Register
Register here to join an ASA community. Only current ASA members may contribute to the community blogs. Registration is not required to submit display or text ads or news and events or to view many pages. We will refuse posts that are not of professional interest to ASA members.
Register here at the JHU Press web site for online access to American Quarterly and the Encyclopedia of American Studies Online. Click here for membership FAQ's
Register here for the 2010 annual meeting
Group Members
The following people are members of this group:
The following people are administrators of this group:
Member Tools
We're sorry. You are not yet a member of the Students Committee.
Register or login to join this group.
Main | Annual Meeting | Fellowships | About | Reports | Contact | Apply
Students Committee
Annual Meeting Events
This year, the Students’ Committee is hosting six panels and two Breakfast Forums featuring scholars from various disciplines. All of our events are tailored to specific graduate student needs and offer students the opportunity to meet, share ideas, and initiate professional relationships with scholars outside their own programs and universities.
Click the session title links below for more information about our panels and Breakfast Forums at this year’s annual meeting.
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 6
* Breakfast Forum: Ethno-Racial Representation/Popular Culture Scholarship
* Graduate Student Sustainability? Unionization and the Casualization of Academic Labor
* Demystifying Publishing: A Discussion with Writers and Editors
* Spotlight on Student ASA Regional Award Winners
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 7
* Breakfast Forum: Towards A Substantive Practice of Transnational American Studies
* Mock Job Interview Workshop
* Work and Family in Grad School
* Balancing Civic Engagement and Graduate Education
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 7
Breakfast Forum: Ethno-Racial Representation/Popular Culture Scholarship
This roundtable will explore scholarship on popular culture and the media which critically examines ethno-racial representations. The panelists will address the simultaneity of their research and teaching. The advantages and limitations of producing such vital scholarship and pedagogical strategies within and without the realm of academia will also be essential to this discussion. This convergence of interests and complications are considered through by the following questions: How have academic circles, peer-reviewed journals, students and the greater public received your cultural criticism and assessments? What are some of the pressures in producing scholarship which adeptly interprets and articulates the lives and images of the communities you study and teach? Where has the study of ethno-racial representations in pop cultural scholarship been, and how will or must they change in the future? Quite certainly, at a time when the United States touts itself as a multi-ethnic body politic, and now boasts its first president of color, the research which analyzes and examines ethno-racial imagery in the media demands an engagement beyond the scope we’ve previously conceived. Indeed, what are the transnational commitments and responsibilities (i.e. proficient bilingualism) involved in popular cultural representation and study today? The ways panelists navigate this new cultural terrain is a timely insight into the varied politics of positioning involved in the academy.
Time: 8:00am - 9:45am
Place: Renaissance West B
Chair: Erik C. Wade, Purdue University
Panelists:
Evelyn Alsultany, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
William Anthony Nericcio, San Diego State University
María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo, New York University
Dustin Tahmahkera, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Graduate Student Sustainability? Graduate Student Unionization and the Casualization of Academic Labor
This panel aims to address the unsustainability of the current model of graduate student education and employment in the humanities. Given the possible passage of the Teaching and Research Assistants Collective Bargaining Rights Act in 2009, this panel focuses on the goals and potential effects of graduate student unionization as a response to the increasing casualization of undergraduate teaching. Panelists include scholars specializing in academic labor issues as well as graduate student labor activists.
Time: 10:00am - 11:45am
Place: Renaissance West B
Chair: Paul Saeidi, California State University, Fullerton
Panelists:
Marc Bousquet, Santa Clara University
Cary Nelson, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Michael Bérubé, Pennsylvania State University, University Park
Andrew Yale, University of Chicago
Demystifying Publishing: A Discussion with Writers and Editors
This roundtable is designed to help make the process of publishing, be it a review, journal article or book, less obscure. The participants of this roundtable, including the Managing Editor of American Indian Quarterly, the Executive Director of the SUNY Press, a graduate student in the process of publishing an article in American Quarterly and an Associate Editor of American Quarterly, have all generously agreed to share their tips on publishing.
Time: 12:00pm - 1:45pm
Place: Renaissance West B
Chair: Alison Fields, University of New Mexico
Panelists:
Rod Ferguson, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
LaKisha Michelle Simmons, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Gary Dunham, State University of New York, Albany
Spotlight on Student ASA Regional Award Winners
This panel of papers is the collaborative effort of the ASA Regional Chapters’ Committee and the ASA Students’ Committee. Because the regional conferences offer a unique forum for the presentation of graduate student research, this panel will bring together a sample of exemplary student work from the Mid-America, Mid-Atlantic, Southern, and New England chapters of the ASA. The panel draws from the award winning presentations from the respective chapters, offering a spotlight for the quality of work, special topics, and themes of recent regional meetings with variable close proximity to this years’ national conference in Washington D.C.. Building on a major objective of the Students Committee, to foster the success of graduate students in American Studies, this panel seeks to give exceptional graduate students a medium to present their work at the national conference. Students at smaller schools often lack the connections and resources to put together a panel of scholars at varying levels of their careers that hail from diverse institutions—this panel thus provides an alternative way to participate that offers a more equal playing field for a national conference presentation based on the quality of their work.
