Announcement: Fall Soiree highlights faculty and graduate research

The department is launching a few new events this fall that we hope you'll join us for! The first is a Fall Soiree: today, on the fourth floor of Burdine from 4:00 - 6:30pm, Dr. Shirley Thompson and Ph.D. candidate Elissa Underwood will be giving short talks about their research, followed by discussion and food and drinks.Shirley Thompson: #BlackLivesMatter and My Year of Economic ThinkingDuring this past year, as a widespread, coordinated resistance to anti-Black state violence crystallized in various US locales and on social media, I was able to embark on a systematic study of economic theory and methods for my project on Black Americans and the problem of property and ownership. I will discuss the implications for my work of both this formal study and a newly invigorated insistence on the value of black life.Elissa Underwood:  Pop-Up Prison Kitchens: A Food-Based Challenge to the Prison Industrial ComplexI will be discussing non-traditional prison cookery and exploring its role as a counter-narrative to the personal and structural misery experienced by incarcerated individuals.Should be a great conversation!

A [belated] welcome back to school!

UT's Fall semester began yesterday, so a belated welcome back to all of you! In light of our minor tardiness, we thought this song about being late for school from banjo virtuoso Steve Martin (yes, that Steve Martin... the wild and crazy guy) would be apropos.Stay tuned for another year of American Studies digital content!

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-gs-pgVQsM[/embed]

Announcement: Awards abound in the Department of American Studies

It's the end of the school year, which also means it's awards season for our students and faculty. A hearty congratulations to every one of our community members for these honors, all listed below!(We had so many winners that we had to lump them all into a single post - a testament to the quality of work in our department!)Dr. Randy Lewis was selected to receive a Raymond Dickson Centennial Endowed Teaching Fellowship in recognition of his exemplary performance and commitment to teaching in American Studies.Dr. Bob Abzug was selected as a 2015 NACADA Outstanding Advising Certificate of Merit recipient.Dr. Janet Davis won the Silver Spurs Centennial Teaching Fellowship (Spring 2015), the Dads’ Association Centennial Teaching Fellowship (2015-2016), and was selected to serve as a Provost Teaching Fellow (2014-2016), where she is developing a service learning initiative.Ph.D. candidate Natalie Zelt was honored with an Outstanding Graduate Student award from The John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies for her work with the INGZ Collective.Undergraduate Molly Mandell was selected for an Unrestricted Endowed Presidential Scholarship for the 2015-2016 school year.

Announcement: Workshop with media artist Samuel Cepeda this Friday

This week we'd like to direct your attention to a workshop happening in the Department of Anthropology. The Intermedia Workshop will host Samuel Cepeda, a media artist from Mexico, who will offer a workshop on "Research and remediation techniques in the critical study of media." Cepeda is currently a full time artist and researcher working on his dissertation at Tecnológico de Monterrey in the PhD program of humanities studies in science and technology. Here is some additional information on the workshop, which takes place this Friday, May 8 from noon to 2:00 in the Intermedia Workshop (SAC 4.120):

The research of contemporary culture frequently implies paying attention to the symbolic production in different media, as well as the material and semantic consequences of its remediation. The researcher, in order to understand the symbolic production within a group or culture, needs to deeply comprehend it as a creator too. In this workshop, through the practice of various remediation techniques we’ll approach a way of theorizing while producing.

The workshop is free and open to the public.