Announcement: Congratulations to our newly minted Ph.D.s!

Enormous congratulations to the following graduate students who are now, as of this weekend’s commencement festivities, official Ph.D. recipients. We are so proud of them!

Sean Cashbaugh
“A Cultural History Beneath the Left: Politics, Art, and the Emergence of the Underground During the Cold War”
Supervisor: Randolph Lewis

Brendan Gaughen
“Practices of Place: Ordinary Mobilities and Everyday Technology”
Supervisor: Jeff Meikle

Josh Holland
“Kurt Hahn, the United World Colleges, and the Un-Making of Nation”
Supervisor: Julia Mickenberg

Lily Laux
“Teaching Texas: Race, Disability and the History of the School-to-Prison Pipeline”
Supervisor: Shirley Thompson

Susan Quesal
“Dismantling the Master’s House: The Afterlife of Slavery in the Twentieth-Century Representations of Home”
Supervisors: Shirley Thompson and Stephen Marshall

Kirsten Ronald
“Dancing the Local: Two-Step and the Formation of Local Cultures, Local Places, and Local Identities in Austin, TX”
Supervisor: Steve Hoelsher

Jackie Smith
“Black Princess Housewive and Single Ladies: Renee Cox’s Housewife Enactments and The Politics of Twenty-First Century Wealthy Black Womanhood”
Supervisor: Shirley Thompson

Undergrad Research: A Recap of the 5th Annual Honors Thesis Symposium

Today, we share with you this fantastic recap of last week’s Senior Honors Thesis Symposium, where three of our stellar seniors shared findings from their undergraduate theses. Rebecca Bielamowicz, also a senior and Dean’s Distinguished Graduate Honorable Mention, shares with us her take on the event. Enjoy!

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Max Mills, “In the Belly of the Cotton Kingdom: An Investigation of School Desegregation in Waxahachie, Texas”

Supervisor – Dr. Mark Smith

2^nd Reader – Dr. Steven Marshall

Senior Max Mills conducted his yearlong project on the process of school desegregation in his hometown of Waxahachie, Texas, a community approximately 30 miles south of Dallas. Waxahachie, though no Little Rock, still resisted school desegregation through their adoption of piecemeal, halfhearted policies that did not guarantee full integration with “all deliberate speed.” It was not until 1970 that the Waxahachie Independent School District adopted district-wide desegregation policies and built a new high school that both whites and blacks could attend, and it was not until 1972, a full 18 years after the passage of Brown V. Board of Education of Topeka, that the district was deemed sufficiently integrated by visiting federal agents.

Citing a lack of a comprehensive history of the desegregation process in WISD as the motivation for his project, Max went to work. To document this process, Max investigated old Waxahachie yearbooks, city council minutes, and conducted interviews with black and white students who had experienced the desegregation process firsthand. Yearbooks were visual proof of the ludicrousness of “separate but equal:” bathrooms and classrooms for black students, when compared side by side to their counterparts at the white high school, were pathetically dilapidated. The city council minutes demonstrated the extent of city officials’ foot dragging when policies to desegregate schools were perpetually tabled. Finally, interviews with former students yielded a range of different realities experienced under different district policies: Ira Gay, Jr., attended the white high school under the district’s 1965 Freedom of Choice Plan, which allowed Waxahachie students, both black and white, to attend whatever school they wanted to. He was the only black student at the white high school and said his presence caused little resistance. Conversely, Jackie Mims was forced to attend the white high school in 1968 after federal agents demanded that the district integrate their 10^th, 11^th, and 12^th grades or face dissolution. “It wasn’t our school,” she said, and noted the violent fights that occurred often between white and black students. Interestingly, all white former students who Max interviewed asked that they remain anonymous and said they were “fine with integration” and argued that teacher resistance that was the real problem.

While memories of this process may differ, it’s hard to argue with today’s reality: as of 2010, 28 percent of black families in Waxahachie lived below the poverty line compared to 3.5 percent of non-Hispanic white families. Education promises equal opportunities for all, but it’s falling short. Max closed by stating the importance that lies in confronting Waxahachie’s history: although it is painful, it is necessary to do so in order to move forward.

