Tomorrow (11/28): Diaspora Talk Series with Artist Tammie Rubin
Tomorrow, Wednesday, November 28th, artist and professor Tammie Rubin will speak as part of the John L. Warfield Center for African American Studies's Diaspora Talk Series. The event will begin at 6 pm in GWB 2.206. See you there!
Du Bois @ 150 Symposium: Thursday, 11/29
In honor of W.E.B. Du Bois' 150th birthday, the Warfield Center for African and African American Studies will be hosting a symposium exploring the life and work of one of the most important black intellectuals of the 20th century, W.E.B. DuBois, this Thursday, 11/29.The event will feature lectures in the Harry Ransom Center's Prothro Theatre from 11 A.M. to 4 P.M., by Dr. Annette Gabriel-Joseph (Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor), Dr. David Roediger (Foundation Distinguished Professor and department chair in American Studies, University of Kansas), and Dr. Claudrena Harold (Professor of African American and African Studies and History, University of Virginia).The lectures will be followed by a roundtable discussion between the three lecturers and UT professors Dr. Stephen Marshall and Dr. Jennifer Wilks, held in the Gordon-White Building's Multipurpose Room (GWB 2.206) from 4:30 - 6 P.M.To learn more about the event, the lecturers, and the specific topics of each lecturers' speech, please visit the Warfield Center's event page for the symposium.
What We Did in Atlanta: An ASA/NWSA Recap
Sims Cleaver Panel ASA
NWSA 2018
Trader Vics Atlanta
The Vortex Little Five Points
From November 8-11, graduate students and professors from the UT Austin American Studies Department presented papers and chaired panels at the American Studies Association and National Women's Studies Association meetings. Read on for our reflections on the conferences and to find out what we did in Atlanta.
Gaila Sims: I got to shake Kathleen Cleaver's hand! My sister was on a panel with the iconic former Communications Secretary for the Black Panther Party as part of an ongoing project to process Ms. Cleaver's personal photography archive, and I got to meet her beforehand. She was funny and no-nonsense and told us some very fascinating stories about giving birth to her first son while in exile in Algeria in 1969. It was pretty magical.
Andi Remoquillo: The annual conference for the National Women’s Studies Association is known by many for cultivating a space where scholars, activists, both or neither can come together and re-instate new—and old—feminist solidarities. The 2018 NWSA conference in Atlanta, Georgia was no exception. This was my second year attending and presenting at NWSA, and similar to my first year, I left feeling reinvigorated, re-charged, and re-inspired to pursue the feminist work that I have committed myself to, even before entering graduate school. Similar to so many other conference attendees, I was reminded of the importance and power behind the work that I do for my own community. This year’s conference was organized around the theme of imagining feminist futures of freedoms, and the variations of presentations truly illustrated just how multifaceted and exciting the future of feminist activism and scholarship is. One of the most memorable moments was when keynote speaker Angela Davis praised the diverse faces she saw throughout the hundreds of audience members—for her, this was so indicative of the rebirth of feminist politics in the wake of a socio-political predicament in the U.S. framed by anti-black, anti-immigrant, and anti-woman sentiments. Davis, as well as the other keynote speakers whose activism was rooted in the 1960s, recognized the power of organization and solidarity across multiple identity-lines. By recognizing the audience members in this way, it was as if the speakers were re-directing the gaze to make the claim, “we are here for you, as you are here for us.”
Janet Davis: After chairing and commenting on a terrific ASA panel exploring intersectional considerations of multispecies justice, fellow panelist (and UT AMS MA alumna) Sherri Shue and I spent a wondrous evening at the Georgia Aquarium watching four juvenile whale sharks, manta rays, beluga whales and other charismatic megafauna float in the blue twilight.
Kerry Knerr: Atlanta has one of the last remaining Trader Vic’s in the world, once the favorite restaurant of Rita Hayworth, my Houstonian grandparents (janitor/nurse), and Richard Nixon. Donald Trump shut down the last Trader Vic’s in New York City because it had “gotten tacky”—everyone hates their landlord. Now, there are more in Abu Dhabi than there are in North America. What does the tiki bar in Riyadh serve?
