News
Professor contributes to U.S. National Library of Medicine exhibit
Professor of American History, Susan-Mary Grant has recently contributed an education module to the U.S. National Library of Medicine exhibit, ‘Life and Limb: The Toll of the Civil War.’
Further information on the exhibition
The educational module, entitled ‘Reconstructing States and Soldier: Disability and the American Civil War’, provides students and instructors the opportunity to develop discussion of the issues raised in the exhibition Life and Limb: The Toll of the Civil War by exploring the ways in which hitherto separate fields of scholarship, on disability studies, on the Civil War, military, medical, literary, social and political, can be brought together to expand our understanding of both the immediate and longer-term impact of wounding in that conflict.
Access the module
* Lower half of right femur of Private Orson B. Norwood, who was wounded July 15, 1863, in a skirmish near Jackson, Tennessee. Courtesy Library of Congress
Americas Postgraduate Conference a success!
Citizenship and collective Subjectivities in the Americas
17 March 2011, Newcastle University
The Americas Research Group postgraduate conference ‘Citizenship and collective Subjectivities in the Americas” took place on campus on 17th March 2011. The conference was widely attended by members of staff and students from Newcastle University and ten different UK and European universities. It was deemed a success by the over 35 people who participated in it.
Jenny Pearce, Professor of Latin American Politics at the University of Bradford was the keynote speaker. Her thought-provoking intervention, entitled ‘Beyond Rousseau and Montesquieu: The Quest for a Latin American Democratic Subjectivity’, reflected on the fixed interpretations of democracy that focused on the ‘collective subject’ or the ‘abstract citizen’. Her paper asked whether the new modes of thinking about state and society that have emerged in the region and the hitherto subordinated socio political actors, constitute the source of a unique Latin American contribution to theorising democracy and political agency. It also engaged with the question of whether this potential source of democratic renewal is sustainable against the ongoing efforts from old and new elites to perpetuate violent, unequal and neoliberal social orders in the region.
The conference participants were postgraduate students and recent graduates from across the UK and Ireland, from universities such as Bradford, Bath, Exeter, Durham Edinburgh and University College Cork. The participants gave intellectually engaging presentations on a diverse range of topics encompassing the themes of civil society, socio-political change, border studies, subjectivities, state violence and citizens’ rights. The countries researched included Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, the USA and Colombia.
Details of the conference programme.
The conference was jointly organised by Gisela Zapata from the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology and Silvia Espelt Bombín from the School of Historical Studies.
