AMS Faculty Spotlight—Dr. Julia Mickenberg
Name: Julia Mickenberg
Pronouns: she/her
Title: Professor
Contact information: mickenberg@austin.utexas.edu
Q: What are you research interests, both academic and for fun!?
A: My research interests are pretty wide-ranging, but they’ve tended to focus around radical cultures in the 20th century (the Old Left and the New Left in particular), women, and childhood/children’s literature. My first book was on children’s literature and the left, and my second book was on American women and revolutionary Russia—and I also edited or co-edited several others on related subjects. I’m interested in hidden histories and untold stories of apparently unimportant people, which may sound kind of random, but it reminds me of something Virginia Woolf wrote in “The Art of Biography”: “Is not anyone who has lived a life, and left a record of that life, worthy of biography--the failures as well as the successes, the humble as well as the illustrious? And what is greatness? And what smallness?” The real question is whether the person writing is up to the task of illuminating why a particular story or life is worth writing about. I suppose this is a side interest, but for the past ten years or so—spurred by a first-year Signature course I’ve taught on “College and Controversy” and another course on “The History and Future of Higher Education,” which I co-taught with Rich Reddick (from Higher Education Administration) and Kate Catterall (from Design)—I’ve become interested in Critical University Studies, which looks at the ways in which power informs the processes and cultures around higher education.
I was an American Studies (“American Civilization”) major in college (see below for how I wound up with that concentration), but my two favorite classes were a creative writing class on “Autobiographical Fiction Writing” and a black and white photography class that I took at a neighboring art school. In the former, I found ways of exaggerating and embellishing stories from my own life. In the latter, my final project, which I called “People and Objects,” paired photographs of strangers walking on the streets of Providence, Rhode Island with photographs of objects that reminded me of those people. I still think about that project often because it got me wandering around town in ways I might not have done otherwise, and this became one of my favorite activities. What do we discover and learn by simply wandering and really looking? I also still think about a paper I wrote in graduate school (this for a class on Poetry/Culture/Power) on a 1966 book by the French artist Daniel Spoerri and several friends called An Anecdoted Topography of Chance, which is considered a key artifact of the Fluxus movement. Spoerri cleared off his desk, put down a piece of tracing paper, and then waited a while. Eventually he traced everything that had accumulated and then told stories about each object, stories his friends then expanded upon in footnotes, which also had footnotes. “From the banal detritus of the everyday a virtual autobiography emerges, of four perceptive, witty and exceptionally congenial artists,” notes a description of the book. I wrote about the Anecdoted Topography as a kind of tribute to the poetry and poetics of research and storytelling (I recall the book describing an ailment that the writers may have invented but which I surely have: anecdotonomania, a mania for anecdotes and telling stories).
For me that’s where all the joy is in this work: discovering new things and trying to find interesting and compelling ways of making sense of them. I’m especially interested in varieties of biography and autobiography, collective and individual. I recently taught both graduate and undergraduate versions of courses on auto/biography and loved having undergraduates write flash non-fiction pieces. So many were incredible. Choosing readings for the classes on auto/biography helped me realize/remember how much I like reading (and writing) creative non-fiction (in addition to reading novels, which have long been a refuge for me).
At some level I always wanted to be a writer. I’ve published five books and more than 20 scholarly articles, but I still don’t feel like a writer.
Q: What is the nature of your work? What method(s) do you utilize the most? How does your work align with American Studies at UT?
A: My work tends to be archive- and interview-based. I love getting at original sources and have spent many happy hours in libraries and archives all over the United States and also in London, Amsterdam, Paris, Moscow, and elsewhere, piecing through documents that, in some cases, no one besides their original creator has thought worth considering. I’m pretty intrepid about contacting anyone related to my research projects who is still alive and who might talk to me. I take special pleasure in talking to elderly women, maybe because I feel like their stories have not been properly valued in the past. I also look at actual physical books. Indeed, I’m proud to have been a thorn in the side of administration-level people who want to remove books from accessible shelving in the UT libraries to make way for larger study/social spaces. Books are not just pretty decorations—they are rich resources and artifacts (feel the pages, smell them, look at the marginalia. . . and look at books on the shelves nearby). Some of my favorite sources are diaries and letters: I suppose there’s something voyeuristic about that, but I’m eager to understand individual subjectivity, and the lines between private lives and public selves, especially as those lines shape political expression (this probably arose from studying American Communists, most of whom were secret about their affiliation with the Party).
I’m also pretty committed to following the sources wherever they lead me, even if it’s into unfamiliar territory. This is how I found myself writing a chapter of my first book on children’s literature about science, and a chapter of my second book about dancers and dance (as part of a section on performance in general). In both cases I started out knowing nothing about these subjects. Indeed, I could take that further: I wrote my dissertation and first book about children’s literature because I discovered that many blacklisted writers were able to publish children’s books. That idea was fascinating to me (especially because teachers were under so much scrutiny, and children are always a lightning rod for popular fears), but when I started my research, I knew nothing about children’s literature. I had to learn that whole field, in addition to learning about the history of childhood. And then I discovered that a big proportion of the books that lefties wrote were on scientific subjects. This meant I had to figure out why. In the case of dancers, I kept discovering American dancers who wanted to visit the Soviet Union, but their interest felt different from that of folks interested in Soviet art, film, theater, etc. What was that difference? I read a bunch of performance theory, and learned about embodiment and movement and what that can communicate. I guess you could say I’m methodologically open to anything that can help me understand and articulate whatever it is I’m trying to learn about. I even spent four years learning Russian so that I could do research in Moscow!
