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Students Committee
Report of the Students’ Committee
Thanks to a 1999 decision by the Association’s Council, we have expanded our committee to seven members. In addition, we have added a second Student Councilor, bringing our total membership to nine. The SC has already benefited greatly from this increased membership. This past summer, we were able to organize subcommittees, comprised of both new and returning members, to work on various SC activities pertaining to the Annual Meeting. The expanded membership will also enhance our ability to focus our agenda beyond the yearly sponsorship of activities for the Annual Meeting.
At this time, the SC would like to nominate Colin Johnson, University of Michigan, as co-chair. Colin will work closely with returning co-chair Adam Golub, University of Texas at Austin.
1.) Ongoing Projects
1.1.) Student Access to the Annual Meeting
An on-going concern of graduate students over the years has been the prohibitive cost of attending the ASA Annual Meeting. On average, students make up 25% of conference participants, and there are now several important mechanisms in place to facilitate student access to the Annual Meeting.
Student Travel Fund
We were pleased to see George Sanchez’s call for donors to the Baxter Travel Grants Program in the September ASA Newsletter. As of September 30, 2001 contributions to the travel fund exceeded $1200.00 and the ASA office had received eight applications for funding. The 2002 dues remittance form has a space for contributions to the Baxter Travel Grants Program, which we anticipate will expand the funding base for this important resource. We look forward to assisting however we can in the continued publicity of this important new program.
Roommate Connection Service
For the fourth consecutive year, the Students’ Committee will sponsor a Roommate Connection Service for the ASA Annual Meeting. In response to graduate students’ requests for help in minimizing the costs of attending conferences, the committee will work to connect conference attendees looking to share a room. The Roommate Connection has been widely advertised on list-serves and is described in detail at the Students’ Committee website.
Alternative Accommodations
We are grateful to the Local Arrangements Committee for creating a broad list of alternative accommodations in the Washington, D.C. area. We have established a direct link to this list from our Committee website.
1.2) Data on the Profession
The SC gratefully acknowledges the Report on the ASA’s Survey of Ph.D. Recipients and Employment Trends in the June 2001 Newsletter. Our survey at the 2000 conference found ASA graduate students concerned with future employment opportunities inside and outside of the academy. This new round of data is invaluable for us as we continue to explore this important topic through sponsored panels and informal discussion at the annual meeting. In addition, we remain committed to developing means by which this data can be actively disseminated and discussed at future meetings. We would also support and be willing to assist the ASA with any future data collection that details the contours of the non-academic job market as it relates to graduate degrees in American Studies.
1.3) Fundraising
For the past four years, the Students’ Committee has organized and hosted the Graduate Students’ Hospitality Lounge at the annual meeting of the ASA. In the past, the Hospitality Lounge has served as a conference space where graduate students can enjoy a free continental breakfast as they meet with one another. Through generous donations pledged by programs and departments across the country, we will host the Hospitality Lounge again at the Washington, D.C. Annual Meeting.
The Hospitality Lounge is a popular conference event among graduate students. It is, in fact, one of the few social spaces open to all graduate students at the annual meeting. Last year it was visited by more than 150 students during the two days that it was open. Because it has such broad attendance, the Students’ Committee is able to use the Hospitality Lounge to poll our graduate student constituency with a written questionnaire so that we can more effectively understand and address students’ concerns. During the hours of its operation, the Hospitality Lounge is staffed by members of the Students’ Committee who are available to talk with graduate students about issues that are important to them. Between the questionnaires we collect and the professional academic conversations it fosters, the Hospitality Lounge provides a critical opportunity for the Committee as we work to engage the graduate students we represent.
In early September of each year, we begin the process of contacting potential donors. Although three members of the Committee are currently in the midst of the fundraising campaign, we have attached an early, and thus incomplete list of donors. Already we have received pledges from 1 individual and nearly thirty institutional donors. The Students’ Committee extends its sincere gratitude to current sponsors of the 2001 Hospitality Lounge: Shirley Wajda at Kent State; the American Studies Graduate Student Association at the State University of New York at Buffalo, American Studies Programs at Baylor University, University of California at Santa Cruz, Carleton College, College of William and Mary, University of Colorado, Cornell University, Dickinson College, Emory University, University of Hawai’i at Manoa, University of Iowa, University of Kansas, University of Maryland at College Park, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, New York University, State University of New York at Fredonia, Northwestern University, Rutgers University, St. Louis University, Smith College, University of Southern Maine, Stetson University, Trinity College, Tufts University, Vanderbilt University, Washington State University, the Claremont Graduate School History Department, and the Modern Thought and Literature Program and Humanities Program at Stanford University.
