Irish Association for American Studies

2007 Postgraduate Conference, Mater Dei Institute


"Utopia Achieved": (De) Constructing Paradise

 

‘But is this really what an achieved utopia looks like?’

—Jean Baudrillard, America

9.00-9.30         Registration

9.30-11.00        The Limits of Utopia

Chair: Bernice Murphy (University of Dublin, Trinity College)

*      Dara Downey (University of Dublin, Trinity College)

“‘That Interior Kingdom’: Transgressing the Borders of Utopia in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Stephen Crane’s ‘The Blue Hotel’”

*      Madeleine Lyes (Clinton Institute for American Studies, UCD) 

“‘She is very big and she has no heart’: Representations of New York and a Philosophy of Urban Living in the Life and Work of New Yorker Writer Maeve Brennan”

*      Helen Bralesford (University of Nottingham)

“French Connections to Desperate Housewives: Seeking the Residues of the Second Wave in Contemporary Popular Culture”

11.00-11.15       Tea/Coffee

11.15-12.45       Re-exploring the “Promised Land”

Chair: Stephen Matterson (University of Dublin, Trinity College)

*      Caroline Welsh (University of Glasgow)

“Perpetual Ward, Guardian Nation: Land Sovereignty and the Status of American Indians”

*      Laura Gimeno Pahissa (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona)

“(De)Constructing the Promised Land: Elizabeth Keckley’s Behind the Scenes”

*      Céline Letemplé (Paris XII University)

“From Jefferson’s ‘empire of liberty’ to the neoconservatives’ ‘benevolent empire’: the utopia of America’s exceptional ‘empire’ in cross-historical perspective”

12.45-2.15        Lunch (not covered by registration fee)

2.15-3.45         Hope and Faith: Liberalism, Piety, and Postmodernity in the United States

Chair: Philip Coleman (University of Dublin, Trinity College)

*      Áine Kelly (University of Nottingham)

“Substituting Hope for Knowledge: The Liberal Utopia of Richard Rorty”

*      Marisa Ronan (Clinton Institute for American Studies, UCD) 

“Turning an Evangelical Page: Christian Fiction and Cultural Assimilation beyond the Apocalypse”

*      Jennifer Daly (Clinton Institute for American Studies, UCD) 

“Blind Faith?: Religion and Politics in the United States”

3.45-4.00         Tea/Coffee

4.00-5.45         Rationalizing Paradise: Utopianism and Power

Chair: Michael Hinds (Mater Dei Institute of Education)

*      Maarten Roels (Free University of Brussels)

“Ecotopia vs. Utopia Inc.: Antagonizing utopias in America”

*      Lucas Richert (University of London)

“A Modern Dystopia?: Philip K. Dick, Corporatism, and the Increasing Medicalization of Human Behavior”

*      Michael Collins (University of Nottingham)

  

“‘Enlightenment is Totalitarian’: Surveillance and Social Control in ‘The Masque of the Red Death’ and ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’ by Edgar Allen Poe”

*      Wendy Ward (Clinton Institute for American Studies, UCD)

“Manderlay’s Paranoiac Paradise: Visualizing Vulnerability, Misreading Identity”

5.45-6.30         Wine Reception

7.30                 Symposium Dinner (not covered by registration fee)

Jamuna Indian Restaurant, 157 Lower Drumcondra Road, Dublin 9

Full registration fee: €10

Students/Unwaged/OAPs: €5

For further information, contact Julie Sheridan (jasherid@tcd.ie)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 IAAS Postgraduate Conference