SAM E R I C A N T U D I E S5 9 t h annual

C O N F E R E N C E:t h e

U N I V E R S I T Yo f

B I R M I N G H A M

BAAS Executive: Vacancies Now Open

Martin Halliwell: Chairs Report 2013

Sue Currell: New Chair of BAAS

IBR I T A I NN ISSN 1465-9956NO. 109 SPRING 2014BAAS.AC.UK

2elcome to ASIB, magazine of the British Association for American Studies. Inside you will find a wealth of report articles and features by some of the finest researchers from the UK and beyond engaged with America from such perspectives as literature, political science, history, linguistics, and more.

Regular readers will have noticed that in recent issues, ASIB has gently evolved beyond its original purpose as a digest squarely for our communitys news. Recent issues, for example, have included interview features with the Associations distinguished Honorary Fellows. Concurrently, baas.ac.uk has become the first stop for news and event announcements whilst the costs for distributing a printed ASIB to an international membership have continued to rise. As a consequence, ASIB has been redesigned to emphasise the long form report writing of the Associations award recipients, with online publication inside baas.ac.uk. In visual terms, you will find a refreshed colour palette and revised typography, the inclusion of colour imagery, and more space to promote the activities of our membership. Indeed members are particularly encouraged to report recent publications and other activities of interest to our community to the Editor with the details supplied (p.51).

This issues cover (see p. 3), and the image above (p. 51), emphasise the architecture of the city of Birmingham,

where the 59th BAAS Annual Conference takes place on the 13th of April. Conference details are highlighted on the next page as the organiser, Sara Wood, prepares the final programme to go live shortly on baas.ac.uk. In other updates since issue 108, Sue Currell was elected as the new Chair of BAAS at the Annual General Meeting of April 2013, hosted at the University of Exeter. There, Martin Halliwell delivered his final annual address as Chair and his report (p. 4) makes for very interesting reading. At the request of the Editor, this issue of ASIB includes a letter from Sue on her plans for the Association over the course of her term (p.10). In other key appointments to the BAAS Executive from the AGM, Bridget Bennett took over from George Lewis as Chair of the Publications Subcommittee, and Zalfa Feghali was appointed Chair of the Development Subcommittee.

Complimenting baas.ac.uk, ASIB continues to be a powerful showcase of the important activities of Americanist researchers and scholars based in the UK and beyond. I hope you enjoy this issue, and look forward to bringing you further enhancements in the future. As ever, your feedback about the publication is both welcome and encouraged.

Kal A!raf

ASIB 109 Spring 2014

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LETTEREDITORS

Bs0u10e01

3ASIB N O. 1 0 9

S P R I N G 2 0 1 4

I N S I D E

The Chairs Annual Report Martin Halliwells final annual report as Chair of BAAS, detailing the communitys achievements in the past year.

Introducing Sue CurrellThe new Chair on her vision for BAAS in the coming years.

Can You Host The BAAS Annual Postgraduate Conference?An invitation to host one of the most important events in BAASs annual calendar.

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Articles From BAAS Award RecipientsNew Orleans, Nashville, Arizona...Just some of the locations visited by recent BAAS travel and research award winners.

Publishing Your Book? BAAS Paperbacks Series Editors Halliwell & West invite your proposals.

Articles From Eccles Centre Postgraduate FellowsWoody Allen, William S. Burroughs and the cultural origins of Loyalism in New York: Eccles Fellows on recent work.

Articles From Eccles Centre FellowsResearch inspired by the British Librarys world famous Eccles Centre.

Serve On The BAAS Executive A notice of the next BAAS AGM, plus information and application forms for BAAS Executive vacancies.

MAGAZINE OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR AMERICAN STUDIES

ON THE COVERCelebrating the architecture of Birmingham as the next BAAS annual conference heads to its eponymous University. Here, an artful composition of the Selfridge Building in the morning. With full attribution and thanks to Spinnykid. Image used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Hosted at the Wikimedia Commons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Selfridges_BIrmingham.jpg). Date of access: 20.01.14. For attribution of all further imagery contained herein, see CREDITS & CONTACTS (p. 51).

DISCLAIMERASIB is an official publication of the British Association for American Studies, but the opinions expressed in its pages are those of the contributors alone and do not necessarily reflect the policies or beliefs of the Association.

CONTRIBUTETo contribute an article or feature to ASIB, contact the Editor, Kal Ashraf. Editorial guidelines and contact details appear in CREDITS & CONTACTS (p. 51).

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The 59th annual conference of the British Association for American Studies (BAAS)will be hosted by the School of English, Drama, and American & Canadian Studies at the University of Birmingham 10-13 April, 2014.

The call for papers is now closed. A preliminary draft of the conference programme will be available shortly at baas.ac.uk.

Registration for the conference is now available at birmingham.ac.uk/baas2014.

4t is fitting that I give my final report as Chair of BAAS at

the University of Exeter where I had four happy years as

a BA and MA student. I want to begin by thanking the

conference organisers Sinead Moynihan, Paul Williams

and Jo Gill for planning and delivering a really excellent

conference. I also want to thank Mark Whalan for

bringing the conference to Exeter in the first place and

we are very glad that Mark can be here with us.

My report last year was given during the presidential

primaries. The late summer and autumn gave way to

much excitement and interest in the presidential election,

and I was very pleased to enjoy election night at the

United States Embassy in London, along with Jo Gill,

George Lewis, Iwan Morgan and other colleagues. The

US Embassy continues to be one of the associations most

important allies and supporters and it is great that the

Cultural Attach, Monique Quesada, is able to join us for

the banquet to announce this years Ambassadors

Awards. And it is a pleasure, as ever, to have Sue Wedlake,

the Senior Cultural Specialist at the Embassy, at our 58th

annual conference, as well as Tom Leary, the US

Embassys Minister Counselor for Public Affairs.

Another key theme last year was undergraduate

admissions and the uncertainty that stems from the

government recent shift in policy in respect of the

recruitment of A Level students in English universities.

Undergraduate recruitment on American Studies

programmes did not suffer quite as much as we feared in

2012-13, and it is particularly heartening to see four-year

degrees still attracting students. There are still dangers to

American Studies degrees, though, and our institutions

will have to work harder than ever to promote the subject

to applicants and to our managers in a period when large

administrative units are in vogue and smaller programmes

vulnerable. There is more to say on this topic, but I want

to save time to talk about two other issues: postgraduate

programmes and Open Access publishing that have both

loomed large on the horizon this year.

THE CHAIRS ANNUAL REPORT

Martin Halliwell Spoke at the BAAS Annual General Meeting of April 2013 at the University of Exeter

ASIB 109 Spring 2014

I

Kal Ashraf

5ACHIEVEMENTS

We have had some really impressive distinctions since I last

addressed the AGM.

Professor Judie Newman (Nottingham) was

awarded an OBE last summer recognition of her

contribution to scholarship.

Professor Tony Badger (Cambridge) has been

elected as Fellow of the Society of American

Historians. Tony is the only British based

academic invited to be a fellow.

Among the senior promotions in the American Studies

community this year I am very pleased to report that:

Sylvia Ellis has been promoted to Professor of

International History in the Department of

Humanities at Northumbria University.

Mark Whalan (formerly Exeter and BAAS

Publications Chair) has been promoted to a full

Professorship in the Department of English at the

University of Oregon.

I would like to note the following major grants:

Professor Matthew Jones (Nottingham) was

awarded an AHRC Fellowship in summer 2012

entitled 'Supreme National Interests: The

Official History of Britain's Strategic Nuclear

Deterrent and the Chevaline Programme,

1962-1982 worth 112,000

Dr Stephanie Lewthwaite (Nottingham) was

awarded an AHRC Fellowship for her project

Remaking Modernism: Cross-Cultural

Encounters in Hispano Art, 1930-1960, worth

48,000

Dr Andrew Johnstone (Leicester) was awarded an

AHRC Fellowship for his project

Internationalism, Ideology, and the Debate over

US Entry into World War II, 1937-1941, worth

33,000.

Professor Tim Armstrong (Royal Holloway

College, London) has received a Leverhulme Trust

grant of 31,204 for his research project on

Micromodernism

And, in terms of individual achievements:

Dr Andrew Preston (Cambridge) has won the

Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction

(worth $25,000) for his book Sword of the Spirit,

Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy,

published by Knopf.

