Undergrad Research: Overview of Undergraduate Honors Symposium

Last week, the Department of American Studies had the pleasure of featuring the work of six exceptional undergraduates at the first annual Undergraduate Honors Symposium. The students presented their thesis projects, with topics ranging from resource extraction policy to the American coming-of-age narrative. These projects take the form of thesis papers as well as websites, documentary theater pieces, and novellas.The evening began with a presentation by Miriam Anderson on hydraulic fracturing. Miriam offered a charming and funny visual presentation on the natural gas industry and its detractors set to the words of Dr. Seuss' The Lorax.  Miriam also shared her website, which explains the economic and environmental impacts of the fracking process from multiple perspectives. Miriam was followed by Julie Reitzi, who discussed the drug war in Ciudad Juarez, focusing on the involvement and responses of women and youth. Julie's presentation provided perspective on a much talked about issue, and she shared striking images of women and youth who are both implicated in and responding to the violence and poverty in the city, including Las Guerreras, a group of women on pink motorcycles who distribute food and other supplies to impoverished neighborhoods. Rounding out the first half of the night was Kelli Schultz, who described her ambitious documentary theater project, "Our TEKS," which is a play based on the controversy surrounding recent changes to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills by the Texas Board of Education. Kelli discussed her process and inspiration for creating the play, which draws on circus imagery and Thornton Wilder's Our Town. For more information on Kelli's production, check out our post last week, and head on over to the Winship building April 30 or May 1 at 8pm.The second half of the evening featured presentations by David Juarez, Alexandria Chambers, and Laci Thompson. David led off the second half with a description of his project on Jack Kerouac's early years of devising fantasy sports games, which David reads as early writing exercises for the budding Beat writer. David shared a number of images and score sheets from these whimsical and impressively detailed games, illustrating the way that the young Kerouac exercised control over a life that was often depicted as lacking it. Alex Chambers followed David's presentation with a discussion of American boy's choir schools, focusing on two in particular: the St. Thomas Choir School in New York City and the American Boy Choir School in Princeton, New Jersey. Alex's thesis project took the form of a novella that introduces the choirboy school upbringing into the American coming-of-age discourse, and she shared a wickedly funny selection from the beginning of her novella. The final speaker of the evening was Laci Thompson, whose eloquent presentation described the multiple representations of the night in Western thought and literature. Laci's thesis centers on the unique contributions of Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg, and Patti Smith to this discourse of the night, and Laci ended her presentation with a strong call for academics to own their passions and to "have more fun," because that is what rock music like Patti Smith's is, first and foremost, all about.The evening of presentations was a fabulous success. It was wonderful to be able to chat with the presenters in group discussion and in one-on-one conversations afterward. I was particularly struck by the range of topics and formats represented by these thesis projects. One of the particular strengths of American Studies scholarship is the way it encourages both innovative themes and innovative forms, and both were on display at this event. It is clear that these senior AMS students are headed toward greater and greater things, and the Department should be proud to call them alumni.Stay tuned for more photographs from this event! And remember to follow us on Twitter for updates on new posts!

