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ANNOUNCEMENTS
Reminder: Today is the deadline for Fordham graduate students who wish to apply for the Dartmouth Futures of American Studies Institute and/or the Summer School at University College in Dublin. Scroll down for details!
Read Fordham American Studies Professor Glenn Hendler's Avidly article, "To the NRA, and to Legislatures that Submit to the NRA's Will."
Congratulations to American Studies graduating seniors Teresa Gianotti, who will be working as a production assistant for MSNBC’s "UP with Steve Kornacki," and Jacob Guth who will be joining AmeriCorp's NCCC (National Civilian Community Corps) Program and will be stationed in Sacramento, California!
We have moved from a Facebook group to a Facebook fan page! Please “like” our new page to keep up to date with American Studies events: http://www.facebook.com/fordhamamericanstudies
For all the latest news and events visit the Fordham American Studies blog! Check it out, and whether you love what you read, hate it, or just have something to add, feel free to respond using the comments sections. To keep up with the blog, sign on as a follower.
UPCOMING FORDHAM EVENTS
Wednesday, May 1: "Teaching to the Network: Digital Humanities and Public Pedagogy," Talk by Matt Gold for the Graduate Student Digital Humanities Group
12:00-2:00pm in the Walsh Library, O’Hare Special Collections (fourth floor), Rose Hill Campus
In part 2 of the Fordham Graduate Student Digital Humanities Group's Teaching and Research with Technology Series, the CUNY Graduate Center’s Matt Gold, editor of Debates in the Digital Humanities, will give a talk over lunch. This event is made possible by Fordham University’s Center for Teaching Excellence. All are invited.
Wednesday, May 1: "Menacing Men: Palestinian Gender in Colonial Politics," A talk by Dr. Rhoda Kanaaneh (NEW)
5:30-7:30pm in Lowenstein Room 610, Lincoln Center Campus
A strong gendered narrative undergirds the power imbalance between Palestinian citizens of Israel and their Jewish neighbors. Naturalized assumptions about Palestinian men and women as well as Jewish Israeli men and women are embedded in state power structures and discourses. These public and official gender narratives serve to normalize racial segregation and the political status quo. Government bodies seek to prevent Jewish-Arab dating and intermarriage as these are considered dangerous toboth Jewish women and to the state as a whole. This lecture explores how an imagination of gendered “cultural differences” is central to carving colonial spaces.
Dr. Rhoda Kanaaneh serves on the editorial committee of the Journal of Palestine Studies. Dr. Kanaaneh has taught anthropology and gender and sexuality studies at New York University, American University in Washington, DC and Columbia University. She has held fellowships at Harvard, the European University Institute and Columbia. She is the author of the award winning book Birthing the Nation: Strategies of Palestinian Women in Israel, and Surrounded: Palestinian Soldiers in the Israeli Military. Most recently she co-edited an anthology with Isis Nusair titled Displaced at Home: Ethnicity and Gender Among Palestinians in Israel.
This event is third talk in the inaugural lecture series of the Institute of/for the Global South.
Friday, May 3: Comparative Literature Program Colloquium: "The 'Anachronic' Now: Futures for Comparative and Interdisciplinary Studies" (NEW)
3:00-7:00pm in the President’s Dining Room, 12th Floor, Lowenstein Building, Lincoln Center
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the university has become an anachronism. As the university reckons with its anachronistic status -- whether in terms of exciting new models (like the digital humanities) or depressing new realities (like student debt, and budget cuts) -- how might we positively and productively rethink the crisis of the university's anachronism? How might this crisis be reconceived in terms of what Alexander Nagel and Christopher S. Wood name the "anachronic"? "The power of the image, or the work of art, to fold time was neither discovered nor invented in the Renaissance. What was distinctive about the European Renaissance, so called, was its apprehensiveness about the temporal instability of the artwork, and its re-creation of the artwork as an occasion for reflection on that instability. The work of art ‘anachronizes,’ from the Greek anachronizein, built from ana-, ‘again,’ and the verb chronizein, ‘to be late or belated.’ To anachronize is to be belated again, to linger. … The work of art when it is late, when it repeats, when it hesitates, when it remembers, but also when it projects a future or an ideal, is ‘anachronic'" (Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance [Zone Books, 2010], 13). Does the "anachronic" redefine the way comparative and interdisciplinary studies today are crossing over disciplines, periods, and traditionally defined areas? To what extent might this "anachronic" help shape a future for comparative and interdisciplinary studies to come?
