Stories from Summer Vacation: Superheroes in the Library with Andrew Friedenthal

I've spent this summer so far the way that hordes of Americans have - with superheroes!However, instead of doing so in the multiplex, I've been sitting with my array of superhero comic books in the PCL, working on a first draft of my dissertation (which is, if it hasn't become clear from this paragraph, about superhero comics - specifically in regards to cultural memory and history).  It turns out that you CAN have too much of a good thing.  For some stress relief, I suddenly crave a really complex foreign movie.  Maybe I'll pick up ULYSSES for some light recreational reading...

Stories from Summer Vacation: A Dispatch from Dr. Bob Abzug

Today we press onward in our feature of fun summertime activities! Dr. Bob Abzug, Professor of American Studies, Oliver H. Radkey Regents Professor of History, and Director of the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies (phew!) offers us this dispatch from a vacation spot far from the grip of Austin's summer heat:

Penne and I will be spending the month of July in Billings, Montana, where we rent a loft-like condo carved from an old Swift Meat Processing Plant, right next to the railroad tracks, where we both will be writing and visiting Penne's relatives and going to rodeos, bullriding competitions, and minor league baseball games. The days are long, the weather comparatively cool, and the internet a sometime thing. I have included two pictures that illustrate that life a little, these taken last summer. Our local bar, a three minute walk from the loft, and the bull ring in Acton (population 75), a half hour drive out of town. I can feel the cool air just thinking about it.

Grad Research: John Cline Reviews Harry Belafonte Memoir

We've all heard the hits from singer Harry Belafonte, from "Banana Boat Song" to "Jump in the Line." But many fans of those songs and others are unaware that Belafonte - the King of Calypso - is also an active and vocal social activist. A new memoir by the singer hopes to shed light on those aspects of his political engagement, beyond the songs that became comedy centerpieces in Tim Burton's 1988 film Beetlejuice.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpNk860pTO4]

One of our department's recent graduates, John Cline, has recently published a review of the memoir in the Los Angeles Review of books, where he parses the difficult genre from which the book emerges - the black entertainer's autobiography - and considers the strange inattention to Belafonte's Jamaican heritage. Here's an excerpt:

Harry Belafonte’s My Song: A Memoir, written in collaboration with Michael Shnayerson and published late last year, is a peculiar offering within the genre of the black entertainer’s autobiography. Although totaling out at a doorstopper length of 450 pages, it isn’t until exactly halfway through that Belafonte gives a direct assessment of his own, very long career: “I wasn’t an artist who’d become an activist. I was an activist who’d become an artist.” This priority, though, is implicit at the outset. Rather than leading with an anecdote about “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song),” the tune for which he is perhaps best known, Belafonte chooses to recount the drama and danger of a trip with Sidney Poitier — a lifelong friend and fellow West Indian — when the two brought a bag full of cash to help fund Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee activists in Mississippi, a story replete with pursuit by Klansmen in pickup trucks and very real concerns about their accommodations being firebombed in the middle of the night.

Check the full piece out here.

New Feature: Stories from UT AMS's Summer Vacation

It's now officially summertime, which means students and faculty alike have scattered from the friendly confines of the UT campus. So, from now until school starts, we'll be showcasing how our American Studies community is spending its sort-of-free time in a new feature we're calling "Stories from Summer Vacation."Check back here frequently for a wide variety of stories about travel, research, reading, writing, teaching, and general merriment.Our first dispatch comes from Ph.D. student Brendan Gaughen, who writes about a recent road trip to the east. Enjoy!In late May/early June I took a 4900-mile road trip through the Midwest to Washington DC, returning back home through the South.Highlights include:

• seeing a brand-new nephew in Joplin, MO
• Point Pleasant, WV, home of Mothman
• a six hour walking tour of monuments and museums in Washington DC
• enjoying a chili half-smoke at the legendary Ben's Chili Bowl in DC
• seeing the home of monster truck "Gravedigger" in North Carolina
• visiting Jake Maguire (MA, 2011) in Atlanta and being treated to the best bocce that town has to offer
• kayaking on Lake Lanier in Georgia
• getting pulled over and being treated to a very thorough (but unsuccessful) vehicle search by the Hattiesburg, MS police department
• driving through the worst rainstorm imaginable in Louisiana bayou country

In May I said goodbye to the Department of Rhetoric and Writing after three years of teaching.  It has been a great experience but I am looking forward to being one of Dr. Cordova's TAs in the fall.  This summer I am working part time with the Athletics Department tutoring members of the football team in writing and history.  Hook 'Em!I am currently reading for orals, which is simultaneously overwhelming, enlightening, frustrating, and wonderful.(end transmission)