Both books have come about as part of large collaborative projects funded by the AHRC. 

, published by Routledge, was co-authored by Prof Knight and Clare Birchall, reader in contemporary culture at King’s College London. 

The book analyses ‘the emergence and development of conspiracy theories’ that bubbled up in the pandemic, with particular focus on those theories that were rife in the UK and US in particular.  

The second publication Prof Knight has co-authored is Chicago-published , which is an examination of how investment advice as a genre grew in the UK and US and how it manifested across various media. 

Essays engaging with current issues like racial and environmental justice are of particular interest to the judging panel. Last year’s winner, a student from University College London (UCL), approached the subject of Black Lives Matter and the nature of protest, and this year, Samantha’s winning essay similarly tackled racial themes. 

In response to whether the gentrification of Harlem after 1980 was led by external forces and whether this led to a white takeover, Samantha concluded: “[T]he effects of gentrification are now clear. If there had not yet been a white ‘take-over’ in population by the early 2000s, Harlem is surely on its way there today […] Despite the work of internal forces and community organisation groups to see improvements in Harlem for its long-term residents, the ‘pockets’ of black history were being, and continue to be, overwritten by larger, external forces.”

Samantha takes home a prize of £250, and will have the chance to participate in workshops with the editors of the Journal of American Studiesand the European Journal of American Culture, as well as other opportunities. 

In addition to Samantha, congratulations are in order for Anya, who received one of two honourable mentions for her essay, ‘To what extent were Native American activists recognized and embraced as allies of US Civil Rights and Black Power groups?’

Anya found that Native American activists were recognised and embraced. “In recognising the Black embrace of Native Americans, and, by extension, ‘all poor and oppressed people,’ as allies in a global movement for freedom, intersectionality goes beyond a shared experience of oppression, and becomes in fact a tool of liberation,” she said.

This is a fantastic achievement for Samantha and Anya, and for the American Studies programme as a whole. 

Dr Andrew Fearnley, Lecturer in US History, praised the achievement. 

“We're delighted that our students have received this recognition for their excellent work—on Native activism in the civil rights period, and on the transformation of Harlem at the turn of the twenty-first century. These essays demonstrate the wide range of topics that we address in American Studies, and both show the balance we try to find between historical study and contemporary, political intervention.”

Thomas returns to The University of Manchester, where he spent five years as Professor of Musicology and Head of the Division of Art History, Drama and Music. He has also held posts at Bangor University, the University of Frankfurt and the University of Huddersfield.

The role formally began on 1 July and is dedicated to developing and driving strategic decision-making across the School.

Professor Keith Brown, Vice-President and Dean of Humanities has said on the appointment: “I look forward to working with Thomas as he returns to 91ֱ�� in this new role. I am confident he will build on Alessandro’s many achievements and will lead the School from strength to strength." 

Prior to joining the University for his appointment as Head of School, Schmidt was Visiting Professor at the University of Frankfurt, before moving to the UK in 2005 as Professor and Chair of Music at Bangor University. From 2012, he was Professor of Music at The University of 91ֱ�� (later also leading the Division of Art History, Drama and Music), and from 2017 he was Dean of Music, Humanities and Media at the University of Huddersfield.

Thomas studied at the University of Heidelberg and as a Fulbright Scholar in Chapel Hill. His key research interests are in music of the 15th/16th and the 18th/19th centuries.

On his appointment, Professor Schmidt said: "I am delighted to have been appointed as Vice-Dean and Head of School of Arts, Languages and Cultures. I enormously look forward to returning to the institution where I previously spent some of the most fulfilling years of my career; I am honoured and excited to be working with a dedicated team of staff in one of the leading Arts and Humanities schools in the UK, and with the outstanding students it recruits.”

The University of Manchester’s School of Arts, Languages and Cultures (SALC) will be hosting a celebration to mark the strength and resilience of its students in a virtual event.

The celebration will take place at 3pm on Wednesday 16 December 2020, and will be available to view and return to on the .

These celebrations are an opportunity to recognise the accomplishments of students throughout their studies, particularly acknowledging the resilience and strength they have shown over the course of a challenging year.

After the celebration, students will have the opportunity to attend a live, virtual event with staff and classmates from their Department.

Links for the celebrations will be sent out to students via email and are intended to complement the winter graduation ceremonies.

SALC encourages students to follow the SALC and accounts @UoMSALC to share positive memories and experiences of their time at The University of Manchester, using the hashtags #SALCGrad and #UoMGraduation and to direct any questions to salcstudents@manchester.ac.uk.

Time and date information

SALC Virtual Celebration

3pm on Wednesday 16 December

Department-specific live events (links to follow)

Art History and Cultural Practices: 4.30pm, Wednesday 16 December

Classics, Ancient History, Archaeology and Egyptology: 5pm, Wednesday 16 December

Drama and Film: 4pm, Friday 18 December

English & American Studies and Centre for New Writing: 5.30pm, Wednesday 16 December

History: 10am, Thursday 17 December

Humanitarian Conflict Response Institute: 4pm, Wednesday 16 December

Linguistics and English Language: 5.30pm, Wednesday 16 December

Modern Languages and Cultures: 4pm Wednesday 16 December

Music: 4pm, Wednesday 16 December

Religions & Theology: 1pm, Thursday 17 December

An Emeritus Professor from The University of Manchester has won the prestigious for her outstanding work in the foreign fiction category, the Russian translation of her novel, James Miranda Barry.

Patricia Duncker taught in the Department of English, American Studies and Creative Writing at The University of Manchester from 2007-2015, then became an Emeritus Professor for the department. She gave her acceptance speech from a windswept castle in Aberystwyth, West Wales, which was streamed from the Russian-hosted awards ceremony.

