Four years ago, AMS student Kirsty Callaghan, then on her Year Abroad, wrote us a firsthand account of the Obama campaign in Kissimee, Florida for the 2008 election. Now, Kirsty is back in the US, teaching and studying at the University of Wyoming. On her own blog, Forever West, she's written a new account of her experiences volunteering for the Obama campaign in Colorado.

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The Arthur Miller Centre for American Studies is once again offering its annual prizes: Call for Nominations: The Arthur Miller Centre Prize, and the Arthur Miller Centre First Book Prize Deadline: 1 March 2013 The Arthur Miller Centre Prize of £500 is awarded annually for the best journal length article on any American Studies topic in the preceding calendar year by a United Kingdom journal, providing that the entrant is a member of the British Association of American Studies in the year of submission.

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Geoff Plank has just returned from a five-day tour of the Philadelphia area during which time he presented five talks related to his new book John Woolman’s Path to the Peaceable Kingdom: A Quaker in the British Empire. Geoff spoke at the Quaker meeting house in Woolman’s home town of Mount Holly, New Jersey, at Swarthmore College, Haverford College, and the Pendle Hill Quaker Conference Center.

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Our Research Seminar series - subtitled American Borders this semester - is about to jump into action. View the full schedule.

The first session takes place this Wednesday at 4pm in Arts 1.16.
Our speaker will be John Attridge, Lecturer in English at the University of New South Wales.
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The programme for Norfolk Black History Month 2012 is out.
The School of American Studies' Containing Multitudes exhibition is featured on pages 44-49.
So check it out!

School of American Studies Undergraduate Hamish Jackson, who's returning to the UEA in September after his Year Abroad, has had an article published in Nexus: The International Henry Miller Journal.
His essay, "Henry Miller's Black Spring Through the Looking Glass of Jacques Lacan", shares page space with a contribution from Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa.

Location: Birkbeck, University of London, WC1E 7HX
Date: 3 Nov 2012

A one-day symposium promoting new research and multi-disciplinary academic study of comics / comix / manga / bande dessinée and other forms of sequential art, now in its third year.

Comics studies occupy a unique multi-disciplinary middle-space, one that encourages cross-disciplinary pollination and a convergence of distinct knowledges: literary and cultural studies, visual arts and media, modern languages, sociology, geography and more. Transitions is intended as a platform where different perspectives and methodologies; cultural, historical, or formal, can be brought together and shared, an event devoted to promoting new research into comics in all their forms. Rather than restricting itself to a specific theme, the symposium will highlight research from postgraduate students and early career lecturers. By thinking about comics across different disciplines, the intention is to stimulate and provoke debate and to address a wide spectrum of questions, to map new trends and provide a space for dialogue and further collaboration to emerge.

The first Transitions symposium was the successful opening event of Comica 2010, and in November 2011 Birkbeck hosted Transitions 2, testifying to a thriving UK comics scholarship emerging from a diverse range of disciplinary settings. Transitions 3 is part of Comica 2012, the London International Comics Festival, and is organised in association with Birkbeck, University of London, the School of Film and Television Studies and the School of American Studies at the University of East Anglia, Studies in Comics, European Comic Art, Journal of Graphic Novels & Comics, the Contemporary Fiction Seminar and The Comics Grid. Dr. Roger Sabin, Reader in Popular Culture at Central St. Martins, will once again act as respondent.

We welcome abstracts for twenty minute papers of 250 to 300 words.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to: International iterations - manga, bande dessinée, fumetti etc.; children’s comics; superheroes; non-fiction comics; the (im)materiality of comics; formalist approaches; cultural histories; adaptation / remediation; autographics; early comics; comic strips; small press; alternative comics; underground commix; comics narratologies; political comics; comics and cultural theory; contexts of production and circulation; audiences; comics and the archive; subjectivity in comics; graphic medicine; fan subcultures; comics as historiography; key creators… 

Abstracts should be submitted by the 30th of July 2012 to Hallvard, Nina and Ed at transitions.symposium@gmail.com. 

Looking forward to hearing from you and seeing you there!

Professor Christopher Bigsby had a long professional and personal association with Arthur Miller. He now introduces his much-anticipated biography of one of the 20th century’s greatest playwrights, based on boxes of papers Miller made available to him before his death. Professor Bigsby will be appearing at the National Theatre's 'Platform' on December 10. The talk lasts 45 minutes and will be followed by a book signing. Tickets cost £3.50 (£2.50 concessions) and the talk will last 45 mins.