5 Questions with First Year Colleen Small
Colleen Small (she/her) is a first-year graduate student from Portland, Oregon, and is into mushrooms and American Studies—the mushroom’s way of being in conversation with an interdisciplinary field, and different narrations of mushrooms and psychedelics in the US. Some of her recent work draws from mycology, ecology, queer theory, security studies, and animality studies, and she loves projects that blur the boundaries between academic and artistic work. Outside school, she likes being a couch potato and eating new things with family and friends.
Q: What is your background, academic or otherwise, and how does it motivate your research?
A: Not much tops playing outside in Oregon, so by my third birthday, I wanted to be an entomologist. My surest accessories were a terrarium and mismatched jelly sandals—nineties stuff, neon colors. Books took my hand and helped me escape neighborhood bullies who (I planned to point out) ruined playing outside. Years later, American studies charmed me because it embraced the books while reviving my childhood draw to forests; its lexicon gave me new ways to grapple with cultural history and my life’s trajectory. I started asking questions that haunt a lot of devoutly religious kids but seethe nameless in our guts until we learn how to express them—until we learn how to think beyond narrow histories that strip-mine “others” and shunt their remains into the margins, basically. When I applied to PhD programs, I’d been fumbling around for years, following this visceral pull away from half-truths and scruples, trying to find a field that would meet the pull in just one damn moment of stillness. And it did. Not that it’s one thing or that I’m not still fumbling. But for me, there was a singularity: I witnessed someone I admired in all the ways that mattered to me. She happened to be a scholar. And it wasn’t only her work or achievement that shimmered, but habits shaped by telling the truth and not being an asshat. Well, that’s how it goes sometimes—the freedom and rage and guilt and ecstasy shake you at once. I don’t mean to make a utopia of AMS, but I’ve had the best luck finding cool people here. They motivate my research.
Q: Why did you decide to come to AMS at UT for your graduate work?
A: The program’s reputation attracted me but made me sure I wouldn’t get an offer (love that). Then I talked with PhD candidate Mandee (they designed the post you’re looking at now!), and that’s what pushed me to light my candle every night and start admitting to everyone that UT was my favorite. It feels cheesy, but a big part of choosing was asking for a seat and actually believing I belonged in it, apart from ideas I had about what it means to be deserving.
Q: What projects or people have inspired your work?
A: Dr. Elaine Peña and her work (she was a faculty member at George Washington University when I did my MA there), my cohort and pals at GWU, The Art of Mushrooms exhibit I saw in Portugal in 2022, my friend Kai Blevins’s work on psychedelics and consciousness, Dr. Megan Black’s stuff, growing up in the evangelical church, Verlyn Klinkenborg’s (work on) writing, Marilynne Robinson’s fiction, Dr. Anna Tsing’s work and some very kind advice she gave me, Dr. Yogita Goyal’s Runaway Genres, being outside with mushrooms, Dr. Lauren Berlant’s idea of cruel optimism, Dr. Lorgia García-Peña’s The Borders of Dominicanidad, and now my delightful UT AMS community
Q: What projects do you see yourself working on at UT?
A: I’m still truffling for things! Right now, I feel like there’s convergence among Texas, mushrooms, and religion. Like the Texas star mushroom—our state mushroom!—and religious inflections there. But we’ll see. I’m open and see a lot of messy connections everywhere.
Q: What are your goals for graduate school? What do you see yourself doing after you graduate?
A: Honestly, I do plan to try for tenure-track positions, okay? But it’s chill; I get that the market sucks and that things might not go super well for me if I keep insisting on doing whatever I want. I love communities that involve a lot of reading, writing, warmth, activism, and artsy things. I’ve really felt that combination here—hope I can keep finding it and avoiding people who bug me. There’s revolutionary potential in not being bugged every single day.
*Bonus Q: In your own words, what is American Studies?
A: Of course I compare AMS, in its best light (and best underground darkness?!), to a mushroom that peeks out from a forest floor but has juicy interdisciplinary connections growing underground. You can notice and connect wherever: on the forest floor, floating through the air, in the dirt, in your lungs, etc.
Have you heard Austin has changed?
Dear friends of The End of Austin project,
I’m excited to publish a powerful response to Lawrence Wright’s much-debated New Yorker article about Austin. The author is local writer Adam Schragin, a UT alum (English) who was the editor of the Austinist and has written for the Texas Observer, Rolling Stone and Tablet. His book of essays Chalk Diary is available at BookPeople and elsewhere.
