A Graduate Conference, April 13–14, 2012
University of California, Berkeley
The burdens of history are particularly heavy for the ways we
understand Britain after World War II. For many years, historians
shied away from writing the history of post-war Britain and ended
their narratives of political, economic and social developments in
1945 (or even 1914). When they did turn to the history of Britain
after 1945, their accounts focused on the state, its domestic
expansion and decolonization, and the role of party politics in these
processes. More recently, the increase of interest on the sixty-five
years that have passed since the end of World War II has generated new
avenues of inquiry and new sites of debate, expanding the objects of
study and the modes of history writing. However, there has still to
emerge a defined sense of the era, or any agreement that it makes
sense to think of the post-war as a field constituted around shared
concerns, let alone how these concerns may relate to work on earlier
moments of modern British history.
Our conference at the University of California, Berkeley on April
13–14, 2012, will be an opportunity to share work on post-war Britain,
and open up conversation on writing British history after 1945.
The
Center for British Studies at the University of California,
Berkeley has since 2003 provided a platform for one
of the largest and most distinguished groups of scholars
studying British culture, society and history — spread across
the arts, humanities, social sciences, and professional
schools — in
the United States. With a generous endowment of $2.1
million from the Robert Kirk Underhill Trust, the Center
hosts or supports a wide array of scholarly, cultural, and educational
activities.
In addition, the Center currently coordinates a major three-year
grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which from 2009-11
will fund conferences and collaborations in the field of British
Studies between UC Berkeley, Yale University, the University
of Chicago, the University of Texas, the University of Southern
California, and the Huntington Library.
The Center has three objectives:
- Strengthen Berkeley's intellectual and institutional ties
to Britain
- Support graduate and undergraduate teaching and research
in British Studies
- Support interdisciplinary research that recognizes Britain's
relationships with America, Europe and Commonwealth countries
and their effects on British economy, society, politics and
culture
Since its opening, the Center has hosted numerous prominent visitors,
including Alan Ryan (Oxford), Mary Poovey (NYU), Laura Gowing
(London), Garrett FitzGerald (Former Taoiseach of Ireland), Keith
Thomas (Oxford), and Stefan Collini (Cambridge). We've also awarded
fellowships and prizes to undergraduate and graduate students,
organized an exchange program between Pembroke College, Cambridge
and UC Berkeley, and hosted workshops and conferences, including
a dissertation workshop and a graduate student conference. The
Center for British Studies is ecumenical in its focus upon all
constituent parts of the British Isles, the British Empire, and
its legacies, as well as Britain's relationship with the European
Community and the United States. Applicants for its undergraduate
and graduate research fellowships need not necessarily have Britain
as the primary focus of their research. We will support work
on any part of the world that requires substantial research in
Britain, although preference will given to those concerned with
Britain's imperial or transnational influence and impact.
Ethan Shagan, shagan [@] berkeley.edu
Director
The Institute of British Studies at IES is proud to announce that its
2009 Mellon Consortium Conference exploring the
State in British History is now online as both
video and
audio podcasts. Scholars of the period from UC Berkeley, U. of Texas, Austin; U. of Sheffield, U. of Washington, Vanderbilt University, U. of Oxford, U. of Dundee, Yale, Stanford, Dalhousie University, U. of Connecticut, and U. of Chicago discuss this broad topic from both historical and theoretical points of view.
Equally exciting, CBS former Director James Vernon and current Director Ethan Shagan are both quoted in a May article in The Guardian newspaper, discussing “British Studies” as a peculiarly foreign (non-British) course of study which has its own logic and utility in a way perhaps not immediately apparent to academics in the UK. “The field brings together academics from across all disciplines who study Britain and its empire – including its history, literature and politics – and puts them into critical discussion,” explains Philippa Levine of UT-Austin. The article ends with the hope that “British Studies” might be imported into the UK in the way that “American Studies” courses and departments are popular throughout the United States.
