Alumni Voices: Robin O'Sullivan's American Organic

UT AMS grad Robin O'Sullivan recently published American Organic: A Cultural History of Farming, Gardening, Shopping and Eating, about the history of the organic movement in the United States. AMS grad student Kerry Knerr spoke to her last week.Can you tell us a little bit about your book American Organic, and how you came to the project?It’s a cultural history of the organic food and farming movement, which first elicited my interest after I happened to visit the homestead of Helen and Scott Nearing in Harborside, Maine (when I was living up there in Portland). As I began to research the history of homesteading, I learned more about the organic movement, which was related but also distinct. What projects or people have inspired your work?The Nearings, certainly; and the major player in the organic farming movement was J.I. Rodale, who began farming in Pennsylvania in the 1940s and subsequently developed a media empire that publicized the organic movement. How do you see your work fitting in with broader conversations in academia and beyond?It’s relevant to work in environmental and agricultural history, consumer studies, food studies, and, of course, American Studies. How is this work you're doing now, as a scholar, teacher or both, informed by the work you did as an American Studies student at UT?At UT-Austin, four talented professors served on my dissertation committee: Jeff Meikle, Janet Davis, Steve Hoelscher, and Elizabeth Engelhardt. All four have written books that served as models for mine, and all four were delightful to work with. Do you have any advice for students in our department about how to get the most out of their experience at UT?I’m sure the students already know how fortunate they are to be surrounded by such stellar faculty members! What projects are you excited to work on in the future?My next project will be an analysis of “techno-natural” phenomena, with a particular focus on its manifestations in 19th century literature.

Alumni Voices: Recent Ph.D. Ellen Cunningham-Kruppa named Associate Director and Head of the Preservation and Conservation Division of the Harry Ransom Center

Huge, huge, huge congratulations are in order for Dr. Ellen Cunningham-Kruppa, who was named Associate Director and Head of the Preservation and Conservation Division of the Harry Ransom Center. Ellen received her Ph.D. from the department in Spring 2015.An excerpt of the announcement on the Ransom Center's blog, which can be read in full here:

The Ransom Center announces the appointment of Ellen Cunningham-Kruppa as Associate Director and Head of the Preservation and Conservation Division. Cunningham-Kruppa, who begins her service on October 1, will oversee the preservation, care and protection of the Ransom Center’s collections and will provide strategic direction for future preservation and conservation initiatives.Since its inception in 1980 the Ransom Center’s conservation department has been charged with the care of the Center’s collections including maintaining an optimum preservation environment, overseeing preservation housings, conservation treatment and educating and training more than 80 future conservators.“I am honored and humbled to be entrusted with the care of the Ransom Center’s spectacular collections,” said Cunningham-Kruppa. “It is a dream to have the opportunity to work with the Center’s conservators and curators to envision an exciting agenda of projects and initiatives for the coming months and years.”

We're so proud of you and happy for you, Ellen!

Alumni Research: Siva Vaidhyanathan on Higher Education as a Consumer Good

Congratulations to Siva Vaidhyanathan, a UT AMS alum and professor at the University of Virginia, who has written a critical and thought provoking essay for The Baffler about the cultural and political roots of the rising cost of higher education. We've excerpted a section below, and you can find the whole post here.

Elite higher education in America has long been a Veblen good—a commodity that obeys few, if any, conventional laws of economic activity. In some cases (chiefly among the children of the serene professional elders perusing the Sunday New York Times), the higher the sticker price of a particular college or university, the more attractive it is. Raise the price and then offer a “discount,” and applications will fly in and better students will enroll. Private colleges and universities figured out this marketing strategy about twenty years ago. That’s a major reason that private college tuition has skyrocketed over the same time span, often at more than double the rate of inflation. Because university administrators know they have an essentially captive client base, they can mark up their sticker prices with impunity.

Economists call things “Veblen goods” when they violate standard models of supply and demand—mainly in cases when an ongoing spike in price works, perversely, to increase demand. Veblen goods are usually luxuries, or at least luxury versions of goods that might be considered necessities in general. Higher education seems to comport with the trend: as the prospects dim for earning a decent wage and forging a comfortable life without a bachelor’s degree, we are told we must increase the number of bachelor’s degrees floating around the economy. And as that number increases, some versions of the degree have become even more valuable in the eyes of tastemakers and nervous wealthy people.

Thorstein Veblen described the cultural and economic effects of the irony of prestige in his best-known, bestselling book, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899). But Veblen did not call Veblen goods “me goods” or define the phenomenon himself. In a 1950 paper, economist Harvey Leibenstein coined the term “Veblen effect” to explain why people pay more money for goods of no discernably higher quality. Over time, economists began to refer to such goods as “Veblen goods,” a legacy designation that would doubtless exasperate its namesake.

Alumni Research: Andrew Busch publishes piece on gentrification in Austin

UT AMS grad Andrew Busch passed along an article that he published in the journal Southern Spaces at the end of the summer. Although sometimes our research can seem a little distant from us, Dr. Busch's essay, "Crossing Over: Sustainability, New Urbanism, and Gentrification in Austin, Texas" is one that, quite literally, deals with what's happening on the homefront. We've excerpted a section below:

In July of 2011 Bon Appétit named Franklin Barbecue of Austin, Texas, the best barbecue restaurant in America. As one of the flagship businesses in an area of the city undergoing significant redevelopment Franklin (which began as a food truck three years earlier) had recently moved into a building on East Eleventh Street, adjacent to downtown across Interstate 35. Franklin Barbecue helped enhance the city's wider reputation while locally it helped the reputation of the central Eastside. The white-owned Franklin took the former space of Ben's Long Branch Barbecue, an African American–owned business operating since the 1980s; African Americans had served barbecue at this site since at least the early 1960s. The corridor, formerly the hub of black commerce and social life during the era of segregation, fell into blight and disrepair in the 1970s and sunk into deeper trouble by the 1980s as residents of means and local businesses fled. In the 1990s the Austin Revitalization Authority (ARA) was formed as a non-profit to assist in the commercial development of the neglected neighborhood as well as to renew historic buildings and homes to maintain architecture consistent with the area's heritage. In 1997 the ARA declared the area a slum, making it eligible for Section 108 Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). After completing the Central East Austin Master Plan, which called for 140,000 square feet of mixed-use development, the ARA and the city acquired over $9 million in CDBGs to initiate revitalization. Almost all development took place along the Eleventh Street corridor.Although development in the East Eleventh Street corridor began slowly, by the mid-2000s the area's importance to the city's Eastside efforts and to the downtown was apparent. Eleventh Street is one of only two downtown streets that bridge I-35, the physical barrier between minority and Anglo neighborhoods since its completion in 1962. People coming from downtown to East Eleventh do not have to pass underneath the highway. Signs displaying the East End slogan "Local Spoken Here" invite consumption along the corridor. A gateway arch laden with the Texas Star welcomes traffic from downtown. The cityscape here appears more modern, newer, and cleaner than much on the Eastside. Multiple use zoning allows for architecture consistent with New Urbanism: higher density, mixed use, better public transport and bike lanes, historic districts, and heritage-based public spaces. The area has undergone significant demographic change as middle class whites and upscale businesses have moved in.