Announcement: Workshop with media artist Samuel Cepeda this Friday

This week we’d like to direct your attention to a workshop happening in the Department of Anthropology. The Intermedia Workshop will host Samuel Cepeda, a media artist from Mexico, who will offer a workshop on “Research and remediation techniques in the critical study of media.” Cepeda is currently a full time artist and researcher working on his dissertation at Tecnológico de Monterrey in the PhD program of humanities studies in science and technology.

Here is some additional information on the workshop, which takes place this Friday, May 8 from noon to 2:00 in the Intermedia Workshop (SAC 4.120):

The research of contemporary culture frequently implies paying attention to the symbolic production in different media, as well as the material and semantic consequences of its remediation. The researcher, in order to understand the symbolic production within a group or culture, needs to deeply comprehend it as a creator too. In this workshop, through the practice of various remediation techniques we’ll approach a way of theorizing while producing.

The workshop is free and open to the public.

Announcement: Lecture on American Studies from a Korean perspective this Thursday

This Thursday, we are pleased to welcome Dr. Sangjun Jeong, Professor of English at Seoul National University, who will deliver a lecture on “Doing American Studies on the Periphery: A Korean Perspective.”

Dr. Sangjun Jeong is serving as Visiting Professor of History at Duke University for the current academic year. His publications encompass American literature and culture from Puritanism to postmodernism, and he recently translated Henry James’s Portrait of a Lady into Korean. His ongoing project involves comparing a wide range of international and transnational approaches to American Studies. He is a past president of the American Studies Association of Korea.

The lecture will take place on Thursday, April 30, at 4:30pm in CLA 1.302D (Liberal Arts Building). Refreshments served. The event is co-sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, English, and History, and the Centers for Asian American Studies and East Asian Studies.

Announcement: Undergraduate Honors Thesis Symposium Today!

Here at AMS::ATX, we love to draw your attention to the awesome work our American Studies undergraduates do, and so we’d like to invite you to the Undergraduate Honors Thesis Symposium this evening, Wednesday, April 22. Please join us in Burdine 214 at 5:00pm to celebrate the work of some of our stellar undergraduates, who will present portions of their thesis research.

Here is a lineup of tonight’s presentations:

Courtney Michelle Luther – “Pregnant in Prison: Orange is the New Black and the Reproductive Justice Crisis in Prisons”

Kevin Machate – “Promise Me”

Misael Mendoza – “Popped Open: Containment and Domesticity in Pop Art”

Lindy Nesmith – “An Evolution of the Delta Blues from the Disreputable Margin to the Respectable Sinner”

Shannon Schaffer – “Mental Illness in America: A Personal Odyssey”

Announcement: AMS Graduate Conference this week: “Home/Sick”

Join the graduate students of the Department of American Studies at UT as they put on a conference that takes on the theme “Home/Sick” this Thursday and Friday, April 2 and 3. The keynote address will be delivered by Dr. Kim Tallbear (Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, UT Austin) on Thursday, April 2^nd at 6pm in NOA 1.124. Dr. Tallbear will give a talk called, “Molecular Death and Redface Reincarnation: Indigenous Appropriations in the U.S.” Panels will take place Thursday and Friday in the Texas Union. See below for a full schedule, or click here.

The following is a description of the conference theme from the organizers:

The death of eighteen-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri this August, the immigration crisis centering around the influx of children from Central America to the United States, and the recent panic over the spread of the ebola virus can all be read as the newest manifestations of a long-running pattern throughout American history and culture: the relationship between constructions of “healthy” communities, the fear that these communities will be violated, invaded, or contaminated, and the mobilization of these fears as justification for action in the name of community preservation. The history of the United States is littered with rhetorical constructions of safety and security, purity and contamination—as well as with the results of very real processes of violence, displacement, and exclusion. The 2015 AMS Graduate Student Conference considers constructions of home and health, and explores how these concepts have been and continue to be mobilized in the construction and erasure of American communities, families, and selves.

