10/10/18 10/10/18

What I Did On My Summer Vacation: Judson Barber on Rollercoastering Through the South

In the final installment of "What I Did on My Summer Vacation," UT AMS doctoral student Judson Barber takes us on his road trip to find the best rollercoasters in the American Southeast. Read on to join the adventure---and for Judson's excellent photographs.

Years ago, I heard from somebody that one of the tricks to surviving grad school is having a good hobby. Anything that can give you a break from the rigors of academic life—something that lets you disconnect from the burdens of books to read and paper deadlines to meet—will get you a long way. Luckily, I’ve never had a problem distracting myself.I’m not sure where it comes from, but since I was a kid I’ve always had this compulsion to collect stuff. Back then it was stamps, coins, action figures, whatever I could get my hands on. As I grew up and started to travel that evolved into collecting different places, or pieces of them, and now each summer I attempt to visit different regions of the country that are new to me, if I can. After spending most of my life in the hazy, brown, concrete deserts of Southern California, what some might consider the most mundane aspects of different parts of the country—dense foliage, remote highways, scenic vistas—bring me a very special and unique delight. Getting away from urban sprawl of mass suburbia to more rural parts of the country is a welcome treat in itself.In recent years, those trips have been guided principally by one thing: new roller coasters and amusement parks. Corny, I know. But it’s something that still grabs my interest year after year. These trips through the Midwest, Northeast, Southwest, and this year Southeast, have allowed me to collect place in a more experiential way than through kitschy tchotchkes from wherever.This summer I had my sights set on a major oversight in my regional experience. My trip started in Atlanta where I spent my first day. From there I went up I-75 to I-40 through Knoxville to Pigeon Forge, TN to visit a place that should be on everyone’s to-do list, Dollywood. Pigeon Forge also offered up a unique research opportunity—a trip to the newly opened “Alcatraz East” crime museum. But this isn’t a venue for that sort of academic writing, so I’ll leave you with just a few photos of the façade of that industrial building, nestled comfortably between Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville Island Inn and the Comedy Barn Theater.From Pigeon Forge, Highway 441 South took me through Gatlinburg and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, to the epic Newfound Gap lookout which separates the Volunteer and Tar Heel states. From there, Highway 19 reconnects with Highway 74 and then I-40 to about Asheville, and then I-26 turns south for about 35 miles until it reconnects with Highway 74 again, headed into Charlotte. There’s a theme park that straddles the NC and SC border, called Carowinds (“Where the Carolinas come together!”) where I spent the next day and a half.After my time at Carowinds, and a quick stop in the small town of Belmont, NC for some of the best Barbeque in the state, it’s a straight shot down I-85 through South Carolina back to Atlanta.In all, the four days in July added up to about 16 hours of driving which took me through 4 states (39 new counties), and on 31 new roller coasters.

10/8/18 10/8/18

María Magdalena Campos-Pons's "Like the lonely traveler": A Conversation with the Neon Queen Collective

