North Americans studying North America in Ireland

Having several important things to say about the critical reception of beatsploitation films from 1959 and 1960, I found myself in Dublin in late March, giving a talk at the 2010 Biennial Conference of the European Association of American Studies. I appeared on a panel called "Remediating the Beats" to make the point that while "beatnik" movies, by and large, ridiculed and vilified the beat lifestyle in sensationalistic and paranoia-inducing ways, it is still interesting to read them as a strand of criticism of beat culture. As I hope my paper demonstrated. With that off my chest, I found Karen (who was also presenting a paper at the conference), rented a car, and headed off into the rolling, soggy Irish countryside for a brief vacation to celebrate her 30th b-day.