Announcement: Dr. Nicole M. Guidotti-Hernández Serves as MALS Inaugural Chair
We are thrilled to announce that our very own Dr. Nicole M. Guidotti-Hernández will serve as the inaugural chair for the newly formed Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies (MALS) here at UT. Dr. Guidotti-Hernández is an Associate Professor of American Studies, and she holds the Alma Cowden Madden Centennial Professorship at the University of Texas at Austin. Her book, Unspeakable Violence: Remapping U.S. and Mexican National Imaginaries (Duke University Press 2011), was a finalist for the 2012 Berkshire Women’s History First Book Prize and won the Modern Language Association 2011-12 Prize in United States Latina and Latino and Chicana and Chicano Literary and Cultural Studies.
Just today over on NBCNews.com there is an article about the newly formed department, and Dr. Guidotti-Hernández had the following to say in the article:
This is a really important moment for us in the curriculum. This is a recognition of the Mexican-American population in Texas, as well as the immigrant community from Central and Latin America. Having the two disciplines together, for the first time in the nation, is a move to create a more inclusive, rigorous intellectual community.
Announcement: Ph.D. alumna Carly Kocurek to deliver lecture on video game arcades
We're thrilled that one of our recent Ph.D. recipients, Dr. Carly Kocurek (Illinois Institute of Technology) will be returning to the hallowed halls of Burdine to deliver a lecture about video game arcades. Please join us on Wednesday, September 10 at 4pm in Burdine 214 to hear more about her research.A synopsis of her talk:
Over the past decade, the video game arcade has seen a small revival in the United States. Long-established arcades like New Hampshire's Funspot have become destinations in their own right while new businesses like Austin's own Pinballz and the growing number of bar-arcade hybrids scattered across the country draw a loyal, local clientele. This revival relies in part on a deep fascination with the video game industry's early glory days. Arcades feature "classic" machines in meticulous repair or boast particularly exhaustive collections of rare games to distinguish themselves. In this talk, I excavate the nostalgia for the arcade's "golden age" of the 1970s and 1980s and consider its position in contemporary narratives of American technological progress, entrepreneurship, and masculinity. Ultimately, I tie the nostalgia for classic arcades to multiple points of longing--for an imagined past that is defined by aesthetic style, by political positioning, by economic conditions, and by a particular kind of idealized young manhood.
Announcement: introducing the social media team
The beginning of the school year seems like an apt moment to introduce the editors/writers/internet gurus behind the Department of American Studies social media presence. So, without further ado, meet your American Studies internet team!
My name is Carrie Andersen, and I'm a fifth year Ph.D. student and one of this blog's original editors and founders. Aside from running the blog, I'm the manager of our Twitter account. My dissertation explores the cultural and political valence of the military drone in post-9/11 American society. Beyond my dissertation's confines of technology studies, cultural/media studies, political theory, and gender studies, I hold interests in digital humanities and public scholarship, which also led to my position as a member of The End of Austin's editorial board and manager of its own social media presence. My inclination towards all things internet, however, developed much earlier than graduate school: by age 10, I was teaching myself HTML and creating homepages on - and I'm aging myself here - AOL and GeoCities (RIP). As such, I'm so grateful to our department for supporting and encouraging the development of projects that foreground engaging with individuals through digital media and pushing beyond the boundaries of the everyday - an interest that also nourishes my love of exploring strange, far afield places, as you can see above. 
My name is Josh Kopin, and I'm a second year Ph.D. student in the department of American Studies. My interests lie at the intersection of art, history, politics and commerce, and they express themselves with work on comics and American popular religion. At the moment, I'm preparing to write a master's thesis on the place of religion, writ broadly, in Charles Schulz's Peanuts comic strip. Other dream projects include work on the English rock band The Animals, the relationship between non-fiction comics and traditional journalism and academic history and the history of men's style in the United States. I'm also dedicated, as both a student and a teacher, to writing as a way of thinking something through; I hope that my work for this blog will allow me to do that on a regular basis. 
I'm Emily Roehl, a fifth year Ph.D. student in American Studies. Carrie Andersen and I founded the AMS :: ATX blog back in 2011, and I manage the calendar. Have an Austin/UT event to promote? Let me know! My dissertation focuses on representations of contemporary oil extraction (hydraulic fracturing, oil sands, deep water drilling), and I share Carrie's interest in digital and public humanities. I am a member of The End of Austin's editorial board and the co-founder of Mystery Spot Books, an independent artist book publisher out of Minneapolis. As you can see from my picture, I'm a really bad vegetarian. Texas has that effect.
Welcome back from AMS :: ATX!
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6o0Cah5kQU[/embed]
We're so excited that school is back in session this year. It was a long summer, and we're chomping at the bit to kick off this year in the Department of American Studies. We say it all the time, but stay tuned for new features and new contributors to the growing American Studies social media world at UT Austin. It's going to be a good year.For now: welcome back, everyone! Enjoy this tune from the Lovin' Spoonful's John Sebastian.