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Tuesday, December 1, 2015

AMST 8201 Graduate Student Symposium

AMST 8201: HISTORICAL FOUNDATIONS will be hosting the “Tracing American Studies Graduate Student Symposium” on Monday, December 14th from 12:30 – 3:15pm in Scott Hall 105 (Commons). The five seminar participants from our first year cohort will present their work from this semester. 



Tracing American Studies Graduate Student Symposium
By AMST 8201: Historical Foundations (of American Studies)
Graduate Seminar Participants

Monday, December 14, 2015
12:30-3:15pm
Scott Hall Commons Room (1st Floor)

Quick Schedule


12:30-12:40pm
Professor Kale B. Fajardo, Welcome and Introduction

12:40-1:00pm
Rachelle Henderson, “From Mulatta to Mixed Race: Black-White Mixed Race Women in Interracial Literature”

1:00-1:20pm
Chip Chang, “Mapping Afro-Asian Dialogues”

1:20-1:40pm
Brendan McHugh, “Rainbow Tours: Thom Bean's transnational activism, Queer political speaking tours, and Scientific Diasporas, 1989-1991”

1:40-2:00pm
Vanessa Guzman
“Anti-Migrant Sentiment and the Security-Migration Nexus Pre-and-Post 9/11”
2:00-2:20pm
Matthew Treon, “Noisy Dialogics: Auditioning Sound in American Cultural Studies”

2:20-2:40pm Q+A
2:45-3:15pm Light Refreshments


Abstracts

 
12:40-1:00pm: Rachelle Henderson, American Studies PhD Student
“From Mulatta to Mixed Race: Black-White Mixed Race Women in Interracial Literature”

Abstract: I explore the ways in which representations of mixed women in interracial literature have changed over time. Specifically, I explore the ways in which Fran Ross's Oreo (1974)  and Danzy Senna's Caucasia (1998) challenge nineteenth and early twentieth century representations of the tragic mulatta. 

1:00-1:20pm: Chip Chang, American Studies PhD Student
“Mapping Afro-Asian Dialogues”

Abstract: I trace the genealogy of Afro-Asian scholarship in ethnic studies, focusing on the ways in which it is presented and utilized. For instance, oftentimes Afro-Asian scholarship is used to show a history of solidarity between Blacks and Asian Americans, and is then used to argue for current inter-ethnic relations. This paper looks at past and recent scholarship to look at how Asian American studies as a field in ethnic studies has grown.

1:20-1:40pm: Brendan McHugh, American Studies PhD Student
“Rainbow Tours: Thom Bean's transnational activism, Queer political speaking tours, and Scientific Diasporas, 1989-1991”

Abstract: This paper explores an unwritten moment in queer history through the analytics of "the political economies of intimacy," post socialism, and Scientific Diasporas. It examines the interaction of a U.S. black gay activist, Thom Bean, and his meetings with a South African gay activist and a Russian gay activist while they were on speaking tours in the U.S. and the repercussions these meetings had on international LGBT activism in the first decades of the AIDS/HIV epidemic.

1:40-2:00pm: Vanessa Guzman, American Studies PhD Student
“Anti-Migrant Sentiment and the Security-Migration Nexus Pre-and-Post 9/11”

Abstract: This paper examines the ways scholars have approached how anti-migrant sentiment is formed, shaped, maintained and contested across time.  I will also address how perceived threats to ontological security helped to form the security-migration nexus and security regimes in the post 9/11 era.  

2:00-2:20pm: Matthew Treon, American Studies PhD Student
“Noisy Dialogics: Auditioning Sound in American Cultural Studies”

Abstract: This essay deals with ir/rational sound (historically positioned within American Studies discourse) and trades in theoretical lenses for listening. Borrowing analytical tools from Cultural Studies (especially that of the often visual-centric Birmingham Centre) and literary theory, this essay attempts to call attention to two of American Studies’ significant epistemological lineages while also demonstrating how semiotic codes overdetermined by visual language—still shedding the specter of Age-of-Enlightenment-thinking—cannot translate directly onto the study of sound. “Noisy Dialogics” asks what is lost in this translation? What and who are the remainders? How can rethinking the language of sound in cultural studies help to articulate new ways of meaning-making? And what are the politics involved in such a project? Inspired in part by Michael Denning’s recent call to “decolonize the ear,” this essay responds by carrying on a dialogue with emerging theories of sound and society, especially those that take up the political power of noise.