Sarah Carlson: I was all nerves the 24 hours leading up to our session. As the chair, I'd been in touch with all of our participants, from the initial cold-contact email to the last-minute questions about printing on site. We knew as much about each other as our brief bios shared and we were to have a 90-minute conversation at 8 am on a Saturday. As happens with broad and generous session topics, the round-table was a somewhat eclectic mix that posed a bit of a head-scratcher: would this conversation make any sense? Yet, unbeknownst to me, all four of us had various, independent networks that somehow intersected: some in the digital humanities realm, others in museum studies, and yet more in pedagogy. Over breakfast after our session, we all followed each other on Instagram.The serendipity of conferences reveals surprising relationships, and this is especially so at ASA where unusual presentations often have an unexpected and remarkable relevance. Similarly, those who attended the session and the questions they posed were ones I never expected, which was a good lesson for why we actually go to conferences. It's not to present what we already know, but to be reminded that we don't know what we don't know and that's what makes these projects interesting.
Kate Grover: Here are some things I learned while attending NWSA and ASA in Atlanta:
In Atlanta, as in Austin, no one is prepared for freezing temperatures
The people in Little Five Points are cooler than I’ll ever be
When you combine multiple tater tots into one giant tater tot, it’s called a tater cake
Visiting a tiki bar with a tiki scholar is a joy
If your Airbnb is in an “urban pioneering” building from 1970s, you’ll go through three layers of security and probably take some interesting selfies
Receptions are life-savers (see no. 3)
Old feminists rock
In a pinch, a paper towel can be a coffee filter
Presenting at two conferences in one weekend is exhilarating, and also a lot
My colleagues are brilliant (but I already knew that)
NWSA plenary 2
Nick Bloom: Reflecting on this year's ASA, I am only able to think about the bravery of all of the people I knew who got behind microphones in front of rooms full of strangers inside of what appeared to be the tallest building in Atlanta and said, "I have a monumentally important question about our social world." It's a strange place to ask monumentally important questions about the social world, and it is too bad there aren't more places, less nerve-wracking places to ask such questions. The questions people were asking were urgent, about catastrophe, love, struggle, and the meaning of social existence, not mere intellectual exercises, and I hope we keep feeling brave enough to ask these personally important, righteous questions again and again, in public and in private places.
UT AMS Doctoral Candidate Natalie Zelt Featured in New Routledge Focal Press Companion (2018)
UT AMS doctoral candidate Natalie Zelt is featured in a new Routledge Focal Press Companion, The Constructed Image in Contemporary Photography (2018). Natalie, who wrote the collection's introduction, spoke to us about framing the companion in her introductory essay.Natalie: "I had the honor of writing the introduction which I titled 'State of Photograph: The Status of Photographs.' The editors' ambitious plan was to put together a compendium of essays, interviews and artist vignettes focused on the idea and practice of constructed photography since 1990. My intro was supposed to take a macro view of the photograph's relationship to 'constructed-ness' and that is just what I did. I pull references to Photoshop 1.0, the collapse of the USSR and Black Feminist Thought all into a paragraph on photography and 1990; I do a quick survey of recent publications and exhibitions that consider the topic of constructed photographs and then summarize the book's sections, like any good introduction should. My closing line is one I am pretty proud of: 'Together, [the texts in this volume] manifest a collective effort to grapple with the ever-changing power, politics and pleasures of a vexing medium that refuses to tap out.'"Here's a synopsis of the collection from the Routledge website:"This compendium examines the choices, construction, inclusions and exemptions, and expanded practices involved in the process of creating a photograph. Focusing on work created in the past twenty-five years, this volume is divided into sections that address a separate means of creating photographs as careful constructs: Directing Spaces, Constructing Places, Performing Space, Building Images, and Camera-less Images. Introduced by both a curator and a scholar, each section features contemporary artists in conversation with curators, critics, gallerists, artists, and art historians. The writings include narratives by the artist, writings on their work, and examinations of studio practices. This pioneering book is the first of its kind to explore this topic beyond those artists building sets to photograph."