Featuring the following presentations: Martin Harries (University of California, Irvine): "Anachronic Public;" Julie Beth Napolin (The New School): "Digital Yoknapatawpha;" Emily Wilson (University of Pennsylvania): "Timeless and Untimely Classics;" John Bugg (Fordham): "Decading Romanticism;" and Shonni Enelow (Fordham): "Anachronism and the Anthropocene."
Sunday, May 12 and Monday, May 13: "BodyVox," an original dance-theater-activist performance (NEW)
7:00pm at the Veronica Lally Kehoe Studio Theatre, Fordham College at Lincoln Center, 113 West 60th Street (at Columbus Ave.)
BodyVOX! is an original dance-theater-activist performance written and performed collaboratively by young women. BodyVOX! explores the curvy lines between "sexy" and "sexualized," and demands that we not just critique the media messages forcefed to girls but that we take action and ignite change.
BodyVOX! is a collaboration between The Department of African and African American Studies and The Theatre Program at Fordham University, viBe Theater Experience, and SPARK Movement.
Created in an express 4-week process, this intergenerational team of artists, dancers, writers, activists and performers use performance to share creative strategies to end the sexualization of girls, a root cause of violence against women and girls.
Written and performed by: Aimee, Courtney, Erica, Nicosie, Mia, Mia, Quien, Stephanie & Tanzina, with Emma, Nadia and Aja & the SPARKteam. Directed by: Aimee Cox & Dana Edell.
Don't miss the special lobby installation created by FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture.
UPCOMING NEW YORK CITY EVENTS
Tuesday, April 30: "Bergson at Columbia: Bergsonism and American Philosophy," a roundtable discussion with Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Frédéric Worms, Mathias Girel and Larry McGrath (NEW)
6:00-8:00pm at Columbia University, in the East Gallery, Buell Hall. Main campus entrance at Broadway and 116th st.
2013 marks the centennial of a memorable visit by French philosopher Henri Bergson to Columbia University as a visiting professor and Columbia President Butler's personal guest. The Maison Française Centennial in 2013 is an opportunity for this panel of Bergson specialists to evoke the relationship between Bergsonism and American philosophy, pragmatism and William James in particular, and to examine the continuing influence of Bergson's major concepts, including temporality, life, difference, and novelty.
Souleymane Bachir Diagne is a Professor of French and Philosophy at Columbia, whose many publications include Bergson Postcolonial. Frédéric Worms is the Director of the International Center for the Study of Contemporary French Philosophy and Professor of Philosophy at University of Lille III, and the author of many books and editions on Bergson. Mathias Girel is Professor of Philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and a specialist of pragmatism. Larry McGrath is a PhD candidate at the Humanities Center at Johns Hopkins University. His dissertation examines Bergson's 1913 trip to the U.S.
Wednesday, May 1 and Thursday, May 2: "Oral History and Our Times," a two-day conference
10:00am-8:00pm on May 1; 10:00am-6:00pm on May 2; at Columbia University, Buell Hall, East Gallery, 1st floor, 515 West 116th Street
This two-day conference will explore the role of oral history in documenting, disseminating and educating students and the public about the central events and concerns of our times. The conference will also survey the impact of Columbia’s path-breaking Oral History Master of Arts program [OHMA], the first program of its kind in the U.S., now in its fifth year. The conference gathers leading experts in the fields of oral history, human rights, and the arts.
The Keynote Address is "Psychologists and Torture: Denial and the Corruption of Civil Society" with Stephen Soldz, Psychologist, Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis.
