Undergrad Research: Lauren White on Soul Food

Today we are thrilled to feature an interview with AMS undergraduate student Lauren White. Her thesis project looks at media representations of soul food. We sat down with Lauren and chatted about her research and future plans–enjoy!

Tell me a little about your research.

I’m looking at various media surrounding the neo-soul food movement, thinking about things like the representation of soul food in movies, music, and television. I decided to look at examples from the media, like the film Soul Food and episodes of Boondocks. Soul food is an important part of American culture–it is something that you couldn’t study anywhere else. My thesis project and the paper I am presenting at the conference were originally a part of the Food Studies Project. They needed a blog writer. I was originally going to write about something else, but I had presented at Undergraduate Research Week about soul food, and they noticed that and encouraged me to expanded it from there.

What has been your favorite class in American Studies and why?

Southern Cultures with Dr. Elizabeth Engelhardt. It was a great opportunity to find out about southern traditions, where they come from, where they are practiced, how they have changed. In that class I got to do an ethnomusicology project on the banjo which has led me to want to pursue graduate school in ethnomusicology, or perhaps archival work related either to ethnomusicology or gastronomy. I would love to work at an institution like the Smithsonian and do work on jazz and popular culture.

Undergrad Research: Honors Thesis Symposium TODAY

Research week at UT begins next week, and the American Studies honors thesis writers will be presenting a year’s worth of hard work at our annual symposium on Wednesday, April 17, 5:30-7:30pm in Burdine 214. Below are some brief remarks about each thesis and each presenter. Come by to see the great work these students have done!

Undergrad Research: Amanda Martin Receives Recognition on Commencement Program!

Please join all of us at AMS::ATX in congratulating Amanda Martin, who will receive the Dean’s Distinguished Graduate–Honorable Mention recognition on the 2013 spring commencement program!

We previous interviewed Amanda here on AMS::ATX about her thesis research, which deals with female identity in America and how it is constructed and maintained by women through partaking in beauty processes. Check it out!

Congratulations, Amanda!

Undergrad Research: This Mongolian Life

The following post comes to us from Stephanie Kovanda, a recent graduate of the program in American Studies here at UT Austin. Since graduating from UT, Stephanie has been working as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mongolia. Many thanks to Stephanie for sharing her story with us!

March 16, 2011, 6:13 PM

I receive a text from a friend staying at my place in Cedar Park, Texas. “A package just arrived… something about Peace Corps?” This is the invitation I have been waiting for since I began the grueling application process nearly a year ago, an invitation I’ve been waiting for since I was seven years old. And of course, I have just started my 6-hour shift volunteering at a South by Southwest venue. The details of the next two years of my life will have to wait until the final band finishes their set and all amps, cords, and instruments are transported back to their designated vans.

March 17, 2011, 3:28 AM

I arrive back at the house. Surrounded by three friends, I open one neat little government-issued envelope containing my fate. My friend has the BlackBerry video camera recording. “It is with great pleasure that we invite you to begin training in… Mongolia???” I wish I can say my first thoughts are of intelligible details regarding Mongolian politics and culture or even a clue about the spoken language. No, my first thoughts are of BBQ and something about Chinggis Khaan making the Chinese so nervous that they built a long wall. A quick Google search and I realize that I will be going to a country that is rich, fascinating and about 100 degrees colder than my current location. One big question on my mind, though, is how exactly I will put my bachelors in American Studies to use in an Asian country where the livestock outnumber the human population ten to one.

December 2, 2012, 4:37 PM

I write to you from the Gobi Desert region of Dundgobi Province, Mongolia. I literally live in “Outer Mongolia.” This country has some of the most diverse and rich nature and culture I’ve seen, both of which have been beautifully preserved throughout the centuries. I’ve even acquired a taste for airag, Mongolia’s traditional beverage of fermented mare’s milk.

Since taking Dr. Hoelscher’s “Intro to American Studies” a few years back, I have a thing for sense of space. So allow me paint you a picture of my place right this moment. I live in a Mongolian ger. To me, it is a miniature circus tent and quite the intellectual one-room design for the Nomadic lifestyle that Mongolians have sustained for more than a thousand years. Every so often, I leave my laptop to adjust the central heating system, a coal stove located in the center of the ger. It’s a balmy five degrees Fahrenheit outside, up from last night’s subzero temperatures. My 12-year-old Mongolian host brother is taking a break from fetching water from the community well by sprawling out on my couch, absorbed in a game of “Zombie Highway” on his Blackberry-esque cell phone. His cell phone goes off. It blares out the Korean viral video sensation, “Gangnam Style.”