Undergrad Research: A Trip to the Archives in NYC, Part 2

Note: this is the second of two installments about David's archival research trip. The first can be found here.I landed at La Guardia, took a taxi to the apartment building on W 71^st street, unloaded my bags, and finally sat down in New York City, contemplating everything I would see over the next few days. The Berg Collection wouldn’t open until Tuesday—it was Saturday when I flew in—so I had two full days of sight-seeing available to me and I took advantage of it. I visited Times Square, the Empire State Building, Liberty Island, Ellis Island, NYU campus and Washington Square Park, Radio City Music Hall, Rockefeller Center, Grand Central Station, the site of the World Trade center, The Strand, and up, down, and around Central Park on a tour-bus. By mid-week, I was used to catching the subway and disembarking near Bryant Park, a brief walk away from the ice skating rink and, most importantly, the Stephen A. Schwarzmann building, the iconic section of the New York Public Library. After two full days of exploring Manhattan from top to bottom, I was ready to begin the research that brought me to New York in the first place.There is always a difference between what we expect to happen and what actually happens. I expected the Berg reading room to be an unsettlingly quiet room, observed by predatory librarians making sure that the timid, silent researchers at the tables didn’t destroy the priceless artifacts in their hands. But in reality, the room’s acoustics reminded me of the sixth floor of the PCL where occasional conversations and the jostle of books and pencils on the desks aren’t followed by an agitated, “Shh!” It was also staffed with helpful, caring, and most importantly, smiling, librarians ready to assist me however they could.The Kerouac archives are, at first glance, daunting: they consist of 90 boxes of materials, as well as several oversized materials. The sports materials—real and fantastical—reside in 4 of those boxes. I figured I could finish a box a day, even having enough time to eat lunch and take an extended trip around Manhattan. What I didn’t expect was that I’d only make it through box 59—the first box that contains Kerouac’s sports diaries of 1936 and 1938, as well as his horse-racing newspapers and personal baseball statistics and analyses of his Pawtucketville teams—after two and a half days of work. When I started to read his sports diaries I became absorbed in his day-to-day accounts of sports events across the nation, including the wins and losses of baseball teams and horse races, as well as his detailed predictions for future events. He was dedicated to reporting the outcome of every game or race he encountered.Boxes 60-62, which contain the fantasy baseball materials, weren’t as time-consuming as 59. I had plenty of time to examine the contents, including fantasy baseball newspapers, cards, statistics, letters, and diagrams for how to play the game. If you can imagine a 14 to 16-year-old Kerouac, sitting in his bedroom, developing his own sports newspapers and stories, some in pencil and others on a typewriter, you also have to imagine a much older Kerouac—in college, on the road, and eventually bloated and worn-down by excessive drinking in the early 60s—keeping a systematic record of his fantasy baseball league, teams, and players, some with fleshed-out backstories.Whatever I thought sports meant to Kerouac before this trip was an underestimation. He lived and breathed sports. Before he ever had dreams of becoming a novelist, Kerouac had dreams of becoming a star athlete and a journalist. What appears to be an amusing anecdote about a football scholarship to Columbia University becomes the realization of a young Kerouac wanting to excel on the field and become a sensation. Before becoming part of the nomadic Beat gang of writers and artists in the 1940s and 1950s, Kerouac was part of the Lowell gang in the 1930s, playing baseball, running track behind the textile mills, jotting down the statistics of his friends’ batting averages, hits, and runs in a steno notebook.It was thrilling to sit there amongst all of these materials and realize that I loved every minute of it. While looking at his sports diaries, I had to remind myself a few times that this was it. I wasn’t reading about these diaries; I was reading these diaries.My subway ride back to the apartment gave me time to think about the future and what all of this meant to me beyond the thesis. Not only had I collected materials that would enrich my thesis, I had also gotten a brief taste of scholarly research. I wanted even more meals in the future.The future still looks cloudy to me past the month of May when I graduate. I still don’t know which graduate school I will attend, or if I will be attending graduate school at all. My future has never felt so uncertain. But knowing how accomplished I felt after returning home to Austin after this trip, and knowing how much fun I had working with these primary sources and one-of-a-kind artifacts, I know that I can do this for the rest of my life without regret. I learned that I love research, and I believe research is quite fond of me, too.

Undergrad Research: A Trip to the Archives in NYC

Note: this is the first of two installments about David's archival research trip. The second will be published tomorrow.This January I was fortunate enough to take a trip to New York City and conduct research at the New York Public Library for my honors thesis, “Making the Team: The Real and Fantastical Sporting Life of Jack Kerouac.”Before the trip was even conceivable, though, I was in the midst of applying to graduate schools for the fall 2012 term. Graduate school has been an aspiration of mine since high school, and now, nearly five years later, I was finally applying and taking my first steps into a new tier of my academic career.It was hard to convey to other people how terrified I felt in approaching such a critical moment in my life. As I completed each application, I grew anxious about submitting them. This was the first time that I was really taking a stand for myself and my future. Graduate school was part of the plan, but that plan was never set in stone. It was only what I had imagined for myself thus far. For the first time, I started to imagine different paths for my future that didn’t involve graduate school.This isn’t a great mindset to have if you want your applications to express confidence, but these were the thoughts that ran through my head. As each application was submitted—four in total—it was as if my confidence in my plan was being cut short by every click of the “Submit Now” button. By the end, I was quite drained.Returning to my thesis research, last semester I came across a short book written by Isaac Gewirtz, the curator of the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library, titled, Kerouac at Bat: Fantasy Sports and the King of the Beats. The book was a basic introduction to Jack Kerouac’s fantasy sports materials housed in the Berg archives, which detailed Kerouac’s obsessive interest in creating horse-racing newssheets as an adolescent and maintaining his own fantasy baseball game for most of his life. I had only read about these interests briefly in his biographies and a few of his novels, but I had no idea how extensive they were in reality. The book spurred my hope to go to New York City and see Kerouac’s fantasy sports materials in person.With the assistance of a generous COLA Honors financial award, I made plans to stay a week in Manhattan in mid-January and comb through the Berg Collection. It was to be my first taste of hands-on archival research. I was excited and anxious weeks before the trip, quite similar to my feelings when I submitted my graduate school applications. I would pore over the Kerouac finding aid on the Berg website, examining every box’s contents, reading every description, and thinking endlessly about how each item could support my thesis.When the day finally came to fly out of Houston’s Hobby Airport, I wasn’t only worried about my thesis; I was worried about my future. If I can’t make it a few days in this archive, come back with the necessary information, survive a new city, how am I going to cut it in graduate school? I was mentally attacking myself and preparing myself for failure. I told myself, “You’re not going for fun, you’re going for work.” I imagined I had to be rigid and stern in my demeanor, firmly dedicated to being a “scholar,” or what my conception of a scholar was supposed to be. Never have I had the impression, of course, that the American Studies faculty here at UT are unemotional, stone-faced academics. Quite the contrary, they are some of the most engaging, talkative, intelligent and cool—yes, cool—people that I’ve ever encountered. So, how I came to believe that a scholar should be a stern stick-in-the-mud is beyond me, but that’s what I felt I had to be to make it through this experience.It wasn’t until my plane descended into New York in the early evening—when I caught my first glimpse of the thousands of yellow-orange lights sparkling in the dark across the expansive city, the Brooklyn Bridge gently arching across the quiet flow of the water below, and the Empire State Building merely the size of a snow-globe sized replica of itself—that I realized I was about to land in one of the biggest cultural metropolises in the country and the world. Whatever feelings I had about not having fun and being a righteous fuddy-duddy were gone. I was in NEW YORK CITY.

