I’m very excited to be part of the programme for what should be a fascinating interdisciplinary conference at the University of Kent, ‘Masculinity and the Metropolis’, taking place on the 22 and 23 April. (Their website also shows very good taste in WordPress themes!)

I’ll be speaking after lunch on the first day as part of a panel on ‘Black American Masculinities’, giving a paper titled “Living every day scared”: Disorientation, Incrimination and Black Masculinity in Chester Himes’s If He Hollers Let Him Go. I’m looking forward to speaking on Himes for the first time, and the paper is the fruit of recent research for the chapter of my PhD thesis provisionally titled ‘Arbitrary Incrimination, Restricted Mobility and Black Los Angeles’.

The following month, I’ll be giving a paper at the one-day symposium ‘The Dream of a City’, alongside many of my fellow UCL English scholars (including my thesis supervisor, Dr Matthew Beaumont, which will be a real pleasure and honour. My paper, “Confused about your jurisdiction, Deputy?” Territory, Identity and Los Angeles Law Enforcement will draw on material from an earlier thesis chapter, focusing on James Ellroy’s The Big Nowhere and Joseph Wambaugh’s The New Centurions.

An exciting and busy couple of months ahead!