This Wednesday (11/7): Inaugural American Studies Film Club Screening: "I am Evidence"
This Wednesday, November 7th, undergraduate and graduate members of the UT Austin American Studies Department will kick off the inaugural American Studies Film Club event, a screening of the documentary "I am Evidence." All are welcome. The film begins at 5 pm followed by discussion.Check out the event flyer created by UT AMS undergraduate Dina Karruli for more information! If you're interested in hosting a screening with the American Studies Film Club, please contact Julie Kantor at juliekantor@gmail.com.
Book Talk (11/6): Dr. Leonard Moore to Discuss The Defeat of Black Power
On Tuesday, November 6th from 1 - 2:30 pm, Dr. Leonard N. Moore, Vice President for Diversity and Community Engagement and the George Littlefield Professor of American History at The University of Texas at Austin, will discuss his new book, The Defeat of Black Power: Civil Rights and the National Black Political Convention of 1972 (2018). This event is sponsored by the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and is free and open to the public. Lunch will be served.Please register at the talk's eventbrite page. The event will take place in Bass Lecture Hall at the LBJ School.Here's a synopsis of The Defeat of Black Power from the event page:"For three days in 1972 in Gary, Indiana, eight thousand American civil rights activists and Black Power leaders gathered at the National Black Political Convention, hoping to end a years-long feud that divided black America into two distinct camps: integrationists and separatists. While some form of this rift existed within black politics long before the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., his death―and the power vacuum it created―heightened tensions between the two groups, and convention leaders sought to merge these competing ideologies into a national, unified call to action. What followed, however, effectively crippled the Black Power movement and fundamentally altered the political strategy of civil rights proponents. In The Defeat of Black Power, Moore shows how the 1972 convention signaled a turning point for the Black Power movement, whose leaders did not hold elective office and were now effectively barred access to the levers of social and political power. Thereafter, their influence within black communities rapidly declined, leaving civil rights activists and elected officials holding the mantle of black political leadership in 1972 and beyond."
Five Questions with First Years Continues: An Interview with Kristen Wilson
Originally from the southern side of the Golden State, by way of UC-Berkeley, Kristen Wilson arrives at UT-Austin with an investigative acumen, interests in film, foreign policy, and mid-20th century US-Germany connections, and a love for public educational institutions. For much more on Kristen's background, her plans for graduate study, and a bold attempt to answer American Studies' unanswerable question, keep on reading!
1) What is your background, academic or otherwise, and how does it motivate your teaching and research?
I’m originally from southern California, but I did my undergrad at the University of California, Berkeley, graduating with a B.A. in English and American Studies. I applied to Berkeley as an English major with the intention to pursue investigative journalism, but along the way I found American Studies and fell into research rabbit holes that I never wanted to crawl out of. My drive remains similar—to piece together stories from any and every source I can find, and then to share those stories and the consequences they bear to the broader public. Before I came to UT, I took a gap year working as a writing tutor for the honors thesis program at Berkeley and working in prepared foods for Whole Foods.
2) Why did you decide to come to AMS at UT for your graduate work?
For my project, there seemed no better collection of people and resources than here in Austin. The culture of the department also struck me as remarkably supportive and open, both on a personal and academic level. Additionally, there’s something particularly special about public institutions that I can’t seem to get away from. It’s easy not to believe in anything nowadays, but the mission here seems clear, urgent, and essential.
3) What projects or people have inspired your work?
It’s difficult to name just a few, but I’ll make the attempt. Over the course of my time at Berkeley, I worked with Professor Kathleen Moran, Professor Michael Cohen, Professor Christine Palmer, Professor Andy Shanken, and Professor Justin Gomer on long-form projects that allowed me to develop a breath and depth of interests—I never once talked to one of them without receiving helpful advice or some measure of orientation, their own bodies of work encouraging me to take risks and pursue my interests, whatever they might be. I owe the inspiration for my current project to a visit to the German Museum of Film and Television in Berlin, an other-worldly experience that I hope to repeat at some point in the near future.