Undergrad Research: On Jack Kerouac and Sports

I have a confession to make: I am addicted to Jack Kerouac, and I’m pretty damn happy about that fact.Since my junior year of high school, when I first picked up a copy of On the Road (leant to me by one of my favorite teachers, Amelia Bligh), I have been obsessed with his life and works, and those of his associates—Ginsberg, Burroughs, Corso, Cassady, Snyder, etc. I think my extensive collection of over seventy Beat-related books can attest to that fact, not to mention the posters, the albums, and the films.What always amuses me is that I didn’t react to On the Road the same way that most people do. I’ve heard stories of people reading it and suddenly wanting to pick up a rucksack and hit the road. I respect anyone who can just get up and go like that, but that’s not really my style. I hate driving.No, when I first read that book, I wanted to hit the road in a different way; I wanted to explore it mentally, psychologically. I was passionate for the movement of Kerouac’s prose as it hurtled down the page. There’s nothing like being on the road, but there’s also nothing like hearing people talk about it as sincerely, as hauntingly, and as mythically as he did. The road I wanted to experience was literary, not literal.It’s been five years and I’m still on the road with Kerouac. I’ve read nearly all of his novels, most of his poetry, and chunks of his short stories, correspondence, and journals. I’ve also read several biographies, watched documentaries, and explored analytical studies and interpretations of his works. It hasn’t always been a pleasant ride: the more time you spend with a person, the more you discover their faults and weaknesses. Kerouac was a troubled man, not unlike the other writers and artists he encountered. There were times when I had to step back and reevaluate my appreciation of him, my adoration. Even now, reading and hearing about his dismissal of his only daughter, his hate-filled rants about his wives and his friends, and, of course, his alcoholism, I wonder if I should stop the car and find a bus station somewhere.Nevertheless, I always keep going and keep reading. To love someone means to accept their faults, to acknowledge their mistakes, and to persevere. Good or bad, I accept him for who he was and what he did. This passion for Kerouac, this adoration, is not just a hobby. I want to become a professor and teach my own course on the Beats, though I would prefer to focus on Kerouac. I’m already in the midst of applying to graduate schools, and truthfully, I wouldn’t be the man I am today if it weren’t for this man.Now, to get to the heart of the matter after that lengthy background, in my thesis I’m studying the interactions between Kerouac and sports, in his fiction and his life. A lot has been written on Kerouac, but I have never seen anyone extensively study the ways in which football, baseball, basketball, and a plethora of other activities shaped him physically, mentally, and artistically.The story of Jack Kerouac usually begins with an anecdote about Kerouac’s football scholarship to Columbia University, which he attended on and off from 1940-43. His time on the field was brief: he broke his leg in the middle of his second game, taking him out for the rest of that season. It’s a nice little aside, but most Kerouac scholars use it as a jumping off point to discuss his literary affiliations with the school. It was the place where he met the other Beat figures, like Ginsberg and Burroughs, so it’s understandable.However, Kerouac’s connection to sports is more than just an anecdote. It was one of the most important arenas in which the young Kerouac developed his understanding of the world, his father, his friends, and his imagination. From his earliest childhood experiences going to the racetracks with his father or experiencing the small town barroom scenes in Lowell to his adolescent years playing baseball, football, basketball, and running track on the fields behind the textile mills with his “gang” of friends, these sports were something that connected Kerouac to society.My thesis—tentatively titled Making the Team: The Real and Fantastical Sporting Life of Jack Kerouac—will be split into two distinct sections: Kerouac’s “real” experiences with sports and his “fantastical” experiences, comprised of a study of his fantasy baseball and horseracing games played on and off throughout his life, from childhood up until his death. A little known fact about Kerouac is that he developed an elaborate and fairly complex system of constructing and tracking his fantasy baseball leagues. He developed scorecards for every player, kept track of team rankings, traded players, and wrote his own newspapers documenting new developments. It’s such a fascinating topic, and it surprises me how little has been written about it.Since August, I have read—and re-read—Kerouac’s novels, poetry, short stories, journals, letters, critical analyses, and biographies trying to reconstruct this underlying history of the “King of the Beats.” It’s really made me think about how we chronicle the history of the Beat Generation and how we discuss it. This study will essentially put Kerouac’s Beat years aside and look at the man behind the myth. It does not negate the myth, as I intend to use his fiction and self-reflections prominently, but it does try to explore how myths are created, how authors work, and how reality and fantasy are more closely related than one imagines.I never could have imagined that one book and one man would send me on this, hopefully, lifelong quest, and possible career. But, truth is stranger than fiction. And Jack, if you’re out there somewhere and you happen to read this, I hope I do you justice… and haven’t creeped you out at all.