 

Molly Mandell, “DIY Cuba”

Supervisor: Dr. Randy Lewis

2^nd Reader – Dr. Steven Hoelscher

Senior AMS major and journalism minor Molly Mandell was able to put both of her degrees to use in her thesis project. Motivated by the sparse or inaccurate coverage Cuba has received throughout her lifetime and more recently since Cuban-U.S. relations have been on the mend, she took four trips and spent over three months collecting data in the country. While most coverage reinforces stereotypical understandings of Cuban life in the American imagination, such as antique cars, cigars, and beaches, her goal was to document what Cuban life was really like. Her initial focus was to photograph and interview farmers who were practicing sustainable, pesticide-free farming, but once she spent more time in the country, she realized that do-it-yourself or “maker” culture was flourishing seemingly everywhere in Cuban life.

When she asked Cuban linguistic graduate students why there wasn’t a word or phrase in Cuban Spanish to describe this “do it yourself” culture, they said it was because it wasn’t novel, but it was just their way of life. Although Molly’s project focused on Cuba, her findings shed an illuminating light on American culture. When she returned to the United States, she experienced what she called reverse culture shock: in the United States, more and bigger is always better, and something that would never have been thrown away in Cuba would probably be tossed out here without so much as a second thought. Informed by these observations, she makes the distinction between lifestyle DIY and essential DIY. Lifestyle DIY is often practiced by upper-middle class consumers and facilitated by products like Make magazine or websites like Pinterest. In contrast, Cubans practiced what she calls essential DIY, which, although it can be a deeply fulfilling and enjoyable practice, stemmed from economic necessity and a lack of other resources.

Through stunning photographs and tidbits from interviews, Molly told us of the people she met and the projects they were working on. One jack-of-all-trades English tutor, German tutor, and seamstress, sewed on her great, great grandmother’s sewing machine. Although she sewed, she admitted that her real passion was knitting and crocheting. She shared with Molly a picture of herself proudly wearing her first crocheted dress she created at 16. White and full length, it took her three months to complete. We also heard about Damian, who wandered the streets of Havana searching for materials from old paint cans, cars, or refrigerators that he could use to make his artwork because art supplies are difficult, if not impossible, to find in Cuba. He had plans to renovate an old factory to turn it into a space where he and other artists could work. Navis biked 25 kilometers each way to earn a business degree from the university. When she saw that there was a dearth of bike shops, she used her degree and knowledge of bikes to open one.

The profiles Molly conducted were genuine, detailed documents of contemporary Cuban life that have gone untold by American reporters, and she plans to turn this project into a full-fledged e-book in the near future.

 

Liz Garlow, “Manifesting Outward: A Prosopography of the Feminist Spirituality Movement in Central Texas”

Supervisor: Dr. Jeffrey Meikle

2^nd Reader: Dr. Martha Selby

AMS senior Liz Garlow conducted a prosopography, or the study of a historical group, on three feminist spirituality groups in Austin and its immediate surrounding counties. The feminist spirituality movement, or FSM, is a form of cultural feminism that emerged out of the second-wave feminist movement of the 1960s. FSM is pluralistic faith practice that is informed by neo-paganism, lesbian separatism, Jewish and Christian feminism, New Age, and Native American spiritualities. Founders of the FSM were unsatisfied by the patriarchal and oppressive religions they had access to, so they left to create their own. The religion does not have one holy book, one leader, or one headquarters, but encourages women to do what it is that works best for them, and many identify as Wiccans. Ultimately, FSM is a political and spiritual movement that aims to transform the lives of the women involved.

Although the FSM has only been found in the English-speaking world, it is not endemic to Austin. While conducting research, Liz realized that histories of the FSM existed only about the West Coast and communities in Madison, Wisconsin. This lack of a comprehensive history of the movement in Central Texas motivated her research. She conducted interviews with the founders of three FSM organizations in the area: The Reformed Congregation of the Goddess – RCG 1^st Austin Circle, Tejas Web, and the Unitarian Universalist Women’s Spirituality Group. The women she interviewed all strongly identified as feminists and were in their late 50s and early 60s. These organizations started popping up around Austin in the early 1980s, but their existence was not well documented through pictures or other media. However, they are still active today, although the age of its members tends to be older.