The dichotomy of technology and tradition never ceases to amaze and amuse here. I am connected to the internet in my ger but must run to the outhouse in between sending out an email and checking up on Pinterest. I cut up hunks of mutton for dinner with a meat cleaver while listening to This American Life. I digress.

December 3, 2012, 6:07 AM

The fire died out a few hours ago. I can see my breath inside the ger and I drag myself out from under the layers of a camel wool blanket to start another fire. Soon, I will head to the local secondary school where I work as a Peace Corps TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) Volunteer.

Besides being aware of and analyzing the space around me, how did my work at the University of Texas’ Department of American Studies prepare me for This Mongolian Life? My students are fascinated with all that America entails, so obviously a degree in American Studies has been conducive for teaching on that subject. More importantly, though, American Studies has influenced the way in which I teach my Mongolian students. I draw from many disciplines as I teach the English language and challenge my students to do likewise as they learn it. Critical thinking is a newer concept within the school system here and something for which the American Studies department has provided great tools I now try to develop in this Mongolian generation.

Most importantly, though, I feel that I was provided with a comprehensive and challenging education in the American Studies department, a learning environment that fostered a wide range of skills I now pass on to the Mongolian students and teachers of Dundgobi’s Fourth Secondary School.

Over a year and a half since opening that Peace Corps invitation in Cedar Park, Texas, I can confidently answer a big question regarding my American Studies degree. This degree can take you anywhere, even all the way to Outer Mongolia!

Undergraduate Research: Interview with Amanda Martin, Recipient of the Rapoport-King Thesis Scholarship

Today, we’re pleased to share with you an interview with one of our undergraduates, Amanda Martin, who recently received the Rapoport-King Thesis Scholarship. Congratulations to Amanda on this incredible accomplishment!

What was/is your favorite class in American Studies?

I took a Beats Literature class last semester with Dr. Meikle. I really loved that class. It was kind of refreshing to dive into the literature and live vicariously through these rugged souls. My life looks quite different. I really enjoyed that. I usually take the more intense cultural studies, critical thought classes, which I love, but it’s nice to take something different every once in a while, so I really enjoyed that class.

What are your research interests? Tell me a little about your thesis project.

My thesis is inspired and fueled by personal interests that I have in female identity in America and how it is constructed and maintained by women. I’m really interested in gender studies, obviously, and my thesis focuses specifically on examples of women who claim individual empowerment through partaking in beauty processes or traditional gender roles that can be perceived as regressive by feminist scholars. So I look at these complex, contradictory examples. For example, I’m looking at a pole dancing fitness studio called Brass Ovaries, which is interesting in itself. Even the title gives this idea of empowerment, and I’m hanging out with them and taking photos. Obviously, pole dancing has a lot of connotations for women in our society, but they see it as a really empowering thing, embracing their sexuality. They’re not really frilly about it. I have pictures of them in their Converse, these kick-ass women. I like trying to understand this and grapple with these ideas I’m not really certain about. As I’m trying to understand it, photography is a really useful medium especially with something complex like this.

What are your post-graduate plans?

I’m currently applying to a couple of graduate programs–probably not as many as I should, but I’m also open to the idea of taking a year off and doing photography and figuring life out if the grad school thing doesn’t work out immediately. I’d love to continue studying American studies at a graduate level because in a lot of ways it fuels my photography, that curiosity. I’m always being introduced to new ideas about American culture that make me want to jump into it, take pictures, and get to know people. So I’d love to go to grad school.

Why did you ultimately decide to study American Studies?

It’s funny how it happened. I actually went into undergrad as a Public Relations major. I took a journalism elective because I was still interested in photography, and I had a journalism professor who totally tore apart the advertising industry and PR and was offering a critical analysis that I’d never been introduced to. It was the first time I thought, hey, you can look at things critically, and things aren’t just a given, or naturally occurring, things are very constructed. So I ended up taking an AMS course on a whim as a history credit, and again I was introduced to this idea of critical cultural analysis, and I just loved it. So I immediately went in and added it as a second major, mainly because I thought it was awesome. I thought, I have my journalism degree, but I can do this for fun on the side. That’s how it started, but I’ve really fallen in love with the field and I want to keep going with it.