4) What projects do you see yourself working on at UT?
My hope is to develop a dissertation on the business and politics of exporting American films to Germany in the postwar period, looking at the relationships between the American State Department, the MPEA in Hollywood, the American Department of Defense, the West German film industry, and the West German government. I anticipate that the ultimate thrust of the project will be an analysis of the ways in which American culture was simultaneously commercialized and used as propaganda in the early period of the Cold War, all in the hopes of understanding something fundamental about the ways in which the United States uses culture abroad to accomplish political aims.
5) What are your goals for graduate school? What do you see yourself doing after you graduate?
In my time here, I hope to engage in discussions with a broader community of scholars at all levels and improve my own work and the work of those around me in doing so; as much as I have to learn from faculty and the graduate students ahead of me, I hope to offer what I can to them and to the undergraduates passing through the department and university as a whole. If even one student leaves a better thinker and writer for my efforts, I’ll consider that aspect of my time here a success. Additionally, I would like to build myself up as a researcher and produce a dissertation that can be turned to some public use.
After I graduate, I see myself pursuing a career in academia or in another research setting; that said, it’s some time away and I’d let myself off the hook if something more compelling turned up.
Bonus Question: In your own words--what is American Studies?
I think this question might qualify as hazing, but I’ll give it my best go.
American Studies is an interdisciplinary approach to American history and culture, bringing a variety of academic methodologies and personal perspectives to the fore in order to better understand the reality of the lives of some segment of the American public or those affected by American governance and culture. Just about anything is fair game if you can find the sources to support academic investigation, and I’m fairly certain that’s how we all ended up here.
This Friday (10/26): Michelle Tea Discusses Her New Book, Against Memoir
On Friday, October 26, UT Austin LGBTQ Studies and the Center for Women and Gender Studies will host a conversation with feminist author Michelle Tea on her latest book, Against Memoir: Complaints, Confessions & Criticisms. LGBTQ Studies Director, Ann Cvetkovich and Austin artist Gretchen Phillips will lead a conversation on Against Memoir and queer subculture lives.The conversation will take place from 4 pm - 5:30 pm in the Glickman Conference Center (Patton Hall 1.302B).Here's a synopsis of Against Memoir from the Feminist Press:"The razor-sharp but damaged Valerie Solanas, a doomed lesbian biker gang, recovering alcoholics, and teenagers barely surviving at an ice creamery: these are some of the larger-than-life,yet all-too-human figures, populating America’s fringes. Rife with never-ending fights and failures, theirs are the stories we too often try to forget. But in the process of excavating and documenting these lives, Michelle Tea also reveals herself in unexpected and heartbreaking ways. Delivered with her signature honesty and dark humor, Tea blurs the line between telling other people’s stories and her own. She turns an investigative eye to the genre that’s nurtured her entire career—memoir—and considers the extent to which art preys on life."
ASA and NWSA 2018 Annual Conferences: List of UT-Austin Presenters
The 2018 American Studies Association Annual Meeting (ASA) and National Women's Studies Annual Conference (NWSA) will be held simultaneously in Atlanta, GA this November 8th through November 11th (Thursday - Sunday). Many graduate students and professors from UT-Austin's American Studies department will be presenting at both conferences, as well as students and professors from other departments across campus. We have included a list of UT-Austin presenters at both conferences below. There is a separate list for each conference, and the lists are sorted alphabetically.
American Studies Association Annual Meeting (Westin Peachtree, Atlanta, GA, Nov. 8 - 11)
Betsy Beasley
Panelist, Militarism and Capitalism: The Work of Wages and Violence
Nov. 8, 4 – 5:45 P.M., Westin Peachtree, Sixth, Chastain J
Daina Ramey Berry
Panelist, Program Committee: The Salience of Slavery: Scholarship and Teaching on Racial Slavery in a Moment of Crisis
, Nov. 9, 4 – 5:45 P.M., Westin Peachtree, Sixth, Chastain F
Nicholas Bloom
Paper Presenter, “’Go Home’: Reframing the Subject of Suffering in Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing.”
