The Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford, invites single paper and panel proposals for a three-day interdisciplinary conference examining the subject of American national identity in the twenty-first century. The RAI welcomes proposals analyzing the historical, social, political, literary, and cultural meanings of the American nation.

After 9/11, there was an upsurge of patriotism among the American people but five years on, has this strong sense of united nationhood proved resilient? Can a national identity fuelled by fear and anger be sustained? Or can a more positive patriotism be fostered? Alongside the impact of 9/11, numerous changes in international relations and global affairs have transformed the ways in which the United States understands itself and in how others perceive it. From the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of China, to the spread of digital information technology and global corporatism, to the election of Bush and the invasion of Iraq, the pace of change is rapid and seemingly uncontrollable. Do the founding principles of the United States still translate into a workable creed for the globalized twenty-first century? Or have the pressures of multiculturalism, multilingualism, and transnationalism changed the shape and direction of the country beyond recognition?

This conference will engage with the meaning of the United States of America today and in the past, as a nation and as an international presence. It allows for interdisciplinary approaches, with the historical, political, cultural, and literary significance of American-ness all contributing to the constructions of the identity of the nation and its people.

Topics to be addressed might include one or more of the following themes:

• American patriotism post 9/11
• A divided nation? Red states and blue states
• The American Empire
• Hyphenated American identities
• The construction of citizenship
• 21st century immigration
• The quest for a distinctive American literature
• American civic values, past and present
• American exceptionalism
• America in the Global Age: unilateralism v. multilateralism
• The impact of transnationalism on US literary studies
• Legacies of the Civil Rights Movement
• A nation under God? American evangelicalism in the 21st century
• The influence of the media, the Internet and other new technologies

Please send one-page proposals with a brief CV by Friday 16 June 2006 to:
Cheryl Hudson, Assistant Director, Academic Programme, Rothermere American Institute, Oxford, OX1 3TG, or e-mail academic.programme@rai.ox.ac.uk