What We're Looking Forward To This Summer: UT AMS's Summer Plans
It's the last class day of the 2018-2019 school year, and with summer break approaching, we checked in with our UT AMS department members to see what they were looking forward to this summer. Read on to get a taste of UT AMS's summer plans.
Andi Remoquillo: I'm super excited to start my summer internship with the Smithsonian National Museum of American History; I'll be a curatorial intern for a project on Asian Pacific American women's labor history! Also looking forward to the copious amounts of shellfish I plan on consuming while there.
Jeff Miekle: On May 29 I'll be in Lisbon, Portugal, giving the keynote lecture on "Rethinking Early Plastics: The Rhetoric of New Materials" at the Plastics Heritage Congress 2019, a three-day gathering of historians, museum curators, and conservation specialists. In June, Alice and I will meet up with our daughter and 8-year old nephew in the UK for a two-week narrowboat cruise on the canals of northern England. For the rest of the summer I'll be working on my current neo-Beats book project. I've just submitted articles on Laurie Anderson and Tom Waits and need to strategize about how it all fits together (if it does).
Kate Grover: As is usually the case, my official summer plans are up in the air. But if I'm in Austin this summer, I'm looking forward to many sunny days floating around Barton Springs in my donut inner tube.
Leah Butterfield: This summer, I'm looking forward to heading to Barcelona to TA for a UT Austin study abroad course. My goals while abroad are to keep the undergrads out of trouble and engaged in their class, to make it two months in Europe without being pickpocketed, and to catch up on all the pleasure reading that I put off while studying for my oral exams. If all goes according to plan, you'll find me drinking cerveza on the beach surrounded by novels and stacks of months-old New Yorkers.
Bahar Tahamtani: This summer I look forward to reading without a highlighter, playing video games until my eyes glaze over, and bobbing in the pool with my family and friends.
Gaila Sims: I'll be working at the Bullock Museum this summer, helping with summer programming for kids and families. I'm most looking forward to the museum's Juneteenth celebration. Last year we made quilt squares with early twentieth century photographs of Juneteenth parades in Texas, and this year we will be creating our own prints based on the work of African American artist John Biggers. I really enjoy being able to share African American history and culture with the families who come visit the Bullock Museum, and it will be a nice break from writing my prospectus!
Ja'nell Ajani: I will work periodically over the summer with Six Square: Austin's Black Cultural District to curate an art exhibition and focus on special projects related to cultural preservation. This semester, I conducted research to produce a historic tour video for Six Square as a result of taking Dr. Janet Davis's Cultural History of the US Since 1865 class. It will be featured on the institution's website this summer.
Randy Lewis: This summer I'll be finishing my term as Interim Chair, though I have a few small trips planned. In late May, I am off to Detroit for a week-long workshop run by the Ex-Situ group, an experimental affect theory/cultural studies project. Our theme this year is "Structures of Anticipation" (ooo, I can't wait). A few weeks later I'll be going to Victoria BC and Seattle for a cool weather vacation with Monti. When I'm back, I'll spend some free time working on the 1955 Cree camper trailer that I bought--the interior feels like a set from Mad Men, but I want to install some retro formica and make some other improvements to my future writing studio. Later in the summer I'll be gearing up for a project about the world's largest post-apocalyptic festival--I'll be shooting a documentary in the Mojave desert for a week and editing it in the fall (I hope to have it ready by January 2020). Finally, I'm also going to be promoting the Part Time Genius album, which we recently released on iTunes, Spotify, Bandcamp, YouTube, and other platforms. In short, I'm looking forward to a happy and productive summer.