Panels include: Bearing Witness: The Detainee Experience; Outside the Rule of Law: Illuminating Struggles for Justice; Secrecy and the Right to Know: Oral History and our Times; Sounding the Archive: Notes on Jazz Oral History; Oral History Dialogues; Public Workshops - Oral History and Psychotherapy, Designing Oral History Projects, and Stories Beyond Digital Tools.
For more information, visit: https://blogs.cul.columbia.edu/ohro/2013/04/10/conference-oral-history-and-our-times-may-1-2/
Thursday, May 2: "The Historian's Eye: Interpreting the 'Post' of 'Post-Civil Rights' in Obama's America," RevAmStudies lecture by Matt Jacobson
4:30pm at the CUNY Graduate Center, 365 5th Ave., Room 8201.01
Professor Matt Jacobson will be offering a lecture titled "The Historian's Eye: Interpreting the 'Post' of 'Post-Civil Rights' in Obama's America." Historian's Eye (www.historianseye.org) is a multimedia documentary project devoted to the peculiar compound of hope and despair that makes up the current political and social climate in Obama's America. Beginning as a modest effort to capture in photographs and interviews the historic moment of our first black president’s inauguration in early 2009, the project has evolved into an expansive archive of some 4000+ photographs and an audio archive that would fill nearly two days of non-stop listening. Materials collected from across the country address the Obama presidency, the '08 economic collapse and its fallout, two wars, the raucous politics of healthcare reform, the emergence of a new right-wing formation in opposition to Obama, the politics of immigration, Wall Street reform, street protests of every stripe, the BP oil spill, the Occupy movement, natural disasters in the south and northeast, and the controversy over a proposed Muslim community center in lower Manhattan and the escalation of anti-Muslim sentiment nationwide. The project seeks to trace out the fate of "our better history," in Obama's own phrase, in affecting and telling photographs and in the recorded voices of ordinary people, as the nation faces unprecedented challenges with a president at the helm who is inspirational to some, fully unnerving to others.
William Robertson Coe Professor of American Studies & History at Yale University, Matthew Frye Jacobson is the current president of the American Studies Association. He is the author of numerous books including What Have They Built You to Do?: The Manchurian Candidate and Cold War America (with Gaspar Gonzalex, 2006); Roots Too: White Ethnic Revival in Post-Civil Rights America (2005); Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876-1917 (2000); Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (1998); and Special Sorrows: The Diasporic Imagination of Irish, Polish, and Jewish Immigrants in the United States (1995). His teaching interests are clustered under the general category of race in U.S. political culture 1790-present, including U.S. imperialism, immigration and migration, popular culture, and the juridical structures of U.S. citizenship.
Thursday, May 2: "Writing With Scissors: Scrapbooks as Archive & Activism," NYU Workshop in Archival Practice (NEW)
6:00pm at New York University, 19 University Place, Room 222
The NYU Workshop in Archival Practice and Graduate English Department invite you to join their latest workshop featuring a presentation by Ellen Gruber Garvey, Professor of English and Women’s and Gender Studies at New Jersey City University and author of Writing With Scissors: American Scrapbooks from the Civil War to the Harlem Renaissance (Oxford UP, 2012). There will also be a response from Jenna Freedman, Director of Research & Instruction Services & Zine Librarian at Barnard Library.
For more information about this event please visit: http://nyuarchiveworkshop.wordpress.com/2013/04/12/join-us-workshop-on-may-2-with-ellen-gruber-garvey/
For news and updates on future programming, follow them on Twitter @NYUArchiveWork.
Thursday, May 2: NYMASA Salon Talk with Hildegard Hoeller on From Gift to Commodity: Capitalism and Sacrifice in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction (NEW)
6:30pm at Hunter College, Faculty and Staff Lounge, on the 8th floor of the West Building, Lexington Avenue and 68th Street
In this rich interdisciplinary study, Hildegard Hoeller (College of Staten Island/CUNY Graduate Center) argues that nineteenth-century American culture was driven by and deeply occupied with the tension between gift and market exchange. Rooting her analysis in the period’s fiction, she shows how American novelists from Hannah Foster to Frank Norris grappled with the role of the gift based on trust, social bonds, and faith in an increasingly capitalist culture based on self-interest, market transactions, and economic reason. Placing the notion of sacrifice at the center of her discussion, Hoeller taps into the poignant discourse of modes of exchange, revealing central tensions of American fiction and culture.
