BAAS Postgraduate Symposium

Teesside University, 29^th November 2025

‘The people favored and the people oppressed’: The Unequal Struggle for Equality and Rights in America

The original copies of the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights can be found on permanent display at the United States National Archives. The National Archives describes America’s Founding Documents collectively as ‘the Charters of Freedom [which] have secured the rights of the American people for more than two and a quarter centuries and are considered instrumental to the founding and philosophy of the United States.’ Part of this ‘philosophy’ was rooted in the idea that liberty and equality for mankind was not simply a privilege, but a self-evident truth, laid out in the Declaration of Rights.

However, the United States has always struggled between such lofty rhetoric, proclaiming the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to all, and the reality of certain groups and classes of citizens being excluded from access to these rights. Even in the immediate aftermath of the American Revolution, as the Constitution boldly declared that ‘the people’ had established a new order, it was clear from the Three-Fifths Compromise that certain groups would be excluded from such proceedings. The contested issues of (in)equality and political exclusion have since played out in the adoption and repeal of amendments to the Bill of Rights as well as the legal and political interpretation of the Charters of Freedom. Recent landmark decisions, such as Dobbs vs Jackson (2022), have destabilised constitutionally held rights, making the scholarly discussion of the struggle for equality and rights in America particularly urgent at the present time.

The 2025 BAAS Postgraduate Symposium invites proposals from postgraduate researchers at all levels and across all disciplines that address the diverse interpretations, possibilities and liminality that can be found in the depictions and theorisation of America’s (un)equal past and/or future. We invite panels and individual papers on the topic of The Unequal Struggle for Equality and Rights in America. We encourage you to interpret the theme as broadly as you wish and welcome contributions from all realms of American Studies, including, but not limited to; literature and film studies, postcolonial and decolonial analysis, science and visual culture, urban and environmental history.

We welcome the submission of individual papers as well as proposals for complete panels of three researchers. Applications from groups of three or four researchers for roundtable discussions are also welcome. For panel and roundtable proposals, please also include a statement of up to 250 words on the aims of the collective submission, alongside the individual papers. Papers should be around 15-20 minutes long, and roundtables will consist of five-minute introductions by each researcher followed by 45 minutes of discussion. Interdisciplinary paper, panel, and roundtable proposals are encouraged. This will be a hybrid symposium, so we also welcome researchers wishing to attend online. We especially encourage researchers from across Europe and beyond to submit and attend, as part of ongoing efforts to expand the EAAS community of postgraduates. We want to make this symposium as accessible as possible; we will be working to ensure a relaxed academic environment, and we encourage anyone attending in-person to email us with any access needs.

All presenters attending will receive a contribution toward their costs of attendance or childcare up to £100.

The deadline for submissions is 22nd August 2025. Please send proposals including a title, an abstract of no more than 250 words and a short biography of no more than 300 words to David Malcolm at david.malcolm@baas.ac.uk.

If you have any questions or queries about the symposium, please get in touch. We look forward to hearing from you!