Holly Genovese 7/1/13 Holly Genovese 7/1/13

Stories from Summer Vacation: Jeannette Vaught and Food-Industry-Animal Research in the Archive

Our next report comes from Ph.D. candidate Jeannette Vaught, who describes a recent research trip to Ames, Iowa, to research Iowa State University's Special Collection for materials on food and animals.Early this summer I took my last major research trip to the Iowa State University Special Collections in Ames, which houses massive collections of veterinary and agricultural materials spanning decades of scientific research, industry marketing, and political lobbying. Since my dissertation accounts for animals used both for sport and food, the ISUSC provided the bulk of my food-industry-animal research. Most of these collections have gone largely untapped, judging by the amount of dust rising from many a box of documents. At one point, the archivists had a difficult time locating a box from the Beef Improvement Federation collection, and were extra perplexed by its absence since, well, no researcher had ever requested it before! I capped off my 10 days in the archives by swinging down to Des Moines for the amazingly weird World Pork Expo, the major annual industry trade show. While I write about cattle, not hogs, the Expo nevertheless showcased every detail that goes into industrial meat: booths represented reproductive technologies ranging from individual insemination techniques to patented genes; feeding technologies from fortified corn products to methods of delivering the food to the animal; management technologies from gestation pens (excuse me, now they are called “individual maternity areas”) to slaughter restraints – the list goes on and on. There was also the option of eating some fresh meat scraped from the proverbial whole (roasted) hog, cracklins included. Talking to industry people and hearing their takes on their role in American food production was as useful as the bounty of primary historical records I took home from the archives.The remainder of the summer will be spent turning that research into chapters. I have a handful more interviews to conduct with sport and industry veterinarians at Texas A&M, but once those are completed, it’s pretty much all writing from here on out. In other animal news, I’ll still be hanging out with my horse, Dallas, and teaching riding twice a week, and am adopting a greyhound to share my apartment with come July.

Holly Genovese 6/27/13 Holly Genovese 6/27/13

Stories from Summer Vacation: Emily Roehl in the Digital Stacks

This week's story from summer vacation comes to us from Ph.D. student Emily Roehl, who is beating the heat in Austin by resting in the shade of very tall stacks of books.In addition to working as a Public Services Intern at the Harry Ransom Center this summer, I am finishing my preparations for oral exams. What this means is that when I am done retrieving books and manuscripts for patrons in the reading room each day, I hop on over to the PCL or Fine Arts Library to do the same thing for myself. There's nothing like plopping down at a big, clean desk with a stack of books and a sore arm and getting down to work. But I'll be honest--I could do without the sore arm, so I like to keep my books on campus and avoid the long, hot walk home with pounds and pounds of paper. So instead of stacking up my books on my desk so I can look at them fondly, I put them all here: in a Tumblr site that uses the Otlet's Shelf theme to organize links from Amazon. It's nice to be able to see all my books in one place, and I can add tags to organize the titles by theme. I haven't yet mastered the art of Zotero or Omeka, which are other great digital archiving tools, but I love my Tumblr and would recommend the Otlet's Shelf theme to anyone who would like to organize their own stacks of books online (and save themselves a sore arm).

Holly Genovese 6/17/13 Holly Genovese 6/17/13

Stories from Summer Vacation: Andrew Friedenthal's Summer of Teaching and Comic-Con

Here's how AMS Ph.D. student Andrew Friedenthal will be keeping busy this summer:Aside from teaching the AMS 310 "Introduction to American Studies Course" this summer, focusing on the importance and history of popular culture in US history, I'm going to be attending the annual ground zero for upcoming popular culture - San Diego Comic-Con. Rather than dressing up as Batman or Iron Man, though, I'll be in a suit and tie, as I'm presenting a part of my dissertation at an academic conference there! The annual Comics Arts Conference runs congruent to Comic-Con every year, and is the top annual conference for comics studies, since it allows for academics and culture-makers to forge a joint conversation about the history and future of comics and popular culture in general. I'll probably find time to switch into an Avengers t-shirt, though.

Holly Genovese 6/10/13 Holly Genovese 6/10/13

Stories from Summer Vacation: Tynisha Scott Researches and Relaxes

We're kicking off our Summer 2013 feature, Stories from Summer Vacation, with Ph.D. student Tynisha Scott's discussion of her very busy summer...Like many students, I've spent the first few weeks following the end of a long semester catching up on television and making up for lost sleep.My roommate’s cats have rewarded my actions with cuddles, preventing me from feeling bad about relaxing on most days.However, I haven’t been a complete bum. I graduated with my masters in Women’s and Gender Studies mid-May.And I have completely reorganized my living space to maximize on my productivity this summer. My mini break is coming to an end, however, because I’ll be brushing up on my Spanish and serving as a teaching assistant for Introduction to American Studies. Though I’m excited about both activities (I’m giving a guest lecture on animated cartoons and race!), I am bummed that I will miss spending time with my niece and nephew here:Or here:Still, my plans for the summer will be invigorating as they will involve:

knitting scarves for said niece and nephew since they requested them over a month ago
starting a weekly writing group with some peers
researching archives in Houston and Austin to discover more information about the former’s red light district at the turn of the twentieth century
completing my MA thesis reading list (fingers crossed)
working on a journal submission
perfecting a few dishes (including roast chicken and pot roast)
lounging by a pool as often as possible
catching up Dexter (both the book and television series)
finishing In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson
not brooding over the season finale of Game of Thrones and its likely absence until next year
getting a new tattoo

Out of all these plans, the most exciting is the archive trips. Not only because they’ll be fruitful for my research, but also because my mom will join me on the Houston visits. She’s been working on our family tree and history for the past five years and is very familiar with several of the archives I’ll need to visit upon my return to the Bayou City. It really is a treat to receive guided help from both the archive librarians and my mom. Her enthusiasm for my project just reminds me that we’re never alone on our journey, no matter how isolated we may feel.