I think my work aligns with American Studies at UT in that almost all of us on the faculty are interested in reaching a wide range of readers/audiences. The work is theoretically inflected but we’re not interested in being inscrutable. We care about writing and finding ways to make our work engaging.
I try to communicate these passions in my teaching: I realized at some point that I learn the most from 1) doing my own research and 2) teaching. This means I try to give my students the opportunity to engage with primary sources and to teach each other (with guidance, obviously). I also teach students to value research, and to work hard at becoming good writers. And I encourage them to follow their curiosity wherever it leads them.
Q: Are you currently working on any projects (academically or otherwise), and if so tell us about them!
A: I’m currently working on several projects. The biggest thing is a biography of sorts focused around the poet, playwright, essayist, writer for children and activist Eve Merriam (1916-1992), which I’m currently calling “The Way We Were: Eve Merriam and the Hidden History of US Feminism.” My title comes from the fact that she was a model for Barbra Streisand’s character in The Way We Were. But that’s not what is significant about Merriam, who was very well known for decades and was groundbreaking in all kinds of ways even though now most people haven’t heard of her. What’s striking is that Streisand’s character in The Way We Were gives up her ambition to become a writer, channeling that energy into promoting her husband’s career. We’re supposed to respect her for never giving up her political commitments, but she did give up her own career aspirations. Merriam, in contrast, never did. I’m really interested in all the history I can explore through Merriam, who won the Yale Younger Poets Prize, knew a huge range of people from W.H. Auden to W.E.B. DuBois to Robin Morgan to Norman Lear; and wrote important feminist theory that predated (and influenced) Betty Friedan, the first “story for free children” in Ms. Magazine, the first tv special focused on women’s history (with Mary Tyler Moore narrating), and a gender-bending play that won an unprecedented 10 Obie awards. In some ways the book I’m conceiving is more like a biographically-based intellectual history, but I’m also deeply interested in interiority and the relationship between self and society.
The question of what it means to be “story worthy” also informs an article, “Dreiser’s Red Typewriter in Russia: Ruth Epperson Kennell,” which I’m currently trying to publish. I got interested in Kennell initially because of her children’s books about the Soviet Union, but then I learned about the utopian colony in Siberia that she joined in 1922, and that was the seed that started my book, American Girls in Red Russia. But I did not say much in the book about the fact that she was Theodore Dreiser’s private secretary (and lover) on his tour of the Soviet Union in 1927-1928. The article I’m currently finishing up is based mostly on Kennell and Dreiser’s unpublished correspondence as well as biographical pieces that each published about the other, and the power relations revealed in all of this.
Finally, I recently finished co-writing an article on “Valuing the Liberal Arts,” which started as my Provost Teaching Fellows project on Valuing the Humanities, and eventually involved working with an assistant from the English department, Ricky Shear (who became my collaborator) on a survey of UT liberal arts alumni (we expanded to include all of liberal arts after the dean of COLA agreed to provide additional funding for Ricky’s help). Our questions aimed to find out what alumni valued about their liberal arts degrees and how they felt those degrees limited them. I’m most excited about all the stories we gathered through open-ended questions, and I’m glad we ignored advice to not include so many of those questions. We’ll be presenting this research at the Modern Language Association’s annual meeting in January. I’m also returning to some work I’ve done on the dancer Isadora Duncan to write a commissioned essay on Isadora in Russia for a collection on Duncan and Modernism. For the future, I’m playing with an essay or a book on child liberation. The second-wave feminist Alix Shulman (who I met through my research) sent me an incredible poster made by two kids in the 1970s that really got me thinking about this. In non-scholarly arenas, I started writing a novel a few years ago and then realized it would probably be better as a short story, and then I pretty much stopped working on it. But hopefully I’ll go back to it. I’ve also thought about making a podcast based on letters from the ‘80s, inspired by the piles of mail I recently retrieved from my childhood home (yes, we wrote real letters with stamps and everything). Speaking of work outside of academia I’ve become increasingly involved politically in the past six years or so. I got involved with a local group started after the 2016 election that consists mostly of retired, feisty old ladies who do things like register voters, knock on doors to get out the vote, etc. They’ve restored my faith in humanity (and democracy). Our country has become so polarized, and it’s easy to dismiss the election deniers as lunatic fringe but I think the people who have given up on democracy are afraid and feel misunderstood. We who are working for social justice owe it to them (and to ourselves) to at least try to understand where they’re coming from.
Q: How did you come to American Studies as a discipline?