Amanda Martin is a senior studying American Studies and Photojournalism. She grew up in College Station, Texas. Amanda is currently employed by Texas Performing Arts as a student photographer and also pursues various other freelance photo opportunities. To view her work, visit www.amandamartinphotography.com.

Undergrad Research: A Post-Grad Post from David Juarez

One of our favorite aspects of American Studies as a broad, interdisciplinary field is that it enables students to pursue any number of interests and activities both during school and after graduation. We’ve asked our graduating seniors to write a quick reflection on their time in the American Studies department and to share what amazing things they’ll be up to next. We begin this series with some words from David Juarez.

Being an American Studies major at UT over the past three years has been many things: incredible, eye-opening, thought-provoking, intellectually stimulating, challenging, and phenomenal. I’ve had the opportunity to take classes that still impact how I think about and analyze the texts, art, people, and the world around me. I’ve also been fortunate to work with some of the most intelligent teachers, professors, and students I’ve ever met. To say I’ve changed my ways of living, creating, thinking, and working since I came to UT would be a gross understatement.

I’ve wanted to be an American Studies professor since my junior year of high school and my time spent at UT has not deteriorated that pursuit in the least. In fact, it’s made it stronger than ever. To me, American Studies has become a field so entrenched in my personality and character I can’t imagine being anywhere else in the world right now than in this area and in this department.

After graduation, I will be returning to UT in the fall as an American Studies graduate student. This means I will have the opportunity to forge deeper relationships with the amazing people I’ve met so far in the department, as well as new ones with my own incoming cohort. I don’t think it’s time for me to leave this institution. There’s still so much to learn and so much to do here that to leave it now would be preposterous. I’m just glad that the university, and most importantly, the department, wants me back just as much as I’d like to return.

Here’s to the department that’s treated me so well during these three wonderful years, and to the many more years to come! Cheers!

Undergrad Research: More photos from the Undergraduate Honors Symposium

Congratulations again to all of this year’s American Studies graduates!

Enjoy these photographs from the Undergraduate Honors Symposium, held on April 19, 2012, and check out out overview of the fantastic event here. Click the photo collages for larger images.

Undergrad Research: Review of AMS Senior Kelli Schultz’s Play, “Our TEKS”

Last Monday night, senior Kelli Schultz premiered her American Studies/Plan II honors thesis play titled, “Our TEKS,” to an eager and curious audience. The play was the culmination of a year’s worth of diligent and passionate research into the Texas textbook controversies in 2010 when the Texas State Board of Education drafted a list of over 100 amendments to the Social Studies curriculum for the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). Taking a critical and creative look into the historical hoopla and media coverage of the new standards, Kelli referred to her play as “Our Town meets Barnum & Bailey meets The Colbert Report.” As a form of documentary theater, it combined true accounts and reenactments from board room transcripts, interviews, video and audio clips, and even a surreal recreation of a Colbert Report segment with Alexandra Reynolds as the ever-vigilant Stephen Colbert.

Kelli began by providing a brief overview of what this is all about—policy, history, and memory—before introducing us to the 15 elected “experts” on the Texas State Board of Education. Each member was represented as a circus performer in silhouette, dazzling and dismaying the audience with their rhetoric and apparent expertise in the matters of K-12 standards for education in the departments of Language Arts, Science, Math, and Social Studies. There was the “strong man” Bob Craig; Barbara Cargill, unfurling a long cloth from her mouth as she spoke to the crowd; skilled-balancer Pat Hardy; Siamese twins, a cannon-ball man, a mime, a few clowns, and more. It was an ingenious way to represent the so-called “experts” administering these standards, only one of whom actually holds a degree in history and has experience teaching this information in the classroom. Two are ministers, four are professors, one is a dentist, and another holds no college degree at all.

Undergrad Research: Overview of Undergraduate Honors Symposium

Last week, the Department of American Studies had the pleasure of featuring the work of six exceptional undergraduates at the first annual Undergraduate Honors Symposium. The students presented their thesis projects, with topics ranging from resource extraction policy to the American coming-of-age narrative. These projects take the form of thesis papers as well as websites, documentary theater pieces, and novellas.