The Neon Queen Collective is a trio of Austin-based curators—Jessi DiTillio, Kaila Shedeen, and Phillip Townsend—who collaborate on topics such as race, ethnicity, representation, class, sexuality, and gender in socially engaged art produced by feminist artists of color. This fall, they are showing the second part of a two-part exhibition series on María Magdalena Campos-Pons at the Visual Arts Center here at the University of Texas at Austin. The exhibition Like the lonely travelertraces the evolution of María Magdalena Campos-Pons’s video production over the last three decades, from her early documentary and autobiographical photographic series to her more recent conceptual explorations.On Friday, October 12th, The Neon Queen Collective will host a panel discussion on the work of artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons, who will join scholars from UT Austin and central Texas to discuss her practice in relation to the field of video art across the Americas. The panel will be moderated by Dr. George Flaherty, Associate Professor of Art History and Director of the Center for Latin American Visual Studies (CLAVIS) at UT Austin. The panel takes place at 4:30 p.m. in Room 1.102 in the Art Building.Read on for a discussion between UT AMS doctoral student Gaila Sims and the Neon Queen Collective:Gaila Sims: My first question is about the formation of the Neon Queen Collective. I’d love to know when you were formed and why you felt working in a collective was important.Kaila Sheedeen: We started actually through a conversation Phillip and I had in March 2017, and there was a call out through the Visual Arts Center for Center Space Gallery, which is a student-run gallery space so you can submit proposals and do shows in that space, you can either curate or show your own work. And I saw that call come out and at the time I was really interested in figuring out how to put some of what I was learning in my classes to actual use. I have always been interested in curatorial work and I knew Phillip was interested and we share the same advisor, Cherise Smith. So it seemed to make sense, since our interests aligned, and at that time I realized I didn’t want to be the name of a show. I was trying to avoid that, so I thought the idea of working collaboratively with someone would make the process not only more interesting, it would make it more rich for everyone involved. And so Phillip and I had a conversation and we decided that since he had a personal relationship with Magda [María Magdalena Campos-Pons] from previous work he had done that it made sense to use that as a starting point, as a first time collaboration. It was a really easy stepping stone for us, and I’ve always really admired her work. He obviously loves her work, and it seemed like a really good way to start as a collective. We ended up moving the show to the Christian-Green Gallery, and it moved from there to a two-part show.Phillip Townsend: And one thing that really evolved out of this process that we didn’t really anticipate was this community of art institutions that sort of formed and our being able to get work from various institutions. So the work in February was housed at the Christian-Green Gallery, we have work from the Blanton, we have work from the Peabody Institute in Salem, we have a work from the Cooper Gallery at Harvard. We’ve been able to create a smaller community of art institutions, and now we are involved at the VAC and the Contemporary. It’s become a very intimate relationship between all of them. And that’s a product of our work as a collective, we bring different things to the table but collectively we try to produce something that’s a whole.Kaila Schedeen: And I think that’s something that was really conscious on our part, because we are working as a collective. We all see art as having the ability to provide connections between people, and I think that to me is one of the most powerful things about visual creation is that it connects people across spaces. And so to be able to not only connect ourselves but these different institutions around the country was a really powerful thing that I’m glad that we were able to do it to the extent that we did.Gaila Sims: You’ve already started talking about this, but I’m interested in the goals of the Neon Queen Collective.Phillip Townsend: Well, one of the major goals for us is visibility. When Kaila and Jessi and I started talking about how we wanted to define ourselves, what contribution we wanted to make in Austin and in the art world in general, we thought about the invisibility of minority artists, particularly minority women artists or feminist-identified artists. We thought and feel strongly that that is our wheelhouse, that is where we are going to focus and that’s the contribution that we are going to make. So that’s the main goal, to provide a platform because we acknowledge and recognize that we are not making the art ourselves, that we are just providing a platform so that we can showcase artists’ work and bring these different perspectives to various communities.Gaila Sims: I’d love to hear more about the exhibition that is on display now.Jessi DiTillio: The exhibition is at the Visual Arts Center, in the Art Building. It is a retrospective of her video art—not everything but we have selections of her videos from the early 90s until 2016. It’s a cool space—we’ve built walls in the gallery to make viewing rooms for all the different videos. The show is called Like the lonely traveler, which is a line from a Cuban poet. Magda is really into poetry as an influential aspect of her practice in general. When we were interviewing her and asked her about artists who influenced her it was almost all writers rather than visual artists. She reads a lot of poetry and often draws on particular lines to influence images in her work. So for example there’s one video piece in the show that draws on this image from a poem about the moon and she drew from this image she got while reading the poem of a hill that had the moon sunk into it—the way you would see it at twilight. She built this whole visual experience from this image of a moon sinking into a hill. The show opened on September 21st and will be on display until December 7th.

10/1/18 10/1/18

What I Did On My Summer Vacation: Janet Davis on Touring for American Experience Miniseries, The Circus

In this fourth installment of "What I Did On My Summer Vacation," UT AMS professor Dr. Janet Davis tells us about touring for the new American Experience miniseries, The Circus. Be sure to tune into PBS on October 8th and 9th!This summer, I was part of the Television Critics Association Press Tour for The Circus, an upcoming American Experience miniseries that will air nationally on PBS October 8th and 9th. I’ve been actively involved in the series from start to finish—I’m a talking head onscreen and over the last year, I’ve reviewed the script and the rough cuts of the film.Here are some photos of me and my fellow panelists on July 30th at the TCA event at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills. I am also part of other discussions and screenings at the New York Historical Society and the Portland Art Museum before The Circus airs in October. The series provides a remarkable multifaceted and intersectional exploration of how the circus made modern America. panel 2 panel 1 janet

9/27/18 9/27/18

A Conversation with Molly Mandell (B.A. 2016), Author of "Made in Cuba" (2018)

Molly Mandell (UT AMS B.A., 2016) will publish her book, Made in Cuba, in Fall 2018. AMS :: ATX sat down with Mandell to discuss the book's origins in her undergraduate thesis research and the ways her American Studies background shapes her work as an editor and art director. Read on for insights on the DIY arts scene in Cuba, photography, American Studies research, and for an exclusive AMS :: ATX discount code you can use when ordering your own copy of Made in Cuba!

