Grad Research: Ph.D. students Kerry Knerr and Elissa Underwood inaugural recipients of Les Dames D'Escoffier, Dallas Chapter Endowed Presidential Fellowships in American Studies

A hearty congratulations to Ph.D. students Kerry Knerr and Elissa Underwood, who have been named the 2016 recipients of the Les Dames D'Escoffier, Dallas Chapter Endowed Presidential Fellowships in American Studies. Les Dames D'Escoffier of Dallas have offered their generous support of American Studies graduate scholarship at UT on topics relating to food studies.Kerry Knerr's project, “Cocktails, Class, and Conspicuous Consumption in the Progressive Era U.S.," examines the early history of the American cocktail and its entanglement with American cultural imperialism. The project will build upon her master’s report, “In Search of a Good Drink: Punches, Cocktails, and Imperial Consumption,” currently under review at Global Food History. In it Kerry argues that understanding the material aspects of alcohol consumption (what people are doing), through close readings of recipe collections and material cultures of public and home bars, can ground otherwise nebulous discourses (what people are saying) of social movements, gender politics, or class formation. Kerry will conduct research at the National Food and Beverage Foundation in New Orleans, which houses both the Southern Food and Beverage Museum and the Museum of the American Cocktail. There she will analyze menus, published cookbooks or bar manuals, private recipe collections, newspaper clippings, and photographs.Elissa Underwood's project, "Women and Food in Carceral Spaces," will explore women’s understandings of and experiences with food and foodways, including specific nutritional needs and distinct relationships with food, during and after incarceration by conducting oral histories with formerly incarcerated women in Texas. Elissa will interview women working and learning or perfecting skills in food-based industries, as well as women who have started their own food-based companies or non-profit organizations specifically aimed at combating recidivism and/or preventing incarceration.The winners were announced at this year's Foodways Texas conference, an organization now housed in the Department of American Studies. For more on the conference, check out this very in-depth, fascinating recap of the weekend of festivities.

Grad and Faculty Research: see UT AMS at ASA in Toronto

We have a slew of participants in the annual American Studies Association meeting in Toronto next week (October 7 - 11). Here's a schedule of panels and papers from folks at the UT American Studies community - we hope to see you there!Thursday, October 8Carrie Andersen, "'Dwell, Detect, Destroy': Marketing the Drone in the Post-9/11 Era" (8:00 to 9:45am, Sheraton Centre, Chestnut West)Emily Roehl, "Oil Landscape Photography and the Performance of Resistance" (8:00 to 9:45am, Sheraton Centre, Forest Hill)Caroline Pinkston, "Katrina in the Eye of the Beholder: Hurricane Katrina Tourism and the Commodification of Disaster" (2:00 to 3:45pm, Sheraton Centre, Yorkville West)Natalie Zelt, "Out of Africa? Race, Olmec Colossal Heads and Contested History at LACMA" (2:00 to 3:45pm, Sheraton Centre, Willow East)Cary Cordova and Amanda Gray, dialogue, "Cultivating Communal Sites of Knowledge Production in the Critical Latin@ Studies Classroom" (4:00 to 5:45pm, Sheraton Centre, Chestnut West)Kerry Knerr, dialogue, "Committee on Graduate Education: Precarious Resistance to the University of Austerity" (4:00 to 5:45pm, Sheraton Centre, Chestnut East)Saturday, October 10Janet M. Davis, dialogue, "Caucus Environment and Culture: How American Studies Scholars Can Address Climate Change" (12:00 to 1:45pm, Sheraton Centre, Linden)Elissa Underwood, "Pop-Up Prison Kitchens: A Food-Based Challenge to the Prison Industrial Complex" (12:00 to 1:45pm, Sheraton Centre, Leaside)Sunday, October 11Lily Laux, "Public Schooling as Social Misery: Students, Disability and the School-to-Prison Pipeline" (8:00 to 9:45am, Sheraton Centre, Rosedale)Irene Garza, "'War is an Ugly Thing' Sgt. Eric Alva, Queer Latinidad, and the Disfigurements of Liberalism" (12:00 to 1:45pm, Sheraton Centre, Maple)Susan Quesal, "Devastating Optimism: Landscapes of Renewal from Ida B. Wells to HUD HOPE VI" (12:00 to 1:45pm, Sheraton Centre, Provincial Room North)

Grad Research: E3W Roundtable Features Elissa Underwood as Panelist

A hearty welcome back from spring break (at least for you UT folks) from all of us at AMS :: ATX. We're kicking off the week by sharing what promises to be a fascinating panel discussion featuring one of our own graduate students, Elissa Underwood, as a panelist.Details below from the official event announcement:

In advance of the 12th Annual Sequels Symposium, the second Prequels event of Spring 2013 will focus on the work of Peter Caster, one of the conference's keynote speakers and a distinguished alumnus of the English department. Caster’s recent book, Prisons, Race, and Masculinity in Twentieth-Century U.S. Literature and Film (2008), is grounded in the proposition that “the history, literary and otherwise, of the United States is indivisible from that of its prisons.”Inspired by this work, a panel of graduate students, faculty members, and activists will offer perspectives and narratives that capture the realities of the American prison industrial complex. This discussion will open with a brief video montage of scenes from TV and film that best represent how American popular culture depicts the national prison system. In response to this montage, our panelists will share how their work reveals and communicates the realities of prison life in the United States. Panelists include Melissa Burch (Graduate Student, Anthropology), Rebecca Lorins (Texas After Violence Project), Elissa Underwood(Graduate Student, American Studies), Benet Magnuson (Policy Attorney, Texas Criminal Justice Coalition), and E3W's very own Barbara Harlow, who will serve as a moderator and respondent. We hope you will join us and add your voice to the discussion.

Announcement: Two Not-to-Miss Talks This Friday

Happy almost-end-of-semester!  While we know all the students and faculty out there are probably up to their gills in paper writing and grading, we recommend taking a break from the madness this Friday, December 7, to attend one (or both!) of these great talks.For more information on Christopher Newfield's talk, see here.

For further details on Avery Gordon's talk, see here.