Alumni Voices: Dr. John Gronbeck-Tedesco, Asst. Prof. of American Studies, Ramapo College

Today we share with you some insight from Dr. John Gronbeck-Tedesco, Assistant Professor of American Studies at Ramapo College in New Jersey. Dr. Gronbeck-Tedesco graduated from the department with a Ph.D. in 2009.

How is the work that you’re doing right now informed by the work that you did as a student in American Studies at UT?

The work I do right now evolved out of the nourishing range of experiences I enjoyed as an American Studies graduate student and temporary citizen of Austin, Texas.  UT introduced me to an invigorating intellectual atmosphere where I could explore many facets of humanistic study.  At first, the flexibility of American Studies can be frustratingly amorphous, with its oft-cited lack of consensus on the query, “What is American Studies?” (and outsiders’ persistent question, “What is it not?”)  But as an interdisciplinary, malleable form of study, American Studies continually demands reinvention of itself through its refreshing breadth and creativity.  The program allowed me to tailor my scholarly interests into a set of paradigms and methodologies that still govern my work today.  Classes on Cuban history, the American Left, the African Diaspora, U.S. foreign relations, and on race and ethnicity in the United States helped me produce my own definition and working model of American Studies, which I took with me on the job market, inscribed onto syllabi, and crammed (if uncomfortably in parts!) into my dissertation cum book manuscript.  American Studies at UT gave me the resources and peer/mentor support to travel to Cuba to conduct research and form a community of scholars and friends that continue to shape my personhood today.  And Austin was a place where I politically matured by joining activist organizations that organize on behalf of immigrant rights, compulsions I keep up on a weekly basis in Queens, NY.  UT American Studies is a thriving community that still dazzles on the ASA stage.  I consider myself lucky to have been a part of it.

Do you have any words of wisdom or advice for students in our department about how to get the most out of their time here?

Explore, explore, explore.  Then write a manageable dissertation.  It seems to me that through this exploration we develop an understanding of the scholarly domains to which we will ultimately contribute.  It’s important to have a sense of where our work fits (in journals, departments, conferences) and where it doesn’t.  The advantage of American Studies is that we can have several options in this respect.   Having a good relationship with your mentors is also key.  I have been in awe of my mentors’ capacity to tirelessly help me well beyond graduation.

I think the most important words of advice I can give is something that I did not learn until I was deep into my degree.  That is to indulge in the vulnerability it takes to unmask and remake the hidden assumptions and understandings you carry into the program.  This is intensely personal, much more than I realized until later.  We are intimately invested in our knowledge production because it is inseparable from our profound sense of selfhood.  Breaking down time-tested barriers and defense mechanisms is a discomfiting but unconditional part of the liberatory process of education.  Knowing this at the outset, I think, is advantageous in graduate school.

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!

Announcement: Performing Blackness Symposium Today!

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!

Conference Preview: Keynote Address by Dr. Claire Jean Kim

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!

Conference Preview: The American Dream and the Politics of Promise

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

• Curt Yowell, “The Rhetoric of Poverty and Payday Loans”
• Joe Roberto Tafoya, “Watching and Learning From the Shadows: Political Sophistication of Latina/o Young Adults”
• Jeff Birdsell, “Advancing the Student as Investor Metaphor by Reconceptualizing the ‘Career Student’ to Advance the American Dream”
• Duncan Moench, “How Social Democrats can Change the American Dream: A Political Communication Perspective”

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.

Announcement: Women’s and Gender Studies Conference Today and Tomorrow!

Today and tomorrow, the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies presents “The Feeling Body—Feeling the Body, ” the 20th Annual Emerging Scholarship in Women’s and Gender Studies Conference. This graduate student run conference offers undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to share their research on issues in women’s, gender, and/or sexuality studies. The theme of this year’s conference addresses the relationship between feminist theory,  affect, and the body.

The following comes to us from the conference program:

Affect is an emerging new direction in feminist theory, generating fascinating conversations around the role of the body and feeling in producing knowledge. How are other disciplines writing about and engaging with affect? How might this new direction shift how we think about the role of the body in academic research? The panelists will examine these topics, exploring the ways in which the body shapes knowledge.