When did you graduate from American Studies at UT, and with what degree?I graduated in Spring of 2016, earning a B.A. in American Studies with High Honors and Departmental Honors and a minor in Communications (focused more specifically on journalism). I didn't find the AMS department until fairly late in my college career, but it was absolutely the place for me!

Can you tell us a little bit about your book, Made in Cuba?Made in Cuba focuses on the DIY culture that is so prevalent in the country. As such, it’s really a look into everyday life on the island. Given that much of the media coverage surrounding Cuba is wrought with stereotypes, we set out to tell stories of people in the most genuine way that we could. I co-wrote and photographed the book with James Burke, and we featured 30 different creative professionals, entrepreneurs and makers—everyone from farmers who live almost entirely from their land to internationally recognized artists restoring the island’s old neon signs. The book also includes guest essays from the likes of writer Leonardo Padura and singer/composer Daymé Arocena. We wanted to be sure to include some perspectives that weren’t our own, and I think they add so much. More details can be found at our website cuba-made.com. If anyone is interested in owning a copy, we’ve also set up a special discount code for blog readers (type in AMSxCUBA at checkout).

What inspired you to pursue this project?It all started as a university project. When the United States, under the Obama administration, began normalizing relations with Cuba, the country caught my attention. It's a place that is so close to the States but at the time, seemed so far away. I was born in the early '90s and didn't grow up hearing or reading much about Cuba. Suddenly, there was a lot of media coverage surrounding the island but it primarily demonized or romanticized goings-on. I knew that things likely weren’t so black and white and so I was interested in exploring the gray area. Initially, I went to study agriculture with the help of an Undergraduate Research Award. After the United States instituted its trade, economic and financial embargo against Cuba in 1962, the country relied heavily on the Soviet Union for support. When the Soviet Union collapsed, however, they lost 85% of their trade and aid almost overnight. I had read about some of the organic and sustainable solutions that farmers had developed as a result and went to learn more. After an initial six weeks on the island, I realized that this resolver, as they call it, went far beyond agriculture. The DIY mentality isn’t limited to social strata, economic standing, race, age or geography. Thanks to the support and encouragement of Randy Lewis, Janet Davis and Steve Hoelscher, the project evolved into my undergraduate thesis with the AMS department—but I always wanted the end result to be a book. After I graduated, I went on to work at a quarterly lifestyle magazine in Copenhagen. My time there gave me a lot more insight into publishing so last fall, my partner James and I decided to pursue the project more seriously. James, a writer and photographer who graduated from UT’s RTF department in 2014, had joined me on several of my research trips and as the project grew, it became a joint effort. I’m so pleased with how Made in Cuba has come together, and most importantly, I hope it does justice to the people featured and their work.

Can you describe the research process for this project? What was your experience of traveling to Cuba in order to gather stories?It all boils down to having connections on the ground and actually being on site. Since 2015, when we started, we’ve tried to read and watch as much as possible and keep up on reportage about Cuba generally. That said, doing research from abroad proved to be quite a challenge. Given that internet connectivity is limited in Cuba, people don’t frequently publicize their work online nor communicate regularly (or at all) via email. We did occasionally find subjects through other media sources but actually connecting with them often meant a lot of asking around before eventually showing up on their doorsteps unannounced. Some independent Cuban magazines have cropped up in the last few years, which were helpful in finding people who are doing interesting things but aren’t necessarily reported on by Western media outlets (we find that a lot of stories about Cuba are routinely recycled). Cuba can be a challenging place to dive into, so spending longer stretches there and getting a sense of how people move around and approach communication, for example, was imperative. It took a lot of time and many return visits to establish our relationships and grow our network. That network has absolutely been the most important element in the project’s success. The experience has been a friendly reminder that despite our reliance on the internet, actually talking to people face-to-face makes for the best exchanges. We’re still in awe of the generosity we received—people let us into their lives in deeply personal ways.