Salon Talks are an opportunity for local American Studies scholars to share their published work with an intimate audience. They tend to be small, lively, and informative; light refreshments are served.
For directions, more information, or to rsvp, contact Sarah Chinn at sarah.chinn@hunter.cuny.edu
Thursday, May 9: The Gotham History Forum presents "New York City Cartmen, 1667-1850" (NEW)
6:30-8:00pm at the CUNY Graduate Center, Elebash Recital Hall, 365 Fifth Avenue at 34th Street
The cart men—unskilled workers who hauled goods on one horse carts—were perhaps the most important labor group in early American cities. Revised and re-issued in 2012, New York City Cartmen, 1667–1850 (NYU Press) uncovers the forgotten world of one-horse cart drivers who monopolized the movement of private and commercial goods in New York City from 1667-1850. The cart men dominated the city streets while proving politically adept at preserving and institutionalizing their economic and racial control over this entry-level occupation. The cart men possessed a hard-nosed political awareness, and because they transported essential goods, they achieved a status in New York City far above their skills or financial worth. The cart men's culture and their relationship with New York's municipal government are the direct ancestors of the city's fabled taxicab drivers. This is a stirring street-level account of the growth of New York, growth made possible by the efforts of the cart men and other unskilled laborers.
This Forum will be free and open to the public. No reservations required. A live stream of the event will be available on the Graduate Center's Video Commons: http://videostreaming.gc.cuny.edu/videos/
Sunday, May 19: Columbia University Global Cultural Studies and The boundary 2 Collective present: "Humanities & a Borderless World" (NEW)
10:00am-5:00pm at Columbia University School of Social Work, 1255 Amsterdam Avenue, Room C06, Concourse Level
Featuring presentations by: Rachel Adams, Emily Apter, Jonathan Arac, Charles Bernstein, Paul Bové, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Ronald Judy, Evan Mwangi, Donald Pease, Bruce Robbins, Richard Jean So, and Jennifer Wenzel.
Please RSVP by sending the name of each attendee to eventrsvpcolumbia@gmail.com.
Undergraduate Student Opportunities
INTERNSHIP OPPORTUNITY: City Councilwoman Jessica Lappin Campaign Summer Internship
City Councilwoman Jessica Lappin is running for Manhattan Borough President in 2013, and looking for motivated interns to assist her campaign over the summer. She was born and raised in Manhattan, and quickly became one of the Democratic Party’s rising stars. She won election to the City Council in 2005 representing the Upper East Side and Roosevelt Island, and is currently finishing out her second term.
Interning on a campaign is a fun and rewarding commitment. It’s an excellent way of learning about the political process and the city, and it’s a great way to meet other students. This will be a fantastic opportunity for bright young adults to interact with their communities and build unparalleled professional experience for future positions. Interns are vital to the success of the campaign.
Responsibilities will include: phoning registered voters about her platform, office mailings and clerical duties, street campaigning and canvassing, talking to voters face to face, and attending campaign press conferences, events and rallies.
The internship is unpaid. However, we are happy to offer credit with respective schools for hours/days worked.
Undergrads willing to dedicate 4-6 days per week during summer are highly desired. Interested candidates should include a CV as well as their available start date. Inquiries should be directed to
Max Markham at peopleforlappin2013@gmail.com.
To learn more about Jessica Lappin, please visit her website: www.jessicalappin.com
INTERNSHIP OPPORTUNITY: New Yorkers for Great Public Schools
At your internship, you could be a tiny cog in a big company. Or, you could be a key member of a team of organizers working to change New York City for the better.
