It’s that time of the year again and the Andrew Hook Centre of American Studies is delighted to welcome you back for the beginning of the new academic year. We have so many news to share with you, so let’s get started!

Last year this blog space was run by Tilly Dunnachie and Elisa Pesce. While we wait for new students to take over this coming session, we’ve got some great events lined up – make sure you save the dates in your diaries and keep an eye out for more information about how to register.

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Tuesday 5 October 3.00: Dr Sean Vanatta (University of Glasgow), “Where Did All This Debt Come From?” Citibank, Credit Cards, and the End of the New Deal Financial Economy

Tuesday 19 October 4.00: Yana Shtilman (Université de Paris), Breaking the Binary: The Exploration of Racial Stereotypes and Queer Identity in Robert Mapplethorpe’s Photography

Tuesday 26 October 4.00: The American Literature Book Club is back! During this first meeting we will discuss Yaa Gyasi’s Transcendent Kingdom. (Further information on the Book Club below)

Tuesday 2 November 4.00: Dr Harriet Earle (Sheffield Hallam University), The Monstrous and the Missing: Visualising the Enemy in American Comics of the Vietnam War

Tuesday 16 November 4.00: Oscar Winberg (Åbo Akademi University), “A coalition of Spiro Agnews:” Station Managers in the Political Fight over Television News

Tuesday 30 November 4.00: Ellen Bishell (University of Newcastle), Cuban Music, Global Screen: Identity, Politics, Hypervisibility, and Resistance in Seidy ‘La Niña’ Carrera’s Tumbao

And many more to be revealed in the near future! Sign up to the Hook Centre mailing list and follow our Twitter page @UofGAmStudies to get regular updates from us and reminders about our events!

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The Book Club. As last year, our American literature reading group will be meeting once a month (on Zoom) on a Tuesday, around 4.00-4.15pm, to discuss some of the too many texts which keep slipping through the cracks of higher-education curricula. Please join us for an informal and relaxed chat on our monthly title. The line-up for this first semester includes Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi (26 October), Woman Hollering Creek by Sandra Cisneros (9 November), and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers (7 December). Further updates and instructions on how to participate will follow through our mailing list and social media channels.

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Last, but not least, the Andrew Hook Centre now has a new director. Dr Daniel Scroop is Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Citizenship (History) at the School of Humanities. His research interests include US History since 1865, the New Deal, History of Capitalism, antimonopoly, politics of consumption. In addition to the rich calendar of events for the second semester, which is already underway, Dan is sorting through the list of the potential speakers for the 2022 Gordon Lecture in American Studies (here you can find a list of the previous lecturers), which will hopefully see us meeting in person, as well as online, next spring.

As always, we wish to amplify your voices through this blog space and are continually looking for contributions. If you would like to write a guest post about a book you have read, Americanist themes in your research, a conference you have attended, a trip you have gone on – we want to hear all about it! Likewise, Candice Wallace, Viola Nassi and the incoming member(s) of the book club crew look forward to receiving suggestions for additional guest speaker events.

Please get in contact by emailing UoG.AmStudies@gmail.com or on Twitter to pitch your ideas to us and contribute to widen the American Studies community in Glasgow.

We look forward to engaging with you all soon!

The Andrew Hook Centre blog & reading book teams