Professor Celeste-Marie Bernier (Nottingham) has

been appointed the Dorothy K. Hohenberg Chair

of Excellence in Art History, University of

Memphis for 2014-15.

Professor Dick Ellis (Birmingham) has been elected

President of the Society for the Study of American

Women Writers, from January 2013.

And we are delighted that a good friend of BAAS,

Nicola Ramsay has been promoted to Head of

Editorial (Books) at Edinburgh University Press,

from February 2013.

With respect to institutional news:

We were very pleased to see the opening of the

new Institute of the Americas at University

College London in summer 2012. Simon

Newman, Philip Davies and I are on the advisory

board of the new Institute. One of the most

exciting initiatives this year is that UCL and BAAS

have collaborated on an annual Fellowship in US

Studies to be based at the Institute a Fellowship

that is particularly geared towards Early Career

Scholars. I am happy to announce that for

academic year 2013-14 we are splitting the award

between Dr Nick Witham (Canterbury Christ

Church) for Semester 1 and Dr Maria Ryan

(Nottingham) for Semester 2. Details of next years

Fellowship are included in the list of BAAS related

awards in your delegates packs.

We have positive news about the development of a

new American Studies Centre at the University of

Sussex, which will give institutional shape to

Americanist research and teaching activities.

And, last autumn I was invited as an external

assessor to validate the new BA in American

Studies at Northumbria University, starting from

2013-14.

ASIB 109 Spring 2014

6Finally, in this section I want to record the death of

Professor Susan Manning, Grierson Professor of English

Literature at the University of Edinburgh, who died in

January. Susan was a pioneer on the relationship between

American and Scottish literature and on transatlantic

literary cultures more generally. Andrew Taylor from

Edinburgh has written a very moving tribute to Susan in

the current issue of American Studies in Britain.

BAAS ACTIVITIES

Most of our activities will be detailed under the reports

from the other officers and the Subcommittee chairs, but I

would like to make three points here.

1. In July 2012 we published the report American Studies in the UK, 2000-2010. BAAS

commissioned the report in conjunction with the

Fulbright Commission, and the research was

conducted by the BAAS intern Dr Richard Martin

during 2011-12, in collaboration with the

Development Subcommittee. We think this is a

really important document available through the

BAAS website which outlines institutional trends

across the last decade, taking note of disciplinary

developments, recruitment patterns, study abroad

opportunities, American Studies research centres,

and the 2001 and 2008 Research Assessment

Exercises.

2. This year we are very excited to launch a new BAAS publication, American Studies in the

UK: Impact and Public Engagement, which

showcases our research across a range of funded

projects and across the diversity of our disciplines.

We will be launching the brochure formally

tomorrow lunchtime [Saturday 20 April] and there

is a hard copy of the brochure for each conference

delegate. The brochure will also be available via

our website soon after the conference.

3. We have also spent a great deal of time this year looking at our membership, via our new BAAS

membership officer Rachael McLennan. Please

can I draw your attention to the Join tab at the

top right of the BAAS website and the new

Donate button just underneath it. For BAAS to

continue to work in the energetic and diverse ways

that we have been doing in recent years it is vital

that we have a strong membership base, and we

are always very pleased to receive donations to

supplement our array of awards and the very

generous support we receive from the US Embassy,

the Eccles Centre at the British Library, and

current donors. Could I please ask you to promote

the benefits of BAAS to your colleagues and

postgraduates: this includes the American

Studies in Britain magazine, a discounted rate

to the annual conference, and a very preferential

rate on the Journal of American Studies.

RESEARCH EXCELLENCE FRAMEWORK 2014

We are soon approaching the submission date for the 2014

REF, and I wanted to spend a moment to update you on

subpanel membership here. In winter 2012/13 Professor

Faye Hammill (Strathclyde University) was appointed to

the Area Studies REF Subpanel to take the place of

Professor Heidi Macpherson who moved to the US in July.

Faye will join Brian Ward and Susan Hodgett as the North

Americanists on the Area Studies subpanel, to join other

Americanists: Susan Mary Grant on the History subpanel;

Martin Halliwell on English; and John Dumbrell and

James Dunkerley on Politics and International Relations.

BAAS has recently been asked by the REF manager to

make further nominations to support the English and

History REF 2014 sub-panels. The reason for this is that

more submissions are likely to be submitted to these two

sub-panels than was first estimated. We have made some

nominations and wait to hear back from the REF team.

OPEN ACCESS

The future of open access publishing was the major policy

focus during winter 2012-13. In February and March

BAAS submitted responses on Open Access to BIS and

HEFCE, and we have worked closely with the English and

History subject associations in coordinating our responses,

and on a joint position statement involving 20 scholarly

associations from the arts, humanities and social sciences. I

would like to say a few words about Open Access and

indicate three areas that are of particular concern for us,

but I wont go into all the details here.

ASIB 109 Spring 2014

7The debate stems from the publication of the Finch

Report on the future of Open Access publishing

(Accessibility, Sustainability, Excellence: How to Expand

Access to Research Publications) in June 2012. This

report sought to ensure that published scholarship was

freely available, and recommended that the gold model

should underpin the future of UK scholarship. This means

that authors will pay an Article Processing Charge (APC)

at the point of publishing, thus transferring the cost of

publishing from subscribers to authors, some of whom will

receive the cost of the APC from a funding body as part of

a research grant. The gold model was seen as future proof,

whereas the green option in which published work is

made available through university repositories was

thought to be too baggy, in the respect that readers could

not easily navigate their way around the various platforms

hosted by the broad range of UK universities.

The beginning of 2013 promised strict segregation

between gold and green, but the last six weeks have

brought a different perspective. The responses to the BIS

inquiry, by all accounts, have given pause for thought. It

seems now that the acceptance of the gold model by the

government and RCUK was hasty because it conceives of

the debate in narrow terms and in favour of science

subjects.The gold option simply ignores the many varieties

of publishing needs within the arts, humanities and social

sciences, which includes practice-based research and

creative disciplines such as design, art, music and creative

writing.

The first area of concern for our disciplines is the

monograph. Indeed, the Finch Report itself admitted that

it had not fully considered monograph publishing which,

when taking books and chapters as a whole, represents

around 70% of the submissions for English and History

scholarship, as submitted to the 2008 RAE a trend which

is likely to be replicated in the 2014 REF. The second

concern is that current debates do not fully acknowledge

that American Studies and other Area Studies scholars

frequently publish in journals and with presses outside the

UK and there is little evidence that the gold open access

model will be adopted by publishers in North America.

And the third concern shared with many other

associations is that the gold open access model raises

equal opportunities issues for postgraduates, early career

researchers and retired academics. None of these groups

will have access to institutional or research council funds to

pay for article processing charges.

Although the horizon looks a little better than it did in

December, the debate is far from won and it is still unclear

whether REF 2020 will demand that articles are Open

Access compliant. However, it is heartening to see now a

vigorous debate about the benefits of the green model

across a range of different academic disciplines. Indeed,

publishers including Cambridge University Press, the

publisher of the Journal of American Studies are

already starting to prepare for a hybrid future, with arts,

humanities and social-science journals likely to maintain

both green and gold options. And it might be on this

hybrid model that for most of us unless we are funded by

a research council will continue to publish in ways that

are not dissimilar from the present.

POSTGRADUATES

We are at an in-between time in terms of postgraduate

funding in the arts and humanities. The AHRCs current

five-year block grant of postgraduate studentships awarded

in 2008 comes to an end this year. Many UK institutions

are currently bidding for a second phase of AHRC block

grants. This time studentships will be awarded to consortia

rather than individual institutions, and most of these

consortia are regionally configured. The AHRCs

published funding model will not allow all these bids to

succeed, so we could be looking at significant regions of

the UK which do not have research council scholarships.

The results will be known in the late summer, but however

widely the funding is allocated the AHRC has withdrawn

its support for Masters courses. This is a U-turn on the last

round of block grants, particularly professional MAs

such as Librarianship, Museum Studies and Creative

Writing which seemed to be high on the agenda a few

years ago. Arguably, this has been replaced with the

AHRCs emphasis on partnerships between higher

education and the creative industries, but it still leaves most

MA courses without national funding and with

institutions being pushed to spend much of their

scholarship money on PhDs.

