From Amazon.com: “From 1501, when the first slaves arrived in Hispaniola, until the nineteenth century, some twelve million people were abducted from west Africa and shipped across thousands of miles of ocean – the infamous Middle Passage – to work in the colonies of the New World. Perhaps two million Africans died at sea. Why was slavery so widely condoned, during most of this period, by leading lawyers, religious leaders, politicians and philosophers? How was it that the educated classes of the western world were prepared for so long to accept and promote an institution that would later ages be condemned as barbaric? Exploring these and other questions – and the slave experience on the sugar, rice, coffee and cotton plantations – Kenneth Morgan discusses the rise of a distinctively Creole culture; slave revolts, including the successful revolution in Haiti (1791-1804); and the rise of abolitionism, when the ideas of Montesquieu, Wilberforce, Quakers and others led to the slave trade’s systemic demise. At a time when the menace of human trafficking is of increasing concern worldwide, this timely book reflects on the deeper motivations of slavery as both ideology and merchant institution.”
New Book: The Golden Leaf: How Tobacco Shaped Cuba and the Modern World by Charlotte Cosner
From Amazon.com: “Through the rise and fall of empires, ideologies, and economies, tobacco grown on the tiny island of Cuba has remained an enduring symbol of pleasure and extravagance. Cultivated as one of the first reliable commodities for those inhabitants who remained after conquistadors moved on in search of a mythical wellspring of gold, tobacco quickly became crucial to the support of the swelling Spanish Empire in the 17th seventeenth and 18th eighteenth centuries. Eventually, however, tobacco became one of the final stabilizing forces in the empire, and it ultimately proved more resilient than the best laid plans of kings and queens. Tobacco, and those whose livelihoods depended on it, shrugged off the Empire’s collapse and pressed on into the twentieth century as an economic force any state or political power must reckon with.”
Conference: The tenth biennial Symbiosis conference
Symbiosis stages a biennial conference featuring keynote addresses, panels, workshops and excursions. Papers engage with a variety of transatlantic and/or transnational topics in the literatures and cultural histories of the Atlantic world. The tenth biennial Symbiosis conference is booked provisionally to be held at the University of Essex from 9th – 12th July 2015, local coordinator/organizer, Dr. Susan Oliver. Email: soliver@essex.ac.uk
Conference: Transatlantic Studies Association 2014
The 13th Annual Transatlantic Studies Conference will be held at the University of Ghent, Belgium 7 – 10 July 2014.
Featuring keynote speakers Duncan Bell (Cambridge University): “The Intellectual Grip: Strengths and Weaknesses of Anglo-American Conceptions of the Transatlantic Relationship”; Gregory Castle (Arizona State University): “The Literary Diaspora and Configurations of the Transatlantic”; Jamie Shea (NATO): “Emerging security challenges: a NATO perspective” and Author Roundtable: Sarah Churchwell (University of East Anglia), author of Careless People: Murder, Mayhem, and the Invention of the Great Gatsby
Click here for the CFP
New Book: Goodman and Lenzen, eds, Joint and Double Degree Programs: An Emerging Model for Transatlantic Exchange,
From the Transatlantic Degree Programs Project:
A new book released by the Freie Universität Berlin and the Institute of International Education (IIE) features practical recommendations for developing and delivering collaborative degree programs between U.S. and European universities. The publication, Joint and Double Degree Programs: An Emerging Model for Transatlantic Exchange, features articles and insights from higher education administrators and practitioners on both sides of the Atlantic.
As professional collaboration with colleagues and customers in other countries increases across sectors, colleges and universities around the world are looking to joint and double degree programs as a way to offer their students meaningful international experiences. The diverse language and cultural fluencies they obtain will help prepare them for successful careers, whether in business, government or academia.
The book seeks to provide practical recommendations on key challenges, such as communications, sustainability, curriculum design, and student recruitment. Articles are divided into six thematic sections that assess the development of collaborative degree programs from beginning to end. While the first two sections focus on the theories underpinning transatlantic degree programs and how to secure institutional support and buy-in, the third and fourth sections present perspectives on the beginning stages of a joint or double degree program and the issue of program sustainability. The last two sections focus on profiles of specific transatlantic degree programs and lessons learned from joint and double degree programs in the European context.
Read more at: http://www.jfki.fu-berlin.de/en/v/tdp/index.html
New Book: Layne Parish Craig, When Sex Changed Birth Control Politics and Literature between the World Wars
From Rutgers University Press:
“In When Sex Changed, Layne Parish Craig analyzes the ways literary texts responded to the political, economic, sexual, and social values put forward by the birth control movements of the 1910s to the 1930s in the United States and Great Britain.
Discussion of contraception and related topics (including feminism, religion, and eugenics) changed the way that writers depicted women, marriage, and family life. Tracing this shift, Craig compares disparate responses to the birth control controversy, from early skepticism by mainstream feminists, reflected in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, to concern about the movement’s race and class implications suggested in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand, to enthusiastic speculation about contraception’s political implications, as in Virginia Woolf’sThree Guineas.
While these texts emphasized birth control’s potential to transform marriage and family life and emancipate women from the “slavery” of constant childbearing, birth control advocates also used less-than-liberatory language that excluded the poor, the mentally ill, non-whites, and others. Ultimately, Craig argues, the debates that began in these early political and literary texts—texts that document both the birth control movement’s idealism and its exclusionary rhetoric—helped shape the complex legacy of family planning and women’s rights with which the United States and the United Kingdom still struggle.”