New Yorkers for Great Public Schools (NY-GPS) aims to undo the damage of Mayor Bloomberg's market-driven education "reforms," which are pitting communities against each other, disempowering parents, and causing schools to fail and close, very often being replaced by schools that do worse (by the DOE's own assessment model). As a member of this team, you'll be part of an active political issue campaign. You'll get hands-on experience with organizing, and if you work hard, you will make a difference. Students who can either do community organizing, or who are willing to learn, are needed. Also needed are researchers, aspiring filmmakers / editors, logistics coordinators, web developers / designers, and more. This position runs ideally through the fall Mayoral election, though NY-GPS will accommodate shortened schedules in some circumstances and has different hourly structures for different commitment levels.
Email josh.nygps@gmail.com or maria.nygps@gmail.com today with your resume and cover letter.
AWARD: LALSI "José Martí Award" for the Best Undergraduate Paper on a Latin American or Latino Topic
The Latin American and Latino Studies Institute (LALSI) at Fordham is offering a $300 prize for any paper written in the Fall of 2012 or the Spring of 2013 on a Latin American or Latino topic from any LALS cross-listed course. Professors in all LALSI cross-listed courses will nominate papers. Keep this prize in mind when you are writing your final papers. All students qualify; there is no need to be a LALS Major or Minor. The prize will be announced at graduation ceremonies, and the winning paper will be uploaded to the LALSI website.
INTERNSHIP OPPORTUNITY: LIFT-The Bronx
Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.
LIFT is a growing movement whose mission is to help community members achieve economic stability and well-being. LIFT currently runs centers staffed by trained volunteers in Boston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC, to serve low-income individuals and families. LIFT clients and volunteers work one-on-one to find jobs, secure safe and stable housing, make ends meet through public benefits and tax credits, and obtain quality referrals for services like childcare and healthcare.
Interning at LIFT is a unique opportunity to grow and develop both personally and professionally as you will be working with diverse groups of people, engaging in interpersonal and administrative work, as well as experiencing firsthand non-profit organization and office management. LIFT – The Bronx seeks driven and independent leaders to serve as Client Advocates. Client Advocates work one-on-one community members to find jobs, secure housing, enroll in public benefits, and help these community members obtain referrals for services such as childcare and healthcare. Client Advocates are also responsible for supporting the day-to-day operations of LIFT – The Bronx. We look for individuals who are passionate about community development and are committed to LIFT’s anti-poverty mission. Client Advocates will report to the AmeriCorps Members/Site Coordinators at LIFT – The Bronx.
For eligibility requirements and more information, visit www.liftcommunities.org/new-york.
To apply, email an application and a resume to Tiffany Jackson at tjackson@liftcommunities.org and Betty Gilmore at Bgilmore@liftcommunities.org.
INTERNSHIP OPPORTUNITY: The Center for Architecture Foundation
The Center for Architecture Foundation promotes public awareness and a broader appreciation of the important role architecture and design play in our daily lives. We engage general public audiences in contemporary topics on the built environment to encourage design literacy. The Center for Architecture Foundation seeks an Arts Administration Intern to assist with fundraising, event planning and logistics, prospect research, and general administrative tasks for 10-15 hours per week.
For eligibility requirements and more information about the Center for Architecture Foundation, visit www.cfafoundation.org.
Faculty and Graduate Student Opportunities
APPLY: NEH Professional Development Opportunity for Community College Faculty
Deadline: Tuesday, April 30.
The American Social History Project at The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY) would like to invite you and your fellow faculty members to apply for a National Endowment for the Humanities Bridging Cultures at Community Colleges Project on Latino history and culture. The 2-year program, Bridging Historias through Latino History and Culture, will include a seminar series with guest scholars, an online reading and discussion program, a mentor program to guide participants through curricular development, and a culminating conference to reflect on participant work and present it to a broader public. Program participants will receive a $2400 stipend, monies toward local travel expenses, and books.
Bridging Historias can accept 36 full-time or part-time community college faculty and administrators. This interdisciplinary program will focus on incorporating Latino history and culture into existing courses or designing new courses that focus on Latino history and culture. We invite applications in the form of teams of 2-3 faculty along with an administrator. The application deadline is Tuesday, April 30. For more information and to submit an application please visit the Bridging Historias website: http://ashp.cuny.edu/teaching-and-learning/bridging-historias/program-schedule-and-readings/ or contact Donna Thompson Ray: DThompson@gc.cuny.edu.