ASIB 109 Spring 2014

8The future of stand-alone MAs, then, looks fairly bleak

particularly if we take into account the high level of debt

that students will carry from taking a BA. Currently most

MAs cost around half of an average BA fee (on the higher

fee model), but we could envisage the MA fee soon

creeping up towards the BA level, making Masters courses

available only to the wealthy or to international students

who are used to paying higher fees. The paradox, of

course, is that we cannot simply focus on PhD funding,

when PhD programmes are predicated on completion of

an MA. We might see more research MAs or MRes

courses develop, but it is important that those MA

programmes focusing on American-related topics do not

get squeezed out in favour of more generic or traditional

programmes, and that we push ourselves to think creatively

and in a far-sighted way about this issue. We have

already seen a major threat this year to the only dedicated

MA course in American Literature in the Republic of

Ireland at University College Dublin (although the threat

here is based on staffing, rather than fees) and we want to

ensure that our MAs continue to act as feeders to PhDs in

American Studies and related disciplines.

FINAL REMARKS

As this is my last Chairs report, I would like to take this

opportunity to thank all the colleagues I have had the

pleasure to work with on the Executive Committee over

the last seven years, and particularly over these last three

years during my term as Chair. I would especially like to

thank the BAAS officers between 2010 and 2013: Jo Gill

and Catherine Morley as Secretary and Sylvia Ellis and

Theresa Saxon as Treasurer, as well as the three colleagues

who have acted as Vice-Chair: Sue Currell, Ian Bell and

Will Kaufman. I would particularly like to thank Ian Bell,

George Lewis and Tom Ruys-Smith who finish their terms

of office this year; Dick Ellis whose role as Chair of

BLARS passes to Michael Collins; and Michael Bibler who

will start a new job at Louisiana State University in August.

It has been an honour to serve the American Studies

community and I hope I have done the role justice.

BAAS has been a strong line of continuity through my

career. My PhD supervisor, Richard King, was BAAS

Chair in the mid-1990s; I met the previous Chair, Heidi

Macpherson, at my first BAAS conference in Cambridge

in 1994; and I met the new Chair, Sue Currell, at the

Oxford BAAS conference of 2002. I am delighted that Sue

has been elected as the 19th Chair of BAAS and only the

fourth female Chair, following Heidi, Judie Newman and

Charlotte Erickson. I know that Sue shares my view that

BAAS should actively encourage grassroots groups and

networks across the diversity of our disciplines, but that the

association has a crucial role in representing the American

Studies community in the broadest possible terms.

I will continue our work to help further internationalise

BAAS in my new roles as the UK Representative for the

European Association for American Studies and as

Council member of the International American Studies

Association, and I will continue to engage in professional

and public debates over the next three years in my new

role as the Chair of the English Associations Higher

Education Committee. BAAS will always be my intellectual

home, though, and where my strongest friendships are. I

look forward to seeing the association flourish in the

coming years.

Ma!in Halliwell

ASIB 109 Spring 2014

9A NOTE FROM TRACEY GOOCH ONSULGRAVE MANORS CENTENARY YEARSulgrave Manor is celebrating a special centenary year in 2014. In 1914 the manor was purchased and restored to celebrate 100 years of peace between Britain and the USA. Today it is held in trust for the people of both these nations.

Sulgrave Manor was the home of George Washingtons English ancestors. The original Tudor Great Hall and Great Chamber, built in the mid-1500s by George Washingtons five times great grandfather, exist today alongside a Queen Anne wing built c.1715 and gardens designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield.

We will be hosting a variety of events throughout 2014, including our annual Watson Chair lecture at the British Library in conjunction with the Eccles Centre on 21 February 2014.

Check our website www.sulgravemanor.org.uk and join our mailing list to be kept up to date with whats on at the manor throughout 2014.

We will also be launching our Centenary Appeal in 2014 Sulgrave Manor has suffered from lack of investment and is struggling to cope with the repairs and ongoing maintenance this Tudor house

desperately needs. We are appealing for help to raise the funds we urgently need to ensure the manor remains open to the public for future generations.

Contact us on enquiries@sulgravemanor.org.uk if you would like to know more about our Centenary Appeal or get further involved. Our phone number is (01295) 760205 and our address is Sulgrave Manor, Manor Road, Sulgrave, Near Banbury, OX17 2SD.

Tacey Gooch

HAVE YOU VISITED

SULGRAVE MANOR?

Sulgrave Manor, 1910 prior to the reinstatement of the west wing.

ASIB 109 Spring 2014

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s a Reader in American Literature at the University of Sussex I have taught a wide range of interdisciplinary American Studies courses at all levels. All of my degrees are American Studies: I gained my BA in American Studies (Literature) at Sussex, an MA in American Studies from the University of Maryland and a PhD in American Studies also from Sussex, I also spent two years as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Nottinghams School of American and Canadian Studies.

Working in American Studies enabled me to follow an equal interest and curiosity in literature, history and politics. Until recently, then, I have been a thoroughbred hybrid, a product of this wonderful interdisciplinary field that has sustained a community of Americanists with a broad range of interests. American Studies departments have been a crucible for my eclectic research interests in the cultural history of the US of the early twentieth century, which include the history of leisure, eugenics, and popular culture to the politics and publishing culture of the communist Left.

The huge benefit of having spent an entire academic career working within American Studies departments was brought home to me when this luxury ended and I was restructured into a School of English in 2009 and thereby institutionally split from the historians, political scientists and social scientists I had worked alongside for the first time. While always a valued community, BAAS took on a new significance and importance to me: it presented a haven of friendship, innovative scholarship and a support network of the kind that institutional structures now struggled to sustain.

Becoming a member of the Executive Committee at that point, and then vice-Chair in 2012, I have seen at close hand the huge amount of work that goes into

providing that support and community: through awards, conferences, schools liaison, publications and engagement with governments, embassies, NGOs, commissions, and various international groups BAAS is at the forefront of making sure our presence is known and our work disseminated and understood.

As a long time beneficiary of this, I now feel it is time to repay my debt somewhat. As Chair I hope to build on Martin Halliwells excellent work to bring our research to the forefront of public awareness and to maintain a presence and voice in current discussions taking place within higher education policy discussions. These are certainly challenging times, from privatisation and funding issues to open access and American studies scholarship within the REF. Martin has worked incessantly to make sure that we are part of those debates and decisions and that the concerns of our community are well-voiced.

We will need to work hard to maintain this function as a bulwark against the negative effects of changes. It is also more important than ever to make sure we continue working to steer change in positive and ethical directions. With the help of the executive committee and BAAS membership, I look forward to overseeing further expansion of our network, grow our online presence and enable increasing participation in new media and publishing developments. I would like to see increased benefits to members evolving from a wider members forum and media contact database online but also by exploring and encouraging opportunities for us to take part in community engagement beyond academia. I look forward to working with you on these goals in the coming years.

Sue Currell

AElected Chair of BAAS, April 2013

SUE CURRELLINTRODUCING

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Dear Colleague,

The British Association for American Studies is happy to announce that the deadline

for applications to host the annual postgraduate conference in 2014 has been extended

until the 28th of February 2014. This event usually takes the format of a one-day

conference in November.

Representing interdisciplinary research, academic exchange and scholarly networking,

the postgraduate conference is a key part of BAAS. If you would like more information

about organising this important event, please contact your Postgraduate Representative

at Jonathan.Ward@baas.ac.uk.

Best wishes, Jon Ward

ASIB 109 Spring 2014

YOUR INVITATION TO HOST THE BAAS ANNUAL POSTGRADUATE CONFERENCE

12

Thanks to this award from BAAS, I was able to visit

archives at Butler Library at Columbia University, the

American Academy of Arts and Letters, the New York

Public Library, and Houghton Library at Harvard

University in July 2013. I conducted research on Mary

Wilkins Freeman, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Constance

Fenimore Woolson, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman for a

book project on the reception of American women

writers in Britain between the American Civil War and

World War I. Increased interest in transatlanticism in the

twenty-first century has recently turned to close readings

of womens transatlanticism. Yet the new work on

womens transatlanticism tends to emphasise U.S.

womens indebtedness to British predecessors or treat

specific figures as unique conduits for Atlantic exchange.