New Book: Ed. Christine Devine, NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH TRAVELERS IN THE NEW WORLD
“In recent years transatlantic literary studies has expanded the scope and variety of its inquiries to emphasize the multiethnic and polyglot nature of the Atlantic sphere in every phase of its cultural history. But this book demonstrates the ongoing need for examining Anglo-American relations as a mutually constituting sphere of influence and exchange. Beginning with Christine DeVine’s able introduction and continuing through each of the contributed chapters, this collection illustrates what Thomas Peyser has described –in Utopia and Cosmopolis (1998)–as the tandem relationship between the local and the global during a period when nationalist sentiment was fomented by an increasing sense of globalism. As DeVine puts it, the travel narratives considered in this volume show how “Britain viewed itself as part of the transatlantic world during a crucial time in the development of Anglo-American relations” (3). In other words, in its account of the New World, nineteenth-century British travel writing also expresses a perspective of home. Of course, this is a truism on its face; but the volume ploughs fertile ground in describing the rich and varied ways that travel writing reflected British interests while exploring new physical and cultural terrain. As part of a process of national self-definition, the enterprise of nineteenth-century travel literature embodies to a unique degree what Paul Giles has termed “the politics of traversal” (The Atlantic Republic, 2006)”
Read the whole review here
Conference: The Space Between: Literature and Culture, 1914-1945, July 17-19, 2014, Institute of English Studies, London
The 16th annual conference of the Space Between society will explore the notion of ‘crossing’ − whether of oceans, borders, classes, genders, disciplines or genres − as it relates to literature, art, history, music, theatre, media, and spatial or material culture in any country between 1914 and 1945. From 1930s writers and intellectuals crossing the class divide to the surrealist crossing of a sewing machine with an umbrella, from Virginia Woolf’s Orlando to Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca, from crossing the dance floor to spying and wartime betrayal, tropes and examples of crossing proliferate across the culture of the period. We invite proposals for papers considering any aspect of crossing whether literal or metaphorical, spatial or social, successful or unsuccessful. Topics might include:
- crossing time and space
- transatlantic crossings of American (North and Latin) and European cultures
- crossing between east and west
- crossing the Mediterranean
- crossing travel and colonialism
- crossing the breach between peace and war
- crossing between friendship and enmity
- crossing picket lines
- broadcast media crossing the airwaves
- border crossings
- double crossings, voluntary and involuntary
- identity crossing
- cross dressing
- cross purposes
- cross-cultural activity
Keynote speaker: TBC
Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words along with a short biographical statement to Nick Hubble at Nick.Hubble@brunel.ac.uk by 2 December 2013.
Conference Organising Committee:
Erica Brown, Sheffield Hallam University
Richard Hornsey, University of Nottingham
Nick Hubble, Brunel University
Phyllis Lassner, Northwestern University
Michael McCluskey, University College London
Ann Rea, University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown
New Book: Rebecca Shumway, The Fante and the Transatlantic Slave Trade
From Amazon:
The history of Ghana attracts popular interest out of proportion to its small size and marginal importance to the global economy. Ghana is the land of Kwame Nkrumah and the Pan-Africanist movement of the 19 60s; it has been a temporary home to famous African Americans like W. E. B. DuBois and Maya Angelou; and its Asante Kingdom and signature kente cloth-global symbols of African culture and pride-are well known. Ghana also attracts a continuous flow of international tourists because of two historical sites that are among the most notorious monuments of the transatlantic slave trade: Cape Coast and Elmina Castles. These looming structures are a vivid reminder of the horrific trade that gave birth to the black population of the Americas. The Fante and the Transatlantic Slave Trade/ explores the fascinating history of the transatlantic slave trade on Ghana’s coast between 1700 and 1807. Here author Rebecca Shumway brings to life the survival experiences of southern Ghanaians as they became both victims of continuous violence and successful brokers of enslaved human beings. The era of the slave trade gave birth to a new culture in this part of West Africa, just as it was giving birth to new cultures across the Americas. The Fante and the Transatlantic Slave Trade pushes Asante scholarship to the forefront of African diaspora and Atlantic World studies by showing the integral role of Fante middlemen and transatlantic trade in the development of the Asante economy prior to 1807. Rebecca Shumway is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh.
Conference: Transatlantic Connections Conference Jan 15-18 2014
From their Website. Click here for more information!
Drew University, in association with the Institute of Study Abroad Ireland, is pleased to announce a conference titled TRANSATLANTIC CONNECTIONS. The conference explores relationships between Ireland and the USA, and papers will cover the following areas
Transatlantic connections in history, in particular, transatlantic cooperation in the Abolition of slavery, American and Irish independence, Civil Rights in both countries and the Irish Peace Process
Transatlantic themes in Literature: Critical & Creative work from scholars and writers.
Food Culture: Comparisons of the cuisines of Ireland and the United States. American Irish vs. Irish foodstuffs. History, heritage, and conviviality. The future of food and drink in Ireland.
Film Studies: Irish Cinema in the world
Surf Culture: Surfing & tourism in Ireland, visual culture, arts, music & surf culture, gender studies & surfing, Surfing & education.
The Drew TRANSATLANTIC CONNECTIONS Conference will take place in Bundoran, Co. Donegal, Ireland.
The Conference will also feature plenary lectures on historical and cultural topics pertaining to Ireland, America, and their relationship since the eighteenth century