Utopic/Dystopic: Black Feminist Aesthetics
Sun, Nov. 11, 12 PM, Westin Peachtree, Seventh, Augusta B (Seventh)
Simone Browne
Chair, Maps for the Territory: Walks, Words, and Counter-Worlds in Palestine
Sat, November 10, Westin Peachtree, Sixth, Chastain J
Nicole Burrowes
Panelist, Emergent Counter-Topographies, Infrastructures, and Genealogies of Struggle
Nov. 8th, 4 – 5:45 P.M., Westin Peachtree, Sixth, Chastain H
Christine Capetola
Paper Presenter: “And We’ll Try to Imagine What It Looks Like: Prince, Synthesized Femininity, and the Political Potential of Vulnerability.”
Remember the 1980s through Black and Latinx Performance
Thu, Nov. 8th, 4 – 5:45 P.M., Westin Peachtree, Seventh, Augusta D
Sarah Carlson
Chair: Emergence in the Archive: Cultural Heritage in Theory and Practice
Sat Nov. 10, 8 – 9:45 P.M., Westin Peachtree, Seventh, Augusta A
Amy Sara Carroll
Paper Presenter: “States of Immersion: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Carne y Arena”
Sans Emergence: Aesthetics of Immersion, Technology-Mediated Corporealities, and Weaponized Landscapes
Nov. 10th, 4 – 5:45 P.M., Westin Peachtree, Sixth, Chastain E
Christine Castro
Paper Presenter: “Agricultural Labor, Discipline, and California’s Rural Salinas Valley as Carceral Palimpsest.”
On New Cartographies of Racial Capitalism and Black Radical Tradition
Nov. 8th, 12 – 1:45 P.M., Westin Peachtree, Sixth, Chastain C
Jose Centeno-Melendez
Paper Presenter: “Centering on the Nation’s Capital: Salvadoran Settlement, Survival, and Growth”
Performing Care, Domesting Labor, and Empire
Nov. 8th, 2 – 3:45 P.M., Westin Peachtree, Seventh, Augusta G
Karma Chavez
Panelist, No Borders, No Prisons: Emerging from the Settler State Deportation Regime
Nov. 8, 10 – 11:45 A.M., Westin Peachtree, Sixth, Chastain 1
Martha Cotera
Panelist, Chicana Movidas: New Narratives of Activism and Feminism in the Movement Years
Nov. 9, 12 – 1:45 P.M., Westin Peachtree, Eighth, Peachtree 1
Janet Davis
Chair, States of Embodiment: Animality, Racialization, and Environmental Justice
Nov. 8, 2 – 3:45 P.M. Westin Peachtree, Seventh, Augusta B
Peace and Love El Henson
Paper Presenter: “Pain, Pleasure, and Power: Queer Black Women and Girls Using Non/Erotic Strategies to Resist State Genocidal Terror
Women of Color Resist: Feminist and Queer Strategies
Nov. 8, 12 – 1:45 P.M., Westin Peachtree, Seventh, Augusta C
Ana Isabel Fernandez
Paper Presenter, “Contemporary Muralism, Performance, and the Emergence of a Zapotec Visual Archive in Los Angeles.”
Los Angeles Geographies and Archives
Nov. 10th, 12 – 1:45 P.M., Westin Peachtree, Seventh, Augusta 2
Lyndon Gill
Chair and Panelist, Re-Emergent Erotics, On the Uses of Erotic Islands
Nov. 9, 4 – 5:45 P.M., Westin Peachtree, Sixth, Chastain E
Kate Grover
Paper Presenter: “The Chicago Women’s Liberation Rock Band and Emergences of Rock and Roll Feminism.”
My Music: Anti-Colonial Feminist Punk Rock
Nov. 10th, 2 – 3:45 P.M., Westin Peachtree, Seventh, Augusta 2
Nicole Guidotti-Hernandez
Paper Presenter: "Performing Misogyny for the Anarchist Masses: Enrique Flores Magón’s Gendered Denunciations."