In contrast, this project treats a range of socially active

women writers and demonstrates their impact on British

markets and readers. The British responses to these

writers were admiring, pungent, and unique, and

deserved to be remembered and analysed. The business

records of American publishers were particularly rich

sources. Butler Librarys Rare Books and Manuscripts

room holds the archives of Harper Brothers, which

include correspondence with authors, contracts

(including language about foreign and translation rights),

and even English royalty ledgers dating from the years

1901 to 1919. Through its flagship literary monthly,

Harpers Monthly, which was published in London from

1880 onward, its literary agents like Sampson Low and

Osgood and McIlvaine, and through its London office

once that opened in the 1890s, Harpers were

instrumental in bringing many American authors to

Britain. Through their dealings with publishers in

Australia and other parts of the colonial market, they

also brought American authors to the Anglophone world.

I found the English royalty ledgers particularly informative. The 1901 ledger begins by listing number of copies sold to date, which allowed me to trace reception of some writers back to the 1890s. I am able to say that Harpers sold 3800 copies of Freemans A New England Nun and Other Stories (1891) by 1901. That story collection was the second of two collections that caused a stir of critical and popular interest in Freeman in Britain between 1890 and 1894 (the first story collection was published by David Douglas, an Edinburgh publisher). Today, Freeman is remembered primarily as a short-story writer of the 1880s and 90s, but the ledgers show that her novels, as well as her story collections, continued to sell well in Britain up to around 1910. Beating out the likes of Thomas Hardy and William Dean Howells, she was very often the best-selling Harpers author in many a six-month period. Author correspondence files were also interesting in the case of Freeman. Her letters to Harpers have been published in Brent Kendrick, ed. The Infant Sphinx: Collected Letters of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, but the Harpers archives also includes correspondence from F.A. Duneka, William H. Briggs, Cass Canfield, and other employees of Harpers. Most intriguing was a series of letters from 1924 to 1925 about a play adapted by Susan Richmond of London from Freemans story A Conquest of Humility for the Arts League of Service Traveling Theatre, a subsidised society that produced good plays for small audiences in the provinces. Susan Richmond wrote to Harpers London office asking if the story was still in copyright and for permission to adapt the play for this company; Bernard Shaw advised them on their dealings with authors. Although Harpers was not the original British publisher of the story (Douglas was), Harpers in London and New York agreed that Richmond needed to gain permission from both them and Freeman and to pay royalty to both parties. Writing to the London office, an employee of Harpers in New York expressed his doubts about the commercial value of the play, which he reckoned he could not judge from the great distance across the Atlantic. The correspondence illustrates just how distant the British market and British tastes seemed from Harpers employees, even though they were keen to capitalise as much as possible on it.

A REPORT FROM STEPHANIE PALMER (NOTTINGHAM TRENT UNIVERSITY)BAAS Founders Award Recipient 2013

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The Freeman correspondence also turned up a sheaf of

letters from the 1950s requesting permission to publish

her story, A New England Nun in various U.S.

Information Service books issued with cooperation from

local publishers around the world, in such languages as

Sindhi. The story was selected, a U.S.I.S. official wrote,

because it would improve understanding of the United

States. Perhaps the storys cautious combination of

female chastity and female autonomy appealed to

U.S.I.S. officials looking for respectable American

literature to be read primarily in Asia, where there were

not many good American stories on the market. The U.S.

Information Service at Beirut also wrote asking to

publish the story in simplified English for its English

classrooms. Although Freemans stories were no longer in

copyright in the United States, Harpers agreed to receive

the U.S. Information Services honorarium for world

translation rights and schemed to divide the honorarium

(which was $10 per short story) between themselves and

Freemans heirs as advantageously as possible to

themselves. The exchange illustrates that Freemans

stories were read and remembered between the end of

her life and the emergence of feminist literary criticism

in the 1960s. It also points to a paper trail for the U.S.

Information Service publications, one that may interest

any scholar studying how this influential government

department shaped worldwide reception of American

literature.

At the New York Public Library Henry W. and Albert A.

Berg Collection I looked at two readers reports for the T.

Fisher Unwin of London reprint of Charlotte Perkins

Gilmans Women and Economics (1898). G.K. Chesterton

wrote that it was the best expression of the New Woman

movement he had read, but he quibbled with Gilmans

argument that women are not in a state of economic

dependence by choice. Edward Garnett praised the book

for being sensible and rational. The most striking thing

about the two readers reports of this classic feminist text

is that both are written by men. At the Houghton I read

through letters between Elizabeth Stuart Phelps and her

publisher, Fields and Osgood (later Houghton Mifflin).

Unfortunately few of the early letters have survived, so I

was unable to find out how Phelps felt about Sampson

Low editing and annotating the 1869 British edition of

her bestseller, The Gates Ajar. In the following years she

frequently misspelled Sampson Lows name and seemed

modest and diffident in leaving the negotiations for

finding a British publisher to her American publishers

discretion. But I now have an idea why Phelps stopped

publishing with Sampson Low and turned to other

British publishers.The trip was interesting partially for

omissions in the record. I was unable to locate much

correspondence between Harper and Brothers or

Houghton Mifflin and the British publisher Sampson

Low, which operated as their London agent during the

years in question. Only one scrap of paper remains in

the Constance Fenimore Woolson file at Harpers, and

Mary Noailles Mufrees papers consists of two contracts.

Both transatlanticism and womens writing are difficult to

research for some of the same reasons. Although

American publishers like Harper Brothers were highly

interested in capitalising on the British and Anglophone

market when the opportunity arose, they were not

focused on it enough to preserve clear records. Although

women writers who achieved popular success were

treated warmly by the publishers, much of the record of

womens dealings with their publishers is not extent.

This trip gave me valuable insight into womens

transatlanticism from the publishers perspectives, their

mixture of carelessness and capitalist self-interest in

approaching the British market for American fiction. It

also helped enrich my understanding of what writing for

a British market meant for various American women

writers. I thank BAAS for granting me access to these

archives.

Stephanie Palmer

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am a current third-year PhD student at the University of

Cambridge, working on a dissertation on the

politicisation of abortion among American evangelicals

in the 1970s and 1980s.The generous grant I received

from BAAS enabled me to spend July and the beginning

of August in Nashville, Tennessee (USA), researching at

the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archive

(SBHLA).

The Southern Baptist Convention as Americas largest

Protestant denomination numerically and arguably its

most thoroughly evangelical one occupies a place of

particular significance in understanding how Protestant

evangelicals became pro-life in the 1970s and 1980s. The

Southern Baptist Convention today is one of the most

reliably Republican and pro-life denominations, and it is

therefore tempting presumptively to read this back onto

earlier decades; yet the SBCs current positioning is in

fact the result of a profound and radical internal re-

negotiation and re-imagining of the meaning of Church/

State separation through the early- to mid-1980s.

Throughout the 1970s, the applied ethics agency of the

Southern Baptist Convention, the Christian Life

Commission (CLC), was producing pro-choice material

for the Conventions congregants; and the Baptist Joint

Committee for Public Affairs (BJCPA), supported in

largest measure by the SBC, was campaigning in

Washington for legal abortion. These activities

increasingly met with fierce resistance from a growing

conservative faction in the SBC, who ultimately emerged

ideologically victorious over the moderates. By the late

1980s, conservatives had gained control of the

denomination, grafted the SBC onto the rising pan-

evangelical Religious Right, and under the leadership

of Dr Richard Land had turned the CLC itself into a

forceful exponent for the pro-life cause. I had hoped that

my visit to the SBHLA would illuminate how Southern

Baptists in particular became politicised about abortion,

and how this tied into the national and ecumenical story

of American evangelicals politicisation about the issue.

The bulk of my research last summer at the SBHLA

centred on the files of the CLC. During my five weeks at

the SBHLA, I worked through virtually all of the

archives relevant CLC holdings, which extended through

the 1970s. I was able to get a clear sense of the ways in

which, over that decade, the CLC framed legal abortion

as an extension of key Baptist tenets of freedom of

conscience and separation of Church and State. I had

known before I had visited the SBHLA that the Southern

Baptist Convention in the 1970s was not against

abortion, but I was surprised by the extent to which this

was dramatically borne out by the material at the archive.

