-PROGRAMME
-BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR AMERICAN STUDIES
62ND ANNUAL CONFERENCE
6TH - 8TH APRIL 2017-
CANTERBURY CHRIST CHURCH UNIVERSITY-
WELCOME TO BAAS 2017!
Dear Delegate
Welcome to BAAS2017! We are thrilled to have you here at Canterbury Christ
Church University for what we hope will be another fabulous BAAS conference. If
you have any questions at all, please do not hesitate to ask us, or any of our student
helpers (in the red t-shirts) at the registration desk.
As part of CCCU’s commitment to sustainability, instead of a full printed programme we are pleased to be able to provide a conference app this year. You can
download this for Android or iPhone, via the app store—just search for XXXX. The
app contains all the information you will need about the programme, plenary
speakers, and receptions, and also provides a platform for social networking, so you
can share your thoughts about the papers and the conference with other delegates.
With that in mind, please respect our speakers’ privacy by refraining from livetweeting papers publicly. Please do not record any papers or panels (including the
plenaries) without the speakers’ explicit permission.
If you don’t have a smartphone, or would prefer a hard copy of the programme,
please ask one of our student helpers at the registration desk and they will print one
for you. You can also download the full programme and set of abstracts from the
conference website: www.canterbury.ac.uk/BAAS2017.
To make use of the WiFi, you can connect via your own institution through
Eduroam, or you can access the CCCU guest WiFi service—just choose “WiFi Guest”
from the list on your device and follow the instructions.
A note on CCCU’s room numbering, which can seem unintelligible at first glance:
The first letter denotes the building (e.g. N for Newton or L for Laud) and the
second letter the floor (g for ground, f for first, etc.), then the room number. So
Lg25 is the Laud Building, ground floor, room 25—easy!
We would like to thank our sponsors and the BAAS executive committee for their
support, and we hope you enjoy the conference.
Your conference organisers,
Lydia and Gavan
Lydia Plath (University of Warwick)
Gavan Lennon (Canterbury Christ Church University)
THURSDAY 6TH APRIL12.00
Registration & Sandwich Lunch
Lg25
1.00-2.30
Parallel Sessions A
A1 Defining Americans: Americanisation, Citizenship, and Identity
Ng01
A2 Trauma, Fear and Anguish: The Emotions of US Slavery (sponsored by BrANCH) Lg46
A3 Cultures of Racial Protest: Activism in Contemporary African America
Ng03
A4 New Adventures in Close Textual Analysis: Close Reading in Contemporary Criticism
Lg47
A5 Water, Worms and Wolves: Human and Non-Human Agency in North American
History
Nf01
A6 New Readings in Transcendentalism: Aesthetics and Intellect in the 19th Century
Ng09
A7 Recovering the Invisibilised: New Research in Women’s History and Representation
A8 Writing After the Fall: 9/11 and its Literary Fallout
A9 Imagining American Bodies
Ng07
Lg48
Nf09
2.30-3.00
Lg25
Tea & Coffee
3.00-4.30
Parallel Sessions B
B1 American Foreign Policy during the Cold War
Lg48
B2 Race and Patriotism in Magazine Culture
Ng07
B3 Race and the Construction of Identity at the Edges of America
Lg46
B4 Contemporary Film Western: American and Transnational Variations
Lg47
B5 Roundtable: ‘The room where it happens’: Americanists on Hamilton
Ng03
B6 The South in the World and The World in the South
Nf09
B7 Mid-Century Philosophies of Reading
Ng01
B8 Health, Hygiene, and Consumer Culture
Ng09
B9 Representing America: American History and Culture in Cinema and Videogames
Nf01
4.30-5.00
5.00-6.15
Tea & Coffee
Lg25
Plenary Address
Og46
Sponsored by the Eccles Centre at the British Library
Brian Ward (Northumbria University)
“Sounds Southern?: The Southern Operas of Delius, Davidson and
the Drive-by Truckers”
6.30
Wine Reception
Sponsored by EBAAS 2018 London
Augustine Hall
FRIDAY 7TH APRIL8.45-9.15
Tea & Coffee
Lg25
9.15-10.45
Parallel Sessions C
C1 US Internationalism from World War to Cold War: An Exchange
Ng03
C2 Black Lives Mattered: New Formulations of African American Community in the
1960s
Ng07
