Grad Research: E3W Roundtable Features Elissa Underwood as Panelist

A hearty welcome back from spring break (at least for you UT folks) from all of us at AMS :: ATX. We're kicking off the week by sharing what promises to be a fascinating panel discussion featuring one of our own graduate students, Elissa Underwood, as a panelist.Details below from the official event announcement:

In advance of the 12th Annual Sequels Symposium, the second Prequels event of Spring 2013 will focus on the work of Peter Caster, one of the conference's keynote speakers and a distinguished alumnus of the English department. Caster’s recent book, Prisons, Race, and Masculinity in Twentieth-Century U.S. Literature and Film (2008), is grounded in the proposition that “the history, literary and otherwise, of the United States is indivisible from that of its prisons.”Inspired by this work, a panel of graduate students, faculty members, and activists will offer perspectives and narratives that capture the realities of the American prison industrial complex. This discussion will open with a brief video montage of scenes from TV and film that best represent how American popular culture depicts the national prison system. In response to this montage, our panelists will share how their work reveals and communicates the realities of prison life in the United States. Panelists include Melissa Burch (Graduate Student, Anthropology), Rebecca Lorins (Texas After Violence Project), Elissa Underwood(Graduate Student, American Studies), Benet Magnuson (Policy Attorney, Texas Criminal Justice Coalition), and E3W's very own Barbara Harlow, who will serve as a moderator and respondent. We hope you will join us and add your voice to the discussion.

Faculty Research: Dr. Randy Lewis to Deliver Talk on Surveillance, 3/18

Although spring break is still upon us, we hope that you'll take note of a talk that one of our faculty members, Dr. Randy Lewis, will be delivering on perverse surveillance and the sexualized sovereign.Come by the anthropology department (SAC 5.118) at 12pm on Monday, March 18 to hear about his work as well as that of affiliate faculty member Dr. Craig Campbell.  Hope to see you there!

Alumni Voices: Matthew Hedstrom Featured on ShelfLife@Texas!

Today over at ShelfLife@Texas, UT American Studies alumnus and historian Matthew Hedstrom shares details about the evolution of "Post-Protestant spirituality" and his book, The Rise of Liberal Religion: Book Culture and American Spirituality in the Twentieth Century (Oxford 2012).The following comes to us from the interview with Hedstrom up at ShelfLife@Texas, in which Hedstrom discusses his inspiration for the project and what he hopes his readers will get out of The Rise of Liberal Religion:

I was a graduate student in American Studies at The University of Texas at Austin, looking for new ways to think about religion in the modern United States. Basically, I wanted to think about religion as a phenomenon not just of churches or other formal institutions, but as a part of culture more broadly. Also, in a related way, I wanted to think not just about official theology and ritual, but about religious sensibilities—about spirituality.As I was thinking about all these things, I came across a set of sources about religion and reading in the 20th century and thought, “Ah ha! This is how I can access the stories I want to tell.” So I began studying the history of religious books and reading in the 20th century, because I quickly came to see this as one of the most important ways that religion happens outside of church, especially in a consumer-oriented society like ours....I hope my book raises questions for my readers about the power of consumerism in our society. I hope my readers will come to see that the categories “religious” and “secular” are not very easy to disentangle—that psychology and spirituality, for example, often blur. And I hope my readers will look at religious liberalism as a significant religious tradition in the United States, one with strong ties to Protestantism but not limited to Protestantism. Much of the vitality in modern American religious life is in what might be called post-Protestant spirituality, and I want my readers to learn to see the contours of this phenomenon and to understand where it came from.

Lists: 2013 SXSW Film Picks

Every March, Austin plays host to South by Southwest, a gargantuan festival of new media, film, music, comedy, and everything in between. Although much of the week is closed to the chosen few badge holders, non-badged visitors can purchase single-admission tickets to film screenings, space permitting. With that in mind, we've curated a quick list of films that may be of particular interest to those attendees who study or are generally fans of American Studies.Click each title for screening times and locations.

Our Nixon

http://vimeo.com/58747745Recently discovered Super 8 home movies filmed by three of Richard Nixon’s closest aides – and fellow Watergate conspirators – offer an intimate and complex new glimpse into his presidency in this all-archival documentary.

The Retrieval

http://vimeo.com/60608991On the outskirts of the Civil War, a boy is sent north by a bounty hunter gang to retrieve a wanted man.

12 O'Clock Boys

http://vimeo.com/58654662Pug, a young boy growing up on a combative West Baltimore block, finds solace in a gang of illegal dirt bike riders known as The 12 O’Clock Boys.

We Always Lie to Strangers

http://vimeo.com/58654661A story of family, community, music and tradition set against the backdrop of Branson, Missouri, the remote Ozark Mountain town that is one of the biggest tourist destinations in America.

Hours

http://vimeo.com/60690646Set mostly in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Hours is the story of a man who battles looters, the elements and exhaustion for two days in a hospital while his newborn daughter clings to life inside a ventilator powered only by a manual crank.

Reality Show

http://vimeo.com/58730756A darkly comedic satire that follows TV producer Mickey Wagner and his amoral attempt to re-invent the reality genre. Mickey’s big idea is to pick a family and put them under all encompassing surveillance…without their knowledge.

Continental

Continental is a stylish examination of a lively and lascivious piece of real estate that transcended sexual identity and acted as a beacon to the hip, beautiful and infamous. Housed at the site of the legendary Ansonia Hotel,the Continental became one of the most important keystones for a sexual revolution, fostering an environment of tolerance and contributing to a level of mainstream gay acceptance the likes of which has never been seen again.

Getting Back to Abnormal

http://vimeo.com/58648734New Orleans' long history of political dysfunction and complicated racial dynamics gets a new lease on life when Stacy Head, a polarizing white woman, wins a seat on the city council after Katrina. Four years later, she needs to get black votes to be re-elected. But will her record of blunt racial talk doom her chances? Getting Back to Abnormal follows the unlikely odd couple of Head and her irrepressible black political advisor Barbara Lacen as they try to navigate New Orleans' treacherous political scene. With its cast of only-in-New-Orleans characters, Getting Back to Abnormal is a provocative and amusing look at race in America, set against the backdrop of New Orleans' rich culture.

Spark: A Burning Man Story

http://vimeo.com/60849419Each year, 60,000 people from around the globe gather in a dusty windswept Nevada desert to build a temporary city, collaborating on large-scale art and partying for a week before burning a giant effigy in a ritual frenzy. Rooted in principles of self-expression, self-reliance and community effort, Burning Man has grown famous for stirring ordinary people to shed their nine-to-five existence and act on their dreams. Spark takes us behind the curtain with Burning Man organizers and participants, revealing a year of unprecedented challenges and growth. When ideals of a new world based on freedom and inclusion collide with realities of the “default world,” we wonder which dreams can survive.