Understanding the role religion has played in shaping American life is an important domain to investigate, and Liz’s work is an important contribution. She ended her presentation with a thought-provoking excerpt from one of her interviews with a founder: “What does it say about a culture whose religious icon is a dead man on a cross, tortured, naked, and bleeding, compared to a culture where the central religious icon is a woman on a throne giving birth? What are that culture’s values, what are that culture’s attitudes, and what kind of institutions would that culture produce?” She leaves it to us to answer these questions.

All photos by Dr. Steve Hoelscher.

Undergrad Research: A Conversation with AMS Senior Max Mills

As part of UT’s Undergraduate Research Week, our department will be hosting its 5th Annual Undergraduate Honors Thesis Symposium, to be held on Friday, April 22, 4-6pm, in Burdine 436a. Today, we feature a conversation with one of our undergraduate senior thesis writers: Max Mills. Here, he describes some fascinating findings from his research, as well as some of his favorite moments that emerged from majoring in American Studies. Enjoy!

Why did you major in American Studies?

Coming into UT, I had no idea that the American Studies Department existed. I actually only signed up for Intro to American Studies for my second semester because it fulfilled a flag requirement. The class was taught by Dr. Engelhardt, and it was essentially a course investigating the evolution of gender in America. I was hooked after the first day, but it was the lecture on the importance of Tupperware in American culture that made me realize that I needed to be an American Studies major. The courses that I took later down the road confirmed that I made a great choice. I liked what I was able to learn from an American Studies education, and the interdisciplinary nature of the field really appealed to what I wanted to get out of my time at UT. I mean, who else can say that they learned about the importance of Marxism in American film, the impact animals had as agents of American Empire, or the connection between video games and the military à la the “military-entertainment complex” during their college career?

Do you have any favorite memories from your time in American Studies?

There are too many!! But one that comes to mind is from an assignment in Dr. Davis’ Animals and American Culture 370. We had to bring a cultural artifact that related to factory/ industrialized farming, and so I decided to bring an empty carton of eggs. Her class was the last one I had on those days, and so I carried this carton of eggs everywhere I went with me. I mean, everywhere. And for some reason, everybody reacted to me as if I had a scarlet “A” embroided on my chest. I kept getting asked questions like “What’s the deal with the carton of eggs?” It was a cool way of being able to engage with my colleagues about factory farming and once again reinforces how awesome the American Studies Department is.

What is your thesis about, and why did you decide to write a senior honors thesis?

My thesis is an investigation of the integration process of Waxahachie Independent School District, a process that took about eighteen years after Brown v. Board was decided. While many schools in the South did delay school integration for many years, there are several reasons why I decided to write about this topic in Waxahachie. For one, it’s a history that is incredibly personal to me. Not only is it about the community that I grew up in and care for, but there is also a deep family history that runs through this narrative. My grandfather was the assistant superintendent that was hired to help implement the full desegregation of the school district in 1970. There is also, probably not surprisingly, a lack of community history regarding this process. Even though the memories of integration are held within many community members, I felt that a comprehensive history needed to be preserved for future generations.

What kinds of sources do you draw upon in your research?

Most of my sources were primary documents: school board minutes, newspapers, and yearbooks. I also interviewed a few community members that were former students of the all black schools in Waxahachie, as well as the two superintendents that helped integrate the district in 1970. When I was doing archival research in the school administration building in Waxahachie, I actually got to dig through the physical board minutes and correspondence with the office of Housing, Education, and Welfare. Getting that close to history was amazing.

Has your thesis research yielded any surprising findings?
I knew that white supremacy was manifest in my town, but it was the extent of white supremacy that really took me aback. Reading things like “First KKK wedding in Texas occurs in Waxahachie,” and seeing a high school yearbook cover of a black field worker kneeling before a white overseer made me realize what kind of history I was going to expose and write about.

 

At first I was worried about upsetting people in my community. But that’s Waxahachie history, and avoiding it or choosing to ignore it is counterproductive to progress, and is even dangerous. I hope that this thesis can spur some much needed conversations about race and place.

