Announcements This week on the The Fordham American Studies Blog : Sara Devany writes about salsa's "imagined communities;" Katie Schaller goes to the Museum of the American Indian; and Taylor Riccio has a very busy week. And please: write your own comments on the blog, so we know people are reading it !
We also have a Facebook group. Search groups for " Fordham American Studies " to join.
Thinking of going to graduate school in the humanities? Do not miss the workshop on 11/11! See below under "Fordham Events." Two complimentary tickets to the exhibition Dutch New York Between East and West: The World of Margrieta van Varick , an exhibition at the Bard Graduate Center through January 3, 2010, are available to the first person who writes back to amerstudies@fordham.edu . And: you'll also get a hardcover copy of the catalog
During the academic year, Fordham's American Studies program sends out a weekly newsletter with updates on American Studies-related events on the Fordham campus and in the New York City area. To subscribe, send an e-mail to amerstudies@fordham.edu with your name and e-mail address. To get an event included in the newsletter, send information to amerstudies@fordham.edu by the Monday before the event. Upcoming Fordham events Wednesday 11/11: Thinking of going to graduate school in the humanities? Do not miss this workshop! Receive expert advice on the application process: personal statements, the GRE, recommendations, school selection. Panelists include Pericles Lewis (English and Comp Lit Yale), Daniel Soyer (History, Fordham), Theodore Van Alst (Comp Lit and Cultural Studies, U-Conn-Storrs), and Tom Callahan (MA Candidate in Russian and Slavic Studies, NYU). . 3:30pm, University Commons, Duane Library.
Wednesday 11/11: Poets Out Loud at Fordham University presents "Acentos Poets": Tara Betts, Rachel McKibbens, Willie Perdomo , with graduate student Li Yun Alvarado . Reception and book signing to follow. 7pm. Lincoln Center, 12th Floor Lounge. Free and open.
Thursday 11/12 : The Frances and Ann Curran Center for American Catholic Heritage presents "Women of the World: A Colloquium of Catholic Women Poets." Co-presented by The Joan and Bill Hank Center for the Catholic International Heritage and the Gannon Center for Women and Leadership at Loyola University in Chicago. Featuring Carolyn Alessio, Linda Nemec Foster, Stella Nesanovich, and Angela Alaimo O'Donnell. 6pm, Loyola University Lake Shore Campus, will be streamed live on our Media page ( www.fordham.edu/Media/cs .)!
Wednesday 11/18: Fordham's Latin American and Latino Studies programs present "The Social and Economic Outcomes of Latino Males," a talk by Dr. Edward Fergus , Director of Research and Evaluation at the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education of New York University. Dr. Fergus will discuss the challenges faced by Black and Latino males in the areas of health, education, employment, and criminal justice. 1pm-2:15pm , Room 514, Lincoln Center campus. Monday 11/30 : Fordham's Latin American and Latino Studies programs present Diana T. Sanchez , a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation and Asst. Professor of Psychology at Rutgers. Dr. Sanchez will speak on her study of how specific ethnic markers influence ethnic minorities' self-perceptions and the perception of others in contexts for which minority status is an advantage or disadvantage; her work focuses on both men and women. 1pm-2:15pm, Room 514, Lincoln Center campus.
Thursday 12/3: Join Fordham professor Leonard Cassuto's "American Bestsellers, 1870-1940" class for a lecture by historian and author Marc Aronson , "What is a Bestseller? It all depends on what you mean by 'best' and 'selling.'"Aronson is the author of Exploding the Myths: The Truth about Teens and Reading and many books for young adults, including Race: The History of an Idea. 1pm , Keating 317, RH campus. Upcoming New York City Events Wednesday 11/4: CUNY Graduate Center presents The Audre Lorde/Essex Hemphill Memorial Lecture, given this year by Hortense Spillers (Gertrude Conway Vanderbilt Professer in English at Vanderbilt). The Memorial Lecture commemorates the lives of the American Poets Audre Lorde and Essex Hemphil and encourages exciting scholarship and literary production within the communities to whom their poetry and prose spoke, particularly people of color and members of teh LGBT community. 7pm , The Skylight Room (9100), The Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Ave (btwn 34th and 35th). Free and Open.
Thursday 11/5: NYU's Dept. of Social and Cultural Analysis continues the Asian American Visual Cultures seminar series with "Unsettled Visions: Contemporary Asian American Artists and the Social Imaginary," a talk by Margo Machida (University of Connecticut) about her new book of the same title. Machida discusses the watershed decade of the 1990s, a time when surging new migration flows from Asia, the growing prominence and hipster embrace of 'Asian' cultures, and the heightened rhetoric of 'post-identity' spurred a new generation of Asian artists to rethink and re-engineer their choice of representational strategies. 12:30pm-1:45pm, Room 471, 20 Cooper Square (Bowery and East 5th). Free and open.
