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Students Committee
Students Committee 2004
STUDENTS’ COMMITTEE ANNUAL REPORT
Over the last year the Students’ Committee has continued to explore ways to work collaboratively with other bodies within the ASA while still pursuing our core mission: to advocate for and support the needs of student members of the ASA. We thank our committee colleagues whose appointments ended in June—former co-chairs Laura Barraclough and Amy Nathan, and former members Anne Martinez, James Salazar and Elizabeth Wiley—for their constant commitment and enthusiastic dedication to the work of the Students’ Committee. We also welcome our four new members—Devorah Heitner, Elizabeth Scheps, Manu Vimalassery and National Council member Susie Woo—as well as Adalaine Holton, who joined the committee in December of 2003.
Ongoing Projects
1. Student Access to the Annual Meeting
We are pleased that the ASA has continued to offer affordable hotel rates and discounted registration fees for student attendees. We plan to conduct student surveys at this year’s Hospitality Lounge regarding, among other issues, conference accessibility, and will report our findings accordingly. We also thank the ASA membership at large for their continued support of the Baxter Travel Grant program.
For the seventh consecutive year, the Students’ Committee will also offer its Roommate Connection Service. The service matches attendees who would like to share hotel rooms based on similar interests and living habits, when possible. We expect that this traditionally popular service will elicit an enthusiastic response again this year.
2. Fundraising
The Students’ Committee will once again solicit contributions from American Studies and Ethnic Studies programs and departments to support our programs and panels. In recognition of the growing connections between the fields of American Studies and Ethnic Studies, we have broadened our fundraising efforts in the past few years to include Chicano Studies, Asian American Studies, Native American Studies, and African American Studies programs, as well as traditional American Studies departments