Fri, November 9, 4:00 to 5:45pm, Westin Peachtree, Twelfth, Piedmont 2 (Twelfth)
Laura Gutierrez
Paper Presenter, “Divas, Exoticism, and Freakery in Nao Bustamante’s Filmformance Silver and Gold (2009)”
Performance Studies Caucus: Nao Bustamante’s Always Already Emerging Art
Nov. 10, 2 – 3:45 P.M., Westin Peachtree, Sixth, Chastain 1
Omi Jones
Paper Presenter, “The Block Party as Intervention.”
Creating States of Emergence: Scholar-Artists and the Life-Giving Capacities of the Arts
Nov. 10th, 12 – 1:45 P.M., Westin Peachtree, Seventh, Augusta E
Kerry Knerr
Paper Presenter: “Mai Tai at the End of the World: Nuclear Testing and Tiki”
Pacific Currents and Visions
Nov. 10th, 8 – 9:45 P.M., Westin Peachtree, Eighth, Peachtree 1
Marisol Lebron
Panelist, Critical Ethnic Studies Committee: Academic Labor, Austerity, and Authoritarianism
Nov. 9th, 10 – 11:45 P.M., Westin Peachtree, Sixth, Chastain 1
Paper Presenter: “Counting Death and Making Death Count: Puerto Rico before and after Maria”
Temporalities of Catastrophe
Nov. 10, 12 – 1:45 P.M., Westin Peachtree, Sixth, Overlook
Minkah Makalani
Chair: Varieties of Groundings in Black Studies
Nov. 10, 4 – 5:45 P.M., Westin Peachtree, Seventh, Augusta A
Jennifer McClearen
Chair: Sex Negativities: The Discursive and Institutional Life of Sexual Violence
Nov. 8th, 4 – 5:45 P.M., Westin Peachtree, Eighth, Peachtree 2
Julie Avril Minich
Paper Presenter: “The Politics of Public Health: Reading Rafael Campo in a Health Care Crisis.”
Embracing the Mess, Engaging the Complex: Disability Politics and Anti-Ableist Practices among Poor and Racialized Populations
Nov. 10, 12 – 1:45 P.M., Westin Peachtree, Seventh, Augusta D
William Mosley
Paper Presenter: “Emergent Black Feminism: Intimacy, Interiority, and Tenderness in Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s Spill.”
Queer/Feminist Liberatory Futures
Nov. 10, 10 – 11:45 A.M., Westin Peachtree, Seventh, Augusta A
Lauren Nelson
Paper Presenter: “Some Third-World Sized Hole: Narrative Thourism in Marlon James’ A Brief History of Seven Killings.”
Global Emergencies, Caribbean Responses
Nov. 10, 10 – 11:45 A.M., Westin Peachtree, Sixth, Chastain H
Monica Ortiz
Paper Presenter: “Bones and Bodies: Dead Body as Text.”
(Re) Emergent Bones: Settler Colonial Spaces and the Accumulation of Human Remains
Nov. 10, 2 – 3:45 P.M. Westin Peachtree, Sixth, Chastain J
Paul Joseph Lopez Oro
Paper Presenter: “Diasporic Black Indigeneity: Performing Garifuna Memory”
Traveling Blackness in the Americas: Obscured Transnational Flows of Race, Culture, Gender, and Politics in the African Diaspora
Nov. 9, 12 – 1:45 P.M., Westin Peachtree, Twelfth, Piedmont 1
Ana Schwartz
Chair: Our Borderline Concepts
Nov. 10th, 12 – 1:45 P.M., Westin Peachtree, Sixth, Chastain J
Vivian Shaw
Paper Presenter: “Crisis Activism: Race, Gender, and Mobilization in the Aftermath of Disasters.”