What projects or people have inspired your work?Conner Gorry is a journalist who has been living in Cuba since 2002. Also the founder of an English-language bookstore and community center called Cuba Libro, she is truly a nexus for all different kinds of people and projects happening in Havana and beyond. I really admire her work and she has been so influential to ours. She also wrote a guest essay for Made in Cuba that draws on her personal experiences and truly gets at the essence of DIY culture in the country. I would be remiss if I didn’t give a shout out to professor Randy Lewis—I took his class “Politics of Creativity” on a whim and it turned everything I knew on its head. He encouraged me to think both critically and creatively and to pursue what I was interested in without necessarily knowing what the final product would look like. If it weren’t for that mentality, I’m not sure that this project would have morphed into the book that it is today. His teaching style is very unique, and I have learned so much from his approach to research. I also recently wrapped up working on a book The Eye with Nathan Williams, the founder of Kinfolk magazine. He is, in my opinion, an extremely talented curator and has been incredibly influential in how I’ve developed my own creative vision.

How does your background in American Studies impact your writing, your work as a photographer, and your career in general?American Studies plays such a big part in my work. One of the foundational lessons that I took away from my time in the department was the need to constantly question mythologies. That very questioning is what led me to develop an interest in Cuba in the first place. So many departments focus on teaching hard skills, but American Studies taught me how to think. I always consider broad perspectives when I approach my work, which ultimately makes for better results. My time with AMS also made me comfortable not fitting into one box. I love to write, but I have a real passion for photography, for example. I used to believe that I had to focus on one or the other, but now I’m working on projects where I can successfully combine both (and all of the other things that I love!).

What projects are you excited to work on in the future?As I previously mentioned, I just edited and art directed another book The Eye for Nathan Williams. It features over 90 creative directors in a wide range of fields from publishing to film and dance and takes a look at the processes and inspirations behind their work. I’m also collaborating with James on a new media project. Our end goal is to connect creative professionals who share a similar set of values and approach to life in a deeper, more personal way. I’m currently not at liberty to discuss details but excited to share with the AMS department in the near future!

9/24/18 9/24/18

Dr. Lauren Gutterman Debuts Second Season of "Sexing History" Podcast

Last year, we profiled the new podcast Sexing History, "a podcast about how the history of sexuality shapes our present" co-written and co-hosted by UT AMS Assistant Professor Dr. Lauren Gutterman, as well as Dr. Gillian Frank, Visiting Fellow at Princeton University's Center for the Study of Religion. After a successful first season, Sexing History has just debuted the first episode of their second season. The episode is entitled "Bandstand and the Closet," and you can listen to it here."Bandstand and the Closet" is an exploration of the immense, and often damaging, narrative power of American Bandstand in shaping popular conceptions of youth culture in the 1950s and '60s. "The hit television show American Bandstand," Frank and Gutterman write, "has shaped how we understand the 1950s and early 1960s. For many, American Bandstand still evokes nostalgic images of white youth culture and sexually innocent teenage romance: a world made up of malt shops, juke joints, sock hops and drive-in movie theaters. If we look closer at how Bandstand was staged, and what was hidden from sight or hiding in plain view, we can see how the show's creators erased blackness and queerness from the show itself and from the official story of youth culture."

9/24/18 9/24/18

What I Did On My Summer Vacation: Caroline Johnson on Interning at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum

In this third installment of “What I Did on My Summer Vacation,” UT AMS doctoral student Caroline Johnson takes on the near impossible task of telling us what it's like to be a Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum intern.