How has American Studies prepared you for your post-UT life? Majoring in American Studies has been the most transformative experience I’ve had at UT. Aside from a collection of facts that makes me awesome at dinner parties and trivia nights, the critical reasoning skills I have picked up from the American Studies department will come in handy in whatever I decided to do with my life. Majoring in American Studies has changed the way I perceive the world I live in and how I interact with that world. It has led me to question and contemplate profound moral issues, such as “What is the America we want to live in?” and “What is the responsibility of our America?” These are questions every American should be asking and pondering if we are to make our time on this tiny planet more bearable. The University’s motto is “What Starts Here Changes the World.” Majoring in American Studies has made that more possible for me.

Alumni Voices: Prof. Angie Maxwell (University of Arkansas) on the South and Donald Trump

Prof. Angie Maxwell, Diane D. Blair Professor of Southern Studies and Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Arkansas, has penned a new piece exploring southern identity, whiteness, and Donald Trump’s rise for Virginia Quarterly Review. We’ve reproduced an excerpt below, but for the full article, click here.

Southern whiteness is not just about race. Yes, that is how it started. But as Southern whites faced the changing twentieth century, they became the “other” or foil to American identity. Each time the criticism poured in, they defined themselves in opposition to a growing pantheon of enemies. Southern whiteness expands beyond racial identity and supremacy, encapsulating rigid stances on religion, education, the role of government, the view of art, an opposition to science and expertise and immigrants and feminism, and any other topic that comes under attack. This ideological web of inseparable strands envelops a community and covers everything, and it is easily (and intentionally by Donald Trump) snagged.

Announcement: See these talks at the Texas Book Festival

The annual Texas Book Festival is upon us this weekend, so we’ve curated a list of events that would be of interest to friends of American Studies for your perusal and planning.

We’d like to draw your attention especially two events with American Studies participants. The first is a discussion moderated by Dr. Steve Hoelscher: “A Long Walk Home,” featuring Magnum photographer Eli Reed. Eli Reed: A Long Walk Home presents the first career retrospective of Reed’s work. Consisting of over 250 images that span the full range of his subjects and his evolution as a photographer, the photographs are a visual summation of the human condition. This event will take place at the Contemporary Austin – Jones Center (700 Congress) at 2:00 PM on Saturday.

The second is a discussion moderated by Dr. Shirley Thompson: “Negroland.” Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and memoirist Margo Jefferson recounts growing up in a small region of African-American upper class families in Chicago during the civil rights movement and the genesis of feminism. With this point of view, Jefferson discusses race, identity, and American culture, through her own lens. This event takes place at the CSPAN-2/BookTV Tent at 12:00 PM on Sunday.

Here are some other things to do, too – enjoy!

Reagan: The Life (Saturday)
10:00 AM – 10:45 AM, C-SPAN2/ Book TV Tent

In his newest biography, historian H. W. Brands presents Ronald Reagan as one of the most influential presidents of the twentieth century. Brands traces Reagan’s life from humble beginnings to Hollywood actor to his rise as a politician and president.

The History of Franklin’s Barbecue (Saturday)
10:00 AM – 10:45 AM, Texas Tent

Get hungry for some barbeque with Aaron Franklin and Jordan Mackay as they talk about their new book, Franklin Barbecue: A Meat-Smoking Manifesto.

Jacksonland (Saturday)
11:00 AM – 11:45 AM, C-SPAN2/BookTV Tent

In his latest work, Jacksonland, NPR host and author Steve Inskeep dives deep into an era of change that spanned the country and shaped the future. The Trail of Tears, the Five Civilized Tribes and the acquisition of Jacksonland are important pieces of American history, all of which have two things in common: Andrew Jackson and John Ross.

That Day (Saturday)
11:00 AM – 11:45 AM, The Contemporary Austin–Jones Center (700 Congress)

Join renowned photographer and Texan Laura Wilson as she discusses what it takes to capture the many facets of the unyielding, ever-changing West in her new book That Day: Pictures in the American West.

Talk of the Town (Saturday)
11:15 AM – 12:15 PM, The Sanctuary at First United Methodist Church (1201 Lavaca, enter from Lavaca St.)

Fans! Join two writers who are fans of each other. Jonathan Lethem and Adrian Tomine as they talk about their new respective collections, Lucky Alan and Killing and Dying, which explore humor, identity, and emotional vulnerability in both realistic and absurd landscapes.

