Workshop

The American Way of Life – Images of the United States in Nineteenth Century Europe and Latin America

As part of the project, UCL and the Institute for the Study of the Americas will host a two-day international workshop in London on 8th-9th May 2008.

Workshop programme

Registration

This workshop will investigate perceptions of the United States in mid to late 19th century Europe and Latin America and the way in which these ideas and imaginings of the US informed and shaped notions of identity, nationhood and modernity elsewhere. Although most existing work on the idea of America focuses on the twentieth-century era of US hegemony, the purpose of this workshop is to explore the origins of the widespread perception that the United States is the epitome not only of modern power but of modernity itself. The workshop will reveal the findings of the six researchers working on this topic as part of the AHRC-funded project of the same name, as well as engaging with international scholars researching similar questions across different national case-studies in Europe and Latin America. Papers will focus on the United States as a model republic, ‘techno-utopia’, land of ‘domestic goddesses’ and of ‘barbarism’ among other themes. In addition, the workshop will provide a forum for discussion of theoretical tools and approaches to the study of cultural production-reception.

Workshop programme

Thursday 8th May

6.00pm: Opening lecture – Nicola Miller, Professor of Latin American History, UCL
Gustave Tuck lecture theatre, UCL
7.00pm: Reception – South Cloisters, UCL

Friday 9th May

ISA: Rooms 11 & 12, 35 Tavistock Square

9-9.30 Registration

9.30-11.00 Panel 1
Axel Körner, UCL: “Between Barbarism and Model Republic. Italian image of the United States 1861-1890.”
Maike Thier, UCL: “A world apart, a race apart? The United States in the eyes of the French Right.”
Adam Smith, UCL: “Images of America and working class politics in Britain.”

Coffee

11.30-13.00 Panel 2
Nicola Miller, UCL: “How to be a domestic goddess: US Images of Womanhood in Argentina and Cuba.”
Natalia Bas, UCL: “The model of the United States in the Brazilian debates on slavery and abolition, 1861-1888.”
Kate Ferris, UCL: “Contested republics: The United States and the constitutional question in Spain 1868-1876.”

13.00-14.00 Lunch

14.00-15.30 Panel 3
Guy Thomson, University of Warwick: "Yanquis, come in! Mexico and the United States, 1832-1910".
Duncan Bell, Christ’s College, University of Cambridge:"Dreaming the Future: Fin de Siecle Anglo-America as Techno-Utopia."
Jörg Requate, University of Bielefeld: "American journalism from a Nineteenth-century European perspective."

Tea

16.00-17.30 General discussion
Discussants: Donald Sassoon, Queen Mary, University of London; James Dunkerley, ISA.

Registration

Attendance at this workshop is free. If you would like to attend, please contact Olga Jimenez with your name, institution and contact details.

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