We asked our first year Assistant Instructors how their first month of teaching has gone so far. Check out Taylor Johnson Karahan’s response!
Taylor Johnson Karahan (they/she) is currently a PhD candidate in American Studies. We asked them to share their course title, and to describe their course to us and how it embodies American Studies. Additionally we asked how their first month of teaching is going so far and this is what they had to say!
Course name: Unburied: Ancestral Remains
About: This course is about the ways that collections of ancestral remains and burial grounds, both acknowledged and unacknowledged, demonstrate how the past continuously ruptures the present. Through the lens of the dead, we interrogate how history produces narratives and silences about the people who lived and died before us and how they figure into the stories we tell about ourselves.
Short answer: The first month of teaching has been both exhilarating and exhausting! I have found myself spending twenty hours preparing for class each week, mostly because I enjoy it so much and like drawing connections between different sources and ideas. I have also found that leading students in discussion about the course materials takes a lot energy! I've instituted a regular post-class rest and recovery time. My course embodies AMS at UT because we are using a distinct frame of reference that we encounter in our everyday lives - burials, mourning, memory - in order to interpret the significance given to "our" history. Using unburied ancestral remains, we are thinking about the construction of national narratives about slavery, settler-colonialism, Indian boarding schools, Jim Crow, convict leasing, citizenship, and ideas of national belonging. We are learning about the origins and development of race science, disciplines like anthropology and medical anatomy, and national standards for how we collectively deal with death. In this quintessential American Studies course, students are seeing connections between systems of domination, understanding how power influences the narratives that are told and taught, and recognizing themselves and their ancestors as agents of history.
New Mural by artist Luis Angulo, aka ULOANG
As a small note of thanks for creating an amazing new mural in our department, we want to celebrate the talented artist who took on this challenging commission: Luis Angulo, who is known as ULOANG. He was born in Caracas, Venezuela, and has been an Austin resident for thirteen years. He told us a little bit about his creative goals: “Murals are a fantastic way to create art that can be enjoyed by anyone and everyone. It doesn't have to hang in a gallery, you don't have to go to an art opening to enjoy it. It is out there for all to see.” More about the artist HERE, also be sure to follow him on Instagram for some more dope art!
Women and the Prison System
Madison was a student in AMS311s Prison Art, Literature, and Protest this summer! This research comes from her final project.
Part 1: An Outside Look at Women and the Prison System
Carceral feminism is the idea that “increasing policing, prosecution, and imprisonment” is the solution to reducing violence against women. Some examples of the implementation of carceral feminism into US law include the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity and Reconciliation Act. VAWA was a federal law signed by Bill Clinton in 1994, which attempted to reduce domestic violence by increasing police responsiveness to domestic violence calls and increasing sentencing for abusers. However, not long after, Clinton passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity and Reconciliation Act in 1996, which reformed VAWA. This reform placed a five-year limit on welfare, required recipients to work after two years, and placed a lifetime ban on welfare for anyone who was convicted of a drug felony, violated probation, or violated parole (whether the convictions were valid). As a result, many, especially women of color, were ineligible for welfare, and had no means of escaping their abusive relationships, making VAWA otherwise useless and ineffective at fulfilling its intended purpose. (Law 2014)
Aside from the reform, there are many other issues with carceral feminism. To begin with, it fails to acknowledge that police are often instigators of violence. An example of this is the case of Cherie Williams. She was a 35-year-old African American woman who attempted to call the cops to report domestic violence. However, instead of responding to the call and arresting the abuser, the officers arrested and committed violence against her, even threatening to harm her in the future. In addition, carceral feminism fails to acknowledge the ineffectiveness of the criminal justice system. Many victims who take their cases to court are often dismissed, invalidated, or blamed. The criminal justice system is controlled by men, and thus controlled by misogyny and ignorance of the needs and struggles of women. Additionally, carceral feminism fails to take into account the role of race, gender identity, immigration status, and social and economic inequities. As stated by Law, “Women marginalized by their identities, such as queers, immigrants, women of color, trans women, or even women who are perceived as loud or aggressive, often do not fit preconceived notions of abuse victims and are thus arrested.” (Law 2014)
Moreover, even if officers respond to the calls properly, incarceration rates of abusers are very low, with only 5 out of 1000 reported cases leading to incarceration. (Fulcher-Melendy 2021) Despite there being a great push to persuade women to report rapes to the police, the majority of rapes and sexual assaults go unreported because contrary to the beliefs proposed by carceral feminism, most victims do not want the incarceration of their assailant; they just want the violence to end.
For those in favor of carceral feminism, some questions to ask are: “Is incarceration justice for a sexual assaulter/domestic abuser/rapist? Do they learn, reflect, or feel guilty for what they’ve done? Does it provide closure for the victim? Does it help the victim heal?” As stated frankly by Fulcher-Melendy, “Prisons themselves are incapable of changing rapists.” (2011, pp. 11) In fact, rather than encouraging assailants to reflect on their violent actions, and seek to reform themselves, “male sex roles, violence, and power relations which lead to rape in the first place, are strongly reinforced within prison.” (Fulcher-Melendy, 2011, pp.11) In other words, carceral feminism is ineffective. And even worse, it diverts attention and resources away from real solutions. This includes programs that assist survivors in escaping abusive relationships by providing shelter, public housing, and welfare, community interventions, and long-term organizing. (Law 2014) These alternative solutions will be discussed later in Part 3 of this paper.
Part 2: An Inside Look of Women and the Prison System
Carceral feminism fails to effectively protect and support victims of domestic violence, and as a consequence, many women have been incarcerated for acts that were a means for their, and often their children’s, protection and survival. An example is the case of Marissa Alexander, a mother in Florida, who was routinely abused by her husband. During one incident, she fired a warning shot to protect herself from her husband. Instead of the police arresting the husband on accounts of domestic abuse, or providing Alexander with the resources she needed to leave her husband and find a safe place, she was arrested and prosecuted for aggravated assault. Alexander is not the only victim “forced to endure additional assault by the legal system.” In 2013, 67% of women sent to prison in the state of New York for murder were abused by that person; 93% in California. And in the past decades, the number of incarcerated women has continued to increase. (Law 2014)
Both within the legal system and inside the prison themselves, women are subject to a double standard. As stated by Davis, “There has always been a tendency to regard those women who have been publicly punished by the state for their misbehaviors as significantly more aberrant and far more threatening to society than their numerous male counterparts.” (Davis, 2011, pp. 66) As a result, women often receive longer sentences, with the justification that while men are there for punishment, women are there to be “reformed and retrained, a process that…required time.” (Davis, 2011, pp. 72) Additionally, longer sentences for women were supported by the belief that “genetically inferior” women needed to be “removed from society for as many of their childbearing years as possible.” In addition to longer sentences, while men are treated as criminals, women are treated as insane. As a result, a significantly greater proportion of women are sent to psychiatric institutions and prescribed psychiatric drugs.
