“Dis/Trust” – Irish Association for American Studies Annual Conference, UCD, May 1-3, 2024
Wednesday 1st May 2024
(William Fry Theatre, L143, Sutherland School of Law)
19:00-19:15 – Welcome and Introductory Remarks
19:15-20:30 – Opening Keynote Lecture
Chair: Matt Prout (UCD)
Johannes Voelz (Frankfurt), ‘Trust, Distrust, and the Media Aesthetics of Partisanship’
Followed by Wine Reception
Thursday 2nd May 2024
(Clinton Institute for American Studies, Belfield House)
09:00-09:30 – Registration
09:30-11:00 – Panel Session 1
Dis/Trusting American Authorities (Upstairs Seminar Room)
Chair: Johannes Voelz (Frankfurt)
Natalie Rauscher (Heidelberg), ‘American Philanthropy and Climate Change – Driver of Societal Trust or Distrust?’
Martin Thunert (Heidelberg), ‘Trustfall? Dis/Trust in Epistemic Authorities in the United States’
David Malcolm (Teesside), ‘The Society of the Cincinnati: Exploring the Mistrust of Standing Armies and Aristocracy in the Age of Revolution’
Cultural Imaginaries of Dis/Trust (Downstairs Seminar Room)
Chair: Katherine Fama (UCD)
Trudi Witonsky (Wisconsin-Whitewater), ‘“We are the World Together”: Muriel Rukeyser’s “Words at War” Exhibit (1943)’
Meryem Hana Karouche (Limerick), ‘Cultural Myths and Personal Identity: Dis/trust in Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior’
Kaiyue Hou (Bristol), ‘A Palimpsest of Bodily Costs of the Vietnam War in The Sympathizer’
11:00-11:30 – Coffee Break
11:30-13:00 – Panel Session 2
Declarations of Dependence 1: Narratives of (In)dependence (Upstairs Seminar Room)
Chair: Daniel Geary (TCD)
Madeleine Han (Yale), ‘The Cold War Ended, and Orion’s Choco Pie Won’
Morgan E. Freeman (Yale), ‘Arctic Theatre’
Henry Zhang (Yale), ‘Credible Ethnics’
Sofia Cutler (Yale), ‘The Logistics Revolution from Below’
Ever Osorio Ruiz (Yale), ‘Dependent Words: The Dialectics of the Law and Feminist Speech in Mexico’
Dis/Trust, Deception, and the Social Body (Downstairs Seminar Room)
Chair: Martha Shearer (UCD)
Dara Downey (TCD), ‘Broken Promises and Demon Lovers in Shirley Jackson and Ira Levin’
Janice Lynne Deitner (TCD), ‘“Nobody’s Special!”: Infection, Dis/Trust, and Community in Twenty-First Century North American Zombie Narratives’
Rachel Ann Walsh (Bowling Green State), ‘“A certain amount of deception”: Grift, Precarity, and Neoliberal Security in Emma Cline’s The Guest’
13:00-14:00 – Lunch Break
14:00-15:30 – Panel Session 3
Dis/Trusting Institutions (Upstairs Seminar Room)
Chair: Clare Hayes-Brady (UCD)
Lola Boorman (York), ‘Why I Live at the Post Office: The Postal Service and New Deal Modernism’
Tim Groenland (UCD), ‘Fear and Loathing in Contemporary Publishing: Editorial Assistants in Yellowface and The Other Black Girl’
Adam Kelly & Katerina Pavlidi (UCD), ‘Trust Exercise: An Experimental Reading Group’
19th-Century Dis/Trust (Downstairs Seminar Room)
Chair: Maria Stuart (UCD)
Justyna Fruzińska (Lodz), ‘Emerson’s (Dis)Trusting the World’
John Ronan (Kutztown), ‘Faith in Faith: Hawthorne in the Colonial New England Archives’
Michael Kaelin (Wisconsin-Madison), ‘Selected Lives: Immigrant Community and the Origins of Federal Immigration Control in New York, 1847-1882’
15:30-16:00 – Coffee Break
16:00-17:15 – Alan Graham Memorial Lecture (Clinton Auditorium, John Hume Centre)
Chair: Adam Kelly (UCD)
Imaobong Umoren (London School of Economics), ‘Trust Black Women: Black Women’s Activism and Ideas in Historical and Contemporary Perspective’
Followed by Conference Dinner in Searsons of Baggot St. at approximately 18.15.
Friday 3rd May 2024
(Clinton Institute for American Studies, Belfield House)
09:30-11:00 – Panel Session 4
Dis/Trusting Poetry (Upstairs Seminar Room)
Chair: Catherine Gander (Maynooth)
Philip Coleman (TCD), ‘“From the Transience”: Jorie Graham and the Problem of Trust’
Caren Irr (Brandeis), ‘Can You Still Trust the Trees?: Eco-Anxiety and the Arboreal Imagination in Contemporary US Lyric’
Hope Noonan Stoner (UCC), ‘Trust/Distrust: Questioning the Validity of American Liberty in the Poetry of Lola Ridge and Julia de Burgos’
Revising Black History (Downstairs Seminar Room)
Chair: Imaobong Umoren (LSE)
Conor Fitzgerald (Mary Immaculate College), ‘John Howard Griffin: Revising the Legitimacy of Historical Narratives’
Jeff Melnick (UMass-Boston), ‘Speak On It: Black Boston and the Massachusetts “Miracle” of the 1980s’
Alexander Kroll (UCD), ‘Gentrification Nation: Small-Town Identity and Trust in Colson Whitehead’s Apex Hides the Hurt’
11:00-11:30 – Coffee Break
11:30-13:00 – Panel Session 5
Declarations of Dependence 2: Geographies of Dependency (Upstairs Seminar Room)
Chair: Lola Boorman (York)
Jessica Marion Modi (Yale), ‘As if the Nation Depends on it’
Javier Porras Madero (Yale), ‘Myths of Dependency’
Damanpreet Pelia (Yale), ‘Dependent Sovereign’
Michael Denning (Yale), ‘Relations of Sovereignty and Dependence’
Jess Cruz (Yale), ‘Airing ALBA’
Dis/Trusting Media (Downstairs Seminar Room)
Chair: Jorie Lagerwey (UCD)
Thomas P. Oates (Iowa), ‘Out of the Sandbox and into the Fire: A Half Century of Struggle to Define Sports’ Journalism’
Heather Neilson (UNSW-Canberra) ‘“The soul of America. Remember?”: James Graham’s Best of Enemies (2021)’
Sarah Anne Dunne (UCD), ‘Distrustful Narratives and Disinformation: How American Politics of Distrust Informs the Irish Far-Right’
13:00-14:00 – Lunch Break
14:00-15:00 – Panel Session 6
Displacement and Dis/Trust (Upstairs Seminar Room)
Chair: Tim Groenland (TCD)
Beth Aherne (UCC), ‘Indigenous Families and Histories of Distrust in Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves (2017)’
Clodagh Philippa Guerin (Limerick), ‘“How can one accept anything from so-called rescuers when their predecessors helped your people destroy one another?”: The Role of Trust During the Refugee Assimilation Process in Clemantine Wamariya’s Memoir The Girl Who Smiled Beads’
15:00 – Closing remarks, followed by IAAS AGM (Upstairs Seminar Room)