I breached the surface of the L’Enfant Plaza metro station as the escalator carried me toward a particularly dismal day in Washington, D.C. Wearing my spirited red Toms and holding an umbrella to block the drizzle, I made my way to Independence Avenue. As I rounded the corner and saw the familiar blue and yellow of the Smithsonian symbol, my mind churned over a sea of questions—was I too old to be an intern? What would it be like? Will I fangirl over everything I do and see? Not to ruin the post, but the answers were no, near indescribable, and absolutely.I always thought it a sad reality we can’t put special narratives on our resumes, so I have decided to use this post to give you the two versions of my summer at the Smithsonian.The first is what I like to call the “LinkedIn description,” and it is as follows: As a curatorial intern in the Aeronautics Division at the National Air and Space Museum, I worked with the curators of the permanent military suite galleries spanning WWI, WWII and the Cold War. My primary duties included conducting archival research at the National Archives and Library of Congress as well as contacting key personalities and their families for participation in the exhibits. Since I specialize in visual history and the Cold War gallery will be a new addition to the military suite, most of my energy was spent collecting media relating to topics such as Vietnam airstrikes and photo transparencies from the Berlin Airlift and Korean War. (If you’re thinking that sounds like history nerd heaven, you are 100% correct.) The second version of my summer contains the narratives that don’t quite make it into the bullet points on my resume. As a devoted FRIENDS fan (the TV show), I have titled each experience accordingly:"The One Where She Almost Breathed on Neil Armstrong’s Spacesuit": During my first week, my supervisor gave me a behind-the-scenes tour of NASM’s Udvar-Hazy Center, located in Chantilly, Virginia. While in the preservation lab, a specialist pulled back a large sheet draped across a human-shaped figure. I stared at the freshly revealed artifact laying before me—it was a spacesuit. That alone was a special moment, and then I saw the label, “Armstrong.” Yes, friends, there in front of me, with no glass and subject to my very own mortal breath, was Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit. Keep in mind, this was my first week."The One Where She Befriended the Berlin Candy Bomber": One of my first tasks was to track down Colonel Gail S. Halvorsen (USAF, Ret), better known as the "Berlin Candy Bomber" or "Uncle Wiggly Wings" for his efforts in dropping parachutes containing Hershey bars and bubble gum to the children of West Berlin during the Berlin Airlift in 1948. After weeks of calling various air bases and historical societies, I received a phone number. Much to my surprise, Col. Halvorsen picked up! At 97-years-old, he is one of the most humble, kind, and enthusiastic human beings I have had the pleasure of speaking to. He referred to me as “sunshine” on subsequent calls, and I assume that makes us friends."The One Where They Went to the CIA": “I’m going to need your social security number. We’re heading to CIA Headquarters on Thursday.” My supervisor casually dropped this line as he stopped by my cubicle on his way back down the hallway lined with model spacecraft. This vignette is shorter than most, as I feel it keeps the air of mystery alive. I can say, we spent a little too long in the gift shop. As I sit here sipping my coffee from my official CIA mug, however, I have no regrets."The One Where Marine II Landed Thirty Yards in Front of Her": I often accompanied my supervisor on tours he would provide visitors and other groups of invited guests. On this instance, I met a group of interns at the Naval Observatory, and their supervisor extended an offer for me to tour their facilities. In addition to viewing the telescopes and incredible library with copies of works by Galileo, Copernicus, and Newton, the VP decided to make a guest appearance during the tour. We stood outside as Marine II landed on the front lawn, and then watched a secret service agent chase the VP’s dog across said lawn."The One Where She Cemented her Dissertation Topic": A few times this summer, I found myself at a seminar table consisting of brilliant individuals who work around the clock to provide the most exciting digital content to NASM audiences. The 160th anniversary of aerial photography, and the 75th anniversary of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) were fast approaching. With some encouragement from my supervisor, I volunteered to write these posts, and I ended up doing a bonus story on archival WASP images. My favorite part of this experience was seeing the public interact with the posts on social media, and it only confirmed my desire to return to UT and churn out a prospectus focusing on women in aviation. Yes, this is a shameless, self-promotional plug for you to read these posts, as I greatly enjoyed writing them!And so there we have it, the professional job description, and just a few vignettes to bring the experience to life. Though perhaps atypical in format, I figured it was the only way for me to convey the human element behind the trove of professional experience I gained this summer.In academia, we are trained to teach, to write, and to distill and present information at a rapid rate, yet we often forget we are building a wide range of skill sets in the process of doing so. I never thought my family aviation history, archival work, enthusiasm for Cold War material, and research on women in visual culture would combine in the most unexpected fashion to qualify me for this experience. To me, that has been the beauty of working in an interdisciplinary field: if you pursue your varying interests with a passion and seize opportunities to expand your knowledge base (or even to write in unconventional forms), you might just find yourself spending a summer in the sky, where, at least at NASM, I saw no limits.

9/21/18 9/21/18

Cary Cordova, Steve Hoelscher to participate in "Facing Racism: Art & Action" Symposium at the Blanton (9/27)

In conjunction with the exhibition "Vincent Valdez: The City," the Blanton Museum of Art will host "Facing Racism: Art & Action," a day-long symposium on Thursday, September 27th. Artists, curators, and scholars will speak on the role of the arts in addressing racism, including UT Austin American Studies faculty Cary Cordova and Steve Hoelscher.Please visit the event page to register for the day's events. Aruna D'Souza, author of Whitewalling: Art, Race & Protest in 3 Acts (Badlands Unlimited, 2018) will deliver the keynote address at 6:30pm.Facing Racism: Art & Action is co-sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Central Texas Regional office, the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement at The University of Texas at Austin, and the Humanities Institute at The University of Texas at Austin.