Schedule for Panels

Thursday, April 2

Registration 1pm- 5pm
Sinclair Suite (UNB 3.128), Texas Union

2:00pm – 3:30pm – Panel 1: Surveillance at Home
Texas Governors’ Room (UNB 3.116), Texas Union

3:45pm – 5:15pm – Panel 2: Sick: Bodies and Affect
Texas Governors’ Room (UNB 3.116), Texas Union

Friday, April 3

Registration 8:30am – 5:00pm
Eastwoods Room (UNB 2.102), Texas Union

9:00am – 10:30am – Panel 3: Race and Reconfiguring the Home
Chicano Culture Room (4.206), Texas Union

10:45 – 12:15 –  Panel 4: Home in Digital Life
Chicano Culture Room (4.206), Texas Union

1:45 – 3:15 – Panel 5: Leisure, Labor, and Contested Homes
Chicano Culture Room (4.206), Texas Union

3:30 – 5:00 – Panel 6: Gulf Coast Oil and the Labor of Self, Loss, and the South
Chicano Culture Room (4.206), Texas Union

Grad Research: PhD student featured on television series ‘American Canvas’

We are thrilled to be able to draw your attention to the great work our graduate students do both on and off campus. PhD student Kirsten Ronald, who is writing a dissertation about social dance, gentrification, and cultural preservation, is featured in a segment that was recently filmed for the program American Canvas on the cable channel Ovation TV. The segment follows Ronald as she leads two-step dance lessons at The White Horse in Austin. The episode airs this Wednesday, March 18, at 9pm Central Time. You can find the channel number for your cable provider here.

Ronald shared the following with us about her research about and through dance:

Most of us in American Studies are lucky enough to study what we love, and I’m no exception – I’ve been an avid two-stepper almost since I set foot in Texas, and I research and write about social dance, gentrification, and cultural preservation in Austin.  I also teach beginning two-step classes at a few bars around town.  My co-teacher Houston Ritcheson and I were thrilled when the folks from American Canvas, a new cultural travel show on Ovation TV, asked if they could come film our class at The White Horse for their pilot, and now we’re super psyched to announce that the Austin episode is airing, and we’re in it!  With fingers crossed that they made us look far cooler than we actually are, please check it out: March 18th at 9pm on Ovation.

Announcement: ‘Mapping the Afro-Imaginative’ symposium this week

This Thursday and Friday, the Black Queer Diaspora Collective at UT will present a symposium that convenes activists, artists and scholars from throughout the African Diaspora to discuss “creative strategies for black queer world-making.” The symposium kicks off with a keynote lecture from Nalo Hopkinton tonight, Thursday, March 5 at 6:30 in BLS 2.206. On Friday, March 6, there will be a series of panels in the same room. The symposium features panels with E. Patrick Johnson, Alexis Deveaux, Ana Maurine Lara, and more – find the full schedule at the Fabebook event here.

 

 

Announcement: Professional development workshop on ‘academic performance’ with Dr. Brian Herrera this Friday

This Friday, February 27, visiting Harrington Fellow Dr. Brian Herrera, Assistant Professor of Theater at Princeton, will offer a workshop on academic performance at 12:00pm in GAR 1.134. This workshop is intended for graduate students and early career academics who would like to build their presentations skills or who experience a bit of academic “stage fright.”

 

Dr. Herrera sent us the following description of this workshop:

This performance workshop is designed specifically for early career academics encountering some measure of “stage fright” or “performance anxiety” around essential academic performances like job talks, conference presentations, and thesis/dissertation/exam defenses. After introducing several simple techniques borrowed from actor and voice training, this workshop rehearses how such performance techniques might also be applicable to high-pressure moments of academic performance.

RSVP for this workshop by e-mailing Chad Crawford at chad.crawford@austin.utexas.edu.