Presenters with their instructor, Dr. Janet Davis

The evening began with a presentation by Miriam Anderson on hydraulic fracturing. Miriam offered a charming and funny visual presentation on the natural gas industry and its detractors set to the words of Dr. Seuss‘ The Lorax.  Miriam also shared her website, which explains the economic and environmental impacts of the fracking process from multiple perspectives. Miriam was followed by Julie Reitzi, who discussed the drug war in Ciudad Juarez, focusing on the involvement and responses of women and youth. Julie’s presentation provided perspective on a much talked about issue, and she shared striking images of women and youth who are both implicated in and responding to the violence and poverty in the city, including Las Guerreras, a group of women on pink motorcycles who distribute food and other supplies to impoverished neighborhoods. Rounding out the first half of the night was Kelli Schultz, who described her ambitious documentary theater project, “Our TEKS,” which is a play based on the controversy surrounding recent changes to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills by the Texas Board of Education. Kelli discussed her process and inspiration for creating the play, which draws on circus imagery and Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. For more information on Kelli’s production, check out our post last week, and head on over to the Winship building April 30 or May 1 at 8pm.

David Juarez presents on Jack Kerouac

The second half of the evening featured presentations by David Juarez, Alexandria Chambers, and Laci Thompson. David led off the second half with a description of his project on Jack Kerouac’s early years of devising fantasy sports games, which David reads as early writing exercises for the budding Beat writer. David shared a number of images and score sheets from these whimsical and impressively detailed games, illustrating the way that the young Kerouac exercised control over a life that was often depicted as lacking it. Alex Chambers followed David’s presentation with a discussion of American boy’s choir schools, focusing on two in particular: the St. Thomas Choir School in New York City and the American Boy Choir School in Princeton, New Jersey. Alex’s thesis project took the form of a novella that introduces the choirboy school upbringing into the American coming-of-age discourse, and she shared a wickedly funny selection from the beginning of her novella. The final speaker of the evening was Laci Thompson, whose eloquent presentation described the multiple representations of the night in Western thought and literature. Laci’s thesis centers on the unique contributions of Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg, and Patti Smith to this discourse of the night, and Laci ended her presentation with a strong call for academics to own their passions and to “have more fun,” because that is what rock music like Patti Smith’s is, first and foremost, all about.

Laci Thompson presents on Patti Smith

The evening of presentations was a fabulous success. It was wonderful to be able to chat with the presenters in group discussion and in one-on-one conversations afterward. I was particularly struck by the range of topics and formats represented by these thesis projects. One of the particular strengths of American Studies scholarship is the way it encourages both innovative themes and innovative forms, and both were on display at this event. It is clear that these senior AMS students are headed toward greater and greater things, and the Department should be proud to call them alumni.

Stay tuned for more photographs from this event! And remember to follow us on Twitter for updates on new posts!

Announcement: Interview with Julie Reitzi, AMS Senior and Dean’s Distinguished Graduate Honorable Mention

We’re thrilled to share with you this interview with Dean’s Distinguished Graduate Honorable Mention and American Studies senior Julie Reitzi. Here, she shares her experiences in American Studies over the past four years. Congratulations, Julie!

What was, or is, your favorite class in American Studies?

It’s so hard for me to pick. I found something great, useful, and perspective changing about every course that I took. This department has really great professors and lecturers.

I think one of the classes that impacted me the most personally, though, was Professor Cordova’s Mexican American Cultural Studies. I came out of the class with a new way of thinking about myself. Both this class and Christina Garcia’s Ethnicity and Gender: La Chicana gave me an identity term that worked for me – Chicana. It embraces the complexity that can exist for people of Mexican descent living in the United States, and also has a political edge. I also came away with a deep sense of the importance of keeping ethnic studies programs alive. I was amazed at how much history I had never even heard about. Some of us were even angry that we had been denied that kind of education.

As far as other influential classes, both Professor Lieu’s Asian Americans in Popular Culture and John Cline’s Global Power of the Funk really helped me grasp cultural studies theory and the importance of deconstructing popular culture. Professor Engelhardt’s Masculinity and Femininity intro course gave me a new way of thinking about gender roles – how they really are something we all participate in shaping. I never imagined a room full of sinister, robed men deciding how gender would operate in the United States, but it was good for me to complicate my understanding of patriarchy, to see it as something less top-down than my earlier conception was.