Thursday 11/5: The New York Metro American Studies Assc. (NYMASA) presents their second Salon Talk (an opportunity for local American Studies scholars to share published work with an intimate audience) of the semester, with Paula Geyh (Yeshiva University, author of Cities, Citizens and Technologies: Urban Life and Postmodernity pubished this year). How does the postmodern city change under the impact of globalization and new information and communication technologies? Geyh explores how the urban spaces of postmodernity and postmodern urban subjectivities and communities respond to and create each other. Refreshments will be served. 7:30 pm , 8th Floor Faculty/Staff Lounge, Hunter College, Lexington Ave. at 68th Street. Space is limited; RSVP to Sarah Chinn at sarah.chinn@hunter.cuny.edu.
Saturday 11/7 : The Manhattan Borough Historian's Office presents A Lecture and Tribute Ceremony in Honor of Andrew H. Green, NYC's Unsung Civil Giant. Green, who is sometimes described as a 19th-century Robert Moses, was a pioneering city planner and preservationist, and the driving force behind the movement to consolidate the municipalities around New York Harbor into a single metropolis. Historian Michael Miscione will present an illustrated lecture titled "The Life and Legacy of Andrew H. Green, Gotham's First Master Planner" at the Museum of the City of New York. After the program, attendees will be invited to walk to the Green Memorial Bench in Central Park for a toast in his honor. 1pm, free with museum admission. For more information visit www.mcny.org/public-programs/all/Andrew-H-Green.html .
Monday 11/9: NYU's Dept. of Social and Cultural Analysis presents "Myths and Realities: African American and Latino Relations," Mark Sawyer, Dept. of African American Studies/Political Science at UCLA. 4pm-6pm. 20 Cooper Square 4th Floor, New York NY. 212-992-9650. http://sca.as.nyu/page/home
More upcoming events in the NYU SCA Fall 2009 Speaker Series:
Tuesday 12/1: "Two Decades and Counting: Critical Reflections on 'Intersectionality,'" a Roundtable Discussion with Kimberle Crenshaw (Columbia U and UCLA), Lisa Duggan (NYU), Karen Shimakawa (NYU), and Chandan Reddy (U of Washington). 4pm-6:30pm.
"Vicissitudes of Whiteness: Reflections on the Field," Matthew Frye Jacobson, Dept. of American Studies/History at YaleUniversity. ( Postponed ; watch this space for the new date and time )
Saturday 11/14: The New York Metro American Studies Association annual conference: "A More Perfect Union?" The conference this year explores the appeal of and challenges to the national ideal of a "more perfect union," initially posited at the emergence of the legal entity known as "the United States." Suspending some of our discipline's conventional skepticism, this conference asks what American studies can or should teach us not only about the divisions in US culture, but about its uneven potentials and latent desires for unity. The conference will also reflect on its location in Lower Manhattan, near Ground Zero, where the redevelopment effort has alsoinvolved ideals of unity and perfectibility. 9am-5:30pm, St. John'sUniversity, Downtown Manhattan campus, 101 Murray Street. For conference program and registration information, please go to www.nymasa.org .
The 2009-2010 Columbia University American Studies Seminar Series
The series this year will be devoted to the theme of "New York City in American Studies/American Studies in New York City."
Please note that this year the seminar will return to Faculty House, located 64 Morningside Drive (at 116th Street). We will gather in the downstairs bar at 5:45, move upstairs for dinner, and the talk will begin at 7:30. If you would like to join the speaker, chairs and rapporteur for dinner, please RSVP to Christina Charuhas (cac2166@columbia.edu) by September 15. For help locating Faculty House, you can view a map of Columbia's campus at http://www.columbia.edu/about_columbia/map.
Thursday 11/19: John Matteson , Department of English, John Jay College, City University of New York. "'In Preparation for the New Fire:" The New-York Tribune and the Politicization of Margaret Fuller.'
Thursday 1/ 28: Ellen Gruber Garvey , Department of English, New Jersey City University , Title TBA
Thursday 2/18: Thuy Linh Tu , Assistant Professor of Asian Pacific American Studies, Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University, Title TBA.
Thursday 3/11: Oneka LaBennett , Research Director of the Bronx African American History Project and Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies, Fordham University. "Consuming Identities: Race, Gender and Transnationalism Amongst West Indian Girls in Brooklyn."
Saturday 4/10: "New York City in American Studies/American Studies in New York City" (an all-day symposium)
Please don't hesitate to contact rapporteur Christina Charuhas, by e-mail or phone (925-683-2673) with any questions or comments.
