Sixteenth Annual Conference of the Scottish Association for the Study of America

Sixteenth Annual Conference of the

Scottish Association for the Study of America

7 March 2015

School of History, Classics and Archaeology

University of Edinburgh
Meadows Lecture Theatre / G.15 /G.16 / McMillan Room


Please pre-book at: http://goo.gl/4ab1cZ

9.00-9.15 Registration (Jim McMillan Room, First Floor)

9.15-10.45 Panel 1: Greater Connections (G.16, Ground Floor)

Chair: Marina Moskowitz
‘A Story of Benign Neglect’?: The United States’ First Contact with Habsburg Austria 1776-1778

Jonathan Singerton, University of Edinburgh

‘Like patriots of old we’ll fight, our heritage to save’: The Americanisation of Irish cultural diaspora during the American Civil War

Catherine Bateson, University of Edinburgh

‘The Charge of Murdering a Husband’: Conflict between the Courts and Public Opinion over the Death Penalty in England and America

Rian Sutton, University of Edinburgh
Panel 2: Analogy in American Literature, 1850-1900

Chair: Owen Dudley-Edwards (G.15, Ground Floor)
Melville’s ‘Black Legend’: Spanish America’s ambivalent place in the articulation of US American exceptionalism

Nicholas Spengler, University of Edinburgh

‘He Bides in Hell and is Content’: Feudal Slavery and Antebellum Injustice in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

Brian Wall, University of Edinburgh

‘Agrope among alien forces’: alchemical transformations and capitalist transactions in Edith Wharton’s The Touchstone

Anna Girling, University of Edinburgh
10.45-11.00 Tea/Coffee (Jim McMillan Room, First Floor)
11.00-12.30 Panel 3: Opportunities and Crises in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

(G.16, Ground Floor)

Chair: Blair Smith
Capturing the Katydids: The purpose and practice of Civil War history in the Confederate Veteran

Robin Bates, Newcastle University

‘Ready to Hoist the Stars and Stripes’: Sovereignty and Independence Day in Dawson City, Yukon, 1898

Madison Heslop, University of Edinburgh

Bubonic Plague in New Orleans, 1914: An Initial Survey of the Victims

Bruce Baker, University of Edinburgh
Panel 4: Social and Political Issues in the 1960s and 1970s

(G.15, Ground Floor)

Chair: Mark Newman
‘Social Psychiatry or Socialist Psychiatry? The Politics of Preventive Mental Health Care

Matthew Smith, University of Strathclyde

Order or Justice? Republicans and the Urban Crisis, 1965-1968

Mark McLay, University of Edinburgh

The Juvenile Justice System in the 1970s

Erin Lux, University of Strathclyde
12.30-13.15 Lunch (Jim McMillan Room, First Floor)
13.15-13.45 AGM (Meadows Lecture Theatre, Ground Floor)
13.45-15.15- Panel 5: New Perspectives on the Civil War (G.16, Ground Floor)

Chair: David Silkenat
Covenanter Antislavery and Patriotic Republicanism: Alexander McLeod and the Ideology of Reformed Presbyterian Opposition to Inhuman Bondage

Daniel Ritchie, University College Dublin

The Ancient Veil and the Modern Pedestal: The Roman in America

Jared Jodoin, University of Edinburgh

‘When the Fires Burned Too Close to Home: Southern Women and the Dislocations of the Home-front in the American Civil War.’

Susan-Mary Grant, Newcastle University

Panel 6: Media and Performance in US History (G.15, Ground Floor)

Chair: Mark Ellis
The Clown Suicides: The Death and Cinematic Afterlife of Marceline Orbes and Francis ‘Slivers’ Oakley, New York’s Superstar Clowns, 1905-1927

Darren Reid, Coventry University

Beyond Capitalist Realism: Long Waves, Cultural Realignment, and Middle-class Crisis

Stephen Shapiro, University of Warwick

This Is America: HBO’s Crime Dramas and American Identity

Fraser McCallum, University of Glasgow
15.15-15.30 Tea/Coffee (Jim McMillan Room, First Floor)
15.30-17.00 Panel 7: Old and New National Security Threats in the 1970s and 1980s

(G.16, Ground Floor)

Chair: Matt Ward
Karamanlis, Ford and the US Arms Sales Embargo on Turkey, 1974-1975

Athanasios Antonopoulos, University of Edinburgh

Another Vietnam? US Policy towards Sandinista Nicaragua, 1979-1990.

Hilary Francis, University College London

‘Atomic Ayatollahs’: The “Islamic Bomb” in American News Media, 1979-1991

Malcolm Craig, University of Edinburgh
Panel 8: Themes in American Postwar Rhetoric (G.15, Ground Floor)

Chair: Robert Mason
Uneasy Pluralism: Anti-Communism and Anti-Semitism in the United States, 1947-1962

Jennifer Vannette, Central Michigan University/University of Strathclyde

LBJ’s Presidential Rhetoric

Ben Quail, University of Strathclyde
17.00-18.00 Plenary Lecture: ‘An American Maroon in the Age of Revolution’

(Meadows Lecture Theatre, Ground Floor)

Nathaniel Millett, St. Louis University/University College London