We are a vibrant centre for promoting and disseminating world-leading research into the life and culture of the United States and beyond.
Powerfully underpinned by a tradition of, and commitment to, interdisciplinary research, our areas of expertise range from the Revolutionary period to the present day. We encompass literature and drama, history, politics, and foreign relations. Staff specialisms include American urban history, the international history of the Cold War, civil rights, ecocriticism, American popular culture, comics and graphic novels, and contemporary multi-ethnic American literature and film.
Our research strategy is driven by a desire to enhance understandings of human cultures and communities, their linguistic, historic and literary transformations, and by the questions of power and identity that issue from such investigations.
The research we undertake has demonstrated significant impact, benefiting a wide variety of groups from practitioners and professionals (film-makers, interpreters, lawyers, police, and teachers), to communities facing particular intercultural challenges (whether Native communities or immigrants to Norfolk), and the general public (from local children to visitors to special events).
Recent books and research projects by our faculty members include:
This forum, edited by Nicholas Grant and Elisabeth Engel, examine the cultural spaces and interactions that shaped the worldview of African Americans in the aftermath of the Civil War. Each of the articles reconsiders the relationship between African Americans and the African continent. Adding to scholarly work that has sought to complicate Paul Gilroy’s framework of the black Atlantic, contributors examine the creative work that shaped the African diaspora while also tracing how black diasporic identities have developed over time. All articles build on research that has traced the global contours of the US South, and document how Jim Crow had a profound influence on the ways in which race was discussed around the world. Bringing black responses to American segregation into conversation with the field of colonial history, contributions also trace how the transnational politics of Jim Crow informed the operation of imperial power as well as the politics of anticolonialism.
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