A: In college (at Brown University) you had to declare a concentration by the end of sophomore year. I distinctly remember sitting on the Green trying to figure out how I could graduate and just keep taking whatever classes I felt like taking. That’s how I discovered American Studies. I never really thoughts about becoming a professor but I decided to apply for graduate school when I was working after college as a writer at a public relations firm. I decided to go back to school so I could have more interesting conversations then I was having at this job, and I chose American Studies (over History, Folklore, or English) because it offered the most possibilities. When I was told that I would need to apply to PhD programs in order to get funding, I decided to pursue a PhD. As I was finishing my dissertation and it came time to apply for jobs, I was less stressed out than many of my peers because I felt like there were so many possibilities, not just in academia. I still believe you can do almost anything with a degree in American Studies—that’s what’s so great about it.
Q: How does American Studies at UT make your work possible?
A: American Studies allows me to ask whatever questions seem natural to me. It allows me to teach almost anything I want to teach—even the “service” classes are fun. I’m constantly learning: from my students, from the new courses I design, from my research, you name it. It’s a gift to teach students who are open-minded and intellectually-curious, qualities possessed by a lot of people who wind up taking classes in our department. I also have great colleagues who push me in new directions. And I appreciate how connected we are to incredible resources on campus like the Harry Ransom Humanities Center and the Briscoe Center for American History.
Q: Favorite thing about AMS at UT.
A: I’d have to say that my favorite thing is the students. Getting feedback from a student about how I’ve helped them or influenced them is an incredible feeling. I also love seeing former students come into their own as people, scholars, professionals, etc. I still keep up with a student I had in my very first year at UT (in 2001!) who I now get to hear on NPR and see quoted in the New York Times because she’s become such an important figure nationally. I’ve also gotten letters and emails from students who took big classes with me years ago, people I don’t even remember, but who tell me how my class changed their outlook. The pride and gratification I get from a letter like that is up there with seeing my own children happy and successful. It’s even more of a gift because it comes from out of the blue and I have no expectations.
Bonus Q: What is a fun fact about you that you would like your colleagues, peers, and students to know about you?
A: I am a left-handed Gemini. I don’t remember exactly when I became obsessed with this fact, but I think it was in college: I heard that more Geminis are left-handed than any other sign. Around the time I heard this, I was working in a coffee shop and whenever someone picked up a cup with their left hand I would ask when their birthday was. I’m so obsessed with this fact that if we’ve ever met you probably already knew this about me.
This photo was taken outside a lodge in Stehekin, a remote community in Washington State (bordering North Cascades National Park) which you can only access by boat or by hiking about 10 miles. When I was 21 I worked for the Student Conservation Association in a historic apple orchard and homestead, doing maintenance and giving tours. I returned for the first time this past summer, and you can see I was very happy to be there. When I was in college and taking an American Studies class on “Yeomans and Yahoos: Images of the Farmer in American History,” I wrote a first-person essay about my experience of working in that apple orchard and homestead and how that related to larger ideas about the frontier, the west, the farmer, etc. I used that essay as my writing sample when I applied to graduate school. In other words, this photograph seems to represent not just something about me as a person but how I connected to American Studies.
AMS Alumni Spotlight—Dr. Gaila Sims
Name: Gaila Sims
Pronouns: she/hers
Title: Curator of African American History and Special Projects at the Fredericksburg Area Museum
Contact information: gsims@famva.org
Q: What were your research interests, both academic and for fun, while in American Studies at UT!?
A: Museums! While at UT, I took classes in Museum Ethics, Public and Digital History, and Museum Education, and wrote papers about living history interpretation at Colonial Williamsburg, Lonnie Bunch and the development of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and tourism at “slave castle” museums on the coast of Ghana. I wrote my Master’s Report about the Whitney Plantation Museum in Wallace, Louisiana, and my dissertation on representations of slavery at state history museums in Texas, Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, and Mississippi.
I visited museums for fun, too. I was constantly inspired by the amazing work showcased at the Art Galleries at Black Studies housed on UT’s campus, and made special trips to Houston and San Antonio to visit the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Houston Museum of African American Culture, and the McNay Art Museum (among many others). One of my favorite exhibitions was “The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse,” curated by Valerie Cassel Oliver at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, which I was lucky enough to visit in 2021. Texas has some seriously underrated museums, and I made sure I took full advantage while I was a grad student.
Q: How did you make your way to American Studies as a discipline?
A: I was working at a small African American museum in East Austin, the George Washington Carver Museum and Cultural Center, when I decided to apply to graduate school in late 2015. I knew I wanted to continue working at museums, but I wanted the scholarly training and expertise I realized I needed to continue rising in the field. I applied to programs in Ethnic Studies and American Studies, but I ultimately chose American Studies because I was attracted to the flexibility inherent in its interdisciplinary approach. I wanted a department that would support my museum aspirations, that would facilitate connections in the world of public history, and that would allow me to research and write about contemporary issues in the museum field. American Studies as a discipline, and American Studies at UT as a department, seemed the best choice for the kind of work I wanted to do.
Q: What was the nature of your work? What method(s) did you utilize the most? How does your current work align with American Studies?