One of Russia’s most prestigious Literature Awards, the Yasnaya Polyana Literary Prize is presented by the Leo Tolstoy Museum Estate with Samsung Electronics. The judges of the Yasnaya Polyana Prize include famous Russian writers, critics and public figures, including Tolstoy’s great-great-grandson, Vladimir Ilyich Tolstoy as Chair of Judges. Tolstoy also advises President Putin on matters of culture and arts.

.

The month of October has been celebrated as Black History Month (BHM) in the UK since 1987. This is a national celebration that aims to celebrate and recognise Black British achievement and Black British History.  

Each Thursday throughout the month of October, the collaborative teams will be taking over The University of Manchester’s social media accounts, sharing suggested readings and films that celebrate and recognise black history and culture, provided by colleagues from the English department.  

An extensive list has been created, along with feedback and reviews. Join in each Thursday for recommendations of fantastic titles such as Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and Louise Hare's This Lovely City (to name a few!). 

These activities will complement the  event on 1st October hosted by The University of Manchester and featuring a keynote speech by Professor of Sociology and renowned journalist Gary Younge, as well as a variety of projects and events from academics in the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures and across the Faculty. Brilliant and Black will be live-streamed across a number of platforms. 

These celebrations are an opportunity to recognise and celebrate the accomplishments of students throughout their studies, particularly acknowledging the resilience and strength they have shown in unprecedented, challenging times.

At the celebrations, students will have the chance to enjoy recognition and tributes from their classmates, as well as messages from lecturers and staff across The University.

We encourage students to follow the SALC and accounts @UoMSALC to share positive memories and experiences of their time at The University of Manchester, using the hashtags #SALCGrad and #UoMGraduation.

Responding to the WHO’s warning that misinformation surrounding COVID-19 constitutes an ‘infodemic’,  has secured funding for a new research project that will focus on conspiracy theories as a particularly harmful kind of misinformation.

The team, led by Prof Knight, together with researchers at King’s College London and the University of Amsterdam, will use methods from digital humanities and cultural studies to map how these narratives circulate in the online environment during the crisis.

They will use data scraping and network visualisation tools on a longitudinal data set extracted from social media platforms in order to identify the mechanisms, vectors and histories of transmission of coronavirus conspiracy theories. They will also employ textual analysis, digital ethnography and political economy to analyse the cultural and political contexts in which these narratives arise.

By producing a series of ‘snapshot’ mappings of this complex online ecosystem, they will be able to analyse how conspiracist misinformation has proliferated during the course of the pandemic, which in turn will enable them to assess the effectiveness of the varying interventions by the social media platforms.

The team will publish the research findings in a peer-reviewed journal article and short book. In collaboration with the anti-misinformation organisation , they will communicate their results and recommendations to journalists and the general public in a 'Field Guide to the Infodemic'.

Working with the campaigning charity and the Institute of Education, they will produce educational materials for teachers, young people and science communicators confronted with the problem of how to tackle the infodemic.

You may have seen already the statement from the Vice-President for Social Responsibility at the university, Nalin Thakkar. Professor Thakkar writes that the university cannot be complacent or accepting of racism in any form. Our colleagues in Sociology and History Gary Younge and David Olusoga point out that this is not just a US problem. In EAC we are acutely aware of our shortcomings in the paucity of BAME teaching staff and our need to work harder to encourage and welcome BAME students onto our courses. We understand that as scholars, commentators, and educators, it is our duty to redouble our efforts in challenging the systemic racism that resulted in Mr Floyd’s death, and which is responsible for the loss of Black lives.

We hope that this awful event will remind us all to keep this issue front and centre in our plans, and to work towards creating for our future a level playing field. We are committed to effecting this through our teaching, our research, our committee work within and without the university, and in our conferences and events.

Nicole Gipson has been awarded the Institute for Historical Research’s Iwan Morgan Prize for her work on late-20^th century homelessness in Washington DC. Nicole will give the annual Iwan Morgan Lecture as part of the Institute’s North American History Seminar.

Katherine Reed has been handed the 2020 British Association for American Studies (BAAS) postgraduate essay prize for her exploration Commemoration of the living: A fragment of child’s graffiti from Ellis Island Immigration Station, 1922.

Senior Lecturer in America Studies Dr Eithne Quinn has also been recognised by BAAS, scooping the best book prize for A piece of the action: Race and labor in post-Civil Rights Hollywood.

The Department of American Studies and The School of Arts, Languages and Cultures extend their congratulations to Nicole, Katherine and Dr Quinn.

You can read more about Dr Quinn’s book on the website.

The Californian Century has been an exciting, year-long project and commission for Radio 4, which has delved into the alternative history and stories of the people that made California - from the glitz and glamour of Hollywood to the digital creativities of Silicon Valley.

With series producer Laurence Grissell, Ian researched the project for a year, co-writing the scripts and travelling to California in January to gather exclusive interviews and materials and developing interviews for the programme.

An article from Ian will be available very soon in the BBC World Histories Magazine.

You can listen to the series, which is narrated by actor Stanley Tucci, .

We will make two awards of £250 to students enrolled on an MA course in the Division of English, American Studies and Creative Writing who are writing MA dissertations on an American Studies topic.

The money can be used for travel to conduct research in the UK or United States, to pay expenses connected with American Studies-related archival work, or for travel to a postgraduate workshop or event related to their dissertation topic. Applications should include two parts:

• an overview of no more than 400 words explaining the project and the purpose for which the monies are sought;
• a basic budget outlining the costs.

Students who receive the prize must use it by July 2018, and should submit a one-page blog report on completion.

Please email applications to Dr Eithne Quinn (eithne.quinn@manchester.ac.uk) by 5pm on 27 February 2018.