Alumni Voices Kate Grover Alumni Voices Kate Grover

Alumni Voices: Adam Golub Writes on High School and College Teaching

Classroom in Fort ChristmasOur alumni continually impress us with the work that they do after leaving UT. Today, Ph.D. alumnus Adam Golub, now an associate professor of American Studies at California State University - Fullerton, has published an inspiring and useful essay in Hybrid Pedagogy on how teaching high school prepared him to teach at the college level. We've posted an excerpt below and the full article can be found here.

Teachers in higher education who may be frustrated with an institutional culture that does not always promote formal training or even encourage informal dialogue about pedagogy might helpfully turn to our K-12 colleagues as a resource. The mentoring and instruction I received as a high school teacher provided me with a conceptual vocabulary and a habit of mind with which to approach university teaching and curriculum design. This essay focuses on the pedagogical convergences between secondary and higher education, drawing from my own experience as someone who has taught high school students, college students, and future high school teachers. In the process, I make the case that discussions about pedagogy can constitute a common ground -- a way to bridge the university/secondary divide and engender more productive discourse and collaboration among teachers in both settings. Such dialogue could, I believe, generate more expansive definitions of what teaching means in higher education, definitions that move beyond lecture, discussion, and the use of technology.
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Departmental Theme Kate Grover Departmental Theme Kate Grover

Security/Insecurity in the News: First Dispatch

Airport Security PlaymobilNew feature time. Again.Every other Friday we'll offer a compilation of links and news stories that connect to notions of security and insecurity, our 2013-2014 departmental theme. Some of these connections will be clearer than others  - we're interpreting the theme very, very broadly. So, have at it, and enjoy!Comedian Louis C.K. takes on the smart phone and why it makes us feel sad (Big Think)Louis Menand reviews Eric Schlosser's Command and Control, a new book on nuclear weapons in America (The New Yorker)"The importance of the afterlife. Seriously." Seriously. (The New York Times)What will 3-D printing actually bring us in the future? "Will it save the world? Will it bring on the apocalypse, with millions manufacturing their own AK-47s? Or is it all an absurd hubbub about a machine that spits out chintzy plastic trinkets?" (The New York Times)The myth of executive stress: how hard is it, really, to be the boss? (Scientific American)Guardian editor: NSA surveillance goes beyond Orwell's imagination (The Guardian)A moment-by-moment timeline of the immediate aftermath of Kennedy's assassination. "From noon to dusk on November 22, 1963, history went dark, locked inside the closed and crowded cabin of Air Force One. Fifty years later, what happened after JFK died has fully come to light." (Esquire)Are soldiers becoming too emotionally attached to the robots that accompany them in war zones? (Slate)For more about American Studies at UT, subscribe to our newsletter here.

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Announcements Holly Genovese Announcements Holly Genovese

Announcement: The AMS Film Series Starts This Week!

TARGETSThis week, the AMS Film Series is back in action with films that have been chosen by AMS faculty and graduate students to reflect this year's departmental theme: Security/Insecurity.  Our first film of the year will be Peter Bogdanovich's Targets, which will be introduced by our very own Ph.D. student, Brendan Gaughen.The following comes to us from Brendan:

Targets (dir. Peter Bogdanovich, 1968) centers around the character Bobby Thompson, a clean-cut military veteran who goes on a sudden and random shooting spree.  Thompson is based loosely on mass murderer Charles Whitman, who shot 30 people from the University of Texas Main Tower, killing 11.  Targets was released during a time of increasing violence in the late 1960s and depicts the type of high-profile mass killings that led to an erosion in feelings of safety and security in the home and public space.

Join us on Thursday at 6pm in CAL 100 to watch the film and continue the discussion on Security/Insecurity. Check out the Facebook event here.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiSc3xAXX5gFor more about American Studies at UT, subscribe to our newsletter here.

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Announcements Holly Genovese Announcements Holly Genovese

Are You a Fan of American Studies? Join Us!

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Those of us in the friendly confines of the American Studies department at UT are always thrilled when people outside of our program (and, indeed, the UT community) share with us that they enjoy hearing about the research and work that we do.

So we'd like to make it easier for you folks to keep apprised of the goings-on within our community, from faculty research updates to stories about what our many alumni have done (and are doing!) with their American Studies degrees in hand.

This year, we're launching a monthly email newsletter where we'll provide those updates about research, teaching, events, and more. The newsletter will include additional content that you won't find on our blog, Facebook page, or Twitter account.If you are interested in these updates - just one email a month, and we won't share your contact info with anyone else - fill out the form here. We hope you'll join us!

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