The Articles, Visual Art, Book chapters, and Films our Faculty and Grad Students Made!
The accomplishments of our faculty and grad students continue to amaze me, especially during a pandemic. From journal articles to visual art to documentary films, here is some of the amazing work done in the past year (ish!) All random commentary comes from me unless otherwise stated-Holly Genovese, Ph.D. Candidate in American Studies, Editor AMS: ATX.
Whitney May (Ph.D. Candidate in American Studies):
From Whitney “last year, my article “'Powers of Their Own Which Mere “Modernity" Cannot Kill’: The Doppelgänger and Temporal Modernist Terror in Dracula” was published in the journal Gothic Studies. My chapter “Topophilic Perversions: Spectral Blackface and Fetishizing Sites of Monstrosity in American Dark Tourism” was published in an edited collection called Religion, Culture, and the Monstrous: Of Gods and Monsters. (This was an extension of my term paper for Shirley Thompson’s 385 in fall, 2019.)
Later this semester, my chapter “The Way the Cookie Doubles: Cripping the Cyber-Gothic of Black Mirror’s AI Tech,” will appear in an edited collection called Humanity in a Black Mirror: Essays on Posthuman Fantasies in a Technological Near Future.” (This was my term paper for Alison Kafer’s Sick/Slow/Mad: Crip Theory course in spring, 2020.)”
And pre-order Whitney’s forthcoming edited collection! Encountering Pennywise: Critical Perspectives on Stephen King’s It, forthcoming from the University Press of Mississippi.
Jeff Meikle, Professor of American Studies
Dr. Meikle has published two book chapters in the past year! Very impressive.
"'You’ve Been on This Road Before': The Making of Laurie Anderson’s United States as an American Techno-Pastoral," in Transatlantic Currents: Essays in Honor of David E. Nye, eds. Jørn Brøndal, Anne Mørk, and Kasper Grotle Rasmussen (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2021), 51-62.
"'Hoist That Rag': Tom Waits, the Uncanny, and the Old, Weird America," in An Unfamiliar America: Essays in American Studies, ed. Ari Helo and Mikko Saikku (New York: Routledge, 2021), 11-33.
Coyote Shook, Ph.D. Candidate in American Studies
Coyote has published artwork and essays in journals, magazines, is working on some unpublished art as well!
Salt Hill Journal, 47, features Coyote’s artwork
“The best $78.51 I ever spent: A knife just like my grandfather’s” The Goods (Vox)
“Where Have You Gone, Mrs. Duvall?” Beaver Mag, https://beavermag.org/coyote-shook-2/?fbclid=IwAR056HwxEW5vljNdeGcOgoI4EjmT5ROSDCrFGaBZDiPgY_HG7pW7-c0WlIE
Odalis Garcia Gorra, First Year Ph.D. Student in American Studies (also Social Media Team Editor and Co-Editor of this very blog!)
Odalis published two online essays, both amazing! One on cooking traditions and faith and one on Los Espookys!
“The Unreadability of Los Espookys,”Latinx Spaces, Februrary 2022.
Kameron Dunn, Ph.D. student in American Studies
llustration by Jason Stout
Kameron has been busy publishing in Slate, Texas Highways, as well as in an academic journal! Read his work here!
Holly Genovese, Ph.D. Candidate in American Studies
"What's Next, Southern Fried Chicken?" Confederate Memory and Racial Violence at the Postintegration University” in Invisible No More: The African American Experience at the University of South Carolina (University of South Carolina Press, 2021).
Holly is also publishing a popular Substack, “What is Much?,” where she rounds up books and films she loves as well as does close readings of everything from the Mary Kate and Ashley Canon to a Real Housewives memoir.
