In/Security: Irish Association for American Studies (IAAS) Annual Conference

  • Coughlan, D. (Organiser)
  • Clair Sheehan (Organiser)
  • Tim Groenland (Organiser)

Activity: Participating in or organising an eventOrganising a conference, workshop, ...

Description

"In/Security"

The theme for the 2023 IAAS Annual Conference was “In/Security.” Inderpal Grewal argues that “constructs of security have come to dominate everyday life in the US imperial state” (Saving the Security State 2). Certainly, questions of security dominated the US news agenda in 2023, from the inquest into the breach of the Capitol on 6 January 2021; to geopolitical threats of energy shortages, a cost-of-living crisis, cyber-attacks, and nuclear war; to the FBI’s retrieval of documents endangering national security from a former President’s home. Actual and perceived threats to security – personal, institutional, and technological – have increasingly become the norm in US politics, as allegations of voting fraud and campaigns of intimidation continue to reverberate across elections. Meanwhile, the rising risks of wildfires and storms are a reminder that climate change represents an existential threat to human society that requires us to act now to secure a liveable future.

We invited proposals that considered security, safety, defence, and protection, as well as their opposites: insecurity, precarity, vulnerability, and danger. We thought about security at various scales, the various senses and feelings of terms like “security” and “safe,” and the different ways in which notions of security and its absence structure cultural, social, political, and economic discourses in the Americas.
Period2023
Event typeConference
LocationLimerick, IrelandShow on map
Degree of RecognitionInternational

Keywords

  • American Studies