9/19/18 9/19/18

This Friday (9/21): Award-Winning Hip Hop Journalist Joan Morgan in Conversation with Dr. Lisa B. Thompson

This Friday, September 21, at 1 pm, African and African Diaspora Studies Associate Professor Dr. Lisa B. Thompson talks with journalist and scholar Joan Morgan. The event is part of the Warfield Center's Performing Blackness Series "Duets: Black Creatives in Conversation" curated by AADS Faculty Affiliate Dr. Jennifer Wilks, Associate Director of the Center.Joan Morgan and Dr. Thompson will discuss Morgan's new book, She Begat This: 20 Years of the Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, the latter's new play Monroe, which is currently on stage at the Austin Playhouse, and all things black and feminist. The event will take place at the Glickman Conference Center in RLP and refreshments will be provided. unnamed

9/18/18 9/18/18

A Conversation with Ben Lisle (PhD 2010), Author of 2017 Monograph "Modern Coliseum: Stadiums and American Culture"

Dr. Benjamin Lisle (UT AMS PhD, 2010) published his first monograph last year, entitled Modern Coliseum: Stadiums and American Culture (University of Pennsylvania Press). AMS :: ATX sat down with Lisle to discuss the genesis of Modern Coliseum during Lisle's time as a UT doctoral student, the works, ideas, and thinkers that inspired Lisle's project, and the place of Modern Coliseum in broader intellectual trends and debates, both inside and outside of the academy. Lisle also shares his appreciation for the inspired and collegial atmosphere of the UT American Studies department, and offers some advice for current graduate students. Please enjoy this fascinating--and inspirational--interview.Dr. Benjamin Lisle is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of American Studies at Colby College.

Can you tell us a little bit about your book Modern Coliseum, and how you came to the project?

Modern Coliseum tracks changes in stadium design and culture since World War II—from Brooklyn’s legendary Ebbets Field to Baltimore’s retro Camden Yards and its contemporary siblings. At the heart of the story are the modernist stadiums of the 1960s and '70s, exemplified by Houston’s Astrodome, “eighth wonder of the world.” These engineered marvels channeled postwar national ambitions while replacing aging ballparks typically embedded in dense urban settings. They were stadiums designed for the “affluent society”—brightly colored, technologically expressive, and geared to the car-driving, consumerist suburbanite. The modern stadium thus redefined one of the city’s more rambunctious and diverse public spaces, while reshaping perceptions of the city and its public. And its influence on the stadiums of today is profound, though unappreciated. I try to tell the story of urban change, the shifting ways people experienced the city and each other, and the development of modernism on the ground, as it was imagined, designed, built, and lived as an architectural and social phenomenon. It also has a lot of fun images.I came to Austin with an interest in stadiums, sport, and urban culture—stemming in part from living in Boston after college, where I became fascinated with that urban geography and Fenway Park. My master’s thesis project had examined nostalgia and baseball in the late twentieth century, which included analysis of Camden Yards. People’s valorization of both the “classic” urban ballpark and their replicas led me to wonder why the intervening stadiums—these modern “concrete doughnuts” so universally loathed—were even built at all. In my first semester at UT, someone suggested I visit the Center for American History, which hosted the papers of one of the Astrodome’s engineers. There I found Inside the Astrodome, this incredible, 260-page glossy program sold in the stadium at its opening in 1965. It is this wonderfully hilarious and transparent volume of stadium propaganda that basically answered the question I had—what people were thinking when they built these modern stadiums. I started writing on the Astrodome, then moved outward to other stadiums and cities.

What projects or people have inspired your work?

I found plenty of inspiration close to home—Jeff [Meikle]’s approach to the material and visual, Steve [Hoelscher]’s expertise in the spatial, and Janet [Davis]’s dynamic study of the historical. Jan Todd [UT-Austin Professor of Kinesiology and Health Education] helped introduce me to networks in sport history. And, of course, many of my friends and writing partners in the department then.As for other scholars, I loved Roland Marchand’s Advertising the American Dream, which shaped the ways I approached images as clichéd patterns and stories—I could apply these techniques directly to stadium programs and brochures. David Harvey’s The Condition of Postmodernity exploded my head—it was a book that provided this total explanation of everything I was seeing. I’ve cooled on it in recent years, but I still value it as an insanely ambitious explanatory text—and one that helped me see how space and time relate to human experience and cultural expression (even if it gets the culture part wrong some). Marshall Berman’s All That Is Solid Melts into Air was similar in that way. Thomas Sugrue’s, Origins of the Urban Crisis was important for my book. Though he is a historian, he pushed me to think more about how postwar space was weaponized to define racial experience—something the postwar stadium does too. I’ve gotten a lot out of George Lipsitz. Oddly enough, he wrote an article early in his career about modernist stadiums and political economy in Houston, St. Louis, and Los Angeles—stadiums and cities I examine in my book. But more conceptually, I appreciate his ideas about the white spatial imaginary, which I came to later in the writing but were quite useful in the book (and in teaching). I’ll stop there.

