Seminars Spring 2005

Thursday 10th February - 'Power, Agency and Authority in 18th Century Jamaican Slavery'

Speaker: Professor Trevor Burnard (University of Sussex) Seminar Paper: Power, Agency and Authority in 18th Century Jamaican Slavery (.doc 110kb)
Venue: The Humanities Institute Seminar Room
Time: 4pm

Trevor Burnard is Professor of American History at the Univeristy of Sussex, where he has been since September 2004, having previously taught at Brunel University and at universities in New Zealand and Jamacia. He is the author of two monographs - Creole Gentelmen: Wealthy Marylanders 1691-1776 (New York, 2002) and Mastery, Tyranny and Desire: The Anglo-Jamaican World of Thomas Thistlewood and His Slaves (Chapel Hill 2004) and numerous articles on early Jamaica and the Chesapeake. He is working on various projects including a history of 18th century Kingston and a study of early Jamaica, called A Failed Settler Society: Black and White in Jamica.

Thursday 24th February - 'Martin Luther King's Message for Today'

The Institute in assocation with the US Embassy is delighted to welcome Dr. Elbert Ransom as a guest speaker during Black History Month in the USA

Speaker: Dr. Elbert Ransom
Venue: The Humanities Institute Seminar Room
Time: 6pm

Dr. Ransom has long experience in dealing with matters of racism in multi-cultural environments around the world. He worked with Dr. Martin Luther King in the Civil Rights struggle and he now works in reconciliation and dialogue on a daily basis in the Washington area.

Tuesday 1st March - 'Reporting America'

Speaker: Conor O'Clery (The Irish Times North America Editor)
Venue: The Humanities Institute Seminar Room
Time: 6pm

Conor O'Clery was born in Belfast and educated at Queen's University Belfast. He has worked for the Irish Times for more than 30 years in various positions, including news-editor and resident correspondent in Belfast, London, Moscow, Washington and Beijing. He is currently the North American Editor for the paper. He has won several awards for his work, including Journalist of the Year in Ireland in 1987, and he is the author of many books including, Daring Diplomacy: Clinton's Secret Search for Peace in Ireland.

Thursday 3rd March - What Rocky Meant: Larry Holmes, Gerry Cooney, and "Race, Race, Race" '

Speaker: Professor Carlo Rotella (Boston College)
Venue: J208, John Henry Newman Building (The English Seminar Room)
Time: 6pm

'Carlo Rotella, Director of American Studies at Boston College, is the author most recently of Cut Time: An Education at the Fights, which received the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His other books are Good With Their Hands: Boxers, Bluesmen, and Other characters from the Rust Belt and October Cities: The Redevelopment of Urban Literature. He contributes regularly to the Washington Post Mazagine, and his work has also appeared in The American Scholar, Harper's, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Critical Inquiry, American Quarterly, and The Best American Essays.

Tuesday 8th March - 'The Fugitive, Black and White: Cinematic Narrative, Rodney King, and the Los Angeles Police'

Speaker: Professor Alan Nadel (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)
Venue: The Observatory
Time: 6pm

Alan Nadel, Professor of Literature and Film at Rensselaer Polytecynic Institute, is the author of numerous works on American literature, film, and culture. His most recent books are Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and the Atomic Age and Flatlining on the Field of Dreams: Cultural Narratives in the Films of President Reagan's America. His talk examines how the film The Fugitive participates in re-reading of the video-taped beating of black motorist Rodney King by the Los Angeles police: evoking the black-and-white era of American television, the film erases the problematics of the King video by reconciling notions of white justice to the efficacy of a ubiquitous police state.

Tuesday 5th April - 'The Consuming of September 11: Tourism, Kitsch, and Mourning at Ground Zero in New York'

Speaker: Professor Marita Sturken (University of Southern California)
Venue: The Humanities Institute Seminar Room
Time: 6pm

Professor Sturken is Associate Professor in the Annenberg School for Communication and Program in American Studies & Ethnicity, University of Southern California. She is the author of Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering and co-author of Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture.This paper examines the conflicting meanings that have defined the space of Ground Zero, with particular attention to the ways that mourning and loss have been transformed into consumerism and tourism.

Thursday 7th April

THIS SEMINAR HAS BEEN POSTPONED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

Speaker: Sidney Blumenthal

Sidney Blumenthal served as assistant and senior adviser to President Clinton from 1997-2001. He has worked for the New Yorker magazine, The Washington Post, New Republic and Vanity Fair. His books include: The Rise of the Counter-Establishment: From Conservative Ideology to Political Power (1986), Pledging Allegiance: The Last Campaign of the Cold War (1990); and The Clinton Wars (2003) - a provocative political memoir. He is currently a columnist for Salon.com and writes regularly for The Guardian.

Friday 22nd April - 'Crossroads of Cultures: The Transnational Turn in American Studies'

In association with the Irish Association for American Studies and University College Cork

Speaker: Professor Shelley Fisher Fishkin (Stanford University)
Venue: University College Cork, G18 The Science Building
Time: 2pm

Professor Fishkin is Director of the American Studies programme at Stanford University and current President of the American Studies Association. Professor Fishkin is the author of: From Fact to Fiction: Journalism and Imaginative Writing in American (1985); Was Huck Black? Mark Twain and African-American Voices (1993); and Lighting Out for the Territory: Reflections on Mark Twain and American Culture (1997). She is the editor of 29-volume Oxford Mark Twain (1996), the Oxford Historical Guide to Mark Twain (2002), and "Is He Dead?" A new Comedy by Mark Twain (2003)

Wednesday 4th May - 'Our Virgencitas, Ourselves: Religious Icons in Chicana\o Literature and Visual Art'

Speaker: Professor Tiffany López (University of California, Riverside)
Venue: The Humanities Institute
Time: 6pm

Editor of the anthology Growing Up Chicana/o (William & Morrow, 1993). Professor López has published various essays in the fields of Chicana/o Latina/o literature and performances. Recent publications include " Imaging Community: Video in the Installation Work of Pepó Osorio," Art Journal (Winter 1995), "A Toleranace for Contradictions: The Short Sotirese of Marí Cristina Mena", 19th Century American Writers: A Critical Reader (Oxford UP, 1998). Her teaching interests include 20th century American literature and drama, Chicana/o Latina/o popular culture, and feminist and minority discourses.

Wednesday 11th May - '"What Kind of People are We": The United States and the Truth and Reconciliation Idea'

Speaker: Professor Richard King (University of Nottingham)
Venue: The Humanities Institute
Time: 6pm

Professor King is Professor of Intellectual History in the Department of American and Canadian Studies at University of Nottingham. He is the author of Southern Renaissance: The Cultural Awakening of the American South, 1930-1955 (1980), Civil Rights and the Idea of Freedom (1992), and Race, Culture and the Intellectuals, 1940-1970 (2004). He is now at work on an intellectual history of American conservatism and race.

Tuesday 7th June - "Better?, Faster?, Cheaper? - Changes in the Transmission of Information and the Consequences for Business in the Early Modern Atlantic World"

In association with the History Department, Trinity College Dublin

Speaker:Professor John McCusker (Trinity University, San Antonio)
Venue: Trinity College Dublin
Time: 4pm

John J. McCusker is the Ewing Halsell Distinguished Professor of American History and Professor of Economics at Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas.

For further details please contact Catherine Carey

UCD Clinton Institute for American Studies

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