In a piece called “Only Onward: Lawrence Wright’s Austin and the Politics of Nostalgia,” Adam has a lot to say about our city, its history, and the conventional approach to its challenges. As he puts it, “Austinites are becoming displaced economically. Wages are not rising enough to keep up with the cost of living, the dream of home ownership is now a mirage, and without a firm consensus of what to do — and the courage to turn those ideas into policy to advocate on behalf of people who work to survive — all we have are competing fantasies about what Austin was, is, and will be.”
I hope you will read and share Adam’s thoughtful engagement with Wright’s New Yorker essay---in small part because we’re hoping this piece will push us over an important milestone for a project I launched in 2013 with an amazing team of AMS grad students—we’re approaching 300,000 page views! Not bad for a project with no staff and no budget (well, we spend $99 a year on Wordpress).
Because we’ve been slowly building toward a special issue later in 2024, TEOA has been quiet in the past year, but we’re always happy to publish pieces that will spark a healthy conversation about the future of Austin. If you have something to say about urban nostalgia, gentrification, or anything else that colors our life under the violet crown, please let me know.
Best,
Randy Lewis
Editor, The End of Austin
Professor/Chair
American Studies Dept.
UT Austin
5 Questions with First Years—Jeremy Boorum
It is with great pleasure to announce that our tradition of “5 Questions with First Years” has officially begun! First up we have Jeremy Boorum!
Jeremy Boorum (he/him) is a doctoral student in the Department of American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Originally from Rochester, New York, Jeremy completed his bachelor's degree in American Studies and Business Administration at Elmira College and then a master's degree in American Studies at Penn State Harrisburg. His research primarily focuses on queer artistic and cultural production and sits at the intersections between LGBTQ+ history, queer theory, visual and popular culture, space and place, and public humanities.
Additionally, Jeremy serves on the steering committee for the LGBT Center of Central PA History Project, a community-based public humanities initiative which documents and preserves LGBTQ+ histories in Central Pennsylvania. Throughout his time with the project, Jeremy created self-guided tour brochures of LGBTQ+ historic sites in Lancaster and York, contributed to the traveling exhibit Out on Campus: A History of LGBTQ+ Activism at Pennsylvania Colleges and Universities, wrote an encyclopedia article illustrating the history of Harrisburg's Pride Festival, and processed and digitized several of the project's archival collections at Dickinson College. Currently, he is writing an encyclopedia article about Common Roads, the region's LGBTQ+ youth activism group, as well as working on digital app versions of the project's historic site self-guided tours.
In his free time, Jeremy enjoys writing poetry and creative nonfiction, attending concerts and performances, and visiting art museums.
What is your background, academic or otherwise, and how does it motivate your research?
I first became interested in American Studies as an undergraduate student at Elmira College. My American Studies courses originally served as both a passion project and an escape from my business curriculum. After deciding a marketing career was not in my future, I enrolled in an American Studies master’s program at Penn State Harrisburg and then continued on in their doctoral program. During this time, I honed my research and teaching interests in queer studies and became involved in numerous queer activist projects, including leading a relaunch of Penn State Harrisburg’s queer student organization and serving on the steering committee for the LGBT Center of Central PA History Project. I also had the great fortune of taking courses in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department at Penn State’s University Park, which opened my eyes to the creative and radically imaginative possibilities for my work and ultimately inspired my decision to transfer to UT Austin. This journey motivates me to probe what may not be entirely visible in the frame and to always push the boundaries of my research to horizons previously inconceivable.
Why did you decide to come to AMS at UT for your graduate work?
Upon my first visit to Austin in March 2023, I knew AMS at UT was the place I needed to be. Right away, I could tell AMS at UT is a community I will thrive in and a department where I can embrace the type of creative scholarly production I most desire. Additionally, having spent my entire life in the same five hour geographic radius in the Northeastern United States, I could sense now was the time to channel my inner Sagittarius spirit and move to a new destination different from all I have known before.
What projects or people have inspired your work?
