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UCD Clinton Institute for American Studies

American Critical Perspectives: Reconfiguring American Studies

Call for Papers

IAAS Irish Association for American Studies Postgraduate Symposium

Clinton Institute for American Studies, UCD
Saturday 26th January 2008

If we have a “method,” it is the approach to ideas and consequences in the round – a total approach something like the “total theatre” of Bertolt Brecht. From the communication point of view, American Studies wants more than most disciplines to include its audiences.

Jay Gorian, “American Studies and the Creative Present”

Traditional fields of American studies are being expanded and redefined, with new concepts of America emerging within the discipline. From Gene Wise’s examination of American Studies’ evolution of consciousness in the late 1970s to Jan Radway’s ASA presidential speech “What’s in a Name?”; to more recently Don Pease and Robin Wiegman’s book “The Future of American Studies”, questions of the academy’s role and position within wider scholarship reflects enquiry into America’s place within society beyond its borders. In reconfiguring American Studies we pursue a greater insight into America redefining the very manner in which it is explored, achieving a richly textured scholarship. 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:

• Contesting the Old, Articulating Visions of a New America
• In a Land of Plenty , America and its Discontents
• Memory, Identity, and Place: Towards a New Era of American Studies
• Against the Grain, Rewriting American Exceptionalism
• New Conceptualisations of Space
• Dispensing with the ‘City on a Hill’
• Re-writing America

Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be emailed to:

Marisa Ronan
Clinton Institute for American Studies
UCD
marisa_ronan@hotmail.com

Please include details of institutional affiliation with abstracts.

DEADLINE FOR RECEIPT OF ABSTRACTS: Saturday 1ST DECEMBER 2007