APPLY: Summer Study in American Studies, Futures of American Studies Institute at Dartmouth College
Deadline: Tuesday, April 30. Email applications to amerstudies@fordham.edu.
The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences will fund two Fordham graduate students to attend the week-long Dartmouth Summer Institute "The Futures of American Studies," which this year runs from Monday, June 17-Sunday, June 23, 2013. Scholarships will provide $900 to cover tuition, application fees and round-trip transportation. The institute is staffed by an assortment of American studies luminaries from around the world (go to http://www.dartmouth.edu/~futures/ to see a list of this year's faculty, as well as a description of this year's theme: "State(s) of American Studies"). You'll participate in a seminar workshop led by a distinguished faculty member with participants from all over the world; there are numerous plenary lectures scheduled as well.
If you're applying for Fordham support, do not apply directly to the Institute; instead, send a brief description of your own project (no more than 1 page), a 10-15 page writing sample (it can be from a course or conference), along with a current CV to amerstudies@fordham.edu.
APPLY: Summer School at the University College Dublin Institute for American Studies
Deadline: Tuesday, April 30. Email applications to amerstudies@fordham.edu.
The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences will also fund two Fordham graduate students to attend the University College Dublin Clinton Institute for AmericanStudies Summer School. The Fordham scholarship will provide $1900 to cover costs including food, accommodation and travel. Held from July 1-10, 2013, this Summer School brings together scholars and graduate students from around the world to engage in wide-ranging discussion on interdisciplinary study of the United States. The School is aimed at advanced graduate studentsand junior faculty in the fields of American Studies, History, Political Sciences and Literary and Cultural Studies. For further details, including a full list of faculty and workshops, visit http://www.ucdclinton.ie/SummerSchool2013.
If you're applying for Fordham support, do not apply directly to the Institute; instead, send a current CV and writing sample (10 pages max) to amerstudies@fordham.edu. Additionally, please see the application form on their website, http://www.ucd.ie/cha/summerschoolnew/summerschool/, and provide answers to all the queries in a separate Word document.
NOTE: Students may apply for both the Dartmouth and Clinton Institutes but they may only receive Fordham funding to attend one.
CFP: Exhibit Catalog "The American Revolution in New Jersey: Where the Battlefront Meets the Homefront"
Deadline: Submissions are due Friday, May 17. If selected final articles are to be approximately 15 pages and will be due Friday, October 25.
New Jersey spent much of the American Revolution as a theater of war, with troops from both sides continuing to march through the state, land destroyed in battles and provisions used by soldiers. Yet life had to go on, and New Jersey civilians were responsible for keeping the economy intact, tables filled and New Jersey troops outfitted. This is the rarely told story of New Jersey’s farmers, women and tradesmen and their actions during the war. We will explore the local civil wars that erupted between revolutionaries and loyalists, the multiple rolesthat women took on as their men went off to war, and the how civilian life was affected by the regular presence of troops.
Possible article subjects may include but are not limited to:
• The environmental impact of the Revolutionary War
• African Americans in New Jersey at the time
• American Indians in New Jersey at the time
• The role of women in the Revolutionary War
• The role of agriculture
• The impact of the Revolutionary War on New Jersey's economy
• The impact of the Revolutionary War on New Jersey's burgeoning iron industry
• Loyalists in New Jersey
To submit, send an abstract of 150-200 words and CV to curator@metc.org.
CFP: NYMASA Annual Conference: "American Masculinities"
Submissions due by Saturday, June 1. Conference takes place Saturday, November 2.
The New York Metro American Studies Association's Annual Conference provides a dynamic forum for area scholars, while attracting presenters nationally. NYMASA announces a call for papers for the 2013 annual one-day conference, "American Masculinities," taking place on November 2 at Pace University (Manhattan Campus).
