Dr Sam Edwards Contributes to Prestigious Interdisciplinary Seminar in Oxford

For Sam, history is more than just work, and more than just academic study. It is a deeply personal project about which I feel very passionate.

On 30th November 2018, Dr Sam Edwards attended the Interdisciplinary Seminar Series 'Cultures and Commemorations of War', held at the University of Oxford. Sam contributed to a roundtable discussion on the subject of American War Memory, along with Professor Robert Cook of the University of Sussex and Professor John Horne of Trinity College Dublin.

Broadly speaking, Sam is interested in exploring the cultural underpinnings to transatlantic relations in the twentieth century, with a particular focus on the ways in which various commemorative and cultural forms have provided forums in which certain ideas (such as the 'special relationship') have been actively constructed (rather than just repeated or rehearsed). To date, this has led him to examine post-1945 American war memorials in Europe (East Anglia and Normandy), whilst future projects (see below) will explore the 'use' made of particular historical figures appropriated as indicative of a uniquely close Anglo-American alliance (Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Paine, both of whom have Norfolk connections), as well as the ways in which this alliance has been gendered in post-1945 cinema. To his continued delight, he finds that these research interests increasingly take me back to my East Anglian beginnings.