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!

Dream! with Dr. Randy Lewis

As we announced last week, we will be  featuring reflections, responses, and ruminations on the 2012-2013 departmental theme—-”DREAM!”—-from AMS  faculty and assistant instructors who are integrating the theme in their classes in various ways over the course of the semester.

The following thoughts on the theme come to us from Dr. Randy Lewis:

Our departmental theme was an easy fit for my fall lecture course. After all, it would be odd to teach a course entitled “Main Currents in American Culture since 1865″ without some reference to the American dream. The question is how to get at it? Langston Hughes’s dream deferred, Willy Loman’s inability to close the sale, Hunter S. Thompson’s “Savage Journey Into the Heart of the American Dream” amid motocross and mescaline in the Nevada desert?

Sure, but why not go back to the horse’s mouth, to Horatio Alger, whose late 19th century novels crystalized the rags-to-riches mythology that seems inextricably woven into our cultural history. Again and again, Alger showed young men (always men) pulling themselves out of poverty and “moving on up to a deluxe apartment in the sky.” Oh wait, that’s Sherman Helmsley… But the idea is the same, and quite frankly it can be surprisingly pernicious in its application. Too often, the American dream is wielded as a bludgeon to wallop poor people for not improving their lot, allegedly because of some deficiency of will, energy, or character.

I don’t buy it for a moment because the real impediments are structural. What my students and I wrestle with is the astonishing fact that the American dream is alive and well—in Norway, France, New Zealand, and elsewhere. If you look at comparative data regarding intergenerational class mobility, Americans are relatively locked into the social class to which they were born. It cofounds everything we’d like to believe about this country. Of course, some folks are loathe to accept this structural reality for reasons that are therapeutic or even anecdotal. As in: It’s too sad to trade the fantasy for the sobering reality–people would just give up. Or: My cousin knows a guy whose sister is friends with someone who went from rags to riches, so, you know, it’s totally possible. My students have very strong feelings about this subject, and I love exploring the rhetoric and reality of the American dream with them. It’s one of the most important things we can do in the American Studies classroom.

Dream! Postcards from Texas

As we announced earlier this school year, the Department of American Studies has chosen a theme that will create common threads among course offerings, discussions, and departmental events throughout the 2012-2013 school year. The theme for this year is Dream!, and we are very pleased to announce that over the coming weeks, we will be highlighting some of the ways instructors have integrated this theme into their classes.

A word cloud of themes from the Postcards from Texas project.

To start things off, we would like to present Postcards from Texas, a  project of Dr. Steven Hoelscher’s Fall 2012 Introduction to American Studies class. The Postcards project is a blog that features photographs and text created by students that reflect on the concept of the American Dream and what it might mean today.

The following description of the project comes to us from the Postcards website:

The idea of the “American dream” means many different things to different people; it could hardly be otherwise in a nation as diverse as the United States. For some, the dream is about intangible ideas like freedom of expression, freedom of religion, optimism, family ties, social justice, and equality. While for others, it has long been associated with attaining a higher standard of living, especially one that surpasses that of previous generations. What’s more, different people may express and experience the “American dream,” however defined, in very different ways. Finally, it’s also the case that, at different times and in different ways, the “American dream” was not available to everyone in the country; for some it might be technically available, but in practice as distant as the moon.

Undergraduate students in Prof. Steven Hoelscher’s Introduction to American Studies class at the University of Texas at Austin took on the task of interrogating this nebulous, but important concept in a two-step project. Beginning with the inspirational model of Magnum Photos ongoing Postcards from America series, students were asked to explore one segment of the U.S. visually, through photography. First, each student asked him/herself what the “American dream” might mean and if it’s something attainable or hopelessly inaccessible. Then, each recorded her/his thoughts in the form of a photographic image in Texas. In these original photographs—and in the detailed, unedited captions that accompany them—the extraordinary range of how the “American dream” is envisioned comes into full view.

We invite you to take a closer look at the Postcards from Texas site, which is a wonderful archive of some of the many meanings of the “Dream” today.

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!

Hot Off the (Digital) Presses: The AMS 2012-2013 Newsletter!

AMS :: ATX isn’t the only game in town when it comes to updating you readers about the goings-on of our department. Yesterday, the 2012-2013 newsletter was released, and you can check it out here!

Features include pieces from current faculty, students, alumni of both the graduate and the undergraduate program, updates from our faculty and graduate community, and a few words on two of our digital projects (The End of Austin, spearheaded by Dr. Randy Lewis, and, well, AMS :: ATX).

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.