The Dystopian Mirror Reflects the Past (Saturday)
11:45 AM – 12:45 PM, Capitol Extension Room E2.016

Whether the starting place is a reimagining of the Lewis and Clark voyage or a historic Texas War, the future is bleak. Join Benjamin Percy and Zachary Thomas Dodson, two futuristic masterminds, as they unravel the mysteries of the past and the ways in which it predicts our future.

The Art of Politics (Saturday)
2:00 PM – 2:45 PM, Capitol Extension Room E2.026

Join poets Mark Neely and Juliana Spahr as they discuss their latest collections and address tackling current events through poetry. From terrorism to environmental issues, two poets converse about their eloquent, witty works.

Place and Race (Saturday)
2:00 PM – 2:45 PM, C-SPAN2/BookTV Tent

Authors Wendy S. Walters and Jason Sokol discuss the dynamic and complicated course of civil rights over the past several decades in America. Racism emerges in unexpected locations, and the ways in which people resist, cope, and consent are not predictable.

Invisible y Sin Fronteras (Saturday)
3:00 PM – 3:45 PM, Ahora Si Tent (12th & Colorado)

Join Antonio Ruiz-Camacho, Javier Auyero, and Ricardo Ainslie, writers tackling issues of race and place through different genres, as they engage in a wide-ranging discussion of Latino identity in Austin and beyond. (Spanish)

Desde distintos géneros, Antonio Ruiz-Camacho, Javier Auyero, y Ricardo Ainslie trabajan temas de raza, etnicidad, e identidad. Los invitamos a sumarse a la conversación sobre varios tópicos relacionados a la identidad Latina en Austin y en el país. (en español)

Wimmin’s Comix (Saturday)
3:15 PM – 4:15 PM, Capitol Auditorium Room E1.004

Cartoonists Marisa Acocella Marchetto, Anne Opotowsky, and illustrator Aya Morton discuss the role of women in comics, and the influences on their current works. From the subversive Wimmin’s Comix to Anna Tenna and the Walled City Trilogy, the graphic novel genre proves to be inclusive and provocative.

The Wind in the Reeds with Wendell Pierce (Saturday)
4:00 PM – 4:45 PM, House Chamber

With moving recollections of his family, childhood, and artistic journey, Wendell Pierce (The Wire, Treme) relates the story of his mission to rebuild his beloved New Orleans neighborhood after Hurricane Katrina in The Wind in the Reeds: A Storm, A Play, and the City That Would Not Be Broken.

A Portrait of a Critic as a Young Man (Saturday)
4:00 PM – 4:45 PM, Capitol Extension Room E2.010

Join the “Dean of American Rock Critics” Robert Christgau as he dives headfirst into the inspiration behind his new book, a memoir which is equal parts love story and tribute to New York and the metamorphic power of art.

Invisible in Austin (Sunday)
11:00 AM – 11:45 AM, Texas Tent

Join editor Javier Auyero and some of his collaborating graduate students, Katherine Jensen and Caitlyn Collins, in discussion about Invisible in Austin, an essential study of the growing gap between wealth and poverty in a dynamic and overall thriving city.

Getting Real (Sunday)
11:00 AM – 11:45 AM, Capitol Extension Room E2.014

Saeed Jones and James Hannaham bring the crucial Black Lives Matter conversation to the forefront. Join Texas-native Jones and Bronx-born Hannaham in a cross-genre panel as they discuss how race and racism has influenced their respective texts and their poignantly unique perspectives.

Standing Out, Blending In (Sunday)
12:15 PM – 1:00 PM, Capitol Extension Room E2.026

Join Allyson Hobbs and James McGrath Morris as they share their investigations into the tumultuous history of racial identity in the U.S. in their respective works, A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life and Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, the First Lady of the Black Press.

Grant Park (Sunday)
2:00 PM – 2:45 PM, House Chamber

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Leonard Pitts’ latest novel alternates between 1968, the year of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, and Chicago during the election of 2008. Grant Park showcases his talent for addressing racial tensions that are just as relevant today as they were during the Civil Rights era.

Her Texas (Sunday)
4:00 PM – 4:45 PM, Capitol Extension Room E1.026

Multicultural, multiethnic, and multidisciplinary, Her Texas includes stories, essays, memoirs, poetry, song lyrics, paintings, and photographs by 60 Texas women. Some of the contributors are here today to talk about her own Texas.

