Modern Adaptations of Early American People, Places and Spaces
Panel organizers:
Stacey Dearing Stacey.Dearing@Gmail.com
Kirsten Iden Lindmark, Auburn University kti0001@tigermail.auburn.edu
In October 2012, Ubisoft is releasing Assassins Creed III, a video game which features a half Mohawk, half white protagonist who navigates the unstable boundaries of race, class and nationality in eighteenth-century New England. Presented as an observer and participant in the Revolutionary war, the protagonist Connor/ Ratohnhaké:ton (prounounced ra-doon-ha-gay-doo), explores the multiplicity of identity while challenging the master narrative of early American history and of the found fathers. Such modern adaptations seek to reinterpret eighteenth-century themes and place them in a contemporary context. This panel seeks to not only discuss how people are recreating the eighteenth century, but also how these revisions intersect contemporary politics, literature, historiography and culture.
This panel will explore modern adaptations of Early America. Possibilities include, but are not limited to, the TEA Party, Assassins Creed III, and Toni Morrison’s 2008 novel A Mercy. Papers may consider not only characters, events and issues privileged in these contemporary adaptations, but also which figures, issues, and topics are excluded. We are looking for papers which engage with how these modern interpretations illuminate, redefine or obscure traditional topics and approaches to eighteenth-century studies.
Send 250 word paper abstracts to Stacey Dearing at Stacey.Dearing@Gmail.com or Kirsten Iden Lindmark at kti0001@tigermail.auburn.edu by Friday, September 7, 2012.
Stacey C Dearing 