Now in its third year, The University of Kent’s Annual Americanist Symposium will take place on Monday 3rd June 2019, at the University’s Canterbury campus. The event is free and everyone is welcome to attend. Register as soon as possible to secure your place and follow @KentAmSymposium for updates regarding the symposium.
This one day symposium will explore how the Americas have been visualised, with speakers using a singular specific image as a gateway to broader events, trends, and figures. This interdisciplinary event will examine a wide range of themes, and promises to be an exciting and engaging day showcasing the forefront of current American Studies research.
Symposium Programme
Keynote Speaker: Professor Luciana Martins, Birkbeck, University of London
‘Expanding the field: visual and material sources in Latin American research’
Endnote Speaker: Dr. Phil Hatfield, Eccles Centre
‘The ‘Patriotic Indian Chiefs’: propaganda, photography and Canada’s First Nations’
Panel 1: ‘Photography, Activism, and Memory’ (Chair: Megan King, University of Kent)
Charlotte James, University of Nottingham: ‘A Young, Determined Harriet Tubman’ The Power of Photography in the Memory of Harriet Tubman and Nineteenth Century Black Antislavery Activists’
Paul Young, University of Edinburgh: ‘“See dis pictyah in my han’?”: Pictures and Power in the Life and Works of Paul Laurence Dunbar’
Emily Brady, University of Nottingham: ‘“No Matter What It Takes To Get The Job Done”: Elizabeth “Tex” Williams and African American Women Photographers in the US Military
Panel 2: Perspectives on Culture, Nationality, Politics, and Violence (Chair: Sarah Smeed, University of Kent)
Alice Patchett, Durham University: Depicting Corn: Nation and Narrative in American Gothic and Horror Fiction
Chloe Balandier, University of Strasbourg: ‘Doubling The Poet’s Perspective: A European Pointillist Painting in the U.S.’
Tim Galsworthy, University of Sussex: ‘Barry Goldwater, Confederate Icon?: Civil War memory, civil rights, and the “Party of Lincoln”’
Adam Dawson, University of East Anglia: ‘Some Chips and a Pack of Gum: Objects and the Black Male Body in Contemporary African American Young Adult Literature’
Panel 3: Representations, Witnessing, and Agency (Chair: Ellie Armon Azoulay, University of Kent)
Jennifer Dos Reis Dos Santos, Aberystwyth University: ‘Voodoo Feminism’
Sheila Brannigan, NOVA School of Social Sciences and Humanities: ‘Power and knowledge in Gordon Parks’ Homeless Couple, Harlem, 1948’
Elizabeth Collier, University of Essex: ‘The photographic medium and the visualisation of the mask in Tar Baby by Toni Morrison’