Announcement: American Studies Grad Conference Call for Abstracts Deadline Extended - February 7!
The graduate students of the Department of American Studies at UT will be hosting a conference, "Home/Sickness," on April 2-3, 2015. The organizing committee has extended the deadline for abstract submissions until February 7, so if you're a graduate student in any discipline who has research to share based loosely upon the theme of home and sickness, consider submitting! Just follow this link and fill out the very brief form - and, of course, spread the word to any and all interested parties.More details about the conference theme:
The death of eighteen-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri this August, the immigration crisis centering primarily around the recent influx of children from Central America to the United States, and the growing panic over the spread of the ebola virus can all be read as the newest manifestations of a long-running pattern throughout American history and culture: the relationship between constructions of “healthy” communities, the fear that these communities will be violated, invaded, or contaminated, and the mobilization of these fears as justification for action in the name of community preservation. The history of the United States is littered with rhetorical constructions of safety and security, purity and contamination—as well as with the results of very real processes of violence, displacement, and exclusion.With this in mind, we invite presenters to consider constructions of home and health, and to explore how these concepts have been and continue to be mobilized in the construction and erasure of American communities, families, and selves. What processes are involved in the construction of a sense of home, either personal or communal? Who gets to define the boundaries of community? What relationships and investments does the name “home” imply? What produces a sense of homesickness, and what does this sense of nostalgia in turn produce? What does a “healthy”—or a “sick”—community look like? What is the relationship between community construction and processes of exclusion, abjection, and othering? We invite both papers that reflect on the present moment as well as explorations of the shifting terrain of home and health in American history.Submissions from all disciplines are welcome.
Welcome back to school!
Classes at UT have started today, so we'd like to welcome y'all back to campus for the spring semester. We'll be back with more content in the coming weeks, but in the meantime, enjoy a tune! It's on us.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en-liwDGzaw]
Announcement: Dr. Steve Hoelscher gives keynote lecture on photographer Elliott Erwitt
The following information on the photographer and exhibition comes to us from the Boca Raton Museum of Art:
Elliott Erwitt is a renowned documentary photographer who melds substance and enchantment into his work. This exhibition features over 80 images hand selected by the artist himself.Born in Paris, Erwitt and his family fled Europe for the United States at the onset of World War II. Iconic images by Mr. Erwitt include John F. Kennedy, Che Guevara, and Marilyn Monroe with the skirt of her white dress wafting around her legs as she posed over a New York City subway grate. His spectacular sense of humor and joy is evident in his work that captures quotidian life in urban surroundings.
Thank you to Dr. Elizabeth Engelhardt
Today we would like to say a big, public "thank you" to Dr. Elizabeth Engelhardt, who has served the American Studies department and the University of Texas since 2004 and is off to North Carolina to take up the John Shelton Reed Distinguished Professorship in Southern Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Engelhardt is a leading scholar in Southern food studies, and since receiving her doctorate in Women’s Studies from Emory University, she has held academic positions at Emory, Ohio University, West Virginia University, and most recently at UT in the American Studies Department and the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies. In Chapel Hill, she will join the Department of American Studies, one of the first interdisciplinary programs at UNC, which has specializations in American Indian Studies, Global American Studies, Folklore, and Southern Studies.All of us here at AMS::ATX wish her all the best in her new adventure. As Dr. Engelhardt likes to say, she is never happier than when she can write and read with her feet in a mountain stream. We hope she'll get lots of opportunities to take advantage of the mountains and streams of North Carolina. Best of luck, and we'll miss you, Dr. Engelhardt!