IRISH ASSOCIATION FOR AMERICAN STUDIES
Postgraduate Symposium
Clinton Institute for American Studies, UCD
Saturday 24th January 2009
Call for Papers
“Engaging Exception: Perspectives of Cultural Identity and the Nation”
Ian Tyrrell observes that “In an era of unprecedented internationalisation in historiography, the legacies of internationalism and exceptionalism still haunt the study of American history”. In American studies we struggle with providing an alternative organising framework to how we examine America, its history, its literature and its cultural identity more broadly. How is American national identity construed in a fragmented space of immigration, culture wars, discrimination, patriotism, religion, socio-economic tensions and neoliberalism? We hope to address these issues and many more in the IAAS Postgraduate Symposium.
A postgraduate studies symposium such as the IAAS’ offers immediate insight into emerging research and has a history of showcasing international scholarship that balances the vitality of more traditional insights into American culture with broader investigations of the transnational paradigm.
Postgraduate students of all disciplines within the field of American Studies (including literature, film, history, geography, philosophy, visual arts, performance arts, new media, politics, sociology, cultural studies, ecology, law, economics, and international relations) are invited to submit proposals for 20-minute papers in the area of American studies, with possible topics including but not restricted to:
• States of Exception • Beginnings and Renewals
• Memory, Identity, and Place • Against the Grain, Rewriting American Exceptionalism
• Dispensing with the ‘City on a Hill’ • New iterations of American Studies
• Representing and contesting the past. • Americans / America / American Studies abroad
• Cultural traumas and contested histories • Transatlantic or transnational literary and cultural relations
• Politics of recognition • The New Imperialism
Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be emailed to:
Marisa Ronan (Clinton Institute for American Studies, UCD): marisa_ronan@hotmail.com
Please note that you must be a member of the IAAS to participate, see membership form attached.
DEADLINE FOR RECEIPT OF ABSTRACTS: Wednesday 10TH DECEMBER 2007
SCHEDULE
IAAS Postgraduate Symposium 2009
“Engaging Exception: Perspectives of Cultural Identity and the Nation”
Clinton Institute for American Studies, UCD
Saturday 24th January
Registration Fee: €6 (Students and Unwaged)
€10 (Full Fee)
9:00-9:30 Registration
Panel 1 9:30-11:30
Chair: Kaeten Mistry
Julieann Galloway (UCD)
Title: “The New Corporate Responsibility”.
Alex Runchman (Trinity College Dublin)
Title: “Delmore Schwartz’s international consciousness: Genesis and the American Dream”.
Karina Bracken (UCD)
Title: “Who's afraid of the Big Bad Bear?: The role of the editorial cartoon in visualising the "New Cold War".
11:00-11:15 Break
Panel 2 11:15-12:45
Chair: Jon Mitchell
Wendy Ward (UCD)
Title: “Projecting China, Imagining America: Sontag’s Verbal Resistance to Snapshots and Sequence”.
Dara Downey (Trinity College Dublin)
“The Place Where Space Isn’t”: Contested Memory and Spatial Volatility in the Haunted Title: “House Stories of Emma Frances Dawson and Elia W. Peattie”.
Meadhbh Hand (Independent Student)
Title: “Memory & Identity in the work of Li-Young Lee”.
12:45-1:30 Lunch (provided)
Panel 3 1:30-3:00
Chair: Aoileann Ni Eigeartaigh
Desmond Traynor (UCD)
Title: “The American Taliban: Steve Earle, John Walker Lindh, and the ‘problem’ of socio-political commentary in songwriting at times of (inter)national crisis”.
Neil Doherty (Independent Scholar)
Title: “The Sun Also Rises: Re/Covering Queer Male Bodies in the Poetry of Mark Doty”.
Barry Shanahan (UCD)
Title: “Ask a Baltimore Question”: Hip-hop, Realism, and Identification in The Wire”.
3:00-3:15 Break
Panel 4 3:25-5:00
Chair: Marisa Ronan
Dawn-Marie Gibson (University of Ulster)
Title: “Succession in the Nation of Islam”.
Louise Walsh (UCD)
Title: “Dialogic Dialect(ics): Anglo-Irish and African-American.”
Clare Hayes Brady (Trinity College Dublin)
Title: “E Unibus Pluram: David Foster Wallace as the Voice of a Fragmented People”.
5:00 Wine Reception
Dinner (not included in symposium fee)
Millstone Restaurant on Dame Street
Please email Marisa Ronan to book a place: marisa_ronan@hotmail.com