Despite this view that incarcerated women are more threatening, the struggles of incarcerated women are often overlooked, as they only constitute a minor proportion of the incarcerated population. WIthin the prison itself, there are no arrangements made to accommodate sentenced women, their needs often neglected. In Davis’ book, Are Prisons Obsolete?, she cited an excerpt from Shakur’s autobiography that accurately describes the treatment of incarcerated women:
“‘...confined in a men’s prison, under twenty-four surveillance of her most intimate functions, without intellectual sustenance, adequate medical attention, and exercise, and without the company of other women…” (2011, pp.62)
Furthermore, some would think that incarceration meant safety for these women. Salvation from the abuse and violence they experienced in their day to day lives from their partners. On the contrary, those who “escape” domestic violence by incarceration, only become greater victims to state violence. Prisoners’ daily lives consist of routine strip searches and “internal examination of body cavities”. Pat-frisk or room searches where they are groped or touched inappropriately. Sexual violence, rape, verbal degradation, and harassment. Those with authority abuse their power and try to lure female prisoners to engage in sex by offering or denying goods. Those who refuse or attempt to oppose authority are threatened with force, violence, and sometimes even solitary confinement, until they concede. As described by the 1996 Human Rights Watch report, “...prison is a space in which the threat of sexualized violence that looms in the larger society is effectively sanctioned as a routine aspect of the landscape of punishment behind prison walls.” (Davis, 2011, pp.78) Similarly, in LeFlouria’s book Chained in Silence, she describes the prison environment as “...incessantly tormented by physical violence and rape” with “sexual predators that sometimes invaded the women’s quarters.” (2015, pp. 38-39)
Despite the horrid treatment and violation of women’s bodies and rights, those guilty of committing these actions rarely show remorse. Some justified their actions by stating that “women prisoners had rare opportunities for ‘male contact’” and therefore “welcomed” these actions. Others believed they could continue because they would not be held accountable or face any consequences. And some were not even aware of the wrong in their actions until a group of women reenacted the strip search that is so commonly performed on women in prisons. Many of the prison guards in the audience denied what they saw before them, in shock that that was how their actions were perceived. That’s when the reality hit that “without the uniform, without the power of the state [the strip search] would be sexual assault.” (Davis, 2011, pp. 83)
The mistreatment of women is magnified for women of color, especially Black women. In the past, Black women were often segregated from White women, disproportionately sentenced to men’s prisons, and received forms of punishment that overlooked their gender. In addition to this, they are deprived of proper medical treatment and overall care for their well being. A great illustration of this occurrence is described in Shakur’s autobiography. In it, she describes how her doctor refused to confirm her pregnancy, instead advocating that she had an “intestinal disorder”. Later, when she was having complications with her pregnancy, he insisted she receive an abortion saying “it will be better for you and for everyone else.’” (Shakur, 2016, pp. 126) This mistreatment wasn’t limited to the prison doctor, but included everyone in the prison system. Many attempted to prevent Dr. Garrett, a proper doctor who cared for Shakur’s well-being, from treating her. In some other incidents, she was left “anemic and malnourished” and “left in a room for three days with a woman who turned out later to have active tuberculosis.” (Shakur, 2016, pp. 141-142)
Not only were Black women, like Shakur, deprived of proper medical treatment, but they were also victims of racial violence. They were disproportionately subject to be kept in solitary confinement and psych wards. If they refused orders, they were jumped and beaten. This racial violence was evident in these depictions made by Shakur, describing her experience during pregnancy:
“...a million police cars buzzing around the vehicle in which I, a woman in labor, was riding.”
“They put me in an ambulance, chained me to a stretcher, and brought me back to the Women’s House of Detention at Rikers Island.” pg 144
“My mental stability was also threatened by the round-the-clock guards who sat outside my hospital room with shotguns trained at my head.” pg 141
(2015, pp.141-144)
The worst and most prominent form of this violence was sexual violence. The sexual violence that was commonly experienced by female prisoners was heightened for women of color, as preexisting images of hypersexuality and promiscuity in these women “justified” many of the sexual assaults committed against them. (Davis, 2011, pp. 80) Much of the sentiment that existed during slavery carried over to the prison system, with many guards believeing that they “owned” the right of sexual access to Black women. As a result, many were exempt from legal punishment for raping Black women prisoners. (LeFlouria, 2015, pp. 40-41)
Part 3: Consequences and Alternative Solutions
One of the largest consequences of the prison system is the toll it takes on women’s physical, mental, and emotional health, with the largest contributing factor being the sexual violence they experienced daily. During their time in the prison, and even when they leave, many women experience anxiety, fear, and depression. Some experience insomnia or hypersomnia, PTSD, social withdrawal, low self-esteem, and feelings of guilt and worthlessness. Many develop sexual dysfunction or avoid sexual intercourse due to loss of sexual satisfaction. This sometimes even manifested into avoiding marriage or intimacy with another person all together. (LeFlouria, 2015, pp. 42-43)
As discussed in Part 1, carceral feminism is essentially ineffective at protecting women from sexual violence, or connecting them to the resources needed to support their escape from it. So, what can be done instead of relying on carceral feminism and reporting abusers to the criminal justice system?
One alternative largely advocated by the writers in the Letter to the Anti-Rape Movement is the confrontation of the assailant. What this entails is holding the assailant accountable for their actions and making them responsible for making a change. This is especially important because in the majority of rape and sexual assault cases, victims often blame themselves for what happened. This may have been because of manipulation from the assailant or ideas upheld in society. Thus, it is important that they hold the assailant responsible for their actions and not themselves. In addition, this may be more effective than reporting the assailant. As stated in the letter, by using the criminal justice system, a woman takes on a passive role, where decisions are made for her. By confronting her assailant, she has the power and autonomy to receive the closure and healing she needs. (Fulcher-Melendy, 2021, pp. 12)
This idea of confronting the assailant is greatly demonstrated by “Goldflower’s Story”. This story speaks about a woman who was being routinely abused by her husband and father-in-law. Seeking help, she sought out the women’s association in her local village. She shared her sufferings with the women, and united they sought out her abusers. They tied them up and beat them up until they promised to reform themselves. Some did choose reform, others did not. However, those who chose to continue to abuse these women, were soon confronted again by the women’s association. (Sloan, 2005)
Although the above example is a bit extreme, it promotes the idea that when women build a reliable community, they can come together and challenge the existence of sexual violence. A modern example of this community is evident in the creation of the website Creative Interventions. Creative Interventions is a website that was designed by an anti-violence advocate, Mimi Kim, to offer tools and resources to the public to help address sexual violence. A notable feature of the website is the collection of peoples’s stories and experiences with sexual violence that fosters a community so others know they are not alone.