A: I feel like I’m saying museums a lot, but they pretty much dominate my life. My focus has been (and continues to be) museum interpretation of slavery. I am fascinated by how these public-facing institutions grapple with this extremely important, and extremely difficult, period of history and its lasting consequences. For my Master’s Report, I examined the strengths and weaknesses of the Whitney Museum as a plantation museum entirely dedicated to presenting the history of slavery from the perspective of enslaved people. For my dissertation, I argued that an analysis of state history museum interpretation of the history of slavery constituted a new and productive scholarly direction. For both projects, I utilized a similar method, modeled after preeminent public history scholars like Stephen Small, Jennifer Eichstedt, Ana Lucia Araujo, and Fath Davis Ruffins. Visiting each museum was the crux of the method: at each site, I concentrated on the number of mentions of slavery, the location of exhibitions of slavery, the objects included to describe this history, and the language of the labels and wall text. In addition to visiting each museum, I contacted curators and museum staff at each place, and explored each museum’s website extensively. When available, I gathered visitor numbers, as well as information about the histories and funding structures of each museum. While I was most concerned with how visitors experience these sites and their exhibition of slavery, interacting with curators and museum staff allowed me to understand more about the curatorial and collecting practices of each site and the impact of these practices on the creation of exhibitions.
This work demonstrates the impact and influence of American Studies scholarship on the wider American public. Museums are at their best when they can share the incredible scholarship produced in academic institutions with their visitors in accessible, engaging ways. I think that has always been integral to my conception of American Studies: to produce knowledge about American history and culture that can impact the way we all think about this country, its relationship to the rest of the world, and its future. Museums are a particularly effective way to incorporate this ongoing, integral work.
Q: Are you currently working on any projects, and if so tell us about them!
A: Yes! I currently work as the Curator of African American History and Special Projects at the Fredericksburg Area Museum in Fredericksburg, Virginia. I am responsible for the development of exhibitions, interpretation, and programming related to African American history at the museum and across the city of Fredericksburg. This encompasses a comprehensive exhibition on African American history in the Fredericksburg area that will open with an accompanying publication in 2025 and the review, revision, and enhancement of city interpretive materials, including wayside panels, brochures, and walking tours. Since my arrival in August 2022, I’ve already curated and opened my first exhibition, “A Monumental Weight: The Auction Block in Fredericksburg, Virginia,” which incorporates historical documentation, academic scholarship, and extensive community feedback. It has been fascinating researching the history of Fredericksburg, getting to know community members, and figuring out the best way to incorporate diverse perspectives in the museum and throughout the city.
Q: How did American Studies at UT make your work possible?
A: Many other departments would not have been as enthusiastic about my intention to pursue an alt-ac career, and for that, I will always be thankful for UT AMS. Faculty member connections helped me secure several positions at museums in and around the Austin area, which proved integral to building my career. Finally, the department supported my slightly unusual field of research, which has proven to be extremely useful in my current field of work.
Q: What was your favorite thing about AMS at UT.
My fellow graduate students! I met so many wonderful people during my six years at UT AMS, and I am so grateful for those relationships. I loved learning about other students’ research areas and watching them develop their projects from start to finish. It was such a pleasure collaborating with so many different people and I am so glad to have witnessed all their incredible work. I look forward to following the career trajectories of all my fellow UT AMS alums.
Bonus Q: What is a fun fact about you that you would like your colleagues, peers, and students to know about you?
A: I don’t know if it is a fun fact, but I celebrated finishing my PhD with a trip to London with my partner, my sister, and her husband. The highlight of the trip was afternoon tea at the British Museum on my 33rd birthday, which felt an oddly perfect endnote to my experience as a museum-obsessed graduate student in American Studies.
AMS Alumni Spotlight—Dr. Andi T. Remoquillo
Name: Andi T. Remoquillo
Pronouns: she/her
Title: Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Asian American Studies at Wellesley College
Contact information: ar122@wellesley.edu
Q: What were your research interests, both academic and for fun, while in American Studies at UT!?
A: I was interested in researching the intersections of gender and class in the making of the Filipinx American Diaspora in the Chicago metro area, where I am originally from. I also spent some time at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History doing research on Asian immigrant women’s labor in the United States, particularly Hmong and Cambodian women, and as a graduate RA, I conducted some research on the Vietnamese refugee fishermen in Houston who clashed with the KKK.
Q: How did you make your way to American Studies as a discipline?
A: I came from a Psychology and Women’s and Gender Studies background but knew I wanted to diversify and engage more with Asian American Studies. Since there weren't any Asian American Studies Ph.D. programs, I applied to American Studies and Ethnic Studies Programs across the country. UT AMS was the best route for me!
Q: What was the nature of your work? What method(s) did you utilize the most? How does your current work align with American Studies?
