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UCD Clinton Institute for American Studies

Professor Liam Kennedy: Professor of American Studies at UCD

Professor Liam Kennedy is Director of the Clinton Institute for American Studies at University College Dublin. He has diverse research interests and teaching experiences, spanning the fields of American urban studies, visual culture, globalisation and transatlantic relations.

He is the author of Susan Sontag: Mind as Passion (1995) and Race and Urban Space in American Culture (2000). He is co-editor of Urban Space and Representation (1999) and City Sites: An Electronic Book (2000), and editor of Remaking Birmingham: The Visual Culture of Urban Regeneration (2004).

Professor Kennedy's work is interdisciplinary, blending cultural and political modes of scholarly analysis, and represents American Studies as a valuable framework to study both American domestic and international affairs.

He is currently researching a monograph on photography and international conflict, and preparing two edited books - on urban photography and on cultural diplomacy and US foreign policy.

Recent Articles Include

‘Securing Vision: Photography and US Foreign Policy’, Media, Culture and Society, 30.3 (May 2008), 279-94.

‘American Ways of Seeing’, in American Thought and Culture in the Twenty-First Century, eds. Catherine Morley and Martin Halliwell (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008), 259-74

‘The Clinton Institute: Doing American Studies in Ireland’, Review of International American Studies, 3, 1-2 (2008), http://www.iasa-rias.org/index.php?k=179&art=147

‘What Does America Want?’, Transatlantic American Studies, 1, 1 (2009)

‘Spectres of Comparison: American Studies and the United States of the West’, in Reconfiguring American Studies: A New Anthology, eds. Janice Radway, Barry Shank, Kevin Gaines, and Penny von Eschen (Oxford: Blackwell, 2009)

‘Between Exceptionalism and Universalism: Photography and Public Diplomacy’, in Globalisation, Political Violence and Translation, ed.  Esperanca Bielsa and Christopher Hughes (London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)

‘Frederick Douglass’ Fifth of July Address’, in A New Literary History of America, eds. Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009)

‘Visual Blowback: Soldier Photography and the War in Iraq’, forthcoming in Review of International Studies (2009)

Recent Papers Include

‘Urban Vision’, Conference on Urban Encounters, Goldsmiths College, May 2008

‘The US and the Northern Ireland Peace Process’, The Mitchell Conference, Queens University Belfast, May 2008

‘Photography and Human Rights’, Conference on Imaging Human Rights, University College Dublin, May 2008

‘Visual Blowback: Soldier Photography and the War in Iraq’, American Studies Summer Institute, Dartmouth College, June 2008

‘Afterimages: Photography and the Vietnam/American War’, Clinton Institute Summer School, University College Dublin, July 2008

‘Visual Blowback: Soldier Photography and the War in Iraq’, Conference on Transatlantic American Studies, Berlin, October 2008

‘The Vanishing Americanists’, American Studies Association Conference, Albuquerque, October 2008

‘Photography and Human Rights’, Conference on Media and Human Rights, British Library, London, January 2009

‘The New Photojournalism: Documenting US Foreign Policy after the Vietnam War’, War and American Identity conference, University College Dublin, March 2009

‘Photography and Human Rights’, Political Studies Association Conference, University of Manchester, April 2009

‘Homeland Insecurities’, America Where? conference, University of Coimbra, June 2009

‘Seeing and Believing: Visualising Homeland Security’, Clinton Institute Summer School, July 2009

‘Photography and the Vietnam War’, International American Studies Association Conference, Beijing Foreign Studies University, September 2009

‘Framing the State’, American Studies Association conference, November 2009