Announcement: The 2013-2014 Departmental Theme Is...

... SECURITY/INSECURITY.Thanks to all of you who participated in the voting process! We appreciate your feedback very much. Look in the coming days for a lengthier discussion of what security and insecurity might mean in American culture and history, and the possibilities for integrating the theme into our classes, events, and social media content.

Announcement: PLEASE VOTE On Our Departmental Theme for 2013-2014!

Last year, the Department of American Studies launched its first annual departmental theme, "DREAM." The theme gives us a way to connect our diverse events (loosely) so that we have a year-long series of conversations. It will provide connection for undergrads across classes and across departmental events (if each class touches on the theme and you attend a movie screening and you see a lecture... then you see how intellectual ideas can cross-fertilize) and will provide creative informal writing, interview, conversational topics, or image production that can go on the blog, the webpage, and elsewhere.This past school year, our blog featured the ways that particular classes treated the DREAM theme, our graduate conference was entitled "Reimagining the American Dream" and explored conceptions of the rags-to-riches narrative within America, and we also offered a film series on the broad theme of public and private dreams.The time has come to select a new departmental theme, and WE NEED YOUR INPUT. Please fill out the form linked here to help us select a theme inspiring the coming year's conversations, events, social media, and classes. And spread the word! We would love to see what you folks are interested in.

Dream! with Dr. Randy Lewis

As we announced last week, we will be  featuring reflections, responses, and ruminations on the 2012-2013 departmental theme----"DREAM!"----from AMS  faculty and assistant instructors who are integrating the theme in their classes in various ways over the course of the semester.The following thoughts on the theme come to us from Dr. Randy Lewis:

Our departmental theme was an easy fit for my fall lecture course. After all, it would be odd to teach a course entitled "Main Currents in American Culture since 1865" without some reference to the American dream. The question is how to get at it? Langston Hughes's dream deferred, Willy Loman's inability to close the sale, Hunter S. Thompson's "Savage Journey Into the Heart of the American Dream" amid motocross and mescaline in the Nevada desert?Sure, but why not go back to the horse's mouth, to Horatio Alger, whose late 19th century novels crystalized the rags-to-riches mythology that seems inextricably woven into our cultural history. Again and again, Alger showed young men (always men) pulling themselves out of poverty and "moving on up to a deluxe apartment in the sky." Oh wait, that's Sherman Helmsley... But the idea is the same, and quite frankly it can be surprisingly pernicious in its application. Too often, the American dream is wielded as a bludgeon to wallop poor people for not improving their lot, allegedly because of some deficiency of will, energy, or character.

I don't buy it for a moment because the real impediments are structural. What my students and I wrestle with is the astonishing fact that the American dream is alive and well---in Norway, France, New Zealand, and elsewhere. If you look at comparative data regarding intergenerational class mobility, Americans are relatively locked into the social class to which they were born. It cofounds everything we'd like to believe about this country. Of course, some folks are loathe to accept this structural reality for reasons that are therapeutic or even anecdotal. As in: It's too sad to trade the fantasy for the sobering reality--people would just give up. Or: My cousin knows a guy whose sister is friends with someone who went from rags to riches, so, you know, it's totally possible. My students have very strong feelings about this subject, and I love exploring the rhetoric and reality of the American dream with them. It's one of the most important things we can do in the American Studies classroom.

Dream! Postcards from Texas

As we announced earlier this school year, the Department of American Studies has chosen a theme that will create common threads among course offerings, discussions, and departmental events throughout the 2012-2013 school year. The theme for this year is Dream!, and we are very pleased to announce that over the coming weeks, we will be highlighting some of the ways instructors have integrated this theme into their classes.To start things off, we would like to present Postcards from Texas, a  project of Dr. Steven Hoelscher's Fall 2012 Introduction to American Studies class. The Postcards project is a blog that features photographs and text created by students that reflect on the concept of the American Dream and what it might mean today.

The following description of the project comes to us from the Postcards website:

The idea of the “American dream” means many different things to different people; it could hardly be otherwise in a nation as diverse as the United States. For some, the dream is about intangible ideas like freedom of expression, freedom of religion, optimism, family ties, social justice, and equality. While for others, it has long been associated with attaining a higher standard of living, especially one that surpasses that of previous generations. What’s more, different people may express and experience the “American dream,” however defined, in very different ways. Finally, it’s also the case that, at different times and in different ways, the “American dream” was not available to everyone in the country; for some it might be technically available, but in practice as distant as the moon.Undergraduate students in Prof. Steven Hoelscher’s Introduction to American Studies class at the University of Texas at Austin took on the task of interrogating this nebulous, but important concept in a two-step project. Beginning with the inspirational model of Magnum Photos ongoing Postcards from America series, students were asked to explore one segment of the U.S. visually, through photography. First, each student asked him/herself what the “American dream” might mean and if it’s something attainable or hopelessly inaccessible. Then, each recorded her/his thoughts in the form of a photographic image in Texas. In these original photographs—and in the detailed, unedited captions that accompany them—the extraordinary range of how the “American dream” is envisioned comes into full view.

We invite you to take a closer look at the Postcards from Texas site, which is a wonderful archive of some of the many meanings of the "Dream" today.