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!
We’ve shared quite a bit of information with you about The End of Austin, a digital journal launched by Dr. Randy Lewis and a smattering of graduate students in the American Studies department.
And, in that vein, we have more exciting news to share. The End of Austin is featured in the Spring 2013 issue of UT College of Liberal Arts’s Life and Letters magazine, and you can read the article here as well as in the print edition (and we highly recommend you click through for some wonderful illustrations of cyclops-like monsters attacking the city, as they often do).
A brief excerpt:
So what does the future hold for Austin? Will the city build a better freeway system or buckle under the heavy pressure of rush-hour commuters? Will the skyline be recognizable a century from now, or will it morph into another sprawling megalopolis? The city’s fate depends on the decisions that are being made right now, Lewis says.
“We have the raw ingredients of a great city based on location, climate and the university,” Lewis says. “But the decisions that we make in the next 10 to 20 years will determine whether Austin will be a world-class, great city, or if it will just be another Sunbelt urban zone.”
The hope for the writers and contributors of the website is to provide a shared brainstorming forum for both the community and the university—and ultimately find possible solutions for Austin’s biggest challenges.
The Department of Theatre and Dance’s Performance as Public Practice program and John L. Warfield Center’s Performing Blackness Series will host a discussion today of Charles O. Anderson/dance theatre X’s TAR, with conversation about Black dance, producing Black art, and the role of art in generating social change. The symposium will take place in the Oscar G. Brockett Theatre in the Winship Building on the UT campus from 1:30-5:00p.m.
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Thomas Frantz, Professor of African and African American Studies/Dance/Theatre Studies, Duke University
Featured Panelists:
Ms. China Smith, Founder and Executive Artistic Director, Ballet Afrique, Austin
Dr. Omise’eke Tinsley, Associate Professor, African and African Diaspora Studies, UT Austin
Dr. Michael Winship, Professor, Department of English, The University of Austin
The symposium is in conjunction with two public performances of dance theatre X’s TAR on April 12 and 13 at 8:00 p.m. in the Oscar G. Brockett Theatre. Both performances are free and open to the public.
Hope to see you there!
Only one more day to wait! This Thursday and Friday, the American Studies Graduate Student Conference will take place at the Texas Union. Click here for a full schedule.
Today we’d like to offer you a special invitation to our keynote address by Dr. Claire Jean Kim (Political Science and Asian American Studies, UC Irvine). Dr. Kim’s address is entitled, “The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Michael Vick” and will take place on Thursday, April 4 from 6:00p.m. – 7:30p.m. in NOA 1.124.
Here’s a little more on our keynote speaker:
Claire Jean Kim received her B.A. in Government from Harvard College and her Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University. She is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Asian American Studies at University of California, Irvine, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate classes on racial politics, multiculturalism, social movements, and human-animal studies. Dr. Kim’s first book, Bitter Fruit: The Politics of Black-Korean Conflict in New York City (Yale University Press, 2000) won two awards from the American Political Science Association: the Ralph Bunche Award for the Best Book on Ethnic and Cultural Pluralism and the Best Book Award from the Organized Section on Race and Ethnicity. She is completing a second book, Multiculturalism On Edge: Contesting Race, Species, and Nature (Cambridge University Press, 2014), which examines the intersection of race and species in impassioned disputes over how immigrants of color, racialized minorities, and Native people in the U.S. use animals in their cultural traditions. Dr. Kim has also written numerous journal articles and book chapters. She has been the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the University of California Center for New Racial Studies, and she has been a fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey and the University of California Humanities Research Institute. Dr. Kim is an Associate Editor of American Quarterly and the co-guest editor with Carla Freccero of a special issue of American Quarterly entitled, Species/Race/Gender, forthcoming in September 2013.
Hope to see you there!
The conference is two short days away, and today we bring you our last post in a series of sneak peeks at the American Studies Graduate Student Conference: a panel entitled “American Nightmares.”
Photograph by Andrew Jones
This panel will be the final panel of the conference and will take place on Friday, April 5 from 4:00p.m. – 5:30p.m. in the Texas Union, 4.206 Chicano Culture Room. This is definitely one you don’t want to miss!
Next up in our series of sneak peeks at the American Studies Graduate Student Conference is a panel entitled “The American Dream and the Politics of Promise.” This panel will feature papers on political theory and rhetoric as they relate to the American Dream.
Photograph by Andrew Jones
This panel will take place on Friday, April 5 from 10:45a.m. – 12:15p.m. in the Texas Union, 4.206 Chicano Culture Room.
Today we continue our series of sneak peeks at the American Studies Graduate Student Conference with a look at another one of the great panels we have in store–”The American Dream and the Spatial Imaginary.”
Photograph by Andrew Jones
“The American Dream and the Spatial Imaginary” is composed of papers that consider the relationship between space, place and literature, art, activism, and identity construction. This panel will take place on Thursday, April 4 from 2:15p.m. – 3:45p.m. in the Texas Union, 4.206 Chicano Culture Room.
This conference is free and open to the public. Conference registration (and refreshments!) begin Thursday April 4 at 1:00p.m. in the Texas Union, 3.128 Sinclair Suite. Stay tuned for more sneak peeks!