Closing Remarks
In summation, carceral feminism has many shortcomings that fail to provide women the support and protection they need from domestic violence. A consequence of this failure is the incarceration of many women who were simply trying to escape this violence. As a result, they then become trapped in the prison system, where domestic violence is replaced by state violence. The effect of both forms of violence take a large toll on women’s physical, mental, and emotional health. There are many alternative solutions to dealing with sexual violence and recovering from its effects. This includes confronting the assailant, rather than reporting them, and developing and relying on a community of women to both confront the problem and heal from it.
Sources:
Davis, A. Y. (2011). How Gender Structure the Prison System. Are prisons obsolete? (pp. 60-83) Seven Stories Press.
Davis, A., & Shakur, A. (2016). Assata: An autobiography. Zed Books.
Fulcher-Melendy, D., & Fulcher-Melendy, D. (2021, December 13). Open Letter to the Anti-Rape Movement. The Feminist Poetry Movement. Retrieved June 17, 2022, from https://sites.williams.edu/engl113-f18/fulcher-melendy/an-open-letter-to-the-anti-rape-movement/
Kim, M. (n.d.). Creative interventions. creative interventions. Retrieved June 17, 2022, from https://www.creative-interventions.org/
Law, V., Law, V., Oduor, J.-B., Nelson, S., Watt, F., Gill, T., Chomsky, N., Marcetic, B., Elrod, A., Shaw, D., Finn, D., Pagliarini, A., Sirota, D., Marx, P., Becker, J., Stetler, H., Jamie Allinson Asli Bali Allison McManus, Allinson, J., Bali, A., … Featherstone, L. (n.d.). Against Carceral Feminism. Jacobin. Retrieved June 17, 2022, from https://jacobin.com/2014/10/against-carceral-feminism/
Sloan, S. (2005, March 1). Socialist Revolution and Women's Liberation. Liberation News. Retrieved June 17, 2022, from https://www.liberationnews.org/05-03-01-socialist-revolution-womens-lib-html/
Prison Murals and Transgender Activism
Elizabeth Nguyen was a student in AMS311s
My painting takes place in a prison that incorporates the Arts-in-Corrections program, and the specific scene is the mural photography center. This is depicted by the 2 murals, a table with paint equipment, a camera, and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) reference. The painting I produced relates to transgender activism and the art of the incarcerated. I created a painting because I was interested in applying my own interpretation of what a prison mural could look like. This form of art resonates with me because painting offers me an escape from reality which can be a helpful coping mechanism at times. Paintings can also embody a variety of different meanings which allows individuals to relate to the piece in their own personal way. In addition, viewing a painting can cause us to forget for a moment the background of the painter and appreciate their art. Viewing a painting or painting may provide the feeling of escape for the incarcerated by allowing them to feel and imagine the mural’s image as their current environment for some time.
In some prisons, the incarcerated individuals have the opportunity to create art, like painting wall murals. These murals are used as a photography backdrop for group and individual photos. The images cost approximately $2.00-$3.00 each. In addition, the prison photographer position is rotated amongst the incarcerated (Fleetwood 492). Some prison murals reference iconic landmarks however, the majority of the murals do not specify a location because the focus is on painting a place that has a light, is ungoverned, and has a few boundaries. It is also common to not see symbols that represent human life or a built environment. However, if these symbols are present, it’s typically depicted as a lighthouse or farmhouse. A reason for the vague mural paintings is to increase the difficulty of hiding gang signs (496-497). I incorporated a lighthouse in my painting to represent the built environment, a sunset to symbolize light, and a beach landscape to reflect a place with few borders.
A partnership between the CDCR and the California Arts Council led to the creation of the Arts-in-Corrections program which focuses on introducing the incarcerated to different forms of art such as painting, dancing, and music to inspire change and creativity and prevent recidivism. This program reduced institutional violence and improved self-discipline in the San Quentin State Prison (Linn). The Trans People Exist in the Future is a composition of selected visual images and poems from the Trans Day of Resilience art project (“Trans People Exist in the Future” 1). Butterflies were a common theme in 2 of the images (8, 24). A butterfly represents the transformation of a transgender individual. A caterpillar transitions into a butterfly and the individual transitions into a gender identity that differs from their sex at birth. In my painting, butterflies are escaping from an open mason jar which reflects an individual embracing their desired gender identity with the world.
There are prisons that are not in solidarity with and do not respect an incarcerated individual’s LGBTQ+ identity. This can cause the individual to live in a violent and mistreated living environment which can create a “painful void”(O’Donnell). There has also been an overwhelmingly large number of incarcerated transgender women being transferred into men's prisons or solitary confinement. Although the United Nations (UN) considers solitary confinement for more than 15 consecutive days as torture, many transgender individuals stay past this standard. These individuals even those without nonviolent offenses are often housed in solitary confinement for their own “protection”. In solitary confinement, they are deprived of accessing rehab, early release programs, warm living conditions, educational opportunities, and more (Ophelian). Therefore, it is important for incarcerated transgender individuals to understand that they are not alone in fighting for humane treatment and visibility. This can be achieved by conversing with the incarcerated individuals about shared experiences and offering support (O’Donnell). This act of showing support for the incarcerated, especially the transgender individuals, is present in the mural depicting Miss Major, with a backdrop of the transgender, and an inspiring quote. Miss Major is a trans woman activist and has been advocating for transgender women of color rights for more than 40 years. She is viewed as a mother, father, and grandparent by many and has been described as a safety net along with being a sage individual. She served as the first executive director of the Transgender Gender-Variant & Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP) which offers legal services for formerly or currently incarcerated transgender individuals (Ophelian). Miss Major was also incarcerated for four years. When Miss Major was asked about the advice she would share with the transgender individuals, she responded, “You have to keep the faith and keep going...” (Diavolo). The quote emphasizes perseverance and having it be said by a person who was formerly incarcerated and who still remains committed to helping the incarcerated transgender individuals makes the connection between her and the incarcerated more meaningful. Painting this specific mural was my way of conversing with and expressing my faith in the incarcerated transgender individuals.
Works Cited
Diavolo, Lucy. “Miss Major Griffin-Gracy Is Still Here and Wants Young Activists to
“Keep on Fighting”.” Teen Vogue, Condé Nast, 17 Jun. 2020, https://www.teenvogue.com/story/miss-major-griffin-gracy-still-here-young-activists-keep-fighting. Accessed 4 July 2022.
Fleetwood, Nicole R. “Posing in Prison: Family Photographs, Emotional Labor, and Carceral Intimacy.” Public Culture, vol 27, no. 3 (77), 1 Sept. 2015, pp. 487–511. https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-2896195. Accessed 4 July 2022.
