Latest news and events from the school of American Studies
Lorrie Moore
Wednesday 28 May 2014, 7-8pm, book signing follows
Thomas Paine Study Centre, University of East Anglia
This event is free to attend.
Please register your interest in attending by emailing literaryevents@uea.ac.uk
Lorrie Moore, will be at UEA for a one-off, free-to-attend literary event, hosted by the Arthur Miller Centre. Lorrie Moore will be in-conversation with Chris Bigsby, director of the Autumn Literary Festival.
LORRIE MOORE is the author of the story collections Birds of America, Like Life, and Self-Help and the novels Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?, Anagrams, and A Gate at the Stairs. Her work has won awards from the Lannan Foundation and the American Academy of Arts and Letters as well as the Irish Times International Prize for Fiction, the Rea Award for the Short Story, and the PEN/Malamud Award. She is professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her new short story collection Bark was published in February 2014. Photo credit: Joyce Ravid
Recent reviews:
New York Times: 20 Feb 2014
The Telegraph: 7 March 2014
The Guardian: 9 March 2014
Funding Support for Arts and Humanities Research Students
UEA has AHRC and Faculty PhD Studentships available for entry in September 2014 across all current subject areas.
Black History Month Exhibition
Running from the 15th-31st October as part of the celebrations for Black History Month 2013, this exhibition will examine the extent to which the local political landscape influenced the character of anti-apartheid protest in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s.
Made up of original materials form the Anti-Apartheid Movement Archive, it will outline the efforts of local businesses to boycott South African goods and document the fundraising campaigns launched to enable black and coloured students from South Africa to study at UEA.
Date: 15th-31st October 2013.
Nature of event: Exhibition
Title: The Global Anti-Apartheid Movement in Norwich
Venue: Norwich Millennium Library
Time: Weekdays: 9am - 8pm Saturday: 9am - 5pm.
Cost: Free
For more info email: n.grant@uea.ac.uk
Black History Month Public Lectures
All are welcome to attend the Black History Month Public Lectures October 2013 as part of the UEA’s School of American Studies’ programme for Black History Month.
Taking place at The Forum, Norwich, throughout the month of October, the talks are all followed by an interactive Q&A session. All lectures are open to all and are free to attend.
UEA Arthur Miller Centre Literary Festival Autumn 2013
This Autumn, to mark the University's 50th anniversary, the festival celebrates literary and academic achievement at the University of East Anglia with a glittering line-up of writers and Nobel Prize winner Sir Paul Nurse, all of whom have studied or taught at the University at some point in their careers.
Taking place from 2 October to 20 November 2013 in Lecture Theatre 1, the seven week long festival is kicked off by UEA Chancellor and former BA English Literature graduate Rose Tremain on 2 October, whose latest novel published last year, Merivel: A Man of His Time, is a sequel to Restoration and was shortlisted for the Wellcome Trust book prize.
The remaining six events will each welcome two acclaimed authors to speak on campus. On October 9, Naomi Alderman, who was included in the Granta Magazine list of Best of Young British Novelists this year, will appear alongside the director of UEA’s Creative Writing programme Andrew Cowan whose first novel, Pig, won numerous awards.
And on October 16, Young Bond creator Charlie Higson, also known as author of and performer in The Fast Show, will join David Almond whose first novel Skellig won multiple awards, was translated in 30 languages and turned into a popular Sky TV drama.
Booker Prize-winning Anne Enright and Adam Foulds, one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists, will appear on October 23 while on October 30 John Boyne will join prize-winning author Andrew Miller, whose novel Pure won the Costa Book of the Year.
On November 6, Tracy Chevalier, who was made a UEA honorary graduate in July and whose novel Girl with a Pearl Earring was made into a popular film starring Scarlett Johansson and Colin Firth, will be joining author of eight books and MA Creative Writing graduate Glenn Patterson, winner of the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. And Ian McEwan will be in conversation with Nobel Prize winner Sir Paul Nurse on November 13.
Season tickets for all seven events, excluding the Kazuo Ishiguro event, are priced at £42 (concessions £35) and individual tickets priced £7 (no concessions) are available from the UEA Box Office on 01603 508050 or www.ueaticketbookings.co.uk/events
To find out more visit www.uea.ac.uk/litfest
Beyond the Border: The Vancouver Poetry Conference (1963)
This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of one of the most seminal events in modern American poetry, the Vancouver Poetry Conference 1963. To coincide with UEA’s own fiftieth anniversary, the School of American Studies is hosting a one-day conference on 23rd November intended to reassess the continuing legacies of the Vancouver Poetry Conference, its participants and the open-form poetics being championed at it.
Guest Post: Kirsty Callaghan on the Obama campaign in Colorado
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.
Arthur Miller Centre Prizes
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.
Letter from America: Prof. Geoffrey Plank
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.
Research Seminars, Autumn 2012
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.
Read more.
Containing Multitudes / Black History Month programme out now
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!
AMS Undergraduate Published in Nexus: The International Henry Miller Journal
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.
Transitions 3 Interdisciplinary Comics Symposium 3rd November 2012
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!
Christopher Bigsby on Arthur Miller
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.