UCD Clinton Institute for American Studies
UCD, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland | Director: Professor Liam Kennedy
Clinton Institute Summer School 2010
11th – 17th July 2010
School Director: Professor Liam Kennedy
(University College Dublin)
Lecture Videos
"..an intellectual and academic feast in the most friendly and welcoming atmosphere"
Ioana Luca, University of Bucharest, participant in the 2007 Summer School
The UCD Clinton Institute Summer School will bring together scholars and graduate students from around the world to engage in wide-ranging discussion on interdisciplinary study of the United States. The School is aimed at advanced graduate students and junior faculty in the fields of American Studies, History, Political Sciences and Literary and Cultural Studies. The programme will offer participants the opportunity to work with distinguished figures in these fields and to investigate current developments in study of the United States and its global relations. The School’s format will include daily workshop seminars and plenary lectures. Participants work with the School’s core faculty in one of four week-long seminars.
In 2010 the faculty will include Ruth Wilson Gilmore (University of Southern California), Hamilton Carroll (University of Leeds), Amy Kaplan (University of Pennsylvania), Liam Kennedy (University College Dublin), Scott Lucas (University of Birmingham), Peter Nicholls ( New York University), Donald Pease (Dartmouth College), Werner Sollors (Harvard University)
"It gave me the unique opportunity of sharing time, ideas, many a laughter and a common passion with an incredible group of scholars and people, and to investigate, question, assess and collectively attempt to redefine the objectives, borders and the fluctuating nature of our shared field of study..... All of this contributed to making the School such a wonderfully rich and thought-provoking experience "
Corinna Baschirotto- University of Bergamo
UCD Clinton Institute would like to thank the following for offering financial support to students to attend the Summer School
- Boston College
- Duke University
- Free University of Berlin
- The Skellig Foundation
- University of Illinois
- University of Southern California
Timetable of Events
Workshop Leaders & Workshop Titles
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Professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore Title: ‘Racial Capitalism and The Current Crisis’ Taking our cue from Cedric Robinson's magisterial Black Marxism, and WEB DuBois's indispensable Black Reconstruction in America, we will consider how gendered and sexualized racism is fundamental to the origin *and* perpetuation of capitalism. While our key texts are historical in scope, we will also turn our attention to contemporary economic crises in order to test the theories we draw from our readings and conversations. It is hoped that participants in this seminar will have read both Black Marxism and Black Reconstruction in advance. We will read several shorter pieces together which will be distributed via .pdf in order to think about value in motion, toward the goal of theorizing and specifying what the negation of abandonment looks like. |
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Professor Amy Kaplan Title: ‘Reading Moby-Dick’ After the publication of his early sea tales, Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847), Herman Melville was popularly known as the “man who lived among cannibals.” Moby Dick (1851) led to his relative obscurity, until he was rediscovered as a modernist in the 1920s and canonized as one of the representative authors of nineteenth-century American literature by the publication of F. O. Matthiessen’s American Renaissance in 1941. In this seminar we will have the pleasure of closely reading Moby Dick to focus on its imaginative mapping of globalization in the 19th century. Rather than apply theories of transnationalism to Moby Dick, we will explore how Melville implicitly theorizes the transnational through his representation of the whaling industry. How does the novel chart the circulation of knowledge, language, and culture, along routes traversed by sailors and slaves, capital and labor, empires and revolutions? We will also ask how a writer so thoroughly immersed in international circuits of trade and travel was interpreted by critics as a quintessential “American” author during the Cold War, and how he was also interpreted from a postcolonial perspective by C.L. R. James in Mariners, Renegades and Castaways (1952). A suggested reading list will include criticism, history, and theory. |
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Professor Liam Kennedy Title: ‘Old Media, New Media and International Conflict’ This workshop will focus on the roles of old and new media in the making and representation of war and violent conflict. It introduces critical debates on the relationship between media and conflict and includes focus on:
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Professor Donald Pease Title: ‘Re-Imagining American Studies' Relation to the State’ The term "state(s)" in the title of the seminar is intended to refer at once to the "state" as the organizational agency of the field of American Studies, to the state as an object of analysis, to the state as an imagined addressee and interlocutor for Americanist scholarship, as well as to the reconfigured state(s) of the fields and areas of inquiry in American Studies both inside and outside the United States. In the seminar we'll take up theoretical frameworks, objects and objectives of study, and inter-disciplinary inclinations that have already or promise to transform the field's self-understanding. The readings for the seminar will include chapters and essays taken from Donald E. Pease, The New American Exceptionalism Russ Castronovo's and Susan Gilman's edited volume, States of Emergency as well as a series of selected essays including those written by Liam Kennedy, Paul Bove, and Mark Nucleosus among others. |
Format and Programme
The School’s format will consist of two principle components, daily workshop seminars and plenary lectures. Participants work with the School’s core faculty of distinguished scholars in one of four week-long workshops, as listed above. All participants will be expected to to present a sample of their research in the workshops and this will be circulated in advance. In addition to the daily seminar meetings, all participants attend plenary lectures given by the workshop leaders and other distinguished visitors/scholars. These will include:
- Dr. Hamilton Carroll ( University of Leeds)
- Professor Peter Nicholls ( New York University)
- Professor Werner Sollors ( Harvard University)
Application Procedure
Application Form - please print and return by post or email.
Completed applications should include:
- the application form - indicating which seminar you wish to attend and your second choice
- 1 current CV
- 1 writing sample (20-35 pages)
Applications to the Summer School will be judged on a rolling basis until places are filled.
Completed applications should be returned to:
Catherine Carey
Manager
Clinton Institute for American Studies
Belfield House
University College Dublin
Belfield
Dublin 4
Ireland
or email Catherine.Carey@ucd.ie
Applications received after the 9th May cannot be guaranteed on campus accommodation, should their applications be successful
Accommodation
Applications received after the 9th May cannot be guaranteed on campus accommdation, should their their applications be successful.
Campus accommodation is in a shared apartment. Each person will have their own single bedroom with shared living room and kitchen.
The bedroom includes a workshop desk, wardrobe/storage space, bed linen and hand towel. You should bring your own bath towel. Basic kitchen equipment is also provided.
Campus accommodation is limited and we would therefore advise early registration.
Fees
- Full Fees includes – registration, tuition and campus accommodation - €590
- Partial Fees includes – registration and tuition only - €400
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