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)
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”
2:00-2:20pmMatthew 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.
“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.