Crisis Obscura: Racialized Exceptions and the Biopolitics of American Empire
Nov. 8th, 2 – 3:45 P.M., Westin Peachtree, Sixth, Chastain G
Brett Siegel
Paper Presenter: “Protect Our Kids!: Friday Night Tykes and the Ideological Crisis for Youth Tackle Football”
Emerging Minds, Bodies, and Values: The Concussion Crisis in American Youth Football
Nov. 10th, 10 – 11:45 P.M., Westin Peachtree, Sixth, Chastain J
Gaila Sims
Panelist: Emergence in the Archive: Cultural Heritage in Theory and Practice
Nov. 10th, 8 – 9:45 A.M., Westin Peachtree, Seventh, Augusta A
Eric Tang
Chair: Domestic Empires: Aftermath, Endurance, and Refuge in the Militarized City
Nov. 8th, 8 – 9:45 A.M., Westin Peachtree, Sixth, Chastain H
Lisa B. Thompson
Paper Presenter: “Black Women Under a State of Emergency: Black Feminist Revolutionary Theatre.”
On the Uses of Political Theatre
, Nov. 10, 8 – 9:45 A.M., Westin Peachtree, Seventh, Augusta E
Shirley Thompson
Chair: 9-1-1 Emergency: Locating Emergent Racialized Coping Strategies in Popular Culture
Nov. 9th, 12 – 1:45 P.M., Westin Peachtree, Sixth, Chastain G
Elissa Underwood
Panelist: Critical Resistance South at Fifteen: The 21st-Century Landscape of Abolition in the U.S. South and Beyond II
Nov. 10th, 4 – 5:45 P.M., Westin Peachtree, Sixth, Chastain F
Tabias Olajuawon Wilson
Paper Presenter, “Born to Fly: Black Fugitivity, the Language of Freedom and the Branding of Outlaws.”
Racial Terror in the United States: Black Geographies and Popular Culture
Sat, Nov. 10, 10 A.M. – 11:45 A.M. Westin Peachtree, Twelfth, Piedmont Three
National Women's Studies Association Annual Conference
(Hilton Atlanta, Nov. 8 - 11)
Shawntal Brown
Poster Presenter, “Teaching While Black: Analysis of Black Women Faculty in Academia and Black Communities”
Sat, Nov 10, 1:00 to 2:15pm, Hilton Atlanta, Second Floor Lobby
Christine Capetola
Paper Presenter, “‘Could We Go to a Movie and Cry Together?’: Prince, Vibrational Vulnerability, and the Political Possibility of Androgyny”
Panel: “Sensing in the Interval: Aesthetics and Alternative Forms of Minoritarian Collectivity”
Fri, Nov 9, 2:45 to 4:00pm, Hilton Atlanta, 3, 310 (LCD)
Alexandria Cunningham
Roundtable Presenter, “Becoming Undisciplined: Black Graduate Students on Refusal, Pleasure and Possibility”
Thu, Nov 8, 1:00 to 2:15pm, Hilton Atlanta, 4, 407
Ann Cvetkovich
Roundtable Presenter, “Michfest Legacies: Performing the Impossible”
Fri, Nov 9, 9:30 to 10:45am, Hilton Atlanta, 2, 216 (LCD)
Kate Grover
Paper Presenter, “Surrogating Sister Rosetta: Shingai Shoniwa, Rhiannon Giddens, and the Performance of Black Feminist Memory Work”
Panel: “Performances of New Selves”
Sun, Nov 11, 11:00am to 12:15pm, Hilton Atlanta, 3, 308
Nicole M. Guidotti-Hernandez
Paper Presenter: “Undocu Pedagogies: The History of Freedom University”
Panel: “The Legacies of Freedom University”
Fri, Nov 9, 8:00 to 9:15am, Hilton Atlanta, 4, 404
Natassja Gunasena
Paper Presenter: “A Handful of Mustard Seeds: Theorizing at the Intersection of Death, Transgenerational Violence and Academia.”
Panel: Invoking Remembrance: Spirituality, Embodied Knowledge and the Neoliberal University
Friday, Nov 9, 11:00 am to 12:15 pm, Hilton Atlanta, 3, 310.
