Faculty Research Kate Grover Faculty Research Kate Grover

Faculty Research: Randy Lewis' "The Compassion Manifesto"

The primary directive of AMS :: ATX is to provide a public showcase for research and work from various members of UT's American Studies department. Thus far, we've brought you interviews with faculty members, research updates, and announcements about the wonderful projects our colleagues have undertaken - but we haven't yet highlighted the more formal scholarly writing that academics typically do.Today, we bring you a brief excerpt of a piece by Dr. Randy Lewis from Flow, the online journal of the UT Radio-Television-Film department. He critiques the lack of visible compassion and charity on television, with references to such varied examples as The Wire, Oprah, and Louis C.K.

tv and your brain: Turin street art

This is the first of three pieces he'll be writing for Flow this year, so check back here (and there, natch) to see more:

Think about it: when was the last time you saw an act of charity on TV? In the strictly for-profit world of corporate media that dominates our nightly viewing, caring for strangers has lost out to macho indifference, consumerist narcissism, and paranoid stranger-danger. Except in rare circumstances, we are not permitted to witness ongoing suffering nor those who tend to it. This omission is one of the defining facts of our contemporary mediascape.Let me be clear: I’m not talking about those periodic moments of telegenic ruin when Anderson Cooper choppers in for a few weeks of sober glances at the problem. I’m talking about the day-to-day shit through which people slog and activists struggle: unsafe water, inadequate food, abusive institutions, cruel economics, uncertain prospects, epic despair. Where do we bear witness to that pain in the age of the screen? When do we imagine ourselves in solidarity with those who suffer?

Definitely check out the full article here, and do comment with your thoughts on Dr. Lewis's argument - this is a discussion worth having in a virtual forum. A few questions to stoke the fires in your brain:Where else might we find compassion on TV, beyond Louie and Oprah and independent documentary? And is this ostensible dearth of charity really incubated primarily by corporate ownership and corporate directives? To what extent are we, as television consumers, also responsible, as we crave the 21st century freak show Jersey Shore and the gladiatorial match that is America's Got Talent with a primitive lust for blood? Why haven't we demanded better?

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Faculty Research Kate Grover Faculty Research Kate Grover

American Studies and Occupy Wall Street

Since September 17, a large group of protesters has been convening in New York City's Zuccotti Park in the Wall Street district to express their dissatisfaction with America's financial system, corporate greed, and economic inequality.  Similar protests have sprung up in hundreds of cities worldwide (Austin included, naturally). Because these protests have been so widespread, we're likely seeing the birth of a lasting social movement, one that will potentially have substantial political consequences. This is an important moment.IMG_4650bwThese protests - their methods, their demographic composition, their ongoing presence in cities all over the world  - are ripe for exploration from the vantage point of American Studies. With such methodological fluidity, we can consider both personal narratives and stories from protesters and quantitative data about their political proclivities. We can consider both artistic expressions of protest and the intellectual foundations of opposition. Essentially, we can explore the protest through an endless variety of forms, more so than any other field.It comes as no surprise then, that several of our own faculty members have weighed in on the protests in various forums. For the Austin American-Statesman, Janet Davis describes how these protests might be representative of a more permanent social movement. In The Daily Texan, Randy Lewis offers a fascinating discussion of the use of art and satire in protest movements, drawing comparisons between Occupy Sesame Street and the Situationists.#Occupy Sesame StreetYet traditional written analysis might be insufficient in communicating the lived experience of these protests. This, of course, is no new issue within the scholarly tradition: how does a journal article or a book treat a passionate but ultimately ephemeral moment, an event steeped in the experiential? The big methodological tent of American Studies means we can lean away from typical scholarly analysis towards more creative forms of expression with more fluidity than might a more traditional field. Randy Lewis, for example, recorded the sounds of the first day of the Occupy Austin protest, and in doing so, more readily captures the visceral fervor of the event:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmWl1Rdk2mU]