A: I primarily engage with feminist ethnography, oral histories, and archival research. My current book project examines the role that Filipina/Filipina American women played in the making of the Filipinx American Chicago diaspora, starting from the 1920s to the end of the millenia. This socio-cultural historical ethnography is told through the personal stories and archives of Estrella Alamar, who was one of the few remaining 2nd generation Fil-Ams who was born and raised in Chicago. My work aligns with AMS because it is so interdisciplinary in nature and shows how American identity takes on many forms depending on one’s race, ethnicity, gender, class, generational positioning, and geographical location. I hope that my work challenges any homogenous and male-centered narratives of Asian American identity and community formation.
Q: How did American Studies at UT make your work possible?
A: I received a lot of guidance from AMS faculty members on my dissertation committee, specifically from Dr. Gutterman and Dr. Chhun. Their willingness to go above and beyond when helping me strengthen my research, diversify my analyses, and apply for jobs helped me finish my dissertation and land a job that makes me so happy.
Q: What was your favorite thing about AMS at UT.
A: The friends I made and getting to work with faculty members who were invested in my work.
Faculty Spotlight—Assistant Professor Dr. Alex Beasley!
We asked Dr. Alex Beasley (he/him) a few questions about his research and how he uses American Studies as a discipline, what got him here, and what he loves about American Studies at UT! Continue reading to learn more!
Q: What are you research interests, both academic and for fun!?
A: I’m interested in where capitalism and American culture intersect. That can mean a lot of things. How is our sense of community and identity shaped through being workers and consumers? How does our race, our class, our gender, or our sexuality shape how we understand economic life – and how do those categories shape how economic exchange functions? And what assumptions and beliefs do we hold about how markets work – and how they should work? Essentially, I want to know about where capitalism meets our daily lives.
Q: What is the nature of your work? What method(s) do you utilize the most? How does your work align with American Studies?
A: Right now, I’m finishing up my first book, which looks at the Texas oil industry after World War II. I’m tracing the rise of oilfield services companies, which specialized in offering consulting and expertise to oil companies rather than owning oilfields themselves. I’m arguing that this model became an increasingly important one in Texas by the 1960s and helped reshape the Texas oil industry. This had economic effects but also cultural ones. The centrality of expertise and service helped to shift ideas about masculinity, race, authority, and the role of the United States on the world stage.
Like a lot of American Studies scholars, my methods are varied. I do a lot of archival research, and I often do close reading of images and films as a part of my method. I have also done some work in mapping through GIS and have done some work with statistical data.
Q: Are you currently working on any projects, and if so tell us about them!
A: I’m finishing up my Texas book, but I’m also in the very early stages of a new project on real estate investment and shifting understandings of housing and the family after the 1960s.
Q: How did you come to American Studies as a discipline?
A: When I was an undergraduate, I told my advisor I wished I could create a major that blended history and literature – that studied literary narrative to better understand the past, and that examined historical events in relation to artistic representation. I didn’t want to just study literature and history – I wanted to study how the two intersected. She informed me I hadn’t invented something – I was just talking about American Studies. Unfortunately, my undergraduate institution didn’t have an American Studies department, but I was lucky to find my academic home as a graduate student and now as faculty at UT.
Q: How does American Studies make your work possible?
A: I often find that the kinds of questions that most motivate me are in the spaces between disciplines. American Studies didn’t just let me ask these questions – it encouraged that I do so!
Q: What is your favorite thing about AMS at UT?
A: Where to begin? We have an incredible group of faculty, staff, graduate students, and undergrads here. It genuinely feels like every single one of us is excited to share ideas with each other. There is a lot of energy, excitement, and empathy here.
Bonus Q: What is a fun fact about you that you would like your colleagues, peers, and students to know about you?
A: I spend so much time reading and writing for work, so when I can I like to create something that feels very material and physically grounded. I dabble in craftwork, baking, building things, and generally learning new skills – I like having something physically manifest that I can point to when my work feels a bit too ephemeral.
UT AMS ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT—Dr. Zoya Brumberg-Kraus!
Name: Zoya
Pronouns: She/her
Title: Dr. Zoya Brumberg-Kraus
Optional—contact information: zoyabrumberg@utexas.edu
Q: What were you research interests, both academic and for fun, while in American Studies at UT!?
A: I changed my focus a lot during my time at UT, but a sense of wanderlust and interest in material culture have always been the thread of continuity. Initially, I wanted to write about ghost towns and the built environments of preserved natural areas, but I wrote one or two papers on the topic and that was pretty much all I had to say about it. I went back into some projects I started but never finished to get inspiration for my dissertation. When I was in my MA program, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, I was working on a creative writing piece—vignettes inspired by my impressions of my first visit to California. I rented a car to go between the Bay Area and Los Angeles. I was also couch surfing, staying with friends and friends of friends, so my lists of must-sees in California came from all over the place: punks, artists, sex workers, architects, actors, students, surf bums, and archivists. I was most surprised by how much I loved Los Angeles. It was really full of surprises to me—it was so old and colorful and diverse and way more Jewish than Woody Allen had me believing. My dissertation ended up being about vernacular architecture in California with a specific focus on Chinatown-style architecture. I also did a lot of traveling through West Texas and New Mexico, writing about eco architecture and land art as a sort of side interest.