The head of the CLC through the mid-1980s, Dr Foy

Valentine, had ties with the Religious Coalition for

Abortion Rights, even signing a statement that the latter

produced in 1977. The CLC tended to skew liberal in

general Valentine was close to President Johnson and

was a strong supporter of many aspects of the Great

Society reforms of the 1960s; yet I learned last summer

through personal documents I discovered that even many

key conservatives in the SBC were not yet opposed to

abortion by the late 1970s. I discovered letters and

statements in the archive that indicate that abortion was

not an issue that had permeated the moral consciousness

of even those Southern Baptist conservatives who would

be strongly pro-life by the 1980s and 1990s. During my

time researching at the SBHLA, the archivist there

recommended two further collections on the same topic

the Foy Valentine Papers and the BJCPA Papers, both

held in Baylor Universitys Texas Collection.

A REPORT FROM REBECCA WAGNER (ST JOHNS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE) BAAS Peter Parish Prize Recipient 2013

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As a continuation of my BAAS project, I spent September in Waco, Texas, looking preliminarily through these collections. The Valentine papers afforded me a closer understanding of the concerns and motivations of the man who headed the CLC through the mid-1980s, and the BJCPA papers allowed me a comparative view of another Baptist agency beyond the CLC that was in favour of legal abortion. The Valentine papers and the BJCPA papers are both currently unprocessed, and have thus been seen by very few scholars, and together they represent a trove of exciting new material.

Before I began my BAAS trip, I had originally intended

for this research on Southern Baptists and abortion to

form one chapter of a broader dissertation on the

politicisation of abortion among American evangelicals

more generally from the 1970s onwards. However, as the

material that I came upon during my visit was so

fascinating and virtually untouched by previous scholars,

I ended up shifting my entire doctoral project to focus

specifically on Southern Baptists and abortion in other

words, to look at how, when, and why the SBC became

pro-life. Last summer, the SBHLAs CLC holdings did

not stretch beyond the late 1970s, leaving the rest of the

story opaque. Through good fortune, however, there will

be far more material in the SBC archive for me to work

with in a few months time. With Dr Lands retirement

from the CLC last summer, all of the CLC holdings from

the 1980s through summer 2013 have just now been

transferred to the SBC archive. The archivists have

agreed to expedite their processing of this collection for

me, in advance of my planned visit this coming spring/

summer. Additionally, Dr Land has just deposited his

own papers in the SBC archive papers which contain

key material on how he moulded the CLC into a vehicle

for the evangelical pro-life movement, including material

on his establishment of a Washington office for anti-

abortion lobbying in the 1990s. Although his papers will

be closed for 25 years, I met with Dr Land last summer

and secured special permission from him to research in

his collection on the abortion issue a rare opportunity

that no other scholar has had before.

With these new primary sources, I hope to produce a

comprehensive and well documented exploration of how

Americas largest Protestant denomination became pro-

life. I am incredibly thankful to BAAS for financially

supporting my research, and for making the beginnings

of this exciting new project possible.

Rebecca WagnerASIB 109 Spring 2014

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was awarded the Marcus Cunliffe Prize by BAAS to

enable a three week research trip to Tempe, Arizona.

The main purpose of my trip was to gather material

from the microform collection Major Council Minutes of

American Indian Tribes held at Arizona State University.

This collection is central to my PhD thesis, which

examines the rhetoric surrounding Native American

Termination policy in the United States (1953-1970) in

the domestic, global and Native reservation spheres.

Termination aimed to split up reservation land bases and

rid Native American tribes of their federal trust status,

forcing them to accept the privileges and

responsibilities of American citizenship. My thesis

addresses the issue of why Termination which is now

widely considered a disaster was accepted, by assessing

attitudes towards Native Americans and government

policy. Accessing the minutes of tribal council meetings is

critical to understanding how Bureau of Indian Affairs

officials addressed various tribes and how those tribes

responded to and understood Termination, US

citizenship and being American.

On arrival on campus, I was pleasantly surprised to find

Hayden Library equipped with brand new microform

scanners, attached to large-screen PCs providing visitors

with unlimited, free scanning of sources. This meant that

I could collect sources more efficiently than I had

planned. As a result I included a fourth tribal council, the

Klamath, to the three I had already begun to look at

the Navajo, the Mississippi Choctaw, and the Five

Civilized Tribes Inter-Tribal Council. The Klamath tribe

was faced with a withdrawal bill in 1954 and eventually

terminated in 1961. In including their tribal council

minutes I will be able to examine how a tribe in these

circumstances reacted to Termination, compared to

others which were not immediately threatened.

The resources I was able to access in Tempe are vital to

my project, but were not the only benefit I gained from

this trip. My stay in Arizona and interactions with those I

met there critically aided my development as a historian

in a broader sense. On my very first day I had the

opportunity to have dinner with Professor Donald Fixico,

a key historian in the field of Termination as well as

Native American historiography in general. His advice

and encouragement of my project was invaluable and

raised important questions regarding the theoretical

background of my research. During my trip I also had an

opportunity to meet Dr Katherine Osburn and hear

about her upcoming book on the Mississippi Choctaws

one of the tribes whose council minutes I have chosen to

include in my study. The support from these academics

and the chance to discuss my project alerted me to

different, specifically American perspectives on

Termination and its context. This experience reminded

me to be aware of how my position as a Finnish citizen in

the UK affects my understanding of Native American

and US history.

Considering its location in the Southwest, it is

unsurprising that Arizona State University houses such a

wealth of resources for postgraduate students studying

American Indian topics. I really enjoyed meeting other

postgraduate students and being able to discuss my

project with people who are aware of Termination and

its significance in US history. As the only current history

PhD candidate in Durham focusing on the United States,

let alone Native Americans, this was a rare treat. In

addition, hearing about the research projects of others

broadened my understanding of the differences between

UK and US PhD programmes. For instance, I was able

to sit in on a graduate student class on colonialism and

global indigenous populations; as a result I am aware of

additional important literature on this topic.

A REPORT FROM REETTA HUMALAJOKI (UNIVERSITY OF DURHAM) BAAS Marcus Cunliffe Prize Recipient 2012

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I was very impressed at times perhaps even a bit

intimidated by the breadth of knowledge and skills of

the American grad students. However, after talking to

other students I found that the experience of doing a

PhD is in many ways very similar: filled with stress,

pressure to work non-stop, and often feelings of

confusion when immersed in ones own thesis.

Finally, without this trip I would not have been able to

visit some of the places that I have read about in the

tribal council minutes and gain a glimpse into life on the

reservation of one of the tribes included in my thesis

project. With the help of history graduate student Farina

King and her family on the Navajo reservation, I spent a

weekend in Monument Valley. Seeing the impoverished

conditions many still live in (as well as getting stuck

behind obviously inebriated drivers more than once in a

single day) made the continuing problems of at least one

tribe glaringly obvious. Yet more striking was the

incredible beauty of the land and warmth of the people I

spoke to. These factors affirmed to me how important it

is to continue to study Native American history, as it

remains relevant to examine why change has failed to

occur in so many cases. Furthermore, this must be

conducted in a respectful way understanding the reality

of the challenges faced by tribes and the efforts that they

make to overcome them, avoiding simplistic or

generalised victim narratives.

Three weeks may seem a short time in which to conduct

substantial research, yet having completed the research

trip I disagree. With the help of modern technology and

networks of supportive fellow researchers, I was able to

collect a great deal more sources than I had planned, as

well as having stimulating conversations and getting a

taste of Navajo daily life. Thanks to this award from

BAAS, I have gained the sources and experience I need

to complete a well-rounded thesis. Ree$a Humalajoki

ASIB 109 Spring 2014

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he Founders Award allowed me to travel to the University of Iowas Special Collections Archive which contains important and valuable collections of fanzines, fan letters, science fiction convention material and fan videos. The university has been the recipient of numerous and vast donations from fans and the librarians are still cataloguing new additions every day. The Special Collections Archive is currently involved in a major cooperative effort with theOrganization for Transformative Works(OTW), called The Fan Culture Preservation Project, to preserve zines and other artefacts of fan culture. In partnership with OTW, a non-profit fan-run organisation, Special Collections at Iowa continues to receive donations of materials from their creators and collators and make them available to future generations of researchers and other interested parties.