How do you see your work fitting in with broader conversations in academia and beyond?

The “spatial turn” was the theme of the ASA annual meeting in 2005—my first paper presentation at a big conference. My work reflects that move in American Studies that integrates the spatial and the cultural, thinking about how ideas are expressed through the built environment and the different experiences of those environments. The book and much of my teaching connect to and rely on conversations in urban history and geography—though I’m less interested in planning or politics than I am the cultural aspects of urban space and identity. Modern Coliseum also channels some of the work in critical sports studies—and is relevant to debates over public investment in stadiums and sport as a political platform (both explicitly and implicitly). More amorphously, I think it has been shaped by popular conversations about race, class, and space, provoked by movements like Occupy and Black Lives Matter.

How is this work you’re doing now, as a scholar, teacher or both, informed by the work you did as an American Studies student at UT?

One of the things I valued about UT—a major reason I chose to go there, in fact—was the way it mediated between what I saw as an older brand of American Studies and a newer one. I think people at UT particularly valued the place of history in American Studies more than many other programs or some of the work you see at ASA. I don’t mean to sound reactionary, but that historical rootedness was something I was looking for. You can see that in my teaching and research.Teaching is important. I’m not a genius, and I was never interested (or it never occurred to me) that scholarship alone was realistic or desirable. The faculty I worked with in Texas were great models for that—obviously they are wonderful scholars, but they were also very generous with their valuable time.The general spirit of the place—my relationships with others in the department—was great. People got along. This too was a reason I went to UT, and that probably sounds incredibly naïve, particularly in the current job market. But going somewhere that people got along was important to me at the time, and it’s something I think about every single day in my current position, where I love my colleagues. Institutions are always going to be frustrating, so being a good citizen locally is crucial. One of my colleagues here at Colby College tells us that the first rule of our American Studies program is “Don’t be an asshole.” For me this motto is both practical in a human sense, but also tied to the practice of American Studies—it fuses the ethical to the intellectual. I am thrilled to be associated with the UT program, which has this amazing family tree of teachers, scholars, and people—people that aren’t assholes and fight assholes, basically.

Do you have any advice for students in our department about how to get the most out of their experience at UT?

I doubt my advice would be very valuable, particularly in this job market. I’m not very strategic. But I did come into this (sixteen years ago?) knowing there were narrow prospects for work. So I told myself then that I wanted the experience of being around smart people and learning and writing, and whatever happened after I graduated would be a different thing. I’ve been lucky to have a position that allows me many of the freedoms I suspect we all like about academia. And I deserve it in the sense that I can do my job well. Even so, there are a hell of a lot of people out there who could do it just as well if not better. So, as hard as it is, I think it’s important to do things you are energized by, even if they seem unfashionable. I don’t think you can game the system by anticipating the project that will pop with the ASA theme in two years—or at least I can’t. There just aren’t enough permanent positions out there. This job takes a lot of energy, and in my now seven-ish years of doing it, post-graduation, I have been increasingly trying to strip away the things I don’t care about to focus on those that I do—whether or not they seem more likely to help me get a tenure-track position (which I don’t currently have). I try to trust that what is interesting to me will be interesting to some other people too. And as practitioners of American Studies, we typically bring compelling questions to any topic.

What projects are you excited to work on in the future?

Well, I thought I might write about things other than stadiums once the book came out, but now I find out that if you want people to read it, you need to keep writing to draw them to it. That’s not the question though.One thing I am excited about is a project on craft beer culture, with a particular focus on urban geography. I’m starting in Maine, developing a digital archive with oral histories, maps, collections of visual ephemera, and some short writing as a form of drafting. You can find the Maine Beer Project, in its infancy, here: http://web.colby.edu/mainebeer/. Depending on how that goes, I might try to scale it out to other places.I’ve been trying to help develop courses and student work in the digital humanities at Colby in recent years, so some of my other work has taken on a more public and local focus—things like examining urban renewal in a small city like Waterville, Maine. I’m the project coordinator for Digital Maine (http://web.colby.edu/digitalmaine/) which supports DH projects at the college.Last semester, I taught a class on ethical urban development. We had the chance to work some with the Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates, whose work really inspired our group. We’ve used that as a launching pad for a design group of students and community partners to develop actual material urban interventions in Waterville, an economically distressed former mill town where the college is located. That’s been fascinating and challenging—and not the sort of thing I would have anticipated a year ago.So, the things that excite me now are projects that are creative, collaborative, and hybrid. While making a book is certainly creative and rests on the contributions of others, these new projects have different dimensions to them. Making things in public seems to be what excites me these days, and it seems appropriate to the challenges we’re facing as a society.