I used my research as a way to travel and explore with intention. That also meant that I got to do some really cool things like get a private tour of the Hearst Castle, stay at the Madonna Inn with a press rate, stay in an Earthship, and interview some very cool people like the sisters who transformed a dome-shaped time machine in the desert into a very unique sound bath experience. I also camped for the first time in my life, hated it, and then came around to it once I figured out how to make the experience more comfortable. (In case you’re wondering, this involves a large canvas tent, a floor futon, a camp stove, a camping French press, and being very picky about campsites). I also started dancing maybe a year after I moved to Austin; it’s not related to my research interests really, but it has been a major aspect of my life here.
Q: How did you make your way to American Studies as a discipline?
A: It was mostly accidental, to be honest. My MA thesis was a transnational exploration about the history of collecting—the only American Studies aspect of it was a chapter about the City Museum in St. Louis and Louis Sullivan’s midwestern architecture, and a postscript about the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles. I wanted to continue pursuing that avenue of interdisciplinary material culture research. One of my advisors, Shawn Michelle Smith, came from an American Studies background and suggested I apply to the program at University of Texas at Austin. I thought the discipline and caliber of program were a bit of a stretch for me, but it ended up being the only program that accepted and funded me—it seemed bashert. I took up the opportunity.
Q: What was the nature of your work? What method(s) did you utilize the most? How does your current work align with American Studies?
A: I come from a Fine Arts background, so I tend to find myself most engaged with visual culture, material culture, textures, the built environment…things that absorb all your senses at once, that require some creativity to “read.” I follow my inspiration, visiting places that seem aesthetically evocative for me. Like with art, the materials tell me what methods to use to shape them. I intuit that things are connected and tend to draw from various critical theory methodologies to show it. This is not really a good way to be a historian. Janet Davis, who advised my dissertation, lovingly encouraged me to find historical evidence to back my interpretations. I can feel the connection between the TCL Chinese Theatre and Los Angeles’ Chinatown Center. What transforms that into impactful scholarship is finding that the same muralist who did the interior murals of the Chinese Theatre also painted numerous murals and signage around New Chinatown, or that the Chinese American lawyer You Chung Hong, who had a heavy hand in designing the Center, described the Chinese Theatre as “the most beautiful theater in the world” in a letter to his wife some years earlier. I guess that combination of things is what makes my project “American Studies” and not more general cultural criticism.
All that said, the way I work does not quite fit with what American Studies looks like today. I am not convinced that the area studies I engage with (American Studies, Asian American Studies, Jewish Studies) really know what to do with interdisciplinarity. I get some very polarized reactions to my research and am struggling to find academic journals that are ready for my ideas and style. I am more optimistic about book editors.
Q: Are you currently working on any projects, and if so tell us about them!
A: I am shopping an editor for my book project, From Gold Mountain to Tinseltown: Constructions of Ethnic Identity in California’s Architectural Vernacular. I have a Jewish/Eastern Hemisphere foodways and recipe blog, Kimchi and Kishke, which admittedly I do not update enough…but I hope to turn that into a cookbook. I’m always designing and testing recipes, but it takes a few tests to get it right enough to put on the blog with a photograph.
Q: How did American Studies at UT make your work possible?
A: My dissertation committee was very helpful throughout the entire process. I got good advising and emphatic support from Janet Davis, Julia Mickenberg, and Jeff Meikle throughout my time in the program. I also got a grant from Foodways Texas to support some research travel my second year in the program. American Studies also nominated me for a university continuing fellowship for the 2020-2021, which I received. This is all to say that with my dissertation committee and graduate advisor Cary Cordova’s advising, confidence, and support were all super helpful. My advice to future graduate students is that finding a good fit with your advisor and dissertation committee is probably the best thing you can do for your career.
Q: What was your favorite thing about AMS at UT?
A: Janet’s office! I will admit I have cried in that office at least once and being surrounded by stuffed animals really makes all the difference.
I feel like I’m supposed to say the people, creativity, community…but that’s not really true. American Studies is not uniquely deficient in those areas, but the experience of graduate school (and surely as faculty in the future) is largely what you make of it. You have to create all those things for yourself.
Bonus Q: What is a fun fact about you that you would like your colleagues, peers, and students to know about you?
A: I’m jacked.
(as in strong)
Faculty Spotlight—American Studies Chair Dr. Randolph (Randy) Lewis!
We asked Dr. Lewis a few questions about his role in American Studies, what got him here, and what he loves about it! Continue reading to learn more!
Q: What are you research interests?
A: Like most folks who’ve been doing this for a while, I’ve written and taught about a lot of different things: surveillance technology, documentary film, indigenous media, creative nonfiction, public scholarship, pop music, and urban studies. In addition to writing five books on these topics, I’ve also been making no-budget documentary films for almost 20 years, mostly for academic audiences.
Q: What is the nature of your work? What method(s) do you utilize the most? How does your work align with American Studies?
