Trump’s America

BAAS Conference 2021 - Roundtable Discussion

The Trump presidency delivered a seismic shock to the American political system and more broadly to political culture and the public sphere in the US - and beyond, given the influence of the US across the world. This roundtable discussion considers the ongoing shockwaves and the underlying paradigm shift signified by the advent of Trump. A core point of discussion is the challenge to understand the nature of this disruption, to identify and critically illuminate some of its key cultural and political facets. Another is the ongoing influence of Trump and Trumpism beyond the period of his presidency. Almost one hundred days into a Biden presidency this discussion will take stock of defining cultural and political struggles between the forces of an insurgent populist nationalism and those of a residual liberal democracy.

“Trump’s America” is another name for the ongoing crisis of a traumatised liberal order in the US and this roundtable will consider some of the challenges to constructing new forms of political conversation in the wake of Trump’s presidency. Reflecting on moral and intellectual challenges posed by Trump’s presidency, Russian-American writer Masha Gessen writes:

There will come a time after Trump, and we need to consider how we will enter it. What are we going to take with us into that time—what kind of politics, language, and culture? How will we recover from years of policy (if you can call it that) being made by tweet? How will we reclaim simple and essential words? Most important, how will we restart a political conversation?

These questions guide much of our critical reflections.

The participants in the roundtable are all authors of chapters in Trump’s America: Political Culture and National Identity (Edinburgh University Press, 2019), edited by Liam Kennedy.

Frank Kelleter is Chair of the Department of Culture and Einstein Professor of North American Cultural History at John F. Kennedy Institute, Freie Universität Berlin. He is the director of the Popular Seriality Research Unit (PSRU), a transdisciplinary group consisting of 13 projects, funded by the German Research Association (2010-2016). His monographs include: David Bowie (2016), Serial Agencies: “The Wire” and Its Readers (2014). His edited volumes include Media of Serial Narrative (Ohio State UP, 2017), Populäre Serialität (2012), and American Studies as Media Studies (2011).

Liam Kennedy is Professor of American Studies and Director of the Clinton Institute for American Studies at University College Dublin in Ireland. He has published widely on American culture, politics and foreign policy. Recent books include Afterimages: Photography and US Foreign Policy (2016), Neoliberalism and American Literature (2018, with Stephen Shapiro) and Trump’s America (2019). He is co-founder of the media platform America Unfiltered.

Diane Negra is Professor of Film Studies and Screen Culture at University College Dublin.  A member of the Royal Irish Academy, she is the author, editor or co-editor of ten books, including The Aesthetics and Affects of Cuteness (2016), Extreme Weather and Global Media (2015), Gendering the Recession (2014), Old and New Media after Katrina (2010), What a Girl Wants (2008), Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and Politics of Popular Culture (2007), and The Irish in US: Irishness, Performativity and Popular Culture (2006). She currently serves as Co-Editor-in- Chief of Television and New Media.

Donald E. Pease Jr. is the Ted and Helen Geisel Third Century Professor in the Humanities and chair of the Masters of Arts in Liberal Studies Program at Dartmouth College. He is the founder and director of the Futures of American Studies Institute at Dartmouth and editor of Duke University Press book series The New Americanists. He is author of Visionary Compacts: American Renaissance Writing in Cultural Context (1987), The New American Exceptionalism (2009) and Theodor Seuss Geisel (2010), and editor of several collections, among them National Identities and Postnational Narratives (1994), Cultures of U.S. Imperialism (1992), and New Americanists: Revisionist Interventions into the Canon (1994).

Stephen Shapiro is Professor of English at Warwick University. He is author of Pentecostal Modernisms: Lovecraft, Los Angeles and World-Systems Culture (2017) and The Culture and Commerce of the Early American Novel: Reading the Atlantic World-System (2009) and co-author of Combined and Uneven Development: Towards a New Theory of World Literature (2015). His edited books include The Wire: Race, Class, and Genre (2012), How to Read Foucault’s Discipline and Punish (2000), How to Read Marx’s Capital (2008), and Revising Charles Brockden: Culture, Politics and Sexuality in the Early Republic (2004)

Penny von Eschen is William R. Kennan Jr. Professor of American Studies and Professor of History at the University of Virginia. She is the author of Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War (2004) and Race against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937-1957 (1997) and editor of Contested Democracy: Freedom, Race, and Power in American History (2007) and American Studies: An Anthology (2009).

Liam Kennedy will act as moderator of the roundtable discussion.