The theme for this year's conference explores the intersections of U.S. concepts of masculinity, manhood, and maleness. This query feels particularly relevant to American studies as definitions of masculinity have been foundational to American ideology and identities since its inception. For this reason, contested and contesting challenges to masculinity have signaled major shifts in American society, opening new spaces for gendering practices.
In imagining this conference, participants are invited to engage with any of the following issues (or any other these topic inspires):
Founding fathers; Emersonian men; Radical men; Men in power; Masculinity and the marketplace; Technologies of gender; Military men; Female masculinities and feminine men; Emasculated men; Queer masculinities / Masculinity and queerness; Drag and performative gender; (Psycho) analyzing men and pathologized masculinity; Sports and gym culture; Race Men and other black masculinities; Ethnic masculinities; Feminist men and Reactionary manhood; Male desires; Paternalism and paternity; Fraternalism and fraternities; Lad Lit and Guy Movies; Pedagogy of masculinities; Becoming men: coming of age and transgender men; Boyhood; Laboring men; Traveling men: cowboys, frontiersman, sailors, and salesman; Medical men; Violence and men; Heroes and superheroes; Incarcerated men.
Papers on any historical period in American Studies, as well as 21st century topics, are welcome. NYMASA particularly encourages presentations that circulate across historical and disciplinary borders, presentations that are non-traditional in form, and presentations that incorporate performance and/or visual art. While proposals on any element of American Studies are welcome, NYMASA will especially privilege presentations focusing on the New York area. Please note that abstracts will be accepted for individual paper presentations only, not pre-constituted panels.
Please send abstracts of no more than 500 words to nymasamasculinities@gmail.com by Saturday, June 1.
CFP: Special Issue of Radical Teacher on The Professions
Deadline: Monday, July 15
The professions are an anomaly within the capitalist world. For more than a hundred years, their members had more autonomy than other workers, regulating entry into their fields through educational and other requirements, while at the same time ostensibly serving a social purpose broader than mere gain. No longer. Since the postwar boom peaked, around 1970, capital went after hand workers, then turned its outsourcing, union-busting, and marketizing techniques to mind workers. As a result, the professions are in decline: losing control of the work they do, the protected markets in which they used to do it, the process of admitting new people to their ranks. Pay is declining; respect and authority, too. Most professionals even in privileged fields such as medicine and law work for bosses, now. One way or another, the labor of professionals is increasingly measured by cost-benefit criteria, managed by businesses, and organized to maximize profit.
Higher education privatizes by different, though similar, routes: the disappearance from the work force of tenure track people and their replacement by part-timers and other temporary instructors is only the most obvious and destructive. See also the growth of administrations in numbers, pay, and power; the rise of for-profit institutions; the push for electronic instruction; the commercialization of research, and the emphasis on vocational training. If professional decline is felt even in medicine (where many doctors feel they work for insurance companies) and in law (where 40% of recent law school grads failed to get full time jobs requiring the training they have gone deep into debt to pay for), it is more painful in fields that never fully professionalized. Consider what has happened in journalism, for just one example.
Radical Teacher seeks articles that explore this shift or consider ways of teaching about professions, or both. For instance:
• case studies of the forces that have attacked various professions, how, and against what resistance
• how professional practices and conditions of practice are changing
• what is happening to our control of the bodies of knowledge that authorized our privileges
• how conservative think tanks and foundations are contributing to the decline
• how employers and legislators are mobilizing new technologies to replace or degrade the labor of professional workers
• how professional organizations or unions have tried to halt or control de-professionalization
• new kinds of organizations--e.g., of contingent workers--responding to this situation, and what they have accomplished
• what kinds of resistance seem promising now, or futile
• where professionals can look for allies
• who is teaching--to whom, and how--about the academic profession and others
• what courses for entering graduate or professional systems are alerting them to the perils they face and arm them for later struggles around organization of and pay for their labor
• how guidance counselors "teach" about declining career chances, the risk of unpayable debt, and so on
Send proposals, correspondence, or drafts to Richard Ohmann: richardohmann@earthlink.net, and Ellen Schrecker: ellen.schrecker@gmail.com by July 15.
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