2.) 2001 ASA Annual Meeting
During the 2000-2001 year, the Students’ Committee made it a top priority to address its commitments in collaboration with other standing committees and task forces. We feel this approach is an effective way to address concerns of graduate students, as “graduate student concerns” often reach outside our immediate student constituency. With that in mind, the SC together with the Working-Class Studies Caucus proposed a roundtable session to bring together leading graduate student activists with journalists for a conversation on the intersections of activism and representation in current protests against global capitalism. The discussants on this panel, titled “This is What Democracy Looks Like: Student Activism, Global Business, and Commercial Media’s Grip on Public Representation,“ will explore points of common ground for academics, journalists and student activists - as they have existed in past periods of civic dissent, and as they are evolving within the current wave of public protest.
In a like-minded effort, the SC also co-proposed a roundtable discussion with the recently-formed Task Force on Part-Time and Adjunct Employment, entitled “After Degrees of Shame: Finding Solutions to the Adjunct and Part-Time Employment Crisis.“ The SC considers its constituency to be an important player in the discussion surrounding the economic and working conditions of adjunct and part-time professors. The session will be an opportunity to continue the lively and timely discussion begun at the 1999 Montreal Convention. This session will include a screening of Barbara Wolf’s follow-up documentary video, “A Simple Matter of Justice: Contingent Faculty Organize” (2001) and a roundtable discussion amongst noted activists.
In response to suggestions offered by graduate students present in Detroit last year, the SC has collaboratively proposed two additional sessions. With the newly formed Task Force on Public Practitioners, the SC will provide representation for and discussion amongst graduate students and American Studies scholars whose academic work has a significant and practical bearing in the field of public practice. In response to repeated requests from students attending our Town Hall Meetings, the SC has developed a growing concern about the need to serve and better represent students who intend their work for a public outside of academia. “Multiple Spaces and Voices of American Studies Public Practitioners” will foreground issues in public history and the implications of this enterprise for American Studies as a field and for the American Studies Association, more broadly.
In response to a wide-spread student need for more effective and concrete professionalization strategies, the SC together with the Committee on American Studies Programs will co-sponsor “Making the Most Out of Mentoring: A Workshop For Faculty and Students,“ featuring a panel of faculty recognized by their students as creative and exemplary mentors. The panel and audience will discuss the complexities of mentoring relationships and, we hope, leave the session with concrete tools for pursing effective mentoring in their home departments. The workshop is part of this year’s inaugural “Focus on Programs” day.
In the same spirit of providing concrete and effective strategies for graduate students, specifically those entering the academic job market, the SC will once again sponsor its enormously popular “Academic Job Interviews in American Studies: A Demonstration Workshop.“ Some 63% of American Studies graduate students express interest in obtaining a faculty job upon completing doctoral work. With this in mind, we have assembled a panel of faculty from both four-year colleges and research universities - including faculty who have served as department chairs and on job search committees - to serve as mock interviewers. In an attempt to acknowledge the broad range of American Studies positions available from year to year, this year we have selected a mock job applicant whose work focuses more on visual culture and art history than traditional literature/history scholarship.
3.) New Initiatives
In addition to maintaining current initiatives, the Students’ Committee would like to continue to identify other issues that concern student members of the American Studies Association so that we can begin to think about decisive ways to answer those concerns with concrete action. We invite student members of the ASA to contact us with any ideas that might help define our working agenda in the coming year. To date, members of our constituency have provided a compelling mandate that continues to guide the Committee in its efforts to address the pre-professional concerns of graduate students. Looking toward the future, however, the Students’ Committee would also like to expand the sweep of its attention to include other issues - issues that will affect not only current members of the Association, but future generations of student members. The Students’ Committee looks forward to revitalizing discussions of nation-wide unionization among graduate students and adjunct instructors. Members of the Students’ Committee have also expressed an interest in focusing increased attention on issues that concern undergraduates, most notably state-levied requirements that currently make it extremely difficult for undergraduate students who pursue interdisciplinary courses of study to qualify for teaching certification on the primary and secondary level. Concern has also been raised about pedagogical training for ASA graduate students, since teaching programs are not universally available. The Students’ Committee looks forward to working with other standing committees of the American Studies Association where appropriate to address these and other concerns.
Respectfully submitted by the Students’ Committee, 2001-2002
Adam Golub, Chair, University of Texas at Austin
Themis Chronopoulos, Brown University
Raúl Coronado, Stanford University
Colin Johnson, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Anne Martínez, Student Councilor, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Eve Meltzer, Student Councilor, University of California, Berkeley
Deirdre Murphy, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Jessica Nathanson, State University of New York, Buffalo
Barbara Shaw Perry, University of Maryland, College Park
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