About America Now! American Empire – Past, Present, Future
Almost 250 years ago, thirteen North American colonies made a break from the imperial domination of the British Empire – and yet domination and empire have been recurrent themes in the USA's own culture and relations with the world ever since. From the continental landgrabs of 'Manifest Destiny' in the nineteenth century to today's Trumpian fantasies of annexing Canada, Greenland and Panama, this discussion will explore the significance of expansionist ideologies and the brute realities of geopolitical power to the American story, and how these fit with the myth-making and self-fashioning of an anti-colonial, freedom-loving nation.
With Dr Will Norman, Dr Adam Burns (Brighton College), and Dr Hilary Emmett (UEA), chaired by Dr Mike Collins (BAAS and KCL).
The event is part of 'America Now!', a series of live events exploring the current state of the USA and its place in the world. In a world of hot takes these discussions offer some much-needed deep dives, giving expert insight into some of the most pressing or peculiar aspects of modern American life – from the Supreme Court to Cowboy Carter, and from the politics of the White House to the politics of The White Lotus.
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Dr William Norman
Reader in American Literature and Culture, University of Kent.
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Will Norman is a scholar of 20th-century American literature and culture. He has taught at the University of Kent since 2008. He has been a Leverhulme Research Fellow, a Fulbright scholar at Yale University and a visiting research fellow at the University of Sydney. He is co editor-in-chief at the Journal of American Studies. He is the author of Transatlantic Aliens: Modernism, Exile and Culture in Midcentury America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), and Nabokov, History and the Texture of Time (Routledge, 2012). His latest book, on complicity, race and liberalism will be published in 2025 by Oxford University Press.
Dr Adam Burns
Head of Politics, Brighton College.
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Dr Burns the author of American Imperialism: The Territorial Expansion of the United States, 1783–2013 (Edinburgh University Press, 2017), The United States: Reuniting a Nation, 1865–1920 (Routledge, 2020) and William Howard Taft and the Philippines: A Blueprint for Empire (University of Tennessee Press, 2020). He has also authored several peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century US, including for the journal Sport History Review.
Dr Hilary Emmett
Associate Professor in American Studies, University of East Anglia.
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Hilary Emmett joined the School of American Studies in 2012, having studied and taught at universities in Australia and the USA. Her research engages a variety of fields from the literature of the early American Republic to nineteenth and twentieth century children's literature. She has also published widely on topics related to American Studies pedagogy, most recently on post-pandemic pedagogy in her co-edited collection (with Christopher Lloyd), The Affects of Pedagogy in Literary Studies (Routledge 2023). She has particular interest and expertise in inclusive and experiential pedagogies, and her curricular focus is on transnational American Studies and the transpacific relationships apparent (and not so apparent) in cultural texts of the United States and Australia.
Dr Mike Collins
Reader in American Studies, King's College London, and Chair of the British Association for American Studies.
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Dr Collins is the author of Exoteric Modernisms: Progressive Era Realism and the Aesthetics of Everyday Life (EUP 2023), The Drama of the American Short Story, 1800 - 1865 (Michigan 2016), and editor (with Gavin Jones) of The Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story (CUP, 2023). He is the Chair of the British Association for American Studies and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is currently writing a book on American Literature and the Civil Service.
Venue opening times
This is an in-person only event in the Eliot Room of the British Library Knowledge Centre.
Please arrive no later than 15 minutes before the start time of this event. If you have specific access requirements please email customer@bl.uk.