C3 Contemporary Native American and Chicana/o Activism
Ng01
C4 Troubled and Troubling Masculinities in the 21st Century
Lg48
C5 Freedom and Transnationalism in Gilded Age and Progressive Era Writing (sponsored
by BrANCA)
Lg46
C6 Harlem Renaissance Afterlives
Ng09
C7 Waste, Filth, and Drugs: Transgressions in American Fiction
Lg47
C8 Character Studies: Political Performances on Either Side of the Camera
Nf01
Lg25
Lg45
10.45-11.30
Tea & Coffee
Postgraduate Networking Event
11.30-12.45
Plenary Address
Og46
Sponsored by The Journal of American Studies
Marjorie Spruill (University of South Carolina)
“Divided We Stand: The Battle Over Women's Rights and Family
Values that Polarized American Politics”
12.45-1.30
Lunch
Food Court
1.30-3.00
Parallel sessions D
D1 Education during the Cold War
Lg46
D2 Cultural Clashes in Black and White: Cross-Racial Interactions in African American
History and Culture
Lg48
D3 Bodies that Matter: Racial Performances in American History and Culture
Lg47
D4 Contesting the Reconstruction Era (sponsored by BrANCH)
Nf01
D5 Race, Religion, and the Obama Presidency
Nt01
D6 Britain and America: Rethinking Transatlantic Relationships
Ng09
D7 Transatlantic Formations in 19th Century Literature (sponsored by BrANCA)
Ng01
D8 Southern Literature from the Antebellum to the Fin De Siècle
Ng07
D9 Feminist Readings and Feminist Readers
Ng03
D10 Illustrating America: Graphic Novels, Memoir, and Adaptation
Nf09
3.00-3.30
Tea & Coffee
Lg25
3.30-5.00
BAAS AGM
Og46
5.00-6.15
Og46
Plenary Address
Sponsored by Canterbury Christ Church University
Trudier Harris (University of Alabama)
“Home in African American Literature: Difficult to Define,
Impossible to Claim”
6.30-7.30
Wine Reception
7.30
Banquet
AH3.31 Terrace Teaching Space
Augustine Hall
SATURDAY 8TH APRIL9.00-9.30
Tea & Coffee
Lg25
9.30-11.00
Parallel Sessions E
E1 Religion & Politics in 20th Century America
Ng09
E2 Usable Pasts: Race and Social Justice, and Memory
Lg47
E3 Competing Allegiances: Ordinary People during the American Civil War
Nt03
E4 Cultures of the Presidency
Nf09
E5 Conflicted Identities: Region, Loyalty and Agency in the Early Republic
Nt01
E6 19th Century Networks of Affect and Reform (sponsored by BrANCA)
Lg46
E7 The Heard and the Unheard: ‘Southern Sounds’ in Twentieth Century Film, Literature
and Music
Ng03
E8 Gender, Race, and Religious Difference in the Short Story
Nf01
E9 Psycholiterary Selves: Mental Illness, Therapy and Subjectivity in 20th Century Culture
Ng01
E10 Information, Ethics, and Institutions: The Internet in Contemporary Fiction
Lg48
E11 Constructive Criticism: Literature and Architecture
Nt09
E12 Renegotiating Civil Rights: Minorities within Minorities, Links to Civil Liberties and
Aviation's Anomalies
Ng07
11.00-11.30
Tea & Coffee
11.30-1.00
Parallel Sessions F
F1 American Interests in Asia: Shifting Priorities in Cultural Diplomacy and
Transnational Relations from the Cold War to Today (sponsored by HOTCUS)
F2 New Directions in Black Freedom Studies
F3 Britain and the American Civil War
F4 The Reel (and Imagined) White House: Presidents, First Ladies, and Popular
Culture in the Twentieth Century
F5 American Vernaculars: Seeing and Hearing Contested Identities
F6 Representations of Higher Education in American Culture
F7 Family Dynamics in Contemporary American Fiction
F8 Facilitating Literature: Critics, Collectives, and Editors
Lg25
Lg46
Ng03
Ng09
Ng07
Ng01
Nf09
Lg48
Lg47
1.00
Sandwich Lunch
Lg25
1.30-3.00
Women’s Lunchtime Network and Roundtable
Lg45
WITH SPECIAL THANKS TO:-
NOTES-
NOTES-
NOTES-
NOTES-
BINGO!-
SPUTNIK!
Presenter
shocked
when told to
wrap it up
“more of a
comment
than a
question”
Panel is
sponsored
by BrANCA
“where do I
download
the app?”
Live tweeting
whilst giving
a paper
All-women
Panel
Trump
group
therapy
Member of
the BAAS
exec with a
hangover
“I never
come to
BAAS”
Free wine
Badge worn
off campus
Giant
Cookie
Presenter
wearing a
tie
Maybe live
tweeting,
maybe on
Facebook
“I wrote my
paper on
the train”
“I don’t
know much
about your
topic, but...”
Free wine
“How do I
make my
Powerpoint
full screen?”
Mystery
meat
Cathedral
Selfie
“Too much
history on
the
programme”
“Too much
literature on
the
programme”
Brexit
group
therapy