of the virgin birth or how you read the Bible or questions of the nature of the incarnation or the literal resurrection of Jesus or Jesus’s miracles. All those matter, all of those things do set them apart, but they don’t affect how they live their daily lives. The one thing that affects how they live their daily lives is that they believe we are moving towards the End Times, the rise of the Antichrist, towards a great tribulation and a horrific human holocaust. . . .

This is significant because to believe the world is rapidly moving to its end effects how you vote, how you’re going to structure your education, how you understand the economy, how you’re going to treat global events, how you’re going to look at organizations like the United Nations.

Apocalypticism is central to understanding how fundamentalists and then evangelicals acted. . . .*

The Religion in American History roundtable will be open to the public.  Please contact Randall Stephens for details.

British Association of American Studies PG Conference at the University of Sussex

Megan Hunt

Just a few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending the British Association of American Studies (BAAS) PG conference at the University of Sussex.  The November 2014 conference included a wide and varied programme, reflecting exciting and expansive doctoral research occurring across the U.K. and beyond.  The organizers must really be congratulated for their efforts, and the whole day was a great success. 

My presentation, entitled ‘A Monster of the South': Cape Fear, White Trash, and the Oppositional Region, was nestled between a paper on the appropriation and deployment of Native American stereotypes, presented by Sara Gray (Swansea University), and Hannah Murray’s (University of Nottingham) presentation on the ‘protesting corpse’ in the Edgar Allan Poe tale, “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar.”  The panel therefore explored the often intersecting issues of race, class, and gender, through the examination of a number of cultural products spanning from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century: notably promotional websites, Hollywood film, and literature. 

Robert G. Ingersoll speaking, dangling from
a cord at the edge of the stage is Thomas
De Witt Talmage as a marionette, with one
hand pinned to the Bible (Puck, 1882).
Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Other panels proved just as diverse.  The afternoon panel on Religious Dissent was of particular interest to me, and saw examinations of the ‘Great Agnostic’ of the 19th century: Robert Ingersoll, Rebecca Goldstein’s 2010 novel 36 Arguments for the Existence of God, and the Book of Mormon (the original religious text, not the musical!).

Darryl Barthe (University of Sussex) later gave an impassioned genealogy of ‘African American Avengers’, blacks throughout American history who have violently retaliated against the incessant racism and suppression that marked their lives.  In the same panel, Rosemary Pearce (University of Nottingham) presented her remarkable findings on the ‘Reverse Freedom Rides’, ‘a diabolical, inhuman game of revenge,’ in which White Citizens’ Council members offered free transport for African Americans who wanted to leave the South and experience what the Council argued were false promises about greater acceptance and racial harmony in the North.  Fascinating accounts of how the first ‘Riders’ were met off the bus in Massachusetts by Edward Kennedy only added to this already engrossing and yet almost unknown backlash to the civil rights gains of the 1960s.

The conference also benefitted from two excellent keynotes, the first from our own Dr. Joe Street, whose research into the probable effects of solitary confinement on Black Panther founding member Huey P. Newton offered fascinating insights into the last years of Newton’s life and activism.  The constant FBI surveillance Newton was under certainly exacerbated much of Newton’s existing paranoia, which was also linked to his habitual abuse of cocaine.

Following the academic rigours of the day, Will Kaufman’s wonderful keynote on the radicalization of folk legend Woody Guthrie gave us a welcome transition into the more sociable element of the conference. What could have been a more fitting end to the day than a radical, sing-along rendition of ‘This Land is Your Land’?

Joe Street on the British Assocation of American Studies 2015 Meeting

Randall Stephens

In the short interview below I speak with Joe Street (Senior Lecturer in History) about the April 9-12, 2015 BAAS annual conference.  Hosted by Northumbria University, it will mark the 60th anniversary of the organization and will draw together historians, literary studies scholars, political scientists, and others who work on American subjects.

In a letter to BAAS members Joe notes that Northumbria is a good fit for the 2015 meeting:

In 2013 Northumbria launched the biggest initiative in American Studies in the UK for more than a generation. Amongst numerous new academic posts was the University’s first Professor in American Studies. The University’s innovative and exciting BA programme in American Studies accepted its first students in September 2013. The research interests of staff include religion, race, ethnicity, presidential studies, horror film, poetry, the South, the San Francisco Bay Area, music, modernist fiction, immigration and urban studies, the Atlantic world and expansionism. The University holds numerous major resources that are of interest to American Studies scholars, including the papers of the Black Panther Party and the Records of Students for a Democratic Society.

(For more on the launch of the programme, see this feature, "Made in America," in the Journal, October 4, 2012.)

The conference promises a variety of excellent panels, roundtables, as well as a great lineup of speakers that Joe has put together:

• Gary Younge, author, broadcaster and award-winning columnist for the Guardian and the Nation
• Dana Nelson, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English, Vanderbilt University
• Sarah Churchwell, Professor of American Literature and Public Understanding of the Humanities, University of East Anglia

See more about panel and single paper proposals, as well as additional details, here on the BAAS website. And keep up with all the latest about the conference over at @BAASconf2015.