Visiting this archive forms part of an ongoing and developing research project on the history of popular fandom, fan relationships with the media industries, and the importance of memory and nostalgia in creating a fan identity. The four objectives of the project are: To investigate the affective relationship between the practices of fandom and the consumable merchandise and fanzines that fans collect from their favourite film and TV franchises; To assess the impact of memory and nostalgia in the development of fandom and the formation of collecting and fanzine communities; To analyse the significance of geography and space in the buying, selling and trading of collectible media merchandise and fanzines and how fans interact with and within that space; To establish the roles played by the media industry, manufacturers, sellers, traders, collectors and fans in the mass marketing of merchandising, fanzines and the creation of fan collecting communities.

As part of this project I needed to go to Iowa and gather important research material held in their archive. The archive holds publications donated by collectors and fans dating back to the 1920s. The twenty individual collections that make up the archive, ranging from the Papers of Norman Felton, Gertrude M. Carr and the Debbie Hoover fanzine collection to the collections of TV shows such as Farscape, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and Star

Trek convention memorabilia, represent an important resource for scholars of American studies and stand as a historical record of fan subcultures and their adherents. Researching this history of American fandom through fanzines and fan magazines is an important part of my overall project as understanding how communities of fans engage with media texts in the present can only be done through understanding and piecing together how they did so in the past. Studies of American fans and fandom hardly ever discuss fandom in its historical contexts thus having the opportunity to search the archives and read these rare fanzines and convention programmes can only enrich the project. Publishing the findings will take this archival material, undoubtedly of interest and use to future generations of scholars and fans, beyond the confines of academia and out to a wider audience. Programmes, magazines and flyers stored in the M. Horvat Collection of Science Fiction Convention Materials will be discussed in my forthcoming publication, Cult Collectors (Routledge, 2013) but further material found in the Morgan Dawn Fanzine and Fanvid Collection and the M. Horvat collections of zines and convention material will serve as the basis for a future book on fan histories. The size and diverse contents of the archive means that further research and dissemination through publication are required to fully exploit the collated material. In visiting the archive I was not only able to gather previously unseen material that will be used in current research but it has also introduced me to historical objects and data that have inspired ideas for future work.

I would like to thank BAAS for the financial support provided by the award that enabled me to travel to Iowa. The library staff at the university, including Kathryn Hodson, Greg Prickman and Kalmia Strong, deserves praise for its informed and ever-present help with the collection. The fanzine archive is growing constantly and I do hope to return to Iowa in the near future. As a fan studies resource its contents is still largely untapped and its importance has therefore sadly gone unnoticed. I encourage interested researchers to discover whats there. Lincoln Geraghty

A REPORT FROM LINCOLN GERAGHTY (UNIVERSITY OF PORTSMOUTH)BAAS Founders Award Recipient 2013

ASIB

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Spr

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would like to thank BAAS for supporting a very

productive visit to the Archives of the Archdiocese of

New Orleans to research the recently opened Rummel

Administrative Records for essential final material for a

study of Catholic desegregation in Louisiana.

The Rummel Administrative Records are a vital source,

because Rummel, archbishop between 1935 and 1964,

was responsible for the largest Catholic populated diocese

in the South and led the Province of New Orleans that

included Louisianas three other dioceses.

The archdiocese witnessed a prolonged struggle over

parochial school desegregation, which until now, could

only be studied through public sources, such as pastoral

letters and newspaper reports. The newly processed

materials revealed the inner workings of the Catholic

chancery as it sought a viable desegregation policy for its

churches, schools, agencies and organisations.

The Rummel Administrative Records comprise school

desegregation files, correspondence with other Louisiana

Catholic bishops and New Orleans city officials, Catholic

schools, parishes, and organisations, and lay people.

The materials revealed Rummels early attention to racial

discrimination in both the church and secular world, but

also his reluctance to desegregate Catholic schools in the

face of entrenched opposition from state politicians and

vocal lay people. Correspondence with segregationist lay

people offered insights into segregationist arguments and

beliefs, and Rummels attempts to counter them.

Mark Newman

A REPORT FROM MARK NEWMAN (UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH)BAAS Founders Award Recipient 2013

ASIB 109 Spring 2014

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special

o!er

The American LeftIts Impact on Politics and Society since 1900

Only the American right has ever really recognised the potency of the American left. Now, Rhodri Je!reys-Jones fully details the lefts numerous achievements, including the welfare state, opposing militarism, reshaping American culture, black rights and civil liberties, awakening the USA to the dangers of fascism, and great public enterprises such as the late Twin Towers.

Je!reys-Jones tells the full story of the USs left wing: how the socialists of the Old Left gave way by the 1960s to the anti-war militants of the New Left, and how they in turn gave way to a Newer Left that advocated causes such as gay rights and multiculturalism. Bringing the discussion into the 21st century, he shows how the post-2000 Bush administration succumbed to the socialist nationalisation it despised, and considers Barack Obamas claim to be a president of the left.

Save 25.000DUPCFStQQt)#t

Special Price: 65.00 39.99

New From

NEW PUBLICATIONSFROM BAAS MEMBERS

The Poetics of the American Suburbs is the first book

to consider the rich body of poetry that emerged

from and helped to shape the post-war American

suburbs. Jo Gill discusses the work of forty or

more writerssome well-known, such as Anne

Sexton and Langston Hughes, others not

primarily known through their poetry such as

John Updike, and some who were best-sellers in

their own time but have since largely been

forgotten such as Phyllis McGinley. Combining

detailed textual and archival study with insights

drawn from other disciplines, the book offers a

new perspective on post-war suburbia and on the

broader field of twentieth-century American

literature.

Jo Gill is Associate Professor and Director of Education in the Department of English at the University of Exeter, UK. She is the author of Anne Sexton's Confessional Poetics, Women's Poetry and The Cambridge Introduction to Sylvia Plath, and the editor or co-editor of several other books. She is Lead Researcher on the Leverhulme-Trust funded "Cultures of the Suburbs International Research Network."

ASIB 109 Spring 2014

To contribute your recent publications to ASIB, contact the Editor with the details on p.51. - Ed.

21

BAAS Paperbacks are published by Edinburgh University Press in association with the British Association for American Studies.

BAAS Paperbacks has two new Series Editors who, along with Edinburgh University Press, wish to promote and develop BAAS Paperbacks as the definitive series of lively, accessible and focused books (70,000 words maximum) in any field or subfield of American Studies.

Volumes in the series combine overviews of the subject with original research and are

vigorously marketed by Edinburgh University Press in the UK and via Oxford University Press in North America.

Volumes can be pitched within a single discipline or with an interdisciplinary focus.

In particular, we are keen to recruit proposals relating to areas where we feel the series needs developing, including all areas of pre-twentieth century research; regional, urban and transnational studies; the history of borderlands, ethnicity and citizenship; colonial and revolutionary America; gender

and sexuality; international relations; literary and film genres, contemporary events; public and intellectual cultures; and visual technologies. The book should be appropriate for adoption as required reading on relevant undergraduate courses.

Please do contact us with your ideas for potential books, which can be either thematic or chronological in scope.

For a list of titles in the BAAS Paperbacks series so far, please go to www.euppublishing.com/series/BAAS.

Contact the Series Editors:

Martin Halliwell (University of Leicester) mrh17@leicester.ac.uk

Emily West (University of Reading) er.west@reading.ac.uk

A NOTE FROM MARTIN HALLIWELL AND EMILY WEST

euppublishing.com/series/BAAS

BAAS PAPERBACK SERIESEDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS

ASIB 109 Spring 2014

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Thanks to the generosity of the Eccles Centre Postgraduate Award in North American Studies I was able to make regular research trips to the British Library over the course of 2012-3.

My doctoral thesis, Conservatives and the Politics of Art, from

Red Scares to Culture Wars, offers a new policy history of the

National Endowment for the Arts, the federal agency that

makes grants to artists and arts organisations in the

United States. My thesis explains the development of

conservative perspectives on federal art politics from the

Red Scares of the late 1940s and early 1950s, to the

Culture Wars of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and

hence the evolution of conservative political power.