I am most inspired by works which help me to visualize beauty in new and exciting ways amidst the backdrop of a fraught world. Works which exist on my American Studies “mixtape” (to borrow from Phil Deloria and Alex Olson) include Jack Parlett’s The Poetics of Cruising, José Esteban Muñoz’s Cruising Utopia, Daphne Brooks’ Liner Notes for the Revolution, Jack Gieseking’s A Queer New York, Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, Larry Mitchell’s The F****** and Their Friends Between Revolutions, Audre Lorde’s “A Litany for Survival,” Robert Frank’s The Americans, David Wojnarowicz’s Close to the Knives, Patti Smith’s Just Kids, and any album by Depeche Mode.
What projects do you see yourself working on at UT?
My research sits at the intersections between queer studies, visual culture, performance theory, and popular music studies. I am most interested in exploring the ways in which queerness and visuality circulate in transatlantic popular music, especially during the 1970s and 1980s. Other potential projects which captivate my interests include a queer cultural history of the mixtape and a cultural biography about the B-52’s, tentatively titled Cosmic Satellites. Beyond my academic research, I also hope to become involved in a queer public history project in Austin or Texas more broadly.
What are your goals for graduate school? What do you see yourself doing after you graduate?
My primary goals for graduate school are to expand the types of research questions I seek to answer and to clearly articulate the ways in which I want my work to circulate both inside and outside academia. After graduating, I could see myself working as a faculty member in an art or media department, as a curator in an art museum, or as a freelance creative writer. At the same time, visions of becoming a lead singer in a dance-oriented rock band or owning a cheese shop always loom in the imagination.
Bonus: In your own words, what is American Studies?
A cacophonous sound residing in the liminal spaces between hope and despair, love and loss, passion and disillusionment.
AMS Student Spotlight Feature—PhD Candidate Taylor Johnson Karahan
Name: Taylor Johnson Karahan
Pronouns: she/they
Question (Q): What are your research interests, both academic and for fun, while in American Studies at UT!?
Answer (A): My research interests currently are in ancestral remains and sites of unburial. I work on how and why certain people are remembered and memorialized while others are silenced and forgotten by mainstream narratives.
Q: How did you make your way to American Studies as a discipline?
A: When I was a senior in my undergraduate studies and mentioned wanting to get a doctorate, my advisor asked me what my favorite things I read and studied were. When I answered Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth and Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism, and referenced the prison abolitionist projects I was a part of with her, she directed me toward American Studies.
Q: Are you currently working on any projects, and if so tell us about them!
A: Conceptualizing a politics of unburial at three sites in Texas, I ask what it means for human beings to be kept in the basements and warehouses of major universities, buried unremarked upon on the grounds of symbolic monuments, and found in unmarked graves at construction sites. I trace epistemological and cultural structures which muster some human beings out of their graves to tell particular stories and lead to the unmarked burials of others, how such structures manifest at these sites and in Texas history, and what a Texas-specific historical focus can illuminate about how narrative power operates in the building and expansion of empire. Attending to archeological evidence, counter-memories, and routinely silenced historical archives, my work unpacks the tenuous boundary between past and present and invokes the possibility of more just futures.
Q: How does American Studies at UT make your work possible?
A: Working in American Studies at UT allows me to also situate my research at the intersections of Black Studies, Indigenous Studies, Mexican American Studies, Texas History, Geography, Ethnography, Archeology, Cultural Studies, Carceral Studies, and Public History. By rooting my work in American Studies, I can take an interdisciplinary approach to analyze how power operates in historical productions about unburied ancestors and across ostensibly distinct sites.
Q: What is your favorite thing about AMS at UT?
A: My favorite thing about AMS is the tight-knit and supportive community – especially among the graduate students. From maintaining a close relationship with a visiting Fulbright scholar even though she’s back across the Atlantic Ocean to sharing puppy photos with the sibling of a professor I rode home from the airport with, the connections I’ve made in this department have really supported me through some of the more difficult parts of life and graduate schooling. I have met the most talented, passionate, thoughtful, funny, and generous people here, and I will cherish every one of them for the rest of my life.
Bonus Q: What is a fun fact about you that you would like your colleagues, peers, and/or students to know about you?
I’m not sure if it’s altogether that fun of a fact (and a particularly contradictory one for an abolitionist), but I have seen every single episode of Law-and-Order Special Victims Unit – most of them several times. I can alarmingly recite the intro with perfect timing, and I can place Mariska Hargitay by season based solely on her hairstyle. If you need a walking SVU encyclopedia – call me.
