Announcement: "Archives Against Annihilation: Imagining Otherwise," A Talk by Michelle Caswell

Please join us today at 11:00 AM in the Prothro Theatre in the Harry Ransom Center for a talk by Michelle Caswell entitled Archives Against Annihilation: Imagining Otherwise. The talk, sponsored by the UT Chapter of the Society of American Archivists, is described below:In the 1970s, feminist communication scholars first proposed the term “symbolic annihilation” to describe the ways in which women are absent, underrepresented, or misrepresented in mainstream media. Taking this concept as a starting point, the first part of this talk will examine the ways in which mainstream archival practice has symbolically annihilated communities of color and LGBTQ communities through absence, underrepresentation, and misrepresentation. In the face of such symbolic annihilation, marginalized communities have formed their own independent community-based archives that empower them to establish, enact, and reflect on their presence in ways that are complex, meaningful, and substantive. Based on interviews with dozens of community archives founders, staff, and users, this first act will propose a tripartite structure for assessing the impact of such archives on the individuals and communities they serve: ontological impact (in which members of marginalized communities get confirmation “I am here”); epistemological impact (in which members of marginalized communities get confirmation “we were here”); and social impact (in which members of marginalized communities get confirmation “we belong here”). In the second part, this talk will examine the relationship between symbolic and actual annihilation using the state-sponsored mass murder of Black people by the police in the U.S. as a prime example. Symbolic annihilation both precedes and succeeds symbolic annihilation in that communities are rendered nonexistent, invisible, or expendable before they are subject to violence, and then, after violence, such acts are often rendered invisible or expunged from the record, magnifying and mimicking the violence itself. Finally, this talk will end with a proposition for archivists to “imagine otherwise,” that is, to conceive of and build a world in which communities that have historically been and are currently being marginalized due to white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, gender binaries, colonialism, and ableism are fully empowered to represent their past, construct their present, and envision their futures as forms of liberation.After the talk, we hope you join us for the American Studies Undergraduate Thesis Symposium, 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM in Burdine 436A. We hope to see you at both events!

The World in American Studies Today Keynote: Dr. Anita Mannur

 We are pleased to announce that the keynote lecture for our biennial graduate conference, The World in American Studies Today, will be given by Dr. Anita Mannur at 6 PM on Thursday, March 20th in CLA 1.302B. Dr. Mannur is Associate Professor of English and Asian/Asian American Studies and Director, Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Miami University. She is the author of Culinary Fictions: Food in South Asian Diasporic Culture and the co-editor of Eating Asian America: A Reader and Theorizing Diaspora: A Reader.In this talk, Dr. Mannur explores how the figure of the “enemy” is constructed in public culinary sites by examining social media, cook books and food trucks that are devoted to the dissemination of culinary knowledge. The spaces she examines are Michael Rakowitz’s performance art installation “Enemy Kitchen” and Conflict Kitchen, a take-out restaurant in Pittsburgh, PA. In juxtaposing these sites and exploring the performative politics deployed within each context, Dr. Mannur explores what it means to turn to the tactile, olfactory and consumptive to reflect on questions of US diplomacy and foreign policy that have taken on particular forms of cultural xenophobia, directed at the Islamicsubject, in the wake of the war on terror and 9/11. By focusing in particular on the use of “radical hospitality,” Dr. Mannur asks how meals are staged as spaces to provide a counternarrative to xenophobia and the discourse of theenemy combatant.

Announcement: MARCH ON! Gallery Reception and Conversation with Rep. John Lewis

MARCH ON!, curated by Rebecca Giordano, is a show of original art from the March trilogy of graphic novels written by Congressman John Lewis and Andrew Aydin and drawn by Nate Powell. There are two events this week that are the part of the ongoing programming for the exhibition. First, starting at 5:30 PM on Thursday the 23rd, there is a opening reception in Jester A232A. The following day, Friday the 24th, at 11:00 AM in Hogg Auditorium, there will be a conversation with Rep. Lewis, Aydin, and Powell regarding their work. Tickets are required for the latter event and ticketing information is here.

Announcement: Tirza Latimer Talk on 3/9

Tomorrow, 3/9, the Art History Lecture Series is hosting a talk by Dr. Tirza True Latimer, titled "A Manifesto of Eccentric Modernism." The talk will be at 4 PM in ART 1.120. We've included the description of her talk, below. We hope to see you there.

Focusing on a case study from Eccentric Modernisms: Making Differences in the History of American Art (UC Press, 2017), Latimer presents a piece of ephemera she describes as a "manifesto of eccentric modernism" -- a souvenir program for the 1934 opera Four Saints in Three Acts. The opera premiered in an eccentric venue, the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut. An eccentric libretto, penned by Gertrude Stein, was set to music by the modernist composer Virgil Thomson, choreographed by the neo-romantic Frederick Ashton, with extravagant sets and costumes by the uncatagorizable artist Florine Stettheimer. Perhaps the most unconventional aspect of the production was its all African American cast. Within the frame of American modernism, the opera's producers and performers challenged not only prevailing artistic heirarchies but also sex/gender codes and racial prohibitions to imagine daring social and cultural alternatives. The souvenir playbill presented this event in carefully calculated ways that enable us to speculate today about the collaborators' vision(s) of modernism in America.