Linn, Sarah. “Arts-in-Corrections: California's Creative Response to a Broken Prison System.” KCET, Public Media Group of Southern California, 12 Aug. 2016, https://www.kcet.org/shows/artbound/arts-in-corrections-californias-creative-response-to-a-broke n-prison-system. Accessed 4 July 2022.
Major! Directed by Annalise Ophelian, performance by Miss Major Griffin Gracy, Floating Ophelia Productions, 2015. Accessed 4 July 2022.
O’Donnell, Kimberley. “The radical importance of writing letters to trans people in prison.” DAZED, 12 Feb. 2019, https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/43209/1/trans-lgbtq-people-prison-writing-lette rs-volunteer-activism. Accessed 4 July 2022.
“Trans People Exist In The Future.” Trans Day of Resilience, Forward Together, Nov. 2020, tdor.co/art/trans-people-exist-in-the-future-zine. Accessed 4 July 2022.
Please join us in celebrating the wonderful Coyote Shook's most recent publications!
Shook’s publications are as follows—
The Gospel According to Sister Wendy with Moon City Review (hard copy only) & 5 Variations on Submissions to the Texas Right to Life Heartbeat Act Anonymous Tip Form with The Hunger Mountain Review.
Whitney S. May’s newest publication in Ampersand: An American Studies Journal
Check out Whitney S. May's newest publication in Ampersand: An American Studies Journal "Bearing the Palls of Shopping Malls: Necropsying (Dead) Mall Nostalgia in Netflix's Fear Street Trilogy! Just in time for the start of SPOOKY SEASON. You can read it here: Bearing the Palls of Shopping Malls
Social Media team update! Welcome Amanda Lee Tovar
Hi! I am Amanda, but most people call me Mandee—which I prefer! I am officially a third year in the PhD program in American Studies.
I’m really excited to be taking on the role of social media for the AMS Program this year. I like to think of myself as the “ultimate consumer of content” since I am constantly tapped in to social. Hopefully in all of that I can do this role justice and provide great content to represent, promote and celebrate our program, but more importantly YOU!!!
To that I definitely need your help! Please feel free to send me ANY and ALL updates about your accomplishments, your life within and outside of AMS, and of course about the program. I would also like to know about our students, and upcoming events. I really want to get them featured here and distributed in an engaging way. I welcome any and all content leads that can help our program thrive.
That’s all for now! It’s now time for me to paint my office! ❤️✨
“Deeply Rooted in the Nation’s History and Tradition”:Nativism, Sexism, and Criminalization in 19th and 21st Century America
Jessica Suess is a undergraduate majoring in American Studies and History with a minor in Women and Gender Studies. She is particularly interested in feminist movements and the experiences of working class women in the United States. This paper was written for AMS 311S: Prison Art, Literature, and Protest.
“Guided by the history and tradition that map the essential components of the Nation’s concept of ordered liberty, the Court finds the Fourteenth Amendment clearly does not protect the right to an abortion.… By the time the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, three-quarters of the States had made abortion a crime at any stage of pregnancy.” - Samuel Alito, Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health
In Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health, a majority consisting solely of the Supreme Court’s conservative justices overturned Roe v Wade and thereby eliminated the federal guarantee of the right to control one’s reproduction, relegating that decision to each state individually. Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, grounds his reasoning in originalism, the idea that the deciding factor in judicial thinking should be the framers’ state of mind, and specifically in the understanding of a woman’s rights possessed by the ratifiers of the 14th Amendment in 1868. Because those mid-nineteenth century men and their predecessors did not conceive of reproductive rights as fundamental, Alito concludes that the right to terminate a pregnancy is not “deeply rooted in the nation’s history and traditions”, a phrase which appears in various forms throughout the document. He recognizes but finds no legal significance in the motivations behind the nineteenth century anti-abortion laws the decision hinges on. However, the nativist and sexist animus behind the advocacy for those laws is historically significant, as these ideas are, in fact, “deeply rooted” and their iterations continue to permeate American society over 150 years later, finding expression in the modern carceral institutions that – with the protection of Roe removed – more pregnant Americans will find themselves targeted by.
The state laws prohibiting abortion in existence in 1868 were motivated by a nativist desire to limit the freedom of Anglo-Saxon mothers to control their pregnancy and therefore prevent a dilution of Anglo-Saxon demographic power by immigrants, largely Irish Catholic, who were assumed to possess a criminal nature and were therefore unsuitable for American public life. Alito briefly acknowledges these motivations in Dobbs vs Jackson Women’s Health, however he minimizes them as merely “the fear that Catholic immigrants were having more babies than Protestants” and asserts that the basis of that understanding is confined to a single source[1]. In their paper, “Abortion, Race, and Gender in Nineteenth-Century America”, Nicola Biesel and Tamara Kay evaluated a multitude of sources, finding that “physicians made overt appeals to the racial interests of Anglo-Saxons when they argued that abortion should be prohibited to ensure Anglo-Saxon political control and preserve Anglo-Saxon civilization” and therefore that objection to abortion stemmed not only from nineteenth century understandings of a woman’s role in society, but from nativist ideas of who should be considered American[2].
Figure 1: Abortion Laws per US State by Year Adopted, data from Appendix A of Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health (territories in orange)
Of the laws cited by the majority opinion and in place in 1868, 79% were passed after 1845, a period corresponding to increased immigration and growing nativist sentiment[3]. Prior to 1845, 10,000 to 100,000 people immigrated to the U.S. annually, but 2.9 million arrived between 1845 and 1854[4]. In 1850, foreign-born individuals comprised 11.48% of the white population which increased to 15.37% ten years later[5]. Nativist sentiment, measured by interest in associated political organizations, increased in the same period. The Order of United Americans (OUA) which would become the Know Nothings – the first political party to include immigration concerns as a major part of their platform[6] -- boasted 2000 members at the end of 1846, but up to 30,000 nationally by 1851 and 30,000 in the state of New York alone by 1855[7].
Thomas Whitney – a founding member of OUA and “its most serious theorist and prolific propagandist”[8] – wrote in 1856 that people “are entitled to just such privileges, social and political, as they are capable of employing and enjoying rationally”[9]. Immigrants, particularly Irish Catholics, were characterized as lazy, dishonest, drunk, and criminal, and therefore unfit citizens[10]. The nativists feared that the “foreign” values and presumed criminal nature of immigrants would lead to the deterioration of American society[11]. The criminalization of immigrants had a predictable effect on their rates of incarceration. In 1850, immigrants constituted 9.7% of the total (including non-white) population, but 35.8% of prisoners which, in 1860, increased to 13.2% of the total population and 46.9% of prisoners[12]. The vote, however, was of primary concern as Anglo-Saxon political power in the northern states depended on electoral success[13]. Accordingly, the Know Nothings favored a waiting period of 21 years between naturalization and suffrage[14].