A: It’s so hard to answer this without sounding like a ponderous old windbag from a Monty Python sketch (“of course in those days I was only a tea boy…”) But I’ll try, ha… Basically, I try to sketch cultural scenes like an ethnographer and then pivot to close readings of films, advertising, art works, or spaces that illuminate the hidden dimensions of the subject. All sorts of “non-research” activities shape my writing as well. Just being in the world is research if you’re looking closely.
Q: Are you currently working on any projects, and if so tell us about them!
A: As chair, my main project has been trying to keep the department safe and sane through the pandemic and to support the great work that my colleagues and students are doing. But I’ve also completed some short documentaries and a book manuscript in the past few years. I made a 30 minute film about Mad Max fandom in the Mojave Desert (see my wild photo below); another film about how Prada Marfa changed the west Texas town whose name it bears; and a third one, a much shorter video essay, that compares Austin and Oslo in terms of urban development. My current book is about cultural fragility in pandemic America. Next I’m doing a collaborative project on Tesla and a small project on “psychedelic cities.” And I’m still running The End of Austin after 11 years because it feels like a rare place where a mix of informal and formal approaches to our city can comingle. It started as a class project in a documentary grad seminar and somehow (well, through a lot of hard work from a lot of people) grew into a website with 250,000 page views and over 100 articles about evolution of the city.
Q: How did you come to American Studies as a discipline?
A: I was taking traditional history courses as an undergrad and was bored out of my mind. It was worse than eating paste. I stuck with it only because I had AP credit in the field and could graduate in three years, which was important to someone with very little money. But one day I landed in an AMS course that was called “The Artist in American Society.” Instead of treaties and diplomats, I was studying Louis Armstrong, Walker Evans, and the radical architecture known as Arcology. It was infinitely more me. I haven’t looked back.
Q: How does American Studies make your work possible?
A: Academia is often a traditional place in terms of methods, expectations, and the essential sameness of the product (peer reviewed journal articles; 15 minute conference papers, etc). That traditionalism has its strengths, but I’m happier in a more eclectic context. I always saw American Studies as the wildly painted house that has the colorful yard art and a bunch of chickens running around amusing the neighbors. I’m lucky to be one of those chickens because I would have been miserable in a traditional department that slotted me into a single niche and yelled “stay put!” At its best, American Studies is a fertile place for movement, experimentation, innovation, and creativity. I love that it has welcomed my mix of projects in different forms (digital, video, and traditional scholarship) and hope that our students feel that same freedom of possibility.
Q: What is your favorite thing about AMS AT UT?
A: The creativity and passion that people pour into their work, and the fact that we are small enough that what any single person is doing can resonate throughout the department. We care about what everyone else is doing. Unfortunately, because I’m chair right now, I can’t ask people how their projects are going because it freaks them out. They assume it’s a scrutinizing gaze of “are you working hard enough?” but really I’m just curious and supportive!
Bonus Q: What is a fun fact about you that you would like your colleagues, peers, and students to know about you?
A: When I was a young grad student doing dissertation research, I endured a 180 hour train trip that looped around much of the US and it only cost me $222 (and my dignity)! Also for fun I play vintage guitars, go to hot rod shows with my partner Monti, talk about life and love with my incredibly smart dog Daisy, dream up cool places to visit, and swim at Deep Eddy.
Spotlight Feature of the week—Graduate Coordinator Mary J. Dillman!
We want to spotlight all the AMAZING people that make American Studies at UT possible. This week we are highlighting Mary J. Dillman! We asked Mary what brought her to AMS, what she loves about being a part of the American Studies community, and a fun fact about her! Continue reading to see her responses! 😊
About me…
"I’m a 20+ year UT staffer who grew up in Round Rock, Texas, and has called the Austin area home for most of my life. I studied History and English as a undergrad at UT, then received an MA in History from Arizona State. I’ve worked in historic preservation, as a graduate teaching assistant, an undergraduate academic advisor, and an alumni programs and events coordinator. When the job as Graduate Coordinator in American Studies opened up, I reached out to my colleague and friend Dr. Janet Davis to learn more about the department, and the culture and amazing people here convinced me that it was the right place to be!”
What I love about AMS…
“Although I am still new to my job here, what I love most is being a problem solver for students. Even if I’m not sure of an answer or the process that is needed, I enjoy being the person students know they can come to with a question or an issue, and I will for sure do my best to find a solution for them.”
A fun fact about me…
“A fun fact about me is that I am currently working on downsizing my life to move into a tiny home (399 square feet, to be exact) and I love nothing more than being in the mountains, hiking and wildlife watching. I’m planning a road trip to Glacier National Park next summer for my 50th birthday and am including these two pictures of me at one of my favorite places on earth, Yellowstone National Park (summer 2021 and winter 2022)."
We asked our first year Assistant Instructors how their first month of teaching has gone so far. Check out Amanda Tovar’s response!
Amanda Tovar, (she/her/ella), third-year PhD student in American Studies at UT. She is currently teaching a class titled “Radical Feminisms & Media.” We asked her how her first year is going so far and how his course embodies American Studies at UT. This is her response.
