Are You a Fan of American Studies? Join Us!

Those of us in the friendly confines of the American Studies department at UT are always thrilled when people outside of our program (and, indeed, the UT community) share with us that they enjoy hearing about the research and work that we do.

So we'd like to make it easier for you folks to keep apprised of the goings-on within our community, from faculty research updates to stories about what our many alumni have done (and are doing!) with their American Studies degrees in hand.

This year, we're launching a monthly email newsletter where we'll provide those updates about research, teaching, events, and more. The newsletter will include additional content that you won't find on our blog, Facebook page, or Twitter account.If you are interested in these updates - just one email a month, and we won't share your contact info with anyone else - fill out the form here. We hope you'll join us!

Announcement: The American Studies Film Series on Security/Insecurity

Hey folks! The American Studies film series kicks off soon, so here's a word of introduction from Eddie Whitewolf, who will be coordinating the series this year.

The AMS Film Series, presented by the Department of American Studies, offers free film screenings during the fall and the spring semesters.  Each semester, the series programs both classic and new films from the American film industry that have been selected due to their connection to our departmental theme.This semester, we're excited to view films that connect in some fashion to our departmental theme of "Security/Insecurity," and have been selected by a number of faculty members and graduate students.  Each screening will feature a short introduction to the film by the faculty member or graduate student who selected it.So please join us each month, starting Thursday, September 26th, when Brendan Gaughen will present Peter Bogdanovich's Targets.

Announcement: Ari Kelman Lectures on the Memory of the Sand Creek Massacre This Friday

Listen up, Austin! This Friday at noon, Ari Kelman will give a public lecture entitled "A Misplaced Massacre: Sand Creek in History and Memory" in Burdine 108. Kelman is the author of A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling Over the Memory of Sand Creek (Harvard UP, 2013). This lecture is sponsored by the American Studies Department, the Institute for Historical Studies, and Native American and Indigenous Studies, and we'd love to see you there!The following comes to us from Kelman:

For nearly a century and a half, the Sand Creek Massacre has been at the center of struggles over history and memory in the American West: from the government investigations launched in the massacre's immediate aftermath; to the controversial work of so-called Indian reformers, including Helen Hunt Jackson, writing late in the nineteenth century; to memorials erected in Colorado during the era of the Cold War; to the impact of popular histories, like Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee; to the recently opened Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site.

Announcement: The Baffler Joins American Studies for Discussion on Higher Ed

Guys. Deep breath. You are about to learn some awesome, awesome news.We're extremely excited to announce to you that John Summers and Thomas Frank - the editors of The Baffler - will be joining the Department of American Studies for a conversation about the future of higher education. The event will take place on Wednesday, October 30, exact time and location TBD. We'll keep you posted with further details on Facebook, Twitter, and right here at AMS :: ATX.Here is a brief synopsis of the event's guiding questions:

College is the best thing in the world; college is a complete ripoff. How are these two statements compatible? How do they differ? How can we assess the campus battles of this era, which are more focused on money than the niceties of Western Civ. and Great Books? And what are we to make of the fact that a college education, which was essentially free for the World War II generation, serves today to fasten the bonds of inescapable indebtedness to an entire generation of students?

John Summers is the editor-in-chief of The Baffler and founder and president of the Baffler Foundation. He’s the author of an essay collection, Every Fury on Earth, and editor of three collections of cultural criticism: The Politics of Truth: Selected Writings of C. Wright Mills, Dwight Macdonald’s Masscult and Midcult, and James Agee’s Cotton Tenants. He received his PhD in intellectual history from the University of Rochester in 2006. From 2000 to 2007 he taught social studies at Harvard University. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.Thomas Frank is the founding editor of The Baffler and the Easy Chair columnist at Harper’s. He is the author of five books, including What’s the Matter with Kansas? and Pity the Billionaire, both national bestsellers. He has been a columnist for the Wall Street Journal and a guest columnist for the New York Times. In 2004 he was awarded a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Nonfiction. He received his PhD in history from the University of Chicago and now lives in Bethesda, Maryland.