Saturday 11/14: The New York Metro American Studies Association annual conference: "A More Perfect Union?" The conference this year explores the appeal of and challenges to the national ideal of a "more perfect union," initially posited at the emergence of the legal entity known as "the United States." Suspending some of our discipline's conventional skepticism, this conference asks what American studies can or should teach us not only about the divisions in US culture, but about its uneven potentials and latent desires for unity. The conference will also reflect on its location in Lower Manhattan, near Ground Zero, where the redevelopment effort has also involved ideals of unity and perfectibility. 9am-5:30pm, St. John'sUniversity, Downtown Manhattan campus, 101 Murray Street. For conference program and registration information, please go to www.nymasa.org. Monday 11/16: Who Cares About Family? Despite radical changes in family formations, domestic labor still remains raced, gendered, and otherwise devalued. This panel brings together experts from various fields to examine not only who cares about the family, but who does not, who should, and why. Our distinguished speakers will include Patricia Hill Collins (University of Maryland), author of Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment ; Joan Williams (University of California at Hastings), author of Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do About It ; and Rhacel Salazar Parreñas (Brown), author of The Force of Domesticity . Alyson Cole, Resident Mellon Fellow at the Center for the Humanities and author of The Cult of True Victimhood: From the War on Welfare to the War on Terror , will moderate the conversation. The Graduate Center, CUNY, 365 Fifth Avenue (btwn 34th and 35th), Rooms 9206-07. 6:30pm . Free and open. Undergraduate Student Opportunities
Fresh Air Fund Internship: Be a part of the FriendlyTown team for Spring 2010! We are looking for interns to help us strengthen and grow our program. As an intern based in our NYC office, you will help us prepare for summer, when thousands of children living in New York City’s disadvantaged communities will experience the joys of summer outside the city. You will be able to assist with everyday projects, using your critical thinking and problem solving skills to contribute to our outreach efforts, including public relations and grassroots initiatives. You will put your creativity and research skills to use by brainstorming effective ways to attract new volunteer leaders and host families and make a difference in the lives of the children who visit them.
Established in 1877, the Fresh Air Fund, an independent, not-for-profit agency, has provided free summer experiences in suburban and rural communities for more than 1.7 million New York City children. Each year, thousands of children visit volunteer host families in 13 states and Canada or attend one of five camps in upstate New York. Many children enjoy Fresh Air Fund vacations year after year and form lifelong bonds with the families they visit.
Ideal candidates will have interest or experience in community organizing and possess organizational, communication, research, and problem-solving skills. This would be an unpaid or for-credit internship for the Spring semester (January or February- May.) For more information about the Fresh Air Fund, please see www.freshair.org. To apply or for more information about Spring internships,please contact American Studies major Kaylyn Toale, who is the Fall 2009 intern, at ktoale@freshair.org or (212)897-8941.
Faculty and Graduate Student Opportunities CFP: Princeton Program in American Studies Graduate Conference: "Southern Nation" The Princeton Program in American Studies invites proposals for a graduate conference to be held April 23-24, 2010, featuring a keynote address by University of Virginia historian Grace Elizabeth Hale . The Program Committee welcomes graduate student submissions from all disciplines, and particularly from the traditional American Studies-related disciplines of History, Literature, Art History, Music, and Religion, for individual papers that explore the complex and sometimes ambivalent relationship between the American South and the American nation, either historically or in the present. How have "Southern" cultural forms become national? How has the American South become "globalized" through the presence of multinational corporations? For more suggested topics and conference information, check out www.princeton.edu/ams . Proposals of 250 words or less, accompanied by a CV, should be submitted to Jessica Lowe at jlowe@princeton.edu no later than December 1, 2009.
CFP: The Chesapeake chapter of the American Studies Association's 2010 Annual Conference: "New American Spaces." What might "new American spaces" look like? Spatial metaphors appear as characteristic American Studies concerns: groundwork, crossroads of culture, the local and the global, and crossing borders. We seek to extend this metaphor, calling for papers and panels from any disciplinary perspective that addresses what "new American spaces" have been, are, and might be. Specific areas for examination might include green, virtual/real, public/private, home/homelessness, museum, blogospheric, performative, informational, diasporic, material, educational/pedagogical, immersive/3-D, political, homefront/battlefront, catastrophic, and working-class/elite spaces. Please send single-page panel proposals, 100-word individual paper proposals, or ideas for innovative panels, presentations, or performances as MS Word attachments to chasa2010@georgetown.edu. Please include the words "panel," "individual," "innovative," or "poster" in the subject line. Deadline for proposals is January 11, 2010.