Radical Feminisms and Media provides an overview of the historical and contemporary experiences of women and femmes of color in media and popular culture. The course explores how women and femmes of color, activists, writers, musicians, visual artists, poets and so many others contribute so much to the feminist narrative within media and popular culture while existing on the margins of toxic masculinity, patriarchy as well as racism. The course content is drawn from various texts/media including, novels, testimonios, memoirs, short stories, poetry, histories, murals, paintings, films, music, theory, and many other forms of popular culture. The course began by situating the historical context of women and femmes of color and then moves on to address questions concerning labels such as gender and race. Throughout the semester the course intends to consider the ways in which race, ethnicity, genders, and sexualities underline the material we will be and have been analyzing while they create multiple experiences for women and femmes of color.
I really think—or rather hope—that my class is going well! I absolutely love my students and their critiques of the media that they consume that they bring into the classroom are always scathing HOT. Initially, I was very nervous, and I thought it was going to be difficult trying to convey the way the mundaneness of everyday life wields social AND political power considering older generations continuously degrade the millennial and gen-z generations. But they literally walked into the classroom ignited with passion and a great desire to share their thoughts and opinions on current and historical events and the ways it relates to the media they are consuming.
For a little taste of my class—imagine listening to Philadelphia based screamo punk band Soul Glo alongside Solange while reading Patricia Hill Collins Black Feminist Thought. Or reading Ariana Brown’s poem Nylon, Black, ’72 while listening to Joey Bada$$’s Land of the Free. Or watching TikTok’s on the “Hailey Bieber lip” trend (that we all know she appropriated from Latina women) alongside Bad Bunny’s new mini documentary that accompanies his El Apagón music video. Or reading Rupi Kaur’s poetry in Milk & Honey with Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House alongside the powerful memoir Know My Name authored by Chanel Miller. I mix and pair all the various mediums we dissect with academic readings of a wide range of disciplines to strengthen my argument and really drive home the interdisciplinary nature of American Studies.
Lastly, I believe this course embodies the spirit of American Studies at UT because it quintessentially advocates for the everyday life via media consumption within the strictly defined borders of the United States to be critically analyzed and historicized. Additionally, I emphasize that we do not consume media passively while demonstrating that there is somewhat of a ripple effect between media and the sociopolitical climate that we are currently existing in. And true to American Studies fashion, they can do their assignments with any methodological praxis and approach, à la Paulo Freire, that they wish!
5 Questions with First Years—Jonathan A. Newby
We’re excited to kick off another year of our “Five Questions” series. This year, we’ll be featuring both first- and second-year students here at UT AMS. We look forward to sharing our amazing graduate students with you. Read on to learn more about Jonathan A. Newby.
Q: What is your background, academic or otherwise, and how does it motivate your research?
A: I completed my undergraduate degree in American Studies, with a double major in Digital Studies (self-designed), at William & Mary, in Williamsburg, VA. As a Black, Queer person, I am motivated to conduct research and engage communities in a way which increases authentic representation and full participation. I fully believe that there is a place for the blending of academia and publics - in fact, this blending is necessary for academia to survive and thrive and correct injustices committed by itself and others.
Q: Why did you decide to come to AMS at UT for your graduate work?
The financial support and the friendly approach of professors was a major contributor to why I chose AMS @ UT. I am on fellowship my first year here, under the mentorship of Dr. Gutterman, which has been helpful in allowing myself to settle into AMS and the University, as well as learn how the world of academia works. I will also be on fellowship my fifth year with the support of the Warfield Center for African and African American Studies, to go towards working on my future dissertation. And further, among the programs I applied to, UT Austin was the most approachable and accessible from the get-go, being able to reach a variety of different professors was very important to be towards making my decision, and the wealth of information I gained from them even before being admitted into the American Studies program helped cement my choice to come here.
Q: What projects or people have inspired your work?
A: I have most been inspired by work and research surrounding the internet, video games, and digital communities. I believe there is something special in digital spaces and in interactive media technologies that allow us to develop new ways of interacting, advocating, and learning.
Q: What projects do you see yourself working on at UT?
A: I see myself most looking at video game and internet communities and how they both reflect and affect American history and culture. I am interested in a variety of community-engaged research methods, including ethnography and oral histories, as well as policy and even development. I want to do work which uplifts Queer people, disabled people, people of color, and other communities of marginalized identities. I have other academic and personal interests, such as religion and politics, public transportation and urban planning, and higher education administration that I hope to pursue apart from and alongside my main research projects.
Q: What are your goals for graduate school? What do you see yourself doing after you graduate?
A: After I graduate, I would like to see myself become a professor or university administrator! I am forever grateful for the mentorship and support my past professors have been for me, both academically and personally, and I want to be able to share that with other future generations of students. If I did not work at a college, I would love to work in the video game industry or in digital marketing!
*Bonus Q: In your own words, what is American Studies?
A basic answer: American Studies is whatever you want it to be!
A longer answer: American Studies is the inter-, multi-, and transdisciplinary study of the United States of America, including (and essentially) its predecessors and successors, with a particular focus on the ways in which many American identities, cultures, societies, politics, and institutions are formed, entrenched, and dissolved, separately and all at once.