Latest news
Hook Centre Welcome Event: Wednesday 8th October, 16:30-18:00
Thu, 02 Oct 2025 13:05:00 BST
British Association for American Studies (BAAS) Conference 2026
Thu, 02 Oct 2025 17:20:00 BST
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
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 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 an aspect of the United States at the University.
Wednesday 22 October, 2.30-4.00pm, Room 331, Wolfson Medical Building
Rowena Palacios (University of Edinburgh): Title TBC
Wednesday 12 November, Time and Place TBC
Nathan Corden (University of Birmingham): 'The World Awheel: Americans in the First Global Bicycle Age'
Thursday 20 November, Yudowitz Seminar Theatre, Time TBC
Bradley Simpson (University of Connecticut): Title TBC

27th Scottish Association for the Study of America annual conference
Mon, 15 Sep 2025 16:37:00 BST

Seminars in Semester 2: January to May 2025
Wed, 29 Jan 2025 16:19:00 GMT

European Association for American Studies - British Association for American Studies
Wed, 29 Jan 2025 16:31:00 GMT

2023 Annual Gordon Lecture in American Studies
Fri, 27 Oct 2023 15:41:00 BST

The Challenge of Regulating the Virtual World: AI, The Internet and the Future
Tue, 10 Oct 2023 09:34:00 BST

Joe Ryan-Hume receives a Fulbright-Royal Society of Edinburgh Scholarship
Tue, 26 Mar 2019 15:31:00 GMT

Roosevelt Institute for American Studies (RIAS) International PhD seminar, 27-29 November 2024
Tue, 10 Sep 2024 15:41:00 BST

2019 Annual Gordon Lecture in American Studies
Fri, 01 Mar 2019 15:41:00 GMT

Centre for American Studies Seminar Series 2018-19
Thu, 22 Nov 2018 11:50:00 GMT
14th annual Gordon Lecture in American Studies on 7 May 2014.
Wed, 07 May 2014 10:47:00 BST
14th annual Gordon Lecture in American Studies on 7 May 2014.