5 Questions with Dr. Stephen Marshall

We return on the eve of Spring Break by publishing one of our classic features. Here’s an absolutely fascinating conversation between Ph.D. student Christine Capetola and Dr. Stephen Marshall, associate professor of American Studies and African and African Diaspora Studies.

CC: What’s your favorite project to work on and why?  In the past or maybe right now, whichever…

SM: Well… I’m having a lot of fun with my research right now.  I don’t feel nearly the same amount of pressure that I felt trying to get first book done.  The first book, actually, was not connected with my dissertation.  The dissertation was an entirely different study that was probably too large an undertaking for someone in that stage of their career.  The kind of question I was pursuing in the dissertation was not only a huge question but one that became really politically salient as I was attempting to revise.  The dissertation was on the problem of evil as a political problem, the political as particular kind of interpretation and engagement with evil.  I looked at Hannah Arendt, St. Augustine, and James Baldwin as thinkers who in different ways understand the political in these terms.   So I’m writing about evil and, as it turns out, September 11th happens and everybody and their mother begin to talk about evil.  I find myself responding to everybody and I realize that I could probably spend another three, four years working on this project to do it right.  So after three years on it, I turned to a smaller project that I had been kicking around for a little while and that turned into my first book.

But of course after spinning my wheels on the problem of evil for two, three years, I was under a lot of pressure to get this book done in time to get tenure.  So, that wasn’t a lot of fun.  There’s a chapter in my first book where I write about James Baldwin and I really did feel like I was inspired when I wrote that.  I mean, I actually wrote it out by hand.  I was smoking cigarettes at the time so I sat right out there (points to outdoor space at Flight Path) and Shirley [Thompson] and Solomon, my son, were out of town and over a two day period I just basically wrote out a large part of that chapter.  Those moments of inspiration are rare and special but I can’t say that… I don’t claim that as fun.  Fun is something like I used to experience when I was a graduate student.  After I completed my coursework and before I began writing my dissertation, I was reading everything that I wanted to read at my own pace.  That’s kind of where I’m at right now, pursuing the questions that I’m interested in, engaging authors that I want to engage.  I’m certainly feeling there’s a time constraint, that I need to get this second book finished fairly soon but not feeling like my livelihood or the livelihood of my family depends on me getting this thing done tomorrow.

So what are some of those questions that you’re thinking about right now?

So there are a couple of things.  The general problematic is this question about the afterlife of slavery; that is, the problem of slavery as an ongoing reality of American culture and politics. However, what I am interested in is turning from prevailing investigations which track this reality on and within black life to an investigation that thinks this problem through the problem of mastery- the political constitution of mastery as a legitimate but threatened practice that must remain silent yet always in need of special forms of protection. So, I’m thinking about the political legacies of this problem; where within American culture and politics one finds traces, and in fact, actual reconstitutions of it.

I’ve been recently looking very closely at Du Bois’s arguments about the way the post-Reconstruction consolidation of capital incorporates the ethos and management techniques of the plantation- spiritual commitments to and practical experience with dominating nature that were part and parcel of the southern slaveholding experience but foreign to northern capitalistic practices among smaller property owners.  So I’m thinking about the skills and expertise of the plantation finding their way into corporate practices.  And, also with the way in which the reconstitution of unfree black labor in the south occurs alongside the imperial constitution of virtual slavery in other parts of the world facilitate the emergence of what DuBois describes as the unprecedented power of the super corporation.

There’s another piece to this as well which is trying to figure out how it is that other practices of mastery show up in more mundane and  quotidian practices, some of which become central to African American life.  So, how is it that Americans from all walks of life come to adopt commitments and practices that were originally rooted in the exercise of mastery?   What does this mean for a cultural and political community which claims to have abolished slavery? What does it mean for a counter-tradition and political culture which has historically understood itself as organized around the quest for freedom?  Does it mean that when we take the full measure of the problem of mastery we must come to see freedom as always that something which stands outside the law and all the authoritative normativities which prevail in the U.S?  Is freedom always fugitive?

