Announcement: BlaxploItalian
On Wednesday, February 17th, the French and Italian Department, in conjunction with the Center for European Studies, the Department of American Studies, the Department of History and the Department of Radio, Television and Film, will present an evening with Italian born and Brooklyn based director Fred "Kudjo" Kuworno. In addition to a Q&A with the documentarian, the event will feature screenings of his films BlaxploItalian, a "call to action for increased diversity in international cinema" that follows the careers of several Black actors working in Italian cinema and Inside Buffalo, about a unit of African American Buffalo Soldiers who fought in Italy during World War II. We hope to see you there.
Emily Roehl and Jeannette Vaught Giving Talks on Friday 2/12
This upcoming Friday, 2/12, is an embarrassment of riches for UT AMS as both graduate student Emily Roehl and instructor (and almuna!) Dr. Jeannette Vaught are giving talks. At 11:00am in the Glickman Conference Center (CLA 1.302D), Emily Roehl will participate in a conversation about Stephanie LeMenager's book Living Oil, alongside the author and professor of English Ann Cvetkovich. That event follows a talk, cosponsored by UT AMS, that Dr. LeMenager is giving TONIGHT (Thursday, 2/11) at 6:00pm in the Glickman Conference Center (CLA 1.302B).At 12 PM in WAG 316, Dr. Vaught will be giving a talk, entitled “Feet not Fat: Eugenic Beef and Anxious Husbandmen, 1940-1945,” to the The University of Texas History and Philosophy of Science Colloquium. We've included Dr. Vaught's description of her talk, below.
Shortly before 1940, a well-established veterinary surgeon from Colorado State University was hired as the first Head Veterinarian at the Wyoming Hereford Ranch just outside of Cheyenne, Wyoming. The surgeon, Dr. H. H. Kingman, was charged with revolutionizing this famous beef herd’s breeding program through a combination of eugenic selection and a new technology: artificial insemination. This talk will use Kingman’s daily record of his work as a window into the myriad biological and cultural difficulties of this process between 1940 and 1945. Kingman is a transitional figure—a man poised between evaluating bodies by sight, as cattlemen habitually did, and by an animal’s ability to carry fat, and later by statistics. By focusing on genetics over nutrition, Kingman’s work on the Wyoming Hereford Ranch destabilized the conventions of animal expertise. This instability is especially apparent through his conflicts with the ranch’s husbandmen, who often flummoxed—intentionally or not—his efforts to “scientize” the herd. Considering Kingman’s mixed legacy at the Wyoming Hereford Ranch helps us understand broader shifts in human-animal knowledge and American understandings of nature and the natural that accompanied a postwar transition into an industrial agricultural system.
We hope to see you on Friday!
Grad Research: Julie Kantor in the LARB
Congratulations to UT AMS graduate student Julie Kantor, who recently had some of the poems from her chapbook Land published in the "No Crisis" issue of the Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly. We spoke to Julie about her work when Land came out last spring, and we're excited to able to share a selection with you, below.
Grad Research: Kirsten Ronald and the Public History of the Red River District
UT AMS grad student Kirsten Ronald (pictured in the archive, above) has been taking her teaching out of the classroom and onto the streets of Austin in a project she's been developing with local organization Preservation Austin. Kirsten has been working with high school students, teaching them to do oral history and archival research focusing on Austin's Red River cultural district. Kirsten sez:
Austin's vibrant Red River Cultural District is currently being threatened by encroaching development and rising rents, so Preservation Austin is working with the Vandegrift High School FFA chapter to raise awareness about the historic and cultural importance of the area and its buildings. The stretch of Red River Street between 6th and 10th Streets is home to iconic bars and music venues like Stubb's, Elysium, Mohawk and the now-shuttered Emo's, all of which have helped make Austin the "Live Music Capital of the World." With many properties dating back to the mid-1800s, the District can also provide valuable insight into what makes Austin tick. I'm excited to be teaching a new generation of preservationists and oral historians that while growth, development, and change are important components of any living city, the forms they take are not inevitable.
The website for the project is now live and the work that the students do producing an audio tour of the area will eventually be featured on Preservation Austin's app.