Dr. Randy Lewis’ Psychedelic Cities
Did you know that the chair of American Studies, Dr. Randy Lewis, is a documentary filmmaker?
If you didn't, please be sure to check out his latest short here: Psychedelic Cities
The documentary is an 18 minute film that analyzes the re-emerging of psychedelics such as "magic" mushrooms and dispensaries in Vancouver BC and -legal- ketamine clinics RIGHT HERE IN AUSTIN, TEXAS.
Dr. Lewis stated that he views "these videos as an extension of my teaching + research in the American Studies Dept at UT-Austin---I shoot on GoPro’s, edit on my laptop, compose and record the soundtrack, and share it on Youtube. I hope you enjoy!"
Be sure to check it out & let us know what you think!
AMS Student Spotlight—PhD Student Henrik Jaron Schneider
Name: Henrik Jaron Schneider
Pronouns: he/him
Contact Information: henrik_schneider@utexas.edu
Question (Q): What are your research interests, both academic and for fun, while in American Studies at UT!?
Answer (A): Dinosaurs and the environment. Like most boys, I was indoctrinated by Jurassic Park to be obsessed with prehistoric reptiles. In addition, I was a boy scout for over a decade, which helped me to develop a deep appreciation for nature and taught me that birch wood is highly flammable even when wet (I don’t know what to do with that information but it’s in my brain and now it’s in yours, too. You’re welcome). At UT Austin, I combine my fascination with natural and built environments with my interest in prehistory to explore the intersection of paleontology, extractivism, and dinosaurs as cultural icons. I’m also a hobby meteorologist. So, besides wasting my time gazing at clouds and checking numerical weather prediction models four times a day (without any theoretical knowledge on the matter—but they’re colorful, which I like 🌈), I hope I will be able to integrate my obsession with the atmosphere into my research on the cultural histories of our planet’s geosphere.
Q: How did you make your way to American Studies as a discipline?
A: I started college as an environmental science major with a minor in climatology at the University of Freiburg. During a lecture on edaphology and pedology, I decided to change my major and university and applied to a film and communications program at the University of Mainz. I don’t have an explanation for this radical shift other than the fact that I was an erratic 19-year-old Gemini. After two more years, I decided to switch from film to American studies. What attracted me to the field were the creative methods and approaches to transnational cultural histories. Therefore, it’s not so much a question of how I found my path to American studies as a discipline as it is a convoluted journey to making my way to American studies as a method/habit of mind.
Q: What is the nature of your work? What method(s) do you utilize the most? How does your current work align within American Studies at UT?
A: In the past, I’ve mostly utilized critical media analysis, queer theory, and cultural discourse analysis. For my bachelor’s degree, I wrote a thesis on racial stereotypes in Disney movies. My master’s thesis was an analysis of the intersection of technology, gender, and sexuality in the Jurassic franchise through a queer theory lens. While I’m still interested in pop culture and representations of prehistory, my methodological approach has shifted as a Ph.D. student in the American studies department at UT. In addition to the methods, I utilized as an undergraduate and graduate student at the University of Mainz, several classes I took at UT pointed me toward the material histories of dispossession and how they intersect with the dinosaur as a cultural icon. Thus, my time at UT made me aware of the cultural work of the dinosaur and the ways in which ideas about prehistory are intertwined with racial capitalism, land use politics, and environmental history.
Q: Are you currently working on any projects, and if so tell us about them!
A: I just finished my orals exam, so my main project at the moment is to feel like a real human again. Other than that, I’m working on my prospectus and a paper I will present in March at the conference of the American Society of Environmental History in Boston.
Q: How does American Studies at UT make your work possible?
A: The diverse interests and backgrounds of our faculty profoundly informed my understanding of methodology in the context of my research. In addition, UT provided me with opportunities to further develop as a scholar, such as writing reviews for E3W and supporting the department as a member of the graduate student conference committee.
Q: What is your favorite thing about AMS at UT.
My cohort. Starting a Ph.D. program as an international student from Germany during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic was highly anxiety-inducing. Amanda and Stephanie have always supported me with their compassion, friendship, and advice <3.
Bonus Question: What is a fun fact about you that you would like your colleagues, peers, and/or students to know about you?
A: I was on German reality TV. Good luck finding the evidence.
