Grad Research: PhD Candidate Carrie Andersen wins P.E.O. Scholar Award!
We love it when our grad students do awesome stuff, so we're thrilled to be able to share that PhD Candidate Carrie Andersen has been awarded the prestigious P.E.O. Scholar Award!
Carrie's advisor, Dr. Randolph Lewis, had the following to say about Carrie's work in a recent Chicago Tribune article announcing the award:
Few scholars have reckoned with the profound implications of UAVs or "drones" in ways that go beyond the legality of CIA drone strikes on foreign soil or private drones invading our backyard pool parties with remote-controlled video cameras. These are important matters, but Carrie is exploring something that extends far beyond a single academic discipline, something that requires an interdisciplinary fusion of research and method, indeed, something that probes to the heart of American culture.
Congratulations, Carrie!
Announcement: AMS Graduate Conference this week: "Home/Sick"
Join the graduate students of the Department of American Studies at UT as they put on a conference that takes on the theme "Home/Sick" this Thursday and Friday, April 2 and 3. The keynote address will be delivered by Dr. Kim Tallbear (Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, UT Austin) on Thursday, April 2nd at 6pm in NOA 1.124. Dr. Tallbear will give a talk called, "Molecular Death and Redface Reincarnation: Indigenous Appropriations in the U.S." Panels will take place Thursday and Friday in the Texas Union. See below for a full schedule, or click here.
The following is a description of the conference theme from the organizers:
The death of eighteen-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri this August, the immigration crisis centering around the influx of children from Central America to the United States, and the recent panic over the spread of the ebola virus can all be read as the newest manifestations of a long-running pattern throughout American history and culture: the relationship between constructions of “healthy” communities, the fear that these communities will be violated, invaded, or contaminated, and the mobilization of these fears as justification for action in the name of community preservation. The history of the United States is littered with rhetorical constructions of safety and security, purity and contamination—as well as with the results of very real processes of violence, displacement, and exclusion. The 2015 AMS Graduate Student Conference considers constructions of home and health, and explores how these concepts have been and continue to be mobilized in the construction and erasure of American communities, families, and selves.
Schedule for PanelsThursday, April 2Registration 1pm- 5pmSinclair Suite (UNB 3.128), Texas Union2:00pm - 3:30pm - Panel 1: Surveillance at HomeTexas Governors' Room (UNB 3.116), Texas Union3:45pm - 5:15pm - Panel 2: Sick: Bodies and AffectTexas Governors' Room (UNB 3.116), Texas UnionFriday, April 3Registration 8:30am - 5:00pmEastwoods Room (UNB 2.102), Texas Union9:00am - 10:30am - Panel 3: Race and Reconfiguring the HomeChicano Culture Room (4.206), Texas Union10:45 - 12:15 - Panel 4: Home in Digital LifeChicano Culture Room (4.206), Texas Union1:45 - 3:15 - Panel 5: Leisure, Labor, and Contested HomesChicano Culture Room (4.206), Texas Union3:30 - 5:00 - Panel 6: Gulf Coast Oil and the Labor of Self, Loss, and the SouthChicano Culture Room (4.206), Texas Union
Grad Research: MA student Ashlyn Davis' work featured on LightBox blog
We are thrilled to draw your attention to Time magazine's LightBox blog, which recently featured MA student Ashlyn Davis' collaborative artist book project, Islands of the Blest, which brings together historic photographs of the American west that Davis and photographer Bryan Schutmaat sourced from the online archives of the Library of Congress and the United States Geological Survey.
The following is a description of the book from the publisher's website:
These photographs depict various places in the American West, and were taken over a one hundred-year period, from the 1870s through the 1970s. The photographers represented range from the completely unknown to some of America’s most distinguished practitioners of the medium. All of the images were sourced from digital public archives.
Grad Research: PhD student featured on television series 'American Canvas'
We are thrilled to be able to draw your attention to the great work our graduate students do both on and off campus. PhD student Kirsten Ronald, who is writing a dissertation about social dance, gentrification, and cultural preservation, is featured in a segment that was recently filmed for the program American Canvas on the cable channel Ovation TV. The segment follows Ronald as she leads two-step dance lessons at The White Horse in Austin. The episode airs this Wednesday, March 18, at 9pm Central Time. You can find the channel number for your cable provider here.
Ronald shared the following with us about her research about and through dance:
Most of us in American Studies are lucky enough to study what we love, and I’m no exception – I’ve been an avid two-stepper almost since I set foot in Texas, and I research and write about social dance, gentrification, and cultural preservation in Austin. I also teach beginning two-step classes at a few bars around town. My co-teacher Houston Ritcheson and I were thrilled when the folks from American Canvas, a new cultural travel show on Ovation TV, asked if they could come film our class at The White Horse for their pilot, and now we’re super psyched to announce that the Austin episode is airing, and we’re in it! With fingers crossed that they made us look far cooler than we actually are, please check it out: March 18th at 9pm on Ovation.