Ultimately, all of these approaches enable telling comprehensive stories.We might also consider how American Studies might not simply analyze and document the Occupy Wall Street protests, but also how we participate - intentionally or not. Some protesters in New York have been using academic material strategically: Tales from Little Rebels, a collection of radical children's literature edited by Julia Mickenberg and Philip Nel, has been circulating within Occupy Wall Street as an instructive source for defying authority. That tactic has raised some eyebrows, and Philip Nel weighs in here.Taking a broader glance at the movement, American Studies as a field may stand to gain from the changes that many of these protesters are hoping for. In the face of slashed education budgets and attacks on the nature of liberal arts education itself, we might naturally share concerns about a nation defined by skewed economic priorities and a tendency to view education as a means to a well-paying career, rather than as a valuable end in itself. The environment that the protesters critique has not always been hospitable to American Studies, nor to higher education.So, last weekend, the Council of the American Studies Association released an official statement in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement, emphasizing those attacks on higher education and how the work of the field dovetails with the protests:

We are the public. We are workers.  We are the 99%.  We speak with the people here in Baltimore and around the globe occupying plazas, parks, and squares in opposition to failed austerity programs, to oligarchy, and to the unequal distribution of wealth and power.  The loss of jobs, healthcare, and homes, the distressing use of mass incarceration and mass deportations, and the destruction of environments have brought so many households and individuals to crisis. We join with people re-claiming commons rights to public resources.  We join in the call against privatization and for a democratic re-awakening.As educators, we experience the dismantling of public education, rising tuition, unsustainable student debt, and the assault on every dimension of education.  As American Studies scholars, our work includes, among other things, addressing the problems and challenges societies face, drawing lessons from the past, comparing across polities, and making informed recommendations that will spark open debate.  We draw inspiration from earlier social movements that have challenged the unequal distribution of power, wealth, and authority. Today’s movements continue this necessary work. The uprisings compel us to lift our voices and dedicate our effort to realizing the democratic aspirations for an equitable and habitable world.  We are the 99%.

So where does this leave us? American Studies, thanks to its broad focus and interdisciplinarity, is able to engage with Occupy Wall Street in ways that other fields might not. We can wear the hat of the analytic scholar, the documentarian, the artist, the participant, the supporter. And, by engaging with Occupy Wall Street in so many ways, we are better positioned to interrogate the meanings of the movement - and, by extension, its value.

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Announcements, Faculty Research Holly Genovese Announcements, Faculty Research Holly Genovese

AMS Events this Week!

Hello AMS :: ATX community! We'd like to draw your attention to a couple of great events happening in and around the department this week!First, the inaugural showing of the 2011-2012 AMS Film Series will be tomorrow night, Wednesday, September 21, from 7:00-9:00pm in Parlin 203. This year the theme of the series is "The 'Other' Americans." Each of the films will deal with the interactions between the U.S. and the people and nations of the rest of the Western Hemisphere. In this first installment, we'll be vieweing Island in the Sun. Stay tuned for future showings packed with private armies, drug smugglers and cartoon llamas.Also, later this week, our very own Janet Davis will be giving a talk titled, “Docked Tails, Fighting Cocks, and Raging Bulls: Making Gendered Sense of the American Animal Welfare Movement, 1830-1940.” The talk will be presented as part of  the History Department's Gender Symposium this Friday, September 23, from 3:00-5:00pm in Garrison 1.102.Here's what Professor Davis has to say about this exciting event:

The title of my talk pays homage to Cynthia Enloe’s path-breaking book, Bananas, Beaches, and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics, which found international politics in unexpected places: women’s labor as wives of diplomats, plantation workers and service industry employees, and the sexual politics of U.S. military bases overseas. Likewise, my talk will explore racialized and classed historical constructions of American femininity and masculinity in unlikely places: in fashionably modified equine bodies; cockpits in the United States, the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico; and in the bullrings of Spain (through the eyes of American tourists), Mexico, and Texas.This talk is part of my current book project, “The Gospel of Kindness: Animal Welfare and the Making of Modern America,” which will be published by Oxford University Press. My book manuscript encompasses a long historical arc—from the genesis of the humane movement in the evangelical milieu of human perfectibility and moral free agency during the Second Great Awakening, to its growth and development in America’s overseas empire in the early and mid-twentieth century. Throughout, I contend that the growth of the U.S. animal welfare movement was inextricably tied to ideologies of nation building and the flowering of America’s exceptionalist mission. In other words, considerations of “the least among us” were always connected to larger questions of nation, benevolence as a barometer of American civilization, citizenship, and struggles over culturally specific animalpractices in a pluralistic society.

We hope to see you at these and all the other great events happening around campus and around Austin! For updates on events, check out our calendar page!

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