Book Launch: Accelerate! a History of the 1990s by Prof. James Brooke-Smith
May 23, 2023 — All day
Join us for the launch of Prof. James Brooke-Smith's new book
Q&A, readings, music, 90s nostalgia, and more ...
"If the 1990s can be defined at all, then surely they are the pre-post-everything decade ... the final era before all that was solid melted into the digital air."
A kaleidoscopic history of the final decade of the twentieth century
The 1990s was the decade in which the Soviet Union collapsed and Francis Fukuyama declared the ‘end of history.’ Nelson Mandela was released from prison, Google was launched and scientists in Edinburgh cloned a sheep from a single cell. The president of the United States discussed fellatio on network television and the world's most photographed woman died in a car crash in Paris. Anti-globalisation protestors in France attacked McDonald's restaurants and American survivalists stockpiled guns and tinned food in preparation for Y2K.
Taking a wide-angled view of the politics, social history, arts and popular culture of the era, James Brooke-Smith asks - what was the 1990s? A lost golden age of liberal optimism? A time of fin-de-siecle decadence? Or the seedbed for the discontents we face today?
Prof. James Brooke-Smith
Prof. James Brooke-Smith
James Brooke-Smith is an Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Ottawa. He is the author of Accelerate! a History of the 1990s (The History Press, 2022) and Gilded Youth: Privilege, Rebellion and the British Public School (Reaktion, 2019). His essays have appeared in the Literary Review of Canada, the Times Literary Supplement, and Literature Hub. In 2023 he was the author of the annual Massey Essay for the Literary Review of Canada, "Where's Johnny?" on the art of public conversation.