The most popular story holds that the National

Endowment for the Arts found itself caught up in the

Culture Wars when Christian right groups strenuously

objected to certain federal grants, particularly to Andres

Serranos Piss Christ and Robert Mapplethorpes Self-

Portrait with Whip. Numerous studies have sought to

uncover the meaning of the Culture Wars, but scholars

have yet to examine conservative approaches to federal

activism in the arts in a historical sense. My thesis

therefore uncovers the older origins of conservative

opposition to federal support for the arts, analyses

conservative conceptions of art, and illuminates the

limited role the right imagined for the federal

government in the arts in the post-war period. Most

importantly, my work also offers a focussed analysis of

the agencys grant-making priorities in order to

understand the limited impact of conservatives in terms

of influencing public policy. In a more general sense

then, my thesis illuminates the overall odyssey of modern

American conservatism, provides a new insight into the

ways we periodise political history, and also invites a

broader view of how we understand politics itself.

The research that I undertook at the British Library

enabled me to considerably strengthen, broaden, and

contextualise my primary source basis. In particular, I

was able to access a number of key periodicals, including

conservative magazines (American Mercury, National Review),

specialised art journals (Theatre Arts, Art News, Craft

Horizons), plus other non-arts publications that

infrequently offered critical commentary on the

Endowment, (Esquire, Saturday Review, Business Week). I

arrived at the library with a comprehensive index of

references drawn from the Readers Guide to Periodical

Literature, meaning that I was able to easily order up the

correct issues to the reading room, and hence quickly

locate the relevant articles to copy. I also made good use

of the LexisNexis Congressional Hearings Digital Collection, a

database that offers the full text of published and

unpublished congressional hearings. As this material is

now available in digital format, I was able to easily

undertake searches to find the Endowments

appropriations and re-authorisation submissions.

Overall, my time at the British Library has been

extremely fruitful, and I am very grateful to BAAS and

the Eccles Centre for their support of my work.

Karen Hea%

A REPORT FROM KAREN HEATH (ST ANNES COLLEGE, OXFORD)BAAS/Eccles Centre PG Award Recipient 2013

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uring the 2012-2013 academic year I was fortunate to

make several trips to the British Library due to the

support I received from the Eccles Centre. These trips

were made with the goal of strengthening my doctoral

research on William S. Burroughs and specifically for my

thesis tentatively titled The Only Complete Man in the

Industry: William S. Burroughs and the Post-war avant-garde.

Much of my research at the British Library focused on

the archives of Burroughs, Brion Gysin (Burroughs

primary collaborator during the 1960s and 70s) and

Genesis P-orridge who, aside from his primary work as

the driving force behind Throbbing Gristle and Psychic

TV was a long time disciple of Gysin and Burroughs and

an executor of the estate of filmmaker Anthony Balch.

The archived materials I was most interested in

contained limited release and unreleased audiotape

experiments that William Burroughs created during the

1960s and 70s.

William S. Burroughs written work is difficult to classify.

His most famous literary work Naked Lunch is often

described as everything from post-modern to cyberpunk.

My research focuses on the decade and a half after the

publication of Naked Lunch where his work became

increasingly experimental and began to leave the page to

interact with audiotapes and avant-garde film. While

there has been some research on this portion of

Burroughs oeuvre none of the research focused on

creating an intellectual history of the cut-up movement

and tracing the origin of much of Burroughs philosophy

to his interest in what I refer to as fringe sciences. This is

commonly defined as science that was not part of the

mainstream, yet may have been borne out of cold war

experimentation. This includes fields of interest such as

brainwashing and remote viewing. Thinkers such as W.

Grey Water (neuroscience and cybernetics), Wilhelm

Reich (orgone theory), Alfred Korzybski (general

semantics) and Vladimir Gavreau (infrasound) greatly

influenced Burroughs and he often spoke of them in

interviews and wrote about them in non-fiction work.

However, the depth of their influence on his philosophy

in the 1960s and 1970s is often overlooked. The materials

I had access to at the British Library have provided

ample evidence and source material in support of my

primary argument that the way Burroughs used the cut-

up method was not simply to expose truths hidden within

texts, but, to use these texts as a means of passing on

specific ideas to his audience.

During the academic year I was able to listen to dozens of

hours of audio that are not available to the general

public. These tapes and sound server items generally

cover the times that Burroughs lived and worked in

London as well some recordings from his time in Paris,

New York and Lawrence, Kansas. These recordings

provided excellent source material for the chapters of my

thesis that show how his use of audio tape was a direct

extension, not only of his literary cut-up project, but of

his interests in the work of Alfred Korzybski, W. Grey

Walter, Vladimir Gavreau and Wilhelm Reich. In

addition to the primary source material for my research

these tapes contained private interviews and phone calls

in which Burroughs speaks at length about the cut-up

technique, his collaborations with Brion Gysin and

others.

These interviews and conversations provide a wealth of

contextual information on the primary materials that I

am researching. In addition, the archives contained many

rare pieces of audio including one of Burroughs reading

the text Hassan I Sabbah while under the influence of

mescaline and also contained a cut-up of this text that is

subject to tape dragging.

A REPORT FROM ROBERT W. JONES II (UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER) BAAS/Eccles Centre PG Award Recipient 2013

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This is an explicit example of the way in which text can

be obscured with this technique and also displays how

new words can emerge from the dragging, thus backing

up Burroughs idea that these experiments could bring to

light new and different texts simply by speeding up and

slowing down tape.

The research that I conducted was instrumental in

completing the third chapter of my thesis as well as

providing information for chapter four. In addition, I

prepared a conference paper Body is Evidence of the

Film: William S. Burroughs and the Post-war Avant-

garde that I presented at the British Association For

American Studies conference April 2013 at the

University of Exeter. This paper examines the ways in

which artists and musicians have collaborated with

Burroughs and utilised his ideas in their work. Further, I

have used material collected during my time at the British

Library to prepare an abstract for an upcoming

conference on William S. Burroughs and the image,

taking place in London during February 2014.

I would like to thank The Eccles Centre at the British

library for providing the financial support for my research

trips and the British Association for American Studies for

selecting my grant application. Due to the generous

support of these organisations I was able to spend several

days exploring archival material that has already proven

to be incredibly important to my PhD research. In

addition, I would like to thank the staff at the British

Library especially the staff in the audio archives that

were extremely knowledgeable, helpful and generous with

their time during each of my visits. Robe! W. Jones II

ASIB 109 Spring 2014

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am extremely grateful to the BAAS and the Eccles Centre

for awarding me a Visiting European Postgraduate Award

in North American Studies 2013. I spent almost two

months April/May 2013 on a research in the British

Library. This experience has significantly improved my

PhD project.

My dissertation examines the manifestations of grotesque

in American stage and film musical. My research approach

is based on cultural studies. Therefore an in-depth study of

the history of culture of the United States, in particular

aesthetics of theatre, film and literature is necessary. The

basic research questions are: In what extent the category of

grotesque, so popular in the European culture, relates to

the representations of American culture? What are the

symptoms of this aesthetic category that indicate specific

nature of this musical genre?

I spent the time mostly researching a chapter of my

dissertation on various aspects of grotesque in the

nineteenth-century pre-musical stage form: blackface

minstrelsy and its later manifestations in film musicals. I

had the opportunity to find various materials, make a

profound readings and almost 120 pages of notes from

such monographs like Inside the minstrel mask: readings in the

nineteenth-century blackface minstrelsy (Bean, Hatch,

McNamara 1996), Demons of disorder: early blackface minstrels

and their world (Cockrell 1997), Grotesque Essence: Plays from the

American Minstrel Stage (Engle 1978), Jump Jim Crow: lost

plays, lyrics, and street prose of the first Atlantic popular culture

(Lhamon 2003), Dan Emmet and the rise of early Negro

minstrelsy, (Nathan 1962), Blacking up: the minstrel show in the

nineteenth century America (Toll 1974), Disintegrating the musical:

Black performance and American musical film (Knight 2002).

This allowed me to look more thoroughly at this cultural

phenomenon which earned its popularity due to

stereotyped and caricatured presentations of black people.