As per [Fred] Moten…

Moten, exactly.  Moten famously claims that fugitivity is expressly anti-political.  Not simply apolitical but actually anti-political.  According to him, you have to guard against the development of political interests because these interests implicitly connect you to institutionalized forms of race governance and state normativity.  So the experience of fugitivity, the experience of always being one step removed from the law means this refusal to stake a claim in yourself as an interlocutor with these logics.

I’m not totally comfortable with that.  At the same time, I’m not comfortable with other interpretations of black fugitivity which claim that the experience is sedimented in the radicality of those slave narratives which pushed the American regime to incorporate blackness and black folk within its conception and practice of liberty.  This view seems to flatten out the centrality of the fugitive’s experience of flight, evasion, and discipline to remain undetected by the law.  So, I think there is real work to be done around identifying the distinctive politics that flow from the experience of fugitivity. What are fugitivity’s conditions of possibility? What kinds of supports does it require and how does it exist in relationship to countervailing forces?  If it seeks to reproduce itself what must be done now and in the future to maintain and/or defend itself?  This is a political problematic that seems to me unavoidable for those of us interested in recommending fugitivity as an exemplary practice of freedom.  So, it is in light of these concerns that I’ve been drawn more and more to literary figures, Toni Morrison in particular.  So I’m having a lot of fun with this, reading widely in history and philosophy and putting this into conversation with political philosophers and literary artists has been a blast.

So what are some connections that come to mind for you between these questions and things going on both in academia and in the world outside of that?

One of the most exciting developments in my field and one of the most exciting things at the University of Texas is the emergence of black political thought as a recognized intellectual paradigm.  For political science, actually political theory, to finally acknowledge the authority and wisdom of these texts pushes the margins of the canon and the field.  To be forced to reckon with the philosophical autonomy of these texts even as we acknowledge their engagement with central questions of the canon and discipline means recognition of the need for a kind of specialized engagement with these texts. And, to reckon with the concerns of this literature that go beyond the traditional canon means the possibility that the entire enterprise of political theory may be undergoing important change.

The University of Texas was founded as an institution to carry out the project of reconstituting the nation along lines imagined by nostalgic former confederates.  One important founder was a large plantation owner from Mississippi who moved to Texas, and decided to invest in the mission of cultivating white manhood for a new south.  Since then, there’s been a slow and uneven opening to blackness at this university- first, with the admission of a small number of students and then with the hiring of a small number of black faculty. Today, we have this major opening where permanent institutions devoted to scholarly engagement with blackness have been created to serve the interests of the entire university.  This is a pretty dramatic transformation and wonderful opportunity. I think the acknowledgement of black political thought and black studies have been really important interventions.

You know this question of mastery is for me at the heart of the crisis of black vulnerability in our present moment.  The racialization of crime and the criminalization of blackness are obvious and well documented examples of the afterlife of slavery.  The recent spate of indefensible killings of young black men under suspicion of criminality by law enforcement and their auxiliaries are too easily regarded as a break from or malfunction of the regime of American liberalism. And what this view does is displace victims and families of victims as the center of moral concern and focus attention on the frailties of ostensibly just American institutions.  And of course, this focus obscures how black vulnerability to surveillance, interdiction, and incarceration is and always has been constitutive of our politics.  So what I’m asking is what if what we’re really wrestling with when thinking about these killings is the normal operations of post-slavery liberalism?  What if that’s the regime that we live in? American liberalism and various projects of attempting to master blackness go hand in hand.

I started thinking about the problem of mastery long before the vulnerability of black men to executions became topical.  It actually came to me as I was thinking about this dispute between Du Bois and Douglass about the survival of the power and spirit of the confederacy.  But as I began to think about it, it began to illuminate for me the continuities between a number of unpleasant political moments.  I think a number of people are increasingly coming to believe that while we have this extraordinary array of theoretical formulations to make sense of the political past, we don’t really know the fundamental character of the regime we inhabit right now.  We don’t know where we are.  And I suspect part of this has to do, as George Shulman says in American Prophecy…, this is because we orient ourselves in light of models which presuppose the political experiences of Europe rather than the experiences of new-world political modernity. We need to devise the theoretical tools and frameworks that actually engage our experience and history to describe where we’re at right now.

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.