Kate Grover, Ph.D. Candidate in American Studies
Rocking the Revolution: The Chicago Women’s Liberation Rock Band and the Politics of Feminist Rock and Roll, Kate Grover, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 2021 46:2, 489-512, https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/710813
Kate Grover; Rock Trolls and Recovery: Revisiting Rockism via Miles Parks Grier. Journal of Popular Music Studies 1 March 2022; 34 (1): 29–34. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jpms.2022.34.1.29, https://online.ucpress.edu/jpms/article/34/1/29/120446/Rock-Trolls-and-RecoveryRevisiting-Rockism-via
Dr. Gaila Sims, Ph.D. in American Studies (congrats Gaila)
Not only did Gaila recently defend her Ph.D. but she found time to write an essay with her sister for Believer Mag as well as a book review for H-Net.
Where We At, Believer Mag (co authored with her sister!)
Sims on Hall, 'Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts'
https://networks.h-net.org/node/12840/reviews/8609849/sims-hall-wake-hidden-history-women-led-slave-revolts
Dr. Randy Lewis, Professor and Chair of American Studies
From Dr. Lewis “It’s been a busy year for me, but I’m happy to share a few highlights. In September 2021 I started production of a documentary film called PRADA MARFA? about the most Instagrammed spot in West Texas, the artwork Prada Marfa, and how it has changed Marfa and become a Beyonce-fueled internet sensation in the process. Over the course of about four months from September to January, I cobbled together about two weeks of shooting in Valentine and Marfa, mostly standing on desolate Highway 90 and interviewing strangers about the art work. Think of it as a populist art criticism film essay that basically asks, “how do people respond to a controversial public art work?” It has required many drafts of a written essay, which provides my V/O; composing and recording a complex soundtrack; and cutting a 30 minute film that has probably 500 edits. Right now I’m soft releasing it on Youtube with the goal of bringing it to campuses—art history, Texas studies, American Studies, and geography classes would benefit from it. It’s been out for a few weeks, and it’s already being assigned to students at other universities!
What else can I say? Well, in January 2022 I spent a few weeks working with the Carceral Edgelands Project, writing about and raising awareness about migrant detention. Then in February 2022 I was invited to join a new collaborative writing project on the elements led by anthropologists Marina Peterson (UT Anthro) and Gretchen Bakke (Humboldt University, Berlin). Imagine 118 tiny books on the cultural lives of the elements and you’ll get the idea. More here. Around that time I wrote and recorded “Memories,” an original musical composition accepted in European anthology of contemporary Experimental Music called DATAPANIC #3 whose curators are based in Rome, Italy. I often use my recordings as a free form of soundtrack music, but this piece is too strange! I also published a very short essay called “Wandering as Method” in Imaginations: Journal of Cross Cultural Image Studies. It has images by my partner Monti Sigg, from a group project we did in Detroit/Windsor in 2020 that resulted in an exhibition at a gallery there. The big news in summer 2021 was that my film Who Killed the World? was named an Official Selection for Gbiennale 21, Melbourne, Australia. It was then released on Youtube where it already has reached 10,000 views and almost 200 “likes” despite literally zero promotion thus far. Free autonomous scholarly production is the future for a lot of the work I want to do!
Finally, I’m very excited that I’m starting a new research project on Telsa with my colleague Craig Campbell and a researcher in Berlin. Some portion of the work will end up The End of Austin, which I continue to edit—and which reached the amazing milestone of 250,000 page views this year!”
Zoya Brumberg, Ph.D. (Yay Zoya) in American Studies
From Zoya “I have a piece coming out in the spring/summer issue of SCA Roadside about UFO religions and the Integratron—I have the proof and can let you know/send the link when it goes into print.”
Dr. Erin McElroy, Assistant Professor in American Studies
A couple of articles/essays that Dr. McElroy had come out recently:
"Automating Gentrification: Landlord Technologies and Housing Justice Organizing in New York City Homes." Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, DOI: 10.1177/02637758221088868.
"Public Thinker: Sophie Gonick on Housing Justice and Mass Movements." Public Books, April 26, 2022. https://www.publicbooks.org/sophie-gonick-on-housing-justice-and-mass-movements.
Taylor Johnson, Ph.D. Candidate in American Studies
Taylor has been latch hooking and doing other fiber arts this semester while working on and defending her prospectus!