Time: 4:00pm - 5:45pm
Place: Renaissance West B
Chair: Paul Saeidi, California State University, Fullerton
Presenters:
“Dying to be Here(oes): The Construction of Latino/a Heroism Discourses in Post-9/11 National Security and Immigration Rhetoric in the United States”
- Mauricio Espinoza, Ohio State University, Columbus
“Red All Over: Protecting the American Body Politic from Infection in the Early Twentieth Century”
- Ziv Eisenberg, Yale University
“The Case of the Forgotten Themes: Nancy Drew’s Lessons on Culture”
- Holly Scott, American University
“Re-engaging Blues Narratives”
- Victor George Hobson, University of East Anglia
Commentator: John Rogers Haddad, Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 7
Breakfast Forum: Towards A Substantive Practice of Transnational American Studies
Issues of transnationalism have produced many new inquiries in the field of American Studies. However, methodologies for capturing and exploring transnationalism and transnational flows have been little discussed. As transnational research is often multi-sited and multilingual, new methodological challenges are presented to scholars. This panel aims to open up discussion on methodologies and the pragmatics of designing and executing transnational research projects. How does the field of American Studies fit into these questions? What kinds of questions might be proposed within this field and how do these questions influence the nature of the sources and methodologies used and vice versa? Does American Studies replicate asymmetrical flows and power relations? How are transnational work and comparative work separate and entangled? By addressing mono- and multilingualism, this panel also considers linguistic challenges regarding methodologies in transnational American Studies. The panel also raises questions regarding the importance of acquiring multiple languages in American Studies. How important is it for monolingual transnational American Studies scholars to become fluent in languages other than English?
Time: 8:00am - 9:45am
Place: Renaissance West B
Chair: Brenda Yosseti Beza, University of Texas, Austin
Panelists:
Jason Oliver Chang, University of California, Berkeley
Justine Pas, Oberlin College
Anne Magnussen, University of Southern Denmark
Denise E Brennan, Georgetown University
Elaine Peña, George Washington University
Jasmine Mitchell, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Mock Job Interview Workshop
This panel is a consistently popular and well-attended demonstration workshop sponsored annually by the Students’ Committee of the American Studies Association for graduate students about to enter the job market. The workshop begins with a mock job interview, in which a dissertating graduate student has a conference interview with a “search committee” of senior scholars. This year, the position in question is a tenure-track appointment in American Studies at a small liberal arts college. Our “job candidate” is Tyrone A. Stewart, a doctoral candidate in the department of American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. After the mock interview session, the faculty panelists provide feedback on the candidate’s written materials and performance, and then field questions from the audience about the job market and interview process. The Students’ Committee receives overwhelmingly positive responses from graduate students on the practical benefits of this workshop.
Time: 10:00am - 11:45am
Place: Renaissance West B
Chair: Lisa Duggan, New York University
Panelists:
Duchess Harris, Macalester College
Rachel Ida Buff, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Jane Simonsen, Augustana College
Tyrone Anthony Stewart, University of Maryland, Baltimore
Work and Family in Grad School
While graduate students feel pressured to finish their dissertations as quickly as possible and move on to tenure-track jobs, many
find that graduate school offers the best opportunity before tenure to start a family. How can students balance parenting, home life and scholarly work? What sort of support can students seek from their departments and universities? What institutional options are available for obtaining healthcare and child care? What possibilities and constraints do non-biological parents and fathers face? Many students find it difficult to find advice and support to manage these decisions. This roundtable, sponsored by the ASA Students’ Committee, will provide an opportunity to hear from graduate students and faculty who chose to become parents at various stages of their careers. Participants will share personal and professional perspectives and facilitate a discussion on parenting in academia.
Time: 12:00pm - 1:45pm
Place: Renaissance West B
Chair: Elizabeth Freeman, University of California, Davis
Panelists:
Liza Burbank, Brown University
J. Samaine Lockwood, George Mason University
Dana Luciano, Georgetown University
Patricia Connolly-Shaffer, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Erik Morales, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Balancing Civic Engagement and Graduate Education
The imperative within American Studies to practice socially engaged scholarship is one of its distinguishing characteristics. Yet for many who begin their graduate careers with the hopes of continuing or pursuing a commitment to activism and civic engagement, the material and temporal constraints of graduate school become an obstacle. The pressures of rigid curricula, burdensome teaching requirements, funding limitations and professionalization often discourage students from their original goals. How can we reconcile our ongoing activist work with our graduate school careers? How might curricula change to not only make space for, but also facilitate civic engagement? This roundtable, co-sponsored by the Committee on Graduate Education and the Students’ Committee, will provide a forum for students, faculty and independent scholars to discuss ways in which the goals of civic engagement and activism might be reconciled with the demands and limitations of a graduate education.
Time: 2:00pm - 3:45pm
Place: Renaissance West B
Chair: Nikhil Singh, New York University
Panelists:
Kathleen Franz, American University
Dylan Rodriguez, University of California, Riverside
Luis Moreno, Michigan State University
Sasha Costanza-Chock, University of Southern California
Kevin Bott, New York University
Steven Lubar, Brown University
Quick Links
American Quarterly [official journal site]
American Quarterly [editorial site]