University of Glasgow - Research - Research units A-Z - Andrew Hook Centre for American Studies

Latest news

Guest Lecture: Art and Empire: Counterliturgical Dispatches from the United States of America. Professor David Dark (Belmont University)

Fri, 27 Oct 2023 15:41:00 BST

Monday 20 November 2023

Hook Centre Welcome Event: Wednesday 8th October, 16:30-18:00

Thu, 02 Oct 2025 13:05:00 BST

The Andrew Hook Centre for American Studies warmly invites you to our Welcome Event for this year, to be held in the Humanities Hub, 1 University Gardens, 4.30pm-6pm on Wednesday 8th October. All are welcome, and we particularly invite PGT and PGR students so that we have a chance to connect with everyone working on any aspect of the United States at the University.

British Association for American Studies (BAAS) Conference 2026

Thu, 02 Oct 2025 17:20:00 BST

The College of Arts & Humanities and Andrew Hook Centre for American Studies at the University of Glasgow are delighted to invite submissions for the 71st annual British Association for American Studies conference at the University of Glasgow, to be held from Thurs 9th to Sat 11th April 2026. We look forward to welcoming the international American Studies community to our beautiful West End campus.

Seminars 2024-25

SEMESTER TWO SEMINARS 2024-25

Wednesday 12 February

Hook Centre Social

Room 209, 2 University Gardens

16.00-18.00

Monday 24 February

Dan Scroop – William E. Leuchtenburg and the limits of liberalism: US history and historians,1948-1968

McKechnie Room, 10 University Gardens

16.00-17.30

Wednesday 5 March

Christopher Tounsel – Book Talk: Bounds of Blackness: African Americans, Sudan, and the Politics of Solidarity

Online

17.00-18.00

Thursday 6 March (Co-Sponsored with the Stirling Maxwell Centre)

‘Broken Kites’: The Representation of Vets in Comics of the Vietnam War

Harriet EH Earle, Sheffield Hallam University

Seminar Room 306 (TalkLab), University Library

In-person and on Zoom.

16.00-17.30

Thursday 20 March

Ideas in American Studies: Piracy

Room 302, 59 Oakfield Avenue

14.00-16.00

Tuesday 22 April

Sean Vanatta – Plastic Capitalism: Banks, Credit Cards, and the End of Financial Control

Room 461 (Senate Room), Gilbert Scott Building

16.00-18.00

May

Annual Gordon Lecture

Details TBA

Thursday 12 - Friday 13 June

Alexander Trocchi Symposium

Co-sponsored w/ Scottish Literature

Details TBA

SEMESTER ONE SEMINARS 2025-26

Wednesday 1 October, 3:00-4:30pm, Room 202, 4 University Gardens

Professor Sinéad Moynihan (University of Exeter), ‘“For Export Only”: Irish Writers and U.S. Magazines, 1940-75’

This talk is drawn from the larger project, “For Export Only”: Irish Writers and U.S. Magazines, 1940-1975, which uncovers the extent, variety and significance of Irish writers’ contributions, mostly fiction and travel writing, to U.S. magazines at mid-century. Focusing on Mademoiselle (1935-2001), the magazine for “smart young women,” this paper traces the proliferation of Irish fiction in its pages during the 1940s and 1950s. At first glance, such stories appear to fall into two categories: “Anglo-Irish” in subject matter and/or authorial background (Mary Manning, Elizabeth Bowen, Joyce Cary) and “Hiberno-Irish” (Seán O’Faoláin, Liam O’Flaherty, Bryan MacMahon, Frank O’Connor), with childhood and/or coming-of-age the dominant themes across both categories. However, such a neat overview fails to acknowledge the ways in which the meanings suggested by several of the works are complicated by their illustrations, challenging readers primed by content published elsewhere in the magazine to expect its “Irish stories” to fit a certain mould. Of mid-twentieth century Irish literature, Eve Patten asks: “where has the persuasive ‘national’ label on Ireland’s literary output obscured the impact of alternative spatial and political formations – trans-local and transatlantic, cross-continental and cross-border – in the shaping of Irish literary tradition?”By identifying how mid-twentieth century Irish prose was written, sold, circulated and illustrated in a transatlantic magazine marketplace, this paper provides one answer to that question.

Sinéad Moynihan is Professor in American and Atlantic Studies at the University of Exeter. She has published widely on American, Irish and transatlantic literatures in Éire-Ireland, Modern Drama, MELUS, American Literary History, Studies in the Novel and other journals. She is also the author of three monographs, the most recent of which – Ireland, Migration and Return Migration: The “Returned Yank” in the Cultural Imagination, 1952 to present (Liverpool UP, 2019) – was awarded the Michael J. Durkan Prize for Books on Language and Culture by the American Conference for Irish Studies. Her current book project, “For Export Only”: Irish Writers and U.S. Magazines, 1940-1975, is supported by a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship (2025-26).

Wednesday 8 October, 4.30-6.00pm

Hook Centre Welcome Event, Humanities Hub, 1 University Gardens

The Andrew Hook Centre for American Studies warmly invites you to our Welcome Event for this year, to be held in the Humanities Hub, 1 University Gardens, 4.30pm-6pm on Wednesday 8^th October. All are welcome, and we particularly invite PGT and PGR students so that we have a chance to connect with everyone working on an aspect of the United States at the University.