Annie Hill
Roundtable Presenter, “The Manifesta as Utopian Form: Queer and Feminist of Color Critique
Sat, Nov 10, 9:30 to 10:45am, Hilton Atlanta, 2, 222
Alden Jones
Paper Presenter, “Ivory Tower Ignorance: Trans(*) Knowledge and Organizations as Adjuncts of the Academy”
Panel: “Thinking Trans*: Emergent Trans* Epistemologies in the Academy and Educational Space”
Fri, Nov 9, 11:00am to 12:15pm, Hilton Atlanta, 2, 215 (LCD)
Caitlin O’Neill
Panel Moderator: “Traversing Academic Maroonage: How Black Women’s Kitchen Tables Conjure Radical Spacemaking”
Fri, Nov 9, 4:15 to 5:30pm, Hilton Atlanta, 2, 220
Andi Remoquillo
Paper Presenter, “Daughterhood and the Diaspora: Asian-American Women on Defining Home, Belonging, and Gender”
Panel: “Re-imagining Belonging in Asia and Asian America”
Fri, Nov 9, 2:45 to 4:00pm, Hilton Atlanta, 3, 309 (LCD)
Lisa B. Thompson
"The Mamalogues:" A Reading of Lisa B. Thompson's "The Mamalogues"
Fri, Nov 9, 4:15 to 5:30pm, Hilton Atlanta, 2, 221
Five Questions with First-Years Returns: with Holly Genovese!
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It's October, and it's time to introduce the newest cohort of UT AMS doctoral students! We asked all five incoming students about their academic backgrounds, their intellectual interests, and projects they plan to pursue here at UT. Today we bring you Holly Genovese. She's straight out of the hallowed Civil War streets of Central Pennsylvania, and she's done with the northern winter.
1) What is your background, academic or otherwise, and how does it motivate your teaching and research?
I got my B.A in history and political science (Temple University, ‘13) and M.A in History (South Carolina, 15). Right before coming to UT I served as the coordinator for the Field Family Teen Author Series at the Free Library of Philadelphia, planning author events for teens throughout Philadelphia. My work with YA literature has really influenced my interest in the cultural production written by and for those who aren’t taken seriously. This includes teenage girls, but also people of color, the incarcerated, and other marginalized groups. I had the opportunity to be trained in the Inside Out Prison Exchange Program a few years ago, which really motivated my work with and about the experiences of incarcerated people. And while I’ll always love history, my love of literature comes first, and I was feeling limited by some of the boundaries of history.
2) Why did you decide to come to AMS at UT for your graduate work?
There were so many reasons I chose AMS at UT. The diversity of faculty and faculty interests, the supportive graduate student environment, the ability to explore my interests in history, in literature, in ethnographic research all in one place...I was also running from the northern winter, to be honest.
3) What projects or people have inspired your work?
So many! I am constantly inspired by the work of cultural critics, from Ta-Nehisi Coates to Susan Sontag to Roxane Gay. Activist scholars, like Ruthie Gilmore and Angela Davis. And importantly for my work, incarcerated and formerly incarcerated activists and intellectuals have been so inspirational to me, especially Robert King and Albert Woodfox of the Angola 3, whom I now consider friends.
4) What projects do you see yourself working on at UT?
I am trying to stay open minded because I tend towards myopic focus. But my work thus far has focused on cultural production and activism amongst prisoner rights activism in Louisiana. I hope to continue this work while at UT, as well as working more on African American women’s prison writing. But honestly, my interests are so broad, who knows where I will end up. I love writing and talking about the politics of young adult literature, feminism in television, southern studies, and victorian children’s literature.
5) What are your goals for graduate school? What do you see yourself doing after you graduate?
For graduate school, I want to soak up as many books as possible. I want to practice my writing, both academic writing and popular writing. I want to get more experience working in museums and historic sites. I have a lot of ideas about what I might do after I graduate, but in an ideal world I would be some sort of cultural critic and teach in a prison or jail. That might mean I have a traditional academic post or it might not. I’m just excited to see where UT leads me.
Bonus: What is American Studies?
I have no idea what American Studies is, but isn’t that kind of the point?