Undergrad Research: Postcards from Texas

We love to feature student work here on AMS :: ATX, and today we are pleased to direct your attention to a project by Dr. Steve Hoelscher's Spring 2014 Intro to American Studies class, Postcards from Texas. We mentioned this project previously here on the blog, and we're thrilled to show you its latest iteration. The Postcards project is a blog that features photographs and text created by students that reflect on various concepts--previously the American Dream, and this time around, mobility--and what they might mean today.Here is a description of the project from the Postcards website:

Over the past couple of years, undergraduate students in Prof. Steven Hoelscher’s Introduction to American Studies class at the University of Texas at Austin researched competing notions of American identity in a two-step project. Beginning with the inspirational model of Magnum Photos ongoing Postcards from America series, students were asked to explore one segment of the U.S. visually, through photography. First, each student considered a complex cultural phenomenon—“the American Dream” in 2012 and “Mobility” in 2014. Second, students then recorded their thoughts in the form of a photographic image in Texas. In these original photographs—and in the detailed, unedited captions that accompany them—the extraordinary range of how American cultural life is envisioned comes into full view.What follows are visual documents of the hope and confidence that often come naturally to college students, but also, in many cases, an equal recognition of life’s injustices and uncertainties. A composite, multifaceted picture of modern America emerges from these photographs: of idealism and pragmatism, the political left and political right, acquisitiveness and a rejection of materialism, arguments for traditional family values and LGBT rights, conformity and insurgency.  Together, these postcards from Texas—of cotton fields and strip malls, millionaires and homeless men, junkyards and mansions—complicate glib calls for an unproblematically unified America. They also demonstrate the creative energy and thoughtfulness that has always been central to “the American dream”—whatever it means – and to American mobility.

Dream! Postcards from Texas

As we announced earlier this school year, the Department of American Studies has chosen a theme that will create common threads among course offerings, discussions, and departmental events throughout the 2012-2013 school year. The theme for this year is Dream!, and we are very pleased to announce that over the coming weeks, we will be highlighting some of the ways instructors have integrated this theme into their classes.To start things off, we would like to present Postcards from Texas, a  project of Dr. Steven Hoelscher's Fall 2012 Introduction to American Studies class. The Postcards project is a blog that features photographs and text created by students that reflect on the concept of the American Dream and what it might mean today.

The following description of the project comes to us from the Postcards website:

The idea of the “American dream” means many different things to different people; it could hardly be otherwise in a nation as diverse as the United States. For some, the dream is about intangible ideas like freedom of expression, freedom of religion, optimism, family ties, social justice, and equality. While for others, it has long been associated with attaining a higher standard of living, especially one that surpasses that of previous generations. What’s more, different people may express and experience the “American dream,” however defined, in very different ways. Finally, it’s also the case that, at different times and in different ways, the “American dream” was not available to everyone in the country; for some it might be technically available, but in practice as distant as the moon.Undergraduate students in Prof. Steven Hoelscher’s Introduction to American Studies class at the University of Texas at Austin took on the task of interrogating this nebulous, but important concept in a two-step project. Beginning with the inspirational model of Magnum Photos ongoing Postcards from America series, students were asked to explore one segment of the U.S. visually, through photography. First, each student asked him/herself what the “American dream” might mean and if it’s something attainable or hopelessly inaccessible. Then, each recorded her/his thoughts in the form of a photographic image in Texas. In these original photographs—and in the detailed, unedited captions that accompany them—the extraordinary range of how the “American dream” is envisioned comes into full view.

We invite you to take a closer look at the Postcards from Texas site, which is a wonderful archive of some of the many meanings of the "Dream" today.

Read This: Rebecca Onion Blogs for Slate

Here at AMS::ATX we love blogs (obviously) and we love our UT AMS Ph.D. students (naturally).  So we couldn't be happier to announce that our very own Rebecca Onion, who recently defended her dissertation entitled How Science Became Child's Play: Science and the Culture of American Childhood, 1900-1980, has recently launched a blog on Slate.com called The Vault.This description of the blog comes our way from Rebecca:

I'm now running a blog on Slate.com, called The Vault. I post one interesting historical document or object every day, most of which will come from archives, special collections, and museums.The idea is to showcase stuff that jumps out of the historical record. These are the kinds of documents that made me laugh out loud, cringe, or become unexpectedly sad while doing archival research for my dissertation. Examples thus far: a "lab technician" microscope set for girls from 1958; a photograph of a Better Baby contest winner from 1910; a memo from one of Nixon's aides in which he suggests alternative names for the space shuttle program.It's been great fun to hear back from readers about the posts; I love feeling like I have an audience with which to share my weird enthusiasm for research.If anyone has interesting documents or objects that deserve inclusion, by all means, get in touch. And follow @SlateVault on Twitter, or like Slate's The Vault Blog on Facebook, to get notifications of posts as they run.

