5/10/19 5/10/19

What We're Looking Forward To This Summer: UT AMS's Summer Plans

It's the last class day of the 2018-2019 school year, and with summer break approaching, we checked in with our UT AMS department members to see what they were looking forward to this summer. Read on to get a taste of UT AMS's summer plans.

Andi Remoquillo: I'm super excited to start my summer internship with the Smithsonian National Museum of American History; I'll be a curatorial intern for a project on Asian Pacific American women's labor history! Also looking forward to the copious amounts of shellfish I plan on consuming while there.

Jeff Miekle: On May 29 I'll be in Lisbon, Portugal, giving the keynote lecture on "Rethinking Early Plastics: The Rhetoric of New Materials" at the Plastics Heritage Congress 2019, a three-day gathering of historians, museum curators, and conservation specialists. In June, Alice and I will meet up with our daughter and 8-year old nephew in the UK for a two-week narrowboat cruise on the canals of northern England. For the rest of the summer I'll be working on my current neo-Beats book project. I've just submitted articles on Laurie Anderson and Tom Waits and need to strategize about how it all fits together (if it does).

Kate Grover: As is usually the case, my official summer plans are up in the air. But if I'm in Austin this summer, I'm looking forward to many sunny days floating around Barton Springs in my donut inner tube.

Leah Butterfield: This summer, I'm looking forward to heading to Barcelona to TA for a UT Austin study abroad course. My goals while abroad are to keep the undergrads out of trouble and engaged in their class, to make it two months in Europe without being pickpocketed, and to catch up on all the pleasure reading that I put off while studying for my oral exams. If all goes according to plan, you'll find me drinking cerveza on the beach surrounded by novels and stacks of months-old New Yorkers.

Bahar Tahamtani: This summer I look forward to reading without a highlighter, playing video games until my eyes glaze over, and bobbing in the pool with my family and friends.

Gaila Sims: I'll be working at the Bullock Museum this summer, helping with summer programming for kids and families. I'm most looking forward to the museum's Juneteenth celebration. Last year we made quilt squares with early twentieth century photographs of Juneteenth parades in Texas, and this year we will be creating our own prints based on the work of African American artist John Biggers. I really enjoy being able to share African American history and culture with the families who come visit the Bullock Museum, and it will be a nice break from writing my prospectus!

Ja'nell Ajani: I will work periodically over the summer with Six Square: Austin's Black Cultural District to curate an art exhibition and focus on special projects related to cultural preservation. This semester, I conducted research to produce a historic tour video for Six Square as a result of taking Dr. Janet Davis's Cultural History of the US Since 1865 class. It will be featured on the institution's website this summer.

Randy Lewis: This summer I'll be finishing my term as Interim Chair, though I have a few small trips planned. In late May, I am off to Detroit for a week-long workshop run by the Ex-Situ group, an experimental affect theory/cultural studies project. Our theme this year is "Structures of Anticipation" (ooo, I can't wait). A few weeks later I'll be going to Victoria BC and Seattle for a cool weather vacation with Monti. When I'm back, I'll spend some free time working on the 1955 Cree camper trailer that I bought--the interior feels like a set from Mad Men, but I want to install some retro formica and make some other improvements to my future writing studio. Later in the summer I'll be gearing up for a project about the world's largest post-apocalyptic festival--I'll be shooting a documentary in the Mojave desert for a week and editing it in the fall (I hope to have it ready by January 2020). Finally, I'm also going to be promoting the Part Time Genius album, which we recently released on iTunes, Spotify, Bandcamp, YouTube, and other platforms. In short, I'm looking forward to a happy and productive summer.

5/8/19 5/8/19

UT AMS PhD Candidate Josh Kopin Co-Edits Roundtable on Sound in Comics

This April, UT AMS PhD candidate Josh Kopin co-edited "Seeing Sounds/Hearing Pictures - a Roundtable on Sound & Comics," now live on The Middle Spaces. The roundtable features fifteen scholars exploring the diverse manifestations of sound in comics."Seeing Sounds/Hearing Pictures," which you can find here, builds on Kopin's PhD thesis research on 19th century comics. Kopin, who is a Swan Foundation Fellow, also delivered an illustrated lecture at the Library of Congress on March 31, 2019.

5/6/19 5/6/19

Dr. Nicole Guidotti-Hernández to Co-Edit "Latinx: The Future is Now" Series with UT Press

UT AMS Associate Professor Dr. Nicole Guidotti-Hernandez, along with Dr. Lorgia Garcia-Peña, Associate Professor of Latinx Studies at Harvard University, will co-edit a new series with University of Texas Press, Latinx: The Future is Now.According to UT Press, the new series "will focus on ways in which the racial, cultural, and social formations of historical Latinx communities can engage and enhance scholarship across geographies and nationalities" through "projects that consider the multiple queer and gender-fluid possibilities that are embodied in the “x”; projects that have a feminist critique of patriarchy at the center of their intellectual work; projects that deploy a relational approach to ethnic and national groups; and projects that address the overlapping dynamics of gender, race, sexual, and national identities."Forthcoming projects in the series will be listed on the UT Press Website as they are published.