These monographs as well as various secondary materials

newspapers and journals articles found in the British

Library, confirmed my thesis that the discomfort in

research on this specific genre in the context of its musical

representations, is related to a negative paradigm of

racism. In such musical films like Show Time (1936) The

Duke is Tops (1939), Babes in Arms (1939), Stormy Weather

(1943), Hello Dolly (1969), the blackface character is present

and becomes a kind of platform for discussion on

American identity. The grotesque side of this topic is based

primarily on the fact that it was being presented in a happy

and joyful form from which the musical comedy is known.

Extreme energy and carefree shown by dancing, singing

and playfulness clashes with traditional caricatures and

racist stereotypes.

By exploring a range of materials offered by the British

Library I was also able to make excellent use of

publications on the theory of grotesque, I have not been

able to access elsewhere, such as: The Grotesque: A study in

Meanings (Barasch 1971), The gruesome doorway: an analysis of

the American grotesque (Uruburu 1987), The American Stage and

the Great Depression: A cultural history of the grotesque (Fearnow

1997).

I would also like to mention that the EThOS online

platform turned out to be extremely useful as it afforded

me an access to various unpublished doctoral dissertations.

I managed to find several documents that became and

inspiration for my own work. A research stay at the British

Library was a very productive time as well as a great

opportunity to gather valuable materials that are not

available in my home country. It was also an important

scientific experience. I would like to express my deepest

gratitude to Professor Philip Davies and the staff at the

Eccles Centre as well as to BAAS for making such an

invaluable and inspiring research possible. Barbara Pitak

A REPORT FROM BARBARA PITAK (UNIVERSITY OF WARSAW) BAAS/Eccles Centre PG Award Recipient 2013

ASIB 109 Spring 2014

I

26

hanks to the Eccles Centre Postgraduate Award, I was able

to conduct my research at the British Library in London for a period of four weeks. This experience contributed

greatly to the advancement of my research project. The

main objective of my research project is to approach Woody Allens fiction, considering the historical and

cultural implications which shaped his writing, in order to better understand how he continues, develops and replies

to the Jewish tradition within the American urban thinking

pattern. In order to accomplish my research objective, I have to take into consideration the immediate context of

his writing, i.e. the aesthetics coordinates recommended by the editors of The New Yorker magazine, the publication

where most of Woody Allens short pieces had been

published first, as well as the larger literary context which most definitely influenced his writing, that is, the playful

aesthetics of literary postmodernism. Another important aspect I am investigating is represented by the implications

of Woody Allens Jewish cultural heritage in his short

fiction and the way in which he processes all the elements pertaining to the legacy of his Jewish upbringing as

compared to other contemporary Jewish-American writers.

I began my research based on the fact that most studies on Woody Allens work focus on his films, analyzing various

aspects, from plot, technique, influences, and characters to his use of humor or his ideological perspectives.

Nevertheless, his short stories, essays and plays received

little attention from critics worldwide. Given the scarcity of critical material on Woody Allens short fiction, I had to

build a theoretical framework for each section of my thesis, based on researches and theoretical standpoints relevant

for the evolution and the marketing of the short story on

American soil, as well as for postmodernism and contemporary American literary trends. Moreover, the

debates around the definition of Jewish-American literature and the implications of ethnicity in the work of

contemporary Jewish-American writers are also essential

for my research. During my stay at the British Library, I was able to consult books and articles which helped me

understand better what the best approach for the first and the third section of my thesis would be. I am now able to

understand much better the impact of The New Yorker on

Woody Allens short fiction and its readership, just as I can

clearly see the influences of S. J. Perelman and Robert

Benchley on Woody Allens literary style. I would like to mention that I did not have access to any critical approach

to the work of Perelman or Benchley until I got to the

British Library, not to mention that the aesthetic direction of the New Yorker short stories was still rather unclear until I

got the chance to analyze the relevant research in the field. Moreover, I could also consult a series of books on Jewish-

American literature, Jewish stereotypes and Jewish humor,

as reflected into the twentieth century American mainstream culture and literature. One might think that

some of the resources I consulted in the British Library are also available at other libraries and that is true (except for

the Romanian libraries I have access to). Nevertheless,

when writing a thesis, it is extremely important to have all the resources you need available to you in one place. The

thought that you can check your hypotheses without having to travel to another library or wait for weeks to get

a book is extremely refreshing when writing and

conducting research. At least, this is how I work better.

The access to resources (some of which I did not even know existed) is just one of the highlights of the research

trip made possible by the Eccles Centre Postgraduate

Award. I am extremely grateful for the opportunity this grant offered me to meet extremely interesting people,

working in different fields of North American studies. I had the chance to discuss my research with people working

both in connected academic areas and in completely

different research fields, but all the discussions I had seemed to shed even more light on my research project.

These discussions helped me see my research from different perspectives and also offered me the opportunity

to learn extremely interesting things about American

history, politics, culture, and literature, directly from specialists in the field. To sum up my experience, I can say

that my research gained more depth, my thesis advanced considerably, and I got to meet interesting people with

whom I could share experience and knowledge. For all of

these I am extremely grateful to the support I received from the Eccles Centre and the BAAS. Amelia Precup

A REPORT FROM AMELIA PRECUP BAAS/Eccles Centre PG Award Recipient 2013

ASIB 109 Spring 2014

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27

I recently undertook a research trip to the British Library,

London, to carry out crucial research for my Ph.D.

project. Based at the University of Stirling, my

dissertation examines the cultural origins of Loyalism in

New York, c. 17631775. The characters and subjects of

my dissertation are over 9,300 Loyalists from across the

various counties of eighteenth-century New York. To

pinpoint who these Loyalists were, I have identified and

analysed a dozen Loyalist subscription lists or petitions,

two Declarations of Dependence and three

fantastically detailed oaths of allegiance. Although each

document varies in specificitysome oaths of allegiance,

for example, list age as well as occupation, whilst the

petitions usually just have a namethey have provided

me with an interesting challenge and pertinent research

question: just who were these people? To answer this

frustratingly large question, my Ph.D. has adopted an

interdisciplinary approach. By drawing upon traditional

historical methods, I have also implemented

prosopographical, quantitative and qualitative analysis

and social network analysis to pull these people together

under the aegis of Loyalism. To do this, I have used the

ostensibly amorphous concept of community as a

methodological tool to illustrate how these Loyalists were

intimately connected with one another prior to signing a

Loyalist declaration or taking the oath of allegiance.

By using what some historians may classify as

aesthetically unappealing sourcesdaybooks, ledgers,

account books, receipts, probate recordsmy Ph.D.

dissertation wants to suggest that the path to Loyalism

was far from a linear or teleological process, and

allegiance was a peculiarly elastic concept. During the

1760s and early-1770s, future-Loyalists, if they may be

called that without falling foul to inferred teleology,

worked with future-Patriots throughout the various

crises that engulfed New York. For example, John Jay and

future-Loyalist William Laight were close friends, whilst

in 1775 Alexander Hamilton fended off a noisy mob who

sought to tar-and-feather the president of Kings College,

Rev. Dr. Myles Coopera noted and hated Loyalist.

What this project hopes to demonstrate is that Loyalism

was not an overtly political stance; rather, it was more a

statement of community. With a scratch of the pen,

Loyalists sought to legitimise the community and protect

it from being reconfigured by a group of individualsthe

Rebelswho they did not know or trust. My project

argues that our ideological dichotomy of Loyalist and

Patriot is not only misleading, but it is actually less

important than the already- forged division of political,

economic, and social communities in New York. It was

their desire to stay together in these safe, imagined

communities allowed them to suppress the ideological

discord that existed between them.

In the current academic climate, research is becoming

increasingly and frustratingly expensive, especially when

the primary focus of your work is New York. For me, a

large proportion of my funding has been directed

towards conducting archival research in the United

States. Although it was extremely productive, it left me

with less financial leeway to visit key archives in the

United Kingdom. Fortunately, however, I gratefully

accepted a fellowship at the Eccles Centre at the British

Library in mid-2012, which I undertook in May 2013. It

proved to be an absolutely critical trip.

When I first arrived in London, I knew that the papers of

Maj.-Gen. Sir Frederick Haldimand would be of utmost