5 Takes on Women and Bicycles

Back in 2004, inspired by my friend Emily Wismer, I traded my car for a bicycle, and eight years, six cities, and thousands of miles later, I think it's safe to say that I think riding a bike is pretty sweet.  I'm rarely stuck in a traffic jam, I get front-row parking pretty much wherever I go, and hey, I get me some exercise and a little daily sunshine, too, especially here in Austin.  In these enlightened times, it's generally pretty awesome to be a lady cyclist, too, especially with more and more shops hiring female mechanics (thank you, Ozone and The Peddler!), more companies making women-specific gear, and folks like Mia Birk, Georgena Terry, and Shelley Jackson leading the charge in making cycling more accessible to everyone, including women.But gender and bicycles can easily become complicated, too, and not just in a turn-of-the-century dress reform kind of way.  Back in the 1980s and 90s, technophiles like Donna Haraway argued that technology was going to be the great equalizer, as though somehow the right combination of wheels and gears and metal tubing could erase centuries of gender inequality.  As far as bikes go, that hasn't happened - not yet, anyway.  But, with more and more lady cyclists moving into what has so far been a male-dominated technological domain, the bicycle is beginning to raise some questions about gender, female sexuality, and what it means to be a lady on two wheels.  Below, five very interesting answers to these questions.1. Elly Blue, Taking the LaneElly Blue is a bike activist in Portland who writes about - and advocates for - the need for more bike-friendly (and less misogynistic) cities.  Her zine, Taking the Lane, draws clear parallels between being a cyclist in a car's world and being a woman in a man's world.  In its very first issue, Taking the Lane ranges from road rage and grassroots organizing to fat bias and the condescension women often have to endure from male bike shop employees.  Blue argues that women cyclists as both women and cyclists are doubly discriminated against, and that only by working together can we end both gender and transportation inequality.   I find her writing style intense and thought-provoking and her militancy refreshing - especially since so many of her examples hit very close to home.2. Peter Zheutlin's Around the World on Two Wheels and Gillian Klempner Willman's The New Woman: Annie LondonderryGillian Willman's film builds on Peter Zheutlin's long-awaited Around the World on Two Wheels, which tells the story of Annie Londonderry, the first woman to bike around the world.  Back at the turn of the last century, Annie Londonderry (who was actually Annie Cohen Kopchovsky, a 23-year old Jewish mother of 3 from Boston), rode a Columbia bicycle around the world in 15 months - and made $5000 in the process. The whole thing was a publicity stunt, but Willman and Zheutlin both focus less on that than on the impact Londonderry's journey had on women's rights.  She left her home, husband, and kids.  She wore pants.  She sold pictures of herself.  She rented space on her body and her bike to advertisers.  She rode a bicycle, and she worked it. Capitalism, feminism, and bicycles all in one place.  The horror!3. Rebecca "Lambchop" ReillyPortable Portrait: REBECCA REILLY (1995) from Rachel Strickland on Vimeo.Rebecca Reilly is the stuff of legend.  Not only was she a female courier in the 1990s when there were barely any female couriers to speak of, a fierce fixed-gear rider by many (many) accounts, and a woman who insisted she only wanted to be treated the same as a man; she also spent eight years traveling around the United States, working as a courier in Chicago, Houston, Denver, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, DC, Boston, and New York, and collecting hundreds of oral histories from the couriers she met along the way.  In 2000, she compiled many of these stories into Nerves of Steel, an incredible 300-page rollercoaster ride through the US bike messenger scene in the 90s.  The above video is from Rachel Strickland's Portable Effects project; I could talk for hours about the relationship between bicycles and femininity in it.  (I've written a little more extensively about Reilly here.)4.  The Dropout's Bike Taxi Babes calendarBack in January 2010, I managed to sneak into a photo shoot for The Dropout's first bike pin-up spread, and being a good (if idealistic) feminist, I spent the rest of that semester trying to fit that night - and the photographs that eventually made it into the magazine - into some semblance of third-wave feminism.  It was Elly, actually, who pointed out that not every pin-up has to be feminist, and bikes don't automatically lead to feminist liberation.  (Thanks, Elly.)  With that in mind, I'm fascinated by The Dropout's latest project, the Bike Taxi Babes.  As far as I know, the ladies pictured are all pedicabbers, and the calendar has more of the flavor of burlesque than pornography; The Dropout is a pedicab-community organ, and the project is a resolutely for-profit venture.  I can't even begin to talk about how this complicates what it means to be a female cyclist.5.  Rick Darge's bike ♥bike ♥ from Rick Darge on Vimeo.Rick Darge is a cinematographer who has worked with, oh, I don't know, LCD Soundsystem, Fritos, and Dell, and his video is pretty incredible in its ability to tell a story and capture complex emotions without the main character uttering a single word.  The Robert Johnston is a nice touch, too.  But while I love this video for its composition, the one thing that truly stands out to me is how adolescently girly it is: how young and innocent Dee looks, how much the camera loves her sweet eyes and hair, how her delicate lace and lingerie contrast with her black socks and Vans.  Her love for her bicycle, like Dee herself, is stuck somewhere between childhood innocence and full-grown lady.  So what, does she have to cast off all two-wheeled childish things to become a woman?  I guess it is a bit tricky to ride a bike in heels...... or is it?