Students and staff retreat for a week of academic sessions

The Department of American and Canadian Studies held its second annual postgraduate retreat, this year in the Peak District

From 13 to 20 May, a large group of postgraduate students and staff members descended on an old farm in the heart of the Peak District. Following the great success of the inaugural retreat in 2015, staff and students engaged in intense, intellectual discussions over the period of a week. The official program was split into reading groups and training workshops in order to provide a useful set of academic sessions. In sessions on book proposals, the academic job market, and pedagogical methods, participants received training tailor-made for the needs of American and Canadian Studies scholars. The reading sessions included topics on un-Americanism, forgotten histories, music and resistance, black feminism, and visual culture. The Research Priority Area in Rights and Justice also ran a session.

The postgraduate students are grateful to Zoe Trodd, Graham Thompson, Matthew Pethers, Nick Heffernan, and Stephanie Lewthwaite for leading sessions and making their way up to a remote farm. We would also like to acknowledge that the retreat would been impossible without the financial support of the Department of American and Canadian Studies, and the School of Culture, Languages, and Area Studies.

We plan to expand the retreat to be available to all American and Canadian Studies postgraduate students in the Midlands3Cities network for 2017. The retreat is an ambitious project that requires a lot of commitment from participants but we believe that its unique format is important for building postgraduate networks and developing skills.

Pictured are postgraduates Steve Gallo, Hannah-Rose Murray, Olivia Wright, Timo Schrader, Scott Weightman, Lorenzo Costaguta and Jimmy Brookes near the retreat location in Youlgreave, Derbyshire.