2018 HOTCUS Winter Symposium

The State of the State: What is American Political History Now?

9.30-11.15: Session 1

New Ways of Re-envisioning African American Political History through the Archives (Highfield House, A01)

‘Sex, Lies and Photography: An Alternative Civil Rights Archive’, Althea Legal-Miller, Canterbury Christ Church University

‘Reframing Black Participation in Southern Courts’, Melissa Milewski, University of Sussex

‘Writing in Opposition: Congressional Correspondence of White Backlash, 1964-1968’, Neal Allen, Wichita State University

‘“The Mau Maus are Coming!” World Affairs and White Segregationist Media in the 1950s and 1960s’, Scott Weightman, University of Leicester

Chair: Vivien Miller, University of Nottingham

Conservatives and the State in Postwar America (Highfield House, A11)

‘Restlessness Under Reaganism: Conservative Visions of the State and the Origins of the Culture Wars’, Karen Heath, University of Oxford

‘Competing Visions: Conservatives and Reagan and Nixon’s Vision of the State’, Tom Packer, University of Durham

‘A New Policy History of the Nixon Presidency’, Mitchell Robertson, University of Oxford

‘Intervention Out of Sight: The Reagan Administration and the US Automobile Industry’, Daniel Rowe, University of Oxford

Chair: Joe Merton, University of Nottingham

Reinterpreting International and Diplomatic History (Highfield House, A02)

‘Where Transnational and Diplomatic History Meet: Cultural and Scholarly Exchanges and US-China Relations Below the Nixon Summit’, Pete Millwood, University of Oxford

‘The Israeli-American Special Relationship: Beyond Political and Diplomatic History’, David Tal, University of Sussex

‘Still the Missing Dimension: Intelligence and the History of US Foreign Relations’, Calder Walton, Harvard University

‘Patrolling the Beat: Police Actions at Home and Abroad, 1919-1934’, Benjamin Welton, Boston University

Chair: Robert Pee, University of Birmingham

11.15-11.30: Break (Highfield House, Cloisters)

11.30-12.30: Plenary (Highfield House, A01/02)

‘Congress and White Supremacy: After Reconstruction to the New Deal’, Professor Ira Katznelson, Columbia University and University of Cambridge

Introduced by Joe Merton, University of Nottingham

12.30-1.30: Lunch (Highfield House, Cloisters)

1.30-3.00: Session 2

Race, Representation, and the Politics of Respectability: The Problematic Memorialisation of African American Female Activists (Highfield House, A01)

‘The Politics of Respectability and Gender: “Passing” in Early African American Photography’, Emily Brady, University of Nottingham

‘The Radical Repercussions of Respectability: The Activism of Dr Dorothy Height’, Lauren Eglen, University of Nottingham

‘“Heroic Souls”: The Memory of Tubman, Truth and Black Female Abolitionists’, Charlotte James, University of Nottingham

Chair: Karen Salt, University of Nottingham

Social Movements Embracing the State, or Vice Versa? (Highfield House, A02)

‘The Road to Self-Determination: Aboriginal Policy in the United States and Australia, 1960-1993’, Dean Kotlowski, Salisbury University

‘The Right Treatment: Alternative Medicines, Anti-Science and the Ascension of Conservatism’, Lucas Richert, University of Strathclyde

‘How to Build a Man Bomb: Matriachalism and the Men’s Rights Movement’, Keira Williams, Queen’s University Belfast

Chair: Nick Witham, UCL

Beyond the Beltway? Executive and Legislative Politics (Highfield House, A11)

‘“The Last Election Means the Buck Stops Here”: Gerald Ford, the House Democrats and the Limits of Congressional Government, 1974-1977’, Patrick Andelic, Northumbria University

‘A White Backlash? Rumford, Riots and the Rise of Reagan’, Dominic Barker, University of Oxford

‘Reading Ronald Reagan in the Age of Donald Trump’, Daniel Geary, Trinity College Dublin

Chair: Dafyyd Townley, University of Reading

3.00-4.30: Session 3

States and Anti-Statism in an Era of State Building (Highfield House, A01)

‘Anti-Intellectualism, Anti-Statism and the Study of American Politics: Rethinking the “Demise” of American Political History’, Louisa Hotson, University of Oxford

‘“Democracy is Sweeping Over the World”: A Transnational American Twenties’ Andreas Meyris, George Washington University

‘All Policing is Political: The Municipal and National Dimensions of the Politicization of Security in New York City, 1918-1945’, Yann Philippe, Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne

‘Rethinking the New Deal in an Age of Trump and Brexit’, Jason Scott Smith, University of New Mexico

Chair: Cheryl Hudson, University of Liverpool

Connecting Ideas, Culture, and Ideologies (Highfield House, A02)

‘Middle Class as a Historical Category of Legitimation in the American State’, Matteo Battistini, University of Bologna

‘Critique of Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. as a Challenge to Political History and Elite Politics’, Michael Brown, Rochester Institute of Technology

‘Inverted Totalitarianism and Political Protest in the 1960s and 1970s’, Sophie Joscelyne, University of Sussex

‘Diplomats in Chief: Culture, Politics and the Presidency’, Thomas Tunstall Allcock, University of Manchester

Chair: Kendrick Oliver, University of Southampton

4.30-5.00: Break (Highfield House, Cloisters)

5.00-6.00: Roundtable: What is American Political History Now? (Highfield House, A01/02)

Professor Jonathan Bell, UCL Institute of the Americas

Dr Kate Dossett, University of Leeds

Professor Ken Osgood, Colorado School of Mines

Introduced by Bevan Sewell, University of Nottingham

6.00: Close