Figure 2 Caricatures of Irish and German Immigrants steal a ballot box, 1850s. "Nativism and the Know-Nothing Party: American Art in Context," in Smarthistory, February 26, 2021, accessed July 4, 2022
Though the outbreak of the Civil War temporarily pushed immigration concerns to the background, nativist sentiment did not disappear, and is in fact alive and well in the 21st century United States in the form of the “great replacement” theory. Like the nativism espoused by Whitney and the Know Nothings, the “great replacement” theory “insists that entire categories of human beings can or should be excluded from democratic rights and protections” and holds that the conservative, white vote is in danger of being overwhelmed -- in the words of Fox News host Tucker Carlson -- by “more obedient voters from the Third World” welcomed by Democrats to dilute Republican electoral power[15]. A recent Southern Poverty Law Center poll found that almost 70% of surveyed Republicans agreed to at least some extent with white nativist ideas that “that demographic changes in the United States are deliberately driven by liberal and progressive politicians attempting to gain political power by ‘replacing more conservative white voters’”[16].
In this period of heightened concern at the presence of immigrants and the threat they supposedly present to American society, the focus has shifted away from Europe and toward Central and South America and “the perception of Latinos as inherently foreign to the very image and idea of ‘being an American’’ has now become deeply ingrained”[17]. Studies of immigrant representation in news media find that “the most dominant negative characterizations… focus on their perceived criminal tendencies”[18]. Accordingly, rates of incarceration for immigrants are increasing – an average daily population of 34,000 in 2016 rose to 42,000 two years later[19] -- and just like foreign-born Americans in the nineteenth century, Hispanic citizens are imprisoned at rates at odds with their share of the population: 16% of the U.S. population in 2010, but 19% of prisoners[20].
Troublingly, recent whistleblower allegations assert that migrant women held in an I.C.E. detention in Georgia have been sterilized without their informed consent[21]. As of November 19, 2020, 57 women have reported either undergoing unnecessary surgery at the center or being pressured to, and that is likely an undercount due to the deportation of witnesses and survivors and other factors[22]. Forced sterilization of minorities, the poor and those with intellectual disabilities has a long and shameful history in the United States[23]. It reflects the presumption that the state has the right to control its demographic makeup by eliminating the reproductive capacity of potential parents considered to be “unfit”. Though the technology did not exist at the time – the first female surgical sterilization was performed in 1880[24] – it is an intervention mid-nineteenth century nativists would have lauded.
In 1868 -- when Alito would like to source our understanding of reproductive rights -- the role of a woman was understood to be that of a wife and mother. He acknowledges that, in addition to concerns regarding the relative fertility of Catholic immigrants, the motivation behind the mid-nineteenth century anti-abortion laws included fears that “the availability of abortion was leading White Protestant women to ‘shir[k their] maternal duties’”[25]. The physicians advocating for these laws “argued that it was the obligation of Anglo-Saxon women to reproduce the race and thus the nation” and opposed both abortion and contraception on the grounds that control of one’s reproduction contravened a woman’s purpose[26]. Alito notes that when nineteenth century legislatures prohibited abortion, the right to which allows a woman to participate fully in the public sphere, no one objected that “the laws… violated a fundamental right”[27]. However, women were not understood to have a right to equal participation in society. The only suitable public roles for a woman were those “deemed extensions of their maternal and moral roles within the home”[28].
The idea that a woman subverts her natural obligation by terminating her pregnancy is not a relic of the nineteenth century. Though most anti-choice organizations maintain disciplined messaging and avoid hostility toward the person in possession of a uterus, even a cursory survey of the popular Reddit forum’s “pro-life” section reveals plentiful examples of an abortion seeker being derided as selfish for their choice[29]. As Noam Shpancer notes in his essay “Women and Selfishness”: “the association between femaleness and nurturing, caring and consideration permeates our culture”[30]. A woman who prioritizes her own needs or desires rather than the potential life promised by an embryo is therefore violating cultural expectations of self-sacrificing femininity.
Lynn Paltrow and Jeanne Flavin’s examination of cases “in which a woman’s pregnancy was a necessary factor leading to attempted and actual deprivations of [their] liberty” demonstrates that those expectations already contribute to the criminalization of expectant parents[31]. Most of those cases involved an accusation of drug use and, crucially, in fully 64% there was no adverse outcome to the pregnancy[32]. In one example, a woman who sought help for her drug use during her pregnancy was confined to a psychiatric hospital against her will, where she received no prenatal care, and once released was surveilled by the state for the remainder of her pregnancy, despite a doctor’s testimony that her drug use did not endanger the fetus[33]. She suffered confinement and then state supervision for months, losing her job as a result, because as a drug-user she did not meet the cultural expectations of motherhood. This study examined 413 such cases between 1973 and 2005, but National Advocates for Pregnant Women has identified 1,331 additional cases from 2006 to 2020 – after the introduction of fetal personhood bills in many states[34].
Unsurprisingly, most of the women represented in Paltrow and Flavin’s study (52%) were Black. In the U.S., “race has always played a central role in constructing perceptions of criminality”[35]. Like nativism and the primacy of maternity in cultural conceptions of a woman’s role, racialized criminalization of Black citizens is “deeply rooted” in our history. Though Black Codes, which proscribed such malicious acts as vagrancy – provided the perpetrator was Black – were ostensibly eliminated by the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment two years later, similar laws remained on the books for decades[36]. The contemporary mass incarceration crisis, which disproportionately deprives Black Americans of their liberty, is but “one historical moment within a much longer and larger antiblack punitive tradition”[37].
Anti-Black racism was not a significant factor in mid-nineteenth century nativism. During the antebellum heyday of the Know Nothing party, most Black Americans were cruelly enslaved and possessed no rights at all nor any conceivable route to displace white Anglo-Saxon political power in the north. The white supremacist ideas that justified the institution of chattel slavery in the United States and then the glorification of the confederacy are however a feature of that nativism’s modern iteration[38]. The “great replacement” narrative is believed to be a motivation behind the murder of ten people, most of them Black, at the Tops Supermarket in Buffalo, New York in May. Nativist ideas fill the document allegedly posted online by the shooter[39]. A nineteenth century fear of Catholic fertility has now morphed into a white supremacist nativism which has already incited terrible violence.
These traditions – sexist ideas of a woman’s role in society as well as nativism and the white supremacy entangled within it – are “deeply rooted” in our nation’s history. Alito and the five concurring justices find no legal significance in the influence these insidious ideologies had on the passage of anti-abortion laws in the mid-nineteenth century. However, those ideas are still in operation today. Now that Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health has opened the cell door to the criminalization of people seeking to terminate their pregnancy, the burden of real or potential loss of liberty will fall disproportionately on non-white Americans. For an increasing number of women prosecuted for being pregnant but failing to live up to society’s expectation of motherhood, it already has.
