We’re delighted\u00a0to welcome Dr Harriet Earle, Lecturer in English at Sheffield Hallam University, to\u00a0give\u00a0a Centre for American Studies research seminar:<\/p>\n
Dark Underbellies: How American Horror Story <\/em>[Re]constructs \u2018America\u2019 Abstract<\/strong> In this talk, I will interrogate the use of \u2018American\u2019 in the name of the popular television series, American Horror Story<\/em>. Since its first airing in October 2011, American Horror Story<\/em> has moved through eight seasons, 60 awards, over 250 nominations and a huge amount of critical debate. I will argue that the inclusion of \u2018American\u2019 in the title can be seen in one of two ways. On one hand, it is inclusivist, bringing together a collection of narratives linked geographically to think about how inter- and transnational narratives have shaped the concept of America. On the other, the inclusivist \u2018melting pot\u2019 does not allow for the richness of hyphenated Americans to be adequately represented and instead leads to hierarchy and isolationist fracturing of identity.<\/p>\n Using examples from across all eight seasons of the series*, I will address the following questions: According to American Horror Story<\/em>, what does it mean for something to be \u2018American\u2019? What kinds of strategies are being used in this identity construction? And, perhaps most importantly, why should I care?<\/p>\n Speaker biography<\/strong> We’re delighted\u00a0to welcome Dr Harriet Earle, Lecturer in English at Sheffield Hallam University, to\u00a0give\u00a0a Centre for American Studies research seminar: Dark Underbellies: How American Horror … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34306,"featured_media":383,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[124],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/amst-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/amst-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/amst-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/amst-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34306"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/amst-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/amst-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":384,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/amst-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382\/revisions\/384"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/amst-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/amst-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/amst-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/amst-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nFriday 15th February, <\/strong>2019
\n4pm <\/strong>in the E.Taylor Room, Eliot College
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nAmerica\u2019 is a strange and amorphous term \u2013 a \u2018weak brand\u2019 in advertising speak \u2013 and \u2018American\u2019 only more so. If postmodernism gave us the freedom to think of our identity markers as fluid and arbitrary, by this reckoning is surely follows that \u2018America\u2019 contains only the meaning to which the individual will ascribe it, based on personal experiences and understandings. And yet, it remains popular to use it as a title for popular culture artefacts.<\/p>\n
\nDr Harriet Earle is a lecturer in English at Sheffield Hallam University and researcher in American comics, literature, and popular culture. She has a\u00a0 PhD in American Comics from Keele University (completed\u00a0 2014) and her first monograph about conflict trauma and comics post-Vietnam was released in July 2017 by the University Press of Mississippi. She has published across the field of comics\u00a0 and popular culture studies, with recent publications in The Journal of Popular Culture and Film International. Dr Earle sits on the editorial board of Comics Forum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"