9/17/18 9/17/18

What I Did On My Summer Vacation: Leah Butterfield on Interviewing Women Solo Travelers in Spain

Views of Greenland during the return flight to the US

In this second installment of “What I Did on My Summer Vacation,” UT AMS doctoral student Leah Butterfield recounts her experience interviewing women solo travelers in Spain.

We were seated on a sidewalk terraza on a hot, cloudless afternoon. Over icy glasses of Cruzcampo, a Spanish beer, Alexandria talked to me about her solitary travel experiences. As the conversation circled back to the expectations society often has for women—and the ways that traveling alone runs counter to those expectations—she pondered, “We’re warriors in a way.” “Backpack warriors,” she added, with a chuckle. With every solo trip, she suggested, women are fighting against cultural conventions and expectations: that they should remain in the home, that they should prioritize romantic and family ties, that they should avoid risk or adventure.Alexandria is one of the twenty-six American women that I interviewed this summer as part of my preliminary dissertation research. Though not all of these women might label themselves as warriors, most expressed an awareness that their solitary travels are a challenge to traditional gender norms. Despite the often-negative reactions from friends, family and strangers, these women choose to journey solo, on trips ranging from a few days to a few months, to destinations around the globe. The individuals that I spoke with ranged in age from nineteen to seventy. They included women of color and second- and third-generation immigrants, though the majority of interviewees were white. Most women identified as somewhere between lower-middle and upper-middle class, and over 40% of the women claimed queer identities, from “mostly straight” to “fluid” to “Let me put it this way: I don’t usually like sleeping with men.”I spent much of my summer listening to these women’s stories. They shared anecdotes of afternoons spent in charming cafes, of forming unexpected friendships and of being followed by unknown men. They talked about the moments when they felt safe and at peace in their solitude and of the moments when they did not. They told me about the books and blogs and people who inspired their journeys. When I asked interviewees to describe how they feel when traveling alone, they responded with words like joy, exhilaration, terror, independence, self-reliance, worry and love. This discordant mixture of terms suggests that the emotional uplift of women’s travel is often weighed down by the burden of fear. While the vast majority of these women had never experienced sexual assault or violent crime during their travels, the possibility of such occurrences was constantly on their minds. As one interviewee put it, traveling alone is “empowerment tinged with fear.”As I explored Madrid, where I rented a room for two months, and traveled to other parts of Spain, I experienced the truth behind these women’s words. I walked along the shore in Cádiz and through the winding streets of Seville. I marveled at the royal library in El Escorial and pet friendly, stinky goats at the Madrid Zoo. I watched flamenco from the cheap seats at El Teatro de Canal and danced along with the crowd during Madrid’s Orgullo Gay parade. I got pickpocketed, I got catcalled, and I broke down crying to more than one stranger in the Barcelona Sants railway station. I ate countless meals with only a book for company. And, like most of the women that I interviewed, these solitary experiences made me deeply, unshakably, embarrassing-to-try-to-put-into-words happy.As a PhD student feeling the pressure to be productive, it has been challenging to justify my choice to spend the summer in Spain. When people ask me the inevitable, “Why’d you do that?” I emphasize that the trip wasn’t all play, that I offset my costs by working as a nanny, teaching English to three sweet niños. I tell people that I wanted to escape from the Texas heat, that I wanted to practice my Spanish, that I wanted to return to the city, Madrid, that enchanted me as a study abroad student.While these reasons are all true, what I yearned for, above all, was the experience that one interviewee described. Solo travel, she said, “is like when you’re in the shower, but for days.” She explained, “It’s time to really think through s---.” Perhaps, for a scholar-in-training, spending a summer really thinking through s--- is the best justification of all.Some things I’m thinking through next? How American travelers conceive of their ties to the U.S., how age, race and physical appearance influence the anonymity of travel, and how the unsettled nature of travel can alter the value one places on “settling down.”