American Studies Research Group
American Studies Newsletter MAST
There is a cluster of researchers at the University of Manchester working on various aspects of American Studies, ranging from the colonial period to the present. These include Prof. Brian Ward, Dr Eithne Quinn, Dr Peter Knight, Dr Michael Bibler, Dr David Brown, Dr Ian Scott, Dr Monica Pearl, Dr Ian McGuire, Prof. Jackie Stacey, Prof. Janet Wolf, and Prof. Jeremy Tambling in the English and American Studies subject area; Dr Natalie Zacek and Dr Till Geiger in History; Dr. Joanna Pawlik in Art History and Visual Studies; Dr Laurence Brown and Dr Norris Nash (in history) and Dr Inderjeet Parmar in Politics. We would welcome applications from reseach students interested in the following areas:
- black popular culture, esp. popular music and cinema
- postwar cultural industries
- blaxploitation, hip-hop and gangsta rap
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Transnational American Studies
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American Religious Studies
- Civil rights and black power eras
- Southern US Culture, History & Literature
- the culture of the market
- history of the corporation
- conspiracy theories
- Americanisation and anti-Americanism
- postmodern American literature
- screen-writing in 1930s Hollywood
- film and politics
- cultural and political history of California
- Henry James
- representations of illness
- American gay and lesbian writing and visual representation
- psychoanalysis, gender, and queer theory
- colonial British American and Atlantic history
- slavery and race
- gender (esp. masculinity), and material culture
Research Resources
The American Studies team at Manchester runs its own visiting speaker series, Critical MASS [Manchester American Studies Seminar], and through the BAAS (British Association of American Studies) Northwest Symposium there are strong links with other Americanists in the region.
American Studies at Manchester also runs two international AHRC-funded Research Networks: 'Understanding the South, Understanding America: The American South in Regional, National and Global Perspectives' and 'The Culture of the Market'. It also holds an annual postgraduate mini-conference each May, where MA and PhD students can formally present their research.
The University of Manchester was the first UK university to have a chair in American Studies (since 1947), and the John Rylands University Library has benefited from this long history and the financial support of institutions like the Rockefeller Foundation and the US Embassy. There are also many special collections that would support research projects:
- Stapleton Manuscripts (the history of the Leeward Islands in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries)
- Brooke of Mere Muniments (Antiguan slave plantations in the early nineteenth century)
- Thomas Coke Papers (missionary endeavours in colonial British America)
- Raymond Anti-Slavery Collection
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The Claude A. Barnett (Associated Negro Press) Papers
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The African American Experience Database
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Nineteenth Century US Newspapers Database
- Voyages and Travel Collection
- Manchester Geographical Society Collection
- numerous sources on the global/transatlantic textile industry
- Sixsmith collection (Walt Whitman) and the Walt Whitman book collection (cf. also the archive of the Bolton Whitman Fellowship)
- Wallace Stevens Collection
- Upton Sinclair Collection
- Christian Brethren Archive (the theological foundations of contemporary American pre-millenialism)
If you would like to pursue postgraduate research in any of the above areas, or wish to discuss a research proposal in any aspect of American Studies, please feel free to get in touch with Michael Bibler at Michael.Bibler@manchester.ac.uk or Natalie Zacek at Natalie.a.Zacek@manchester.ac.uk.