“COVID-19 and the Slow Death of Interdisciplinarity in the Practice and Teaching of American Studies,” a roundtable panel formed of University of Salford postgraduate researcher Lauren Pearl Holmes, University of Manchester postgraduate researcher Heena Hussain, and University of Salford undergraduate student and qualified primary and secondary school teacher Charlotte Stevenson, has been awarded £5,000 from the British Association for American Studies’ (BAAS) Targeted Research Panel Awards. The Award will facilitate the panel’s attendance the 70th Annual Conference for BAAS and provide funding over a three-year period to facilitate research culminating in a further roundtable panel at an additional BAAS conference.
The three panellists all completed the same English Literature and American Studies Master’s course at the University of Manchester during the 2019/20 academic year. They have come together to discuss the future of American Studies and their lived experience of exclusion and exceptional academic performance while completing degrees during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research aims to prompt future thought and discussion on how decisions are currently made within the academy, on who gets to train in and partake in the research environment and teaching culture, and on who gets to access research materials and why. It will also aim to increase accessibility to research resources and develop writing skills in students impacted by the pandemic.