4/22/19 4/22/19

Andrew Busch to Give Talk at Austin History Center, 4/25, 6:30 PM

Check out Andrew Busch (UT AMS PhD, 2011) give a talk on his 2017 book City in a Garden: Environmental Transformations and Racial Justice in Twentieth-Century Austin, Texas (UNC) this Thursday, April 25th, at 6:30 P.M. The talk will be held at the Austin History Center at 810 Guadalupe Street. Details can be found at the History Center website.Drawing from City in a Garden, Busch will consider Austin's historical development through the twentieth century, and ask audience members to consider the social ramifications of sustainable urban development. Austin’s story helps us to understand the limits of liberal public policies as they apply to racial discrimination and segregation. The talk should be of interest to city planners, environmentalists, and people interested in Austin’s history and future. There will be ample time for a community discussion about the book as well as about Austin’s contemporary development. Event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.

3/29/19 3/29/19

UT AMS Hosts Graduate Conference: Tell-Tale Traces: Living Memory in the United States

On Friday, April 5th, the UT-Austin American Studies Department will be hosting their biennial graduate student and emerging scholars' conference, entitled Tell-Tale Traces: Living Memory in the United States. The conference will be held in the Glickman Conference Center in Patton Hall. Student panels will run from 10 A.M. through 4:30 P.M., and followed by a keynote address by Dr. Sharon Holland, Townsend Ludington Professor of American Studies at UNC Chapel Hill, at 6 P.M.To see full schedule with all panels and presenters, please visit: https://tracesconference2019.wordpress.com/

3/18/19 3/18/19

UT AMS PhD Student Ja'nell N. Ajani Hosts SXSW EDU Panel on "Prisons as a Learning Space"

On Wednesday, March 6th, as part of SXSW EDU 2019, UT AMS PhD student Ja'nell N. Ajani hosted a panel of academics, artists, and educators entitled "Imagination & Ingenuity: Prison as a Learning Space." The panel explored "prisons as a learning space for imagination and ingenuity," and featured a screening of "Fishing," a short animated film by Dr. Michael Ralph (NYU, Department of Social and Cultural Analysis) "capturing the ingenuity of people who are incarcerated." In addition to Ajani, who is an Advisory Board Member for SXSW EDU, and Ralph, the panel featured Dr. Brandi Summers (VCU, Department of African American Studies) and Osborne Foundation mentor Moses "El Sun" White as discussants.Check out Ajani's post-panel interview with UT Austin's Kendall Slagle here!

3/13/19 3/13/19

Tomorrow and Friday (3/14 & 3/15): Black Studies @ 50 Conference at UT

The second biennial Black Studies at UT conference kicks off tomorrow, Thursday, March 14th, at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center. This year's conference, organized around the theme Black Studies @ 50: 1968/1969, explores the legacy of the first Black Studies programs, including the Afro-American Studies and Research Center established at UT in 1969. On-site registration begins at 2pm on Thursday. The opening keynote address, featuring award-winning author and MacArthur Fellow, Edwidge Danticat, begins at 6:30 pm. Please see the conference website for a full schedule of events.

3/8/19 3/8/19

UT AMS Introduces Students to the Fun of American Studies at Explore UT

On March 2nd, students, parents, teachers and community members from across the state came to campus for Explore UT, an annual event that invites Texans to experience the university and encourages elementary through high school students to pursue higher education. Despite the cold, rainy weather, members of the UT AMS community had a blast introducing the next generation to the exciting world of American Studies.Thank you to all the organizers and volunteers who made this such a successful (and fun!) event.

3/6/19 3/6/19

This Friday (3/8): UT AMS Faculty to Present at Humanities Research Symposium

The Humanities Research Award grants three years of funding to faculty to support the completion of a research project in the Humanities. Every two years, the College of Liberal Arts sponsors an all-day event where faculty recipients present their scholarship to the University community. This Friday, March 8th, three UT AMS faculty members, Dr. Shirley Thompson, Dr. Lauren Gutterman, and Dr. Janet Davis will present their recent work. We can't wait to hear more about these exciting projects!Please see the event page for speaker times and a full schedule of events.

3/4/19 3/4/19

New Episode of Dr. Lauren Gutterman's "Sexing History" Podcast: "Sherri"

The Sexing History podcast, co-written and co-hosted by UT AMS Assistant Professor Dr. Lauren Gutterman, as well as Dr. Gillian Frank, has a new episode: "Sherri." Dr. Gutterman and Dr. Frank tell the story of Sherri Chessen whose highly publicized 1962 abortion helped to shift Americans'attitudes toward abortion. You can listen to the episode here.In August of 1962, Sherri boarded a flight to Sweden in order to getan abortion after she was unable to obtain one in the United States. Sherri had accidentally taken medicine containing thalidomide, a drug that caused children to be born with internal injuries and shortened limbs. Thalidomide also caused women to miscarry, deliver stillborn babies, or have children who died during their infancy. Her decision to terminate this risky pregnancy and her journey abroad attracted international attention fromjournalists, politicians, and religious leaders. Sherri's ordeal made public what countless American women experienced when they sought to terminate their pregnancies. Her widely shared story changed the way many Americans thought about abortion laws and even about abortion itself.