BBC News. “ICE Whistleblower: Nurse Alleges ‘Hysterectomies on Immigrant Women in US,’” September 15, 2020, sec. US & Canada. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54160638.
Bauder, David. “What Is ‘Great Replacement Theory’ and How Does It Fuel Racist Violence?” PBS NewsHour, May 16, 2022. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-is-great-replacement-theory-and-how-does-it-fuel-racist-violence.
Beisel, Nicola, and Tamara Kay. “Abortion, Race, and Gender in Nineteenth-Century America.” American Sociological Review 69, no. 4 (2004): 498–518.
Boissoneault, Lorraine. “How the 19th-Century Know Nothing Party Reshaped American Politics.” Smithsonian Magazine. January 26, 2017. Accessed June 26, 2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/immigrants-conspiracies-and-secret-society-launched-american-nativism-180961915/.
Brown, Hana E., Jennifer A. Jones, and Andrea Becker. “The Racialization of Latino Immigrants in New Destinations: Criminality, Ascription, and Countermobilization.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 4, no. 5 (2018): 118–40. https://doi.org/10.7758/rsf.2018.4.5.06.
Clark, Simon. “How White Supremacy Returned to Mainstream Politics.” Center for American Progress. Accessed July 8, 2022. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/white-supremacy-returned-mainstream-politics/.
Davis, Angela. Are Prisons Obsolete. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003.
Davis, Angela. Women, Race and Class. New York: Random House Inc, 1981
Epps, Garrett. “The Antebellum Political Background of the Fourteenth Amendment.” Law and Contemporary Problems 67, no. 3 (2004): 175–211.
Evans, Brenna. “The Long Scalpel of the Law: How United States Prisons Continue to Practice Eugenics Through Forced Sterilization.” Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality (blog), June 7, 2021. https://lawandinequality.org/2021/06/07/the-long-scalpel-of-the-law-how-united-states-prisons-continue-to-practice-eugenics-through-forced-sterilization/.
Frink, Sandra. “Women, the Family, and the Fate of the Nation in American Anti-Catholic Narratives, 1830-1860.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 18, no. 2 (2009): 237–64.
Hernández, César Cuauhtémoc García. “Abolish Immigration Prisons.” The New York Times, December 2, 2019, sec. Opinion. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/02/opinion/immigration-detention-prison.html.
Hinton, Elizabeth, and DeAnza Cook. “The Mass Criminalization of Black Americans: A Historical Overview.” Annual Review of Criminology 4, no. 1 (January 13, 2021): 261–86. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-criminol-060520-033306.
Kavattur, Purvaja. “Arrests and Prosecutions of Pregnant Women, 1973-2020 - New York.” National Advocates for Pregnant Women, September 18, 2021. https://www.nationaladvocatesforpregnantwomen.org/arrests-and-prosecutions-of-pregnant-women-1973-2020/.
Lefouria, Tabitha. Chained in Silence. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015.
Levine, Bruce. “Conservatism, Nativism, and Slavery: Thomas R. Whitney and the Origins of the Know-Nothing Party.” The Journal of American History 88, no. 2 (2001): 455–88. https://doi.org/10.2307/2675102.
Oboler, Suzanne. “‘Viviendo En El Olvido’: Behind Bars, Latinos and Prison.” Latino Studies 6 (2008): 1–10.
Paltrow, Lynn M., and Jeanne Flavin. “Arrests of and Forced Interventions on Pregnant Women in the United States, 1973–2005: Implications for Women’s Legal Status and Public Health.” Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 38, no. 2 (April 1, 2013): 299–343. https://doi.org/10.1215/03616878-1966324.
Prison Policy Initiative. “Breaking Down Mass Incarceration in the 2010 Census.” Accessed July 4, 2022. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/rates.html.
Ritter, Luke. Inventing America’s First Immigration Crisis: Political Nativism in the Antebellum West. Fordham University Press, 2021. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv119907b.8.
Serwer, Adam. “Conservatives Are Defending a Sanitized Version of ‘The Great Replacement.’” The Atlantic, May 18, 2022. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/buffalo-shooting-republican-great-replacement/629903/.
Shpancer, Noam. “Women and Selfishness.” Psychology Today. Accessed June 26, 2022. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/insight-therapy/201110/women-and-selfishness.
Southern Poverty Law Center. “SPLC Poll Finds Substantial Support for ‘Great Replacement’ Theory and Other Hard-Right Ideas.” Accessed June 28, 2022. https://www.splcenter.org/news/2022/06/01/poll-finds-support-great-replacement-hard-right-ideas.
Whittum, Michelle, Robyn Schickler, Nicole Fanarjian, Rachel Rapkin, and Brian T. Nguyen. “The History of Female Surgical Sterilization.” Journal of Gynecologic Surgery 37, no. 6 (December 2021): 459–64. https://doi.org/10.1089/gyn.2021.0101.
(Brief-Address-2474 ). “Getting this off my chest.” Reddit. June 30, 2022. https://www.reddit.com/r/prolife/comments/vo3cuc/getting_this_off_my_chest
(eternitypasses). “Why are you against abortion??” Reddit. Jun 28, 2022. https://www.reddit.com/r/prolife/comments/vn4qva/why_are_you_against_abortion/
(Kidsrgr8-h8parenting). “Prochoice people are selfish and only care about themselves.” Reddit. Jun 8, 2022. https://www.reddit.com/r/prolife/comments/v7j51j/prochoice_people_are_selfish_and_only_care_about/
[1] Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health, No 19-1392 (U.S. June 24, 2022), 28
[2] Nicola Beisel and Tamara Kay, “Abortion, Race, and Gender in Nineteenth-Century America,” American Sociological Review 69, no. 4 (2004): 499.
[3] Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health, No 19-1392 (U.S. June 24, 2022), 79-108; See also Figure 1.
[4] Lorraine Boissoneault, “How the 19th-Century Know Nothing Party Reshaped American Politics.” Smithsonian Magazine, January 26, 2017. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/immigrants-conspiracies-and-secret-society-launched-american-nativism-180961915/.
[5] Luke Ritter, Inventing America’s First Immigration Crisis: Political Nativism in the Antebellum West (Fordham University Press, 2021), 107, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv119907b.8.
[6] Boissoneault, “Know Nothing Party”
[7] Ritter, Inventing America’s First Immigration Crisis, 106-107
[8] Bruce Levine, “Conservatism, Nativism, and Slavery: Thomas R. Whitney and the Origins of the Know-Nothing Party,” The Journal of American History 88, no. 2 (2001): 461, https://doi.org/10.2307/2675102.
[9] Levine, “Conservatism, Nativism, and Slavery”, 465
[10] Boissoneault, “Know Nothing Party”; Levine, “Conservatism, Nativism, and Slavery”, 469
[11] Ritter, Inventing America’s First Immigration Crisis, 105
[12] Ritter, Inventing America’s First Immigration Crisis, 107
[13] Beisel and Kay, “Abortion, Race, and Gender”, 499
[14] Levine, “Conservatism, Nativism, and Slavery”, 470
[15] Adam Serwer, “Conservatives Are Defending a Sanitized Version of ‘The Great Replacement,” The Atlantic, May 18, 2022. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/buffalo-shooting-republican-great-replacement/629903/.
[16] Southern Poverty Law Center, “SPLC Poll Finds Substantial Support for ‘Great Replacement’ Theory and Other Hard-Right Ideas,” Accessed June 28, 2022. https://www.splcenter.org/news/2022/06/01/poll-finds-support-great-replacement-hard-right-ideas.
[17] Suzanne Oboler, “‘Viviendo En El Olvido’: Behind Bars, Latinos and Prison,” Latino Studies 6 (2008): 3
[18] Hana E. Brown, Jennifer A. Jones, and Andrea Becker, “The Racialization of Latino Immigrants in New Destinations: Criminality, Ascription, and Countermobilization,” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 4, no. 5 (2018): 119, https://doi.org/10.7758/rsf.2018.4.5.06.
[19] César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, “Abolish Immigration Prisons,” The New York Times, December 2, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/02/opinion/immigration-detention-prison.html.
[20] Prison Policy Initiative, “Breaking Down Mass Incarceration in the 2010 Census,” accessed July 4, 2022, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/rates.html.
[21] “ICE Whistleblower: Nurse Alleges ‘Hysterectomies on Immigrant Women in US,’” BBC News, September 15, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54160638.
[22] Brenna Evans, “The Long Scalpel of the Law: How United States Prisons Continue to Practice Eugenics Through Forced Sterilization,” Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality (blog), June 7, 2021, https://lawandinequality.org/2021/06/07/the-long-scalpel-of-the-law-how-united-states-prisons-continue-to-practice-eugenics-through-forced-sterilization/.
[23] Angela Davis, Women, Race and Class. (New York: Random House Inc, 1981), 216-220
[24] Michelle Whittum et al., “The History of Female Surgical Sterilization,” Journal of Gynecologic Surgery 37, no. 6 (December 2021): 459, https://doi.org/10.1089/gyn.2021.0101.
[25] Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health, 28
[26] Beisel and Kay, “Abortion, Race, and Gender”, 514; 506
[27] Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health, 28
[28] Sandra Frink, “Women, the Family, and the Fate of the Nation in American Anti-Catholic Narratives, 1830-1860,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 18, no. 2 (2009): 244.
[29] (Kidsrgr8-h8parenting), “Prochoice people are selfish and only care about themselves”, Reddit, Jun 8, 2022, https://www.reddit.com/r/prolife/comments/v7j51j/prochoice_people_are_selfish_and_only_care_about/; (Brief-Address-2474 ), “Getting this off my chest”, Reddit, June 30, 2022, https://www.reddit.com/r/prolife/comments/vo3cuc/getting_this_off_my_chest/: “it hurts me deeply to think that so many people would be so selfish to say its "my body" that they'd kill a baby out of what appears to me as ignorance”; (eternitypasses), “Why are you against abortion??”, Reddit, Jun 28, 2022, https://www.reddit.com/r/prolife/comments/vn4qva/why_are_you_against_abortion/: “A woman’s convenience is more important than another human’s right to life? How do you square that one exactly?”
[30] Noam Shpancer, “Women and Selfishness,” Psychology Today, accessed June 26, 2022, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/insight-therapy/201110/women-and-selfishness.
[31] Lynn M. Paltrow and Jeanne Flavin, “Arrests of and Forced Interventions on Pregnant Women in the United States, 1973–2005: Implications for Women’s Legal Status and Public Health,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 38, no. 2 (April 1, 2013): 299, https://doi.org/10.1215/03616878-1966324.
[32] Paltrow and Flavin, “Arrests of and Forced Interventions on Pregnant Women”, 333
[33] Paltrow and Flavin, “Arrests of and Forced Interventions on Pregnant Women”, 307-308
[34] Purvaja Kavattur, “Arrests and Prosecutions of Pregnant Women, 1973-2020 - New York,” National Advocates for Pregnant Women, September 18, 2021, https://www.nationaladvocatesforpregnantwomen.org/arrests-and-prosecutions-of-pregnant-women-1973-2020/.
[35] Angela Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete, (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003), 28.
[36] Garrett Epps, “The Antebellum Political Background of the Fourteenth Amendment,” Law and Contemporary Problems 67, no. 3 (2004): 205; Elizabeth Hinton and DeAnza Cook, “The Mass Criminalization of Black Americans: A Historical Overview,” Annual Review of Criminology 4, no. 1 (January 13, 2021): 267-268, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-criminol-060520-033306.; Tabitha Lefouria, Chained in Silence, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 58.
[37] Hinton and Cook, “The Mass Criminalization of Black Americans”, 263
[38] Simon Clark, “How White Supremacy Returned to Mainstream Politics,” Center for American Progress (blog), accessed July 8, 2022, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/white-supremacy-returned-mainstream-politics/.
[39] David Bauder, “What Is ‘Great Replacement Theory’ and How Does It Fuel Racist Violence?,” PBS NewsHour, May 16, 2022, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-is-great-replacement-theory-and-how-does-it-fuel-racist-violence.
The Articles, Visual Art, Book chapters, and Films our Faculty and Grad Students Made!
The accomplishments of our faculty and grad students continue to amaze me, especially during a pandemic. From journal articles to visual art to documentary films, here is some of the amazing work done in the past year (ish!) All random commentary comes from me unless otherwise stated-Holly Genovese, Ph.D. Candidate in American Studies, Editor AMS: ATX.
Whitney May (Ph.D. Candidate in American Studies):
From Whitney “last year, my article “'Powers of Their Own Which Mere “Modernity" Cannot Kill’: The Doppelgänger and Temporal Modernist Terror in Dracula” was published in the journal Gothic Studies. My chapter “Topophilic Perversions: Spectral Blackface and Fetishizing Sites of Monstrosity in American Dark Tourism” was published in an edited collection called Religion, Culture, and the Monstrous: Of Gods and Monsters. (This was an extension of my term paper for Shirley Thompson’s 385 in fall, 2019.)
Later this semester, my chapter “The Way the Cookie Doubles: Cripping the Cyber-Gothic of Black Mirror’s AI Tech,” will appear in an edited collection called Humanity in a Black Mirror: Essays on Posthuman Fantasies in a Technological Near Future.” (This was my term paper for Alison Kafer’s Sick/Slow/Mad: Crip Theory course in spring, 2020.)”
And pre-order Whitney’s forthcoming edited collection! Encountering Pennywise: Critical Perspectives on Stephen King’s It, forthcoming from the University Press of Mississippi.
Jeff Meikle, Professor of American Studies
Dr. Meikle has published two book chapters in the past year! Very impressive.
"'You’ve Been on This Road Before': The Making of Laurie Anderson’s United States as an American Techno-Pastoral," in Transatlantic Currents: Essays in Honor of David E. Nye, eds. Jørn Brøndal, Anne Mørk, and Kasper Grotle Rasmussen (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2021), 51-62.
"'Hoist That Rag': Tom Waits, the Uncanny, and the Old, Weird America," in An Unfamiliar America: Essays in American Studies, ed. Ari Helo and Mikko Saikku (New York: Routledge, 2021), 11-33.
Coyote Shook, Ph.D. Candidate in American Studies
Coyote has published artwork and essays in journals, magazines, is working on some unpublished art as well!
Salt Hill Journal, 47, features Coyote’s artwork
“The best $78.51 I ever spent: A knife just like my grandfather’s” The Goods (Vox)
“Where Have You Gone, Mrs. Duvall?” Beaver Mag, https://beavermag.org/coyote-shook-2/?fbclid=IwAR056HwxEW5vljNdeGcOgoI4EjmT5ROSDCrFGaBZDiPgY_HG7pW7-c0WlIE
Odalis Garcia Gorra, First Year Ph.D. Student in American Studies (also Social Media Team Editor and Co-Editor of this very blog!)
Odalis published two online essays, both amazing! One on cooking traditions and faith and one on Los Espookys!
“The Unreadability of Los Espookys,”Latinx Spaces, Februrary 2022.
Kameron Dunn, Ph.D. student in American Studies
llustration by Jason Stout
Kameron has been busy publishing in Slate, Texas Highways, as well as in an academic journal! Read his work here!
Holly Genovese, Ph.D. Candidate in American Studies
"What's Next, Southern Fried Chicken?" Confederate Memory and Racial Violence at the Postintegration University” in Invisible No More: The African American Experience at the University of South Carolina (University of South Carolina Press, 2021).
Holly is also publishing a popular Substack, “What is Much?,” where she rounds up books and films she loves as well as does close readings of everything from the Mary Kate and Ashley Canon to a Real Housewives memoir.
Kate Grover, Ph.D. Candidate in American Studies
Rocking the Revolution: The Chicago Women’s Liberation Rock Band and the Politics of Feminist Rock and Roll, Kate Grover, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 2021 46:2, 489-512, https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/710813
Kate Grover; Rock Trolls and Recovery: Revisiting Rockism via Miles Parks Grier. Journal of Popular Music Studies 1 March 2022; 34 (1): 29–34. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jpms.2022.34.1.29, https://online.ucpress.edu/jpms/article/34/1/29/120446/Rock-Trolls-and-RecoveryRevisiting-Rockism-via
Dr. Gaila Sims, Ph.D. in American Studies (congrats Gaila)
Not only did Gaila recently defend her Ph.D. but she found time to write an essay with her sister for Believer Mag as well as a book review for H-Net.
Where We At, Believer Mag (co authored with her sister!)
Sims on Hall, 'Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts'
https://networks.h-net.org/node/12840/reviews/8609849/sims-hall-wake-hidden-history-women-led-slave-revolts
Dr. Randy Lewis, Professor and Chair of American Studies
From Dr. Lewis “It’s been a busy year for me, but I’m happy to share a few highlights. In September 2021 I started production of a documentary film called PRADA MARFA? about the most Instagrammed spot in West Texas, the artwork Prada Marfa, and how it has changed Marfa and become a Beyonce-fueled internet sensation in the process. Over the course of about four months from September to January, I cobbled together about two weeks of shooting in Valentine and Marfa, mostly standing on desolate Highway 90 and interviewing strangers about the art work. Think of it as a populist art criticism film essay that basically asks, “how do people respond to a controversial public art work?” It has required many drafts of a written essay, which provides my V/O; composing and recording a complex soundtrack; and cutting a 30 minute film that has probably 500 edits. Right now I’m soft releasing it on Youtube with the goal of bringing it to campuses—art history, Texas studies, American Studies, and geography classes would benefit from it. It’s been out for a few weeks, and it’s already being assigned to students at other universities!
What else can I say? Well, in January 2022 I spent a few weeks working with the Carceral Edgelands Project, writing about and raising awareness about migrant detention. Then in February 2022 I was invited to join a new collaborative writing project on the elements led by anthropologists Marina Peterson (UT Anthro) and Gretchen Bakke (Humboldt University, Berlin). Imagine 118 tiny books on the cultural lives of the elements and you’ll get the idea. More here. Around that time I wrote and recorded “Memories,” an original musical composition accepted in European anthology of contemporary Experimental Music called DATAPANIC #3 whose curators are based in Rome, Italy. I often use my recordings as a free form of soundtrack music, but this piece is too strange! I also published a very short essay called “Wandering as Method” in Imaginations: Journal of Cross Cultural Image Studies. It has images by my partner Monti Sigg, from a group project we did in Detroit/Windsor in 2020 that resulted in an exhibition at a gallery there. The big news in summer 2021 was that my film Who Killed the World? was named an Official Selection for Gbiennale 21, Melbourne, Australia. It was then released on Youtube where it already has reached 10,000 views and almost 200 “likes” despite literally zero promotion thus far. Free autonomous scholarly production is the future for a lot of the work I want to do!
Finally, I’m very excited that I’m starting a new research project on Telsa with my colleague Craig Campbell and a researcher in Berlin. Some portion of the work will end up The End of Austin, which I continue to edit—and which reached the amazing milestone of 250,000 page views this year!”
Zoya Brumberg, Ph.D. (Yay Zoya) in American Studies
From Zoya “I have a piece coming out in the spring/summer issue of SCA Roadside about UFO religions and the Integratron—I have the proof and can let you know/send the link when it goes into print.”
Dr. Erin McElroy, Assistant Professor in American Studies
A couple of articles/essays that Dr. McElroy had come out recently:
"Automating Gentrification: Landlord Technologies and Housing Justice Organizing in New York City Homes." Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, DOI: 10.1177/02637758221088868.
"Public Thinker: Sophie Gonick on Housing Justice and Mass Movements." Public Books, April 26, 2022. https://www.publicbooks.org/sophie-gonick-on-housing-justice-and-mass-movements.
Taylor Johnson, Ph.D. Candidate in American Studies
Taylor has been latch hooking and doing other fiber arts this semester while working on and defending her prospectus!
A comic about one of UT's early all-female dorms
Olivia Green is a third year American Studies and History major from Sugar Land, Texas with a keen interest in how history impacts our present day. Alongside her studies Olivia enjoys readings and exploring Austin. This semester she took AMS311s “American Comics” with AMS Ph.D. Candidate Coyote Shook.