The conference will feature a keynote address on Friday at 3:30p.m. by Dr. Ann Cvetkovich (Ellen Clayton Garwood Centennial Professor of English and Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at UT) in the SAC Ballroom.

Also, be sure to check out our AMS grad students presenting at this year’s conference! Masters student Tynisha Scott will present her paper, “Imagining Freedom: On the Vestiges of Enslaved Black Women, Pleasure, and Sexuality” at 3:00p.m. today in SAC 3.116, and Ph.D. candidate Jennifer Kelly will present her paper, “Negotiating (Im)Mobility: Solidarity Tourism in Occupied Palestine” at 1:30 Friday in SAC 1.118.

Hope to see you there!

Lists: 2013 SXSW Film Picks

Every March, Austin plays host to South by Southwest, a gargantuan festival of new media, film, music, comedy, and everything in between. Although much of the week is closed to the chosen few badge holders, non-badged visitors can purchase single-admission tickets to film screenings, space permitting. With that in mind, we’ve curated a quick list of films that may be of particular interest to those attendees who study or are generally fans of American Studies.

Click each title for screening times and locations.

Our Nixon

Recently discovered Super 8 home movies filmed by three of Richard Nixon’s closest aides – and fellow Watergate conspirators – offer an intimate and complex new glimpse into his presidency in this all-archival documentary.

Announcement: Dr. Michael Omi Talk Tonight!

Happy Monday!

Today we invite you to a very exciting talk from Dr. Michael Omi (UC Berkeley) entitled, “The Unbearable Whiteness of Being: Situating Asian Americans.” The talk will take place this evening from 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM in the Avaya Auditorium (ACE 2.302).

Michael Omi is an Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies and Associate Director of the Haas Institute for a Fair and Equitable Society at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also the Associate Director of the University of California Center for New Racial Studies, a multi-campus research program. He is the co-author of Racial Formation in the United States.

This talk is hosted by the Center for Asian American Studies. Full details here.

Announcement: Dr. Eric Tang awarded prize for best essay in American Quarterly

American studies affiliate faculty member Dr. Eric Tang has been awarded the Constance M. Rourke Prize for the best article published this year in American Quarterly. Congratulations, Dr. Tang!

Dr. Eric Tang, credit by David Woodberry

The announcement comes to us from the African and African Diaspora Studies Department:

Each year the American Studies Association awards the Constance Rourke prize to the best essay published in the journal American Quarterly. This year’s prize goes to Eric Tang, Assistant Professor in African and African Diaspora Studies and the Center for Asian American Studies. Tang won for his essay entitled “A Gulf Unites Us: The Vietnamese Americans of Black New Orleans East” 63:1 (March 2011), which examines the forms of life and solidarity created by Black and Vietnamese Americans in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

The prize will be announced at the annual American Studies Association Conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico on Friday, November 16, 2012. Stay tuned this week for a full listing of UT American Studies folks presenting at the annual meeting!

Announcement: CMAS Fall Sexuality Studies Symposium This Weekend

This Friday and Saturday, the Center for Mexican American Studies will be hosting their Fall Sexuality Studies Symposium – “Sexing the Borderlands: From the Midwest Corridor and Beyond.”  The keynote address will be delivered by José Esteban Muñoz, Professor of Performance Studies at New York University, who will speak on “The Brown Commons: The Sense of Wildness.”

AMS professor and Associate Director of the Center for Mexican American Studies, Dr. Nicole Guidotti-Hernández, will be moderating a panel on Saturday, “Shameless Sex: From Porfirian Ruins to the UFW” at 11:00 a.m. in the Santa Rita Suite (3.502) of the Texas Union.

This event is sponsored by the Center for Mexican American Studies; the LGBTQ/Sexualities research cluster in the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies; the Teresa Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies; the Performance as Public Practice program in the Department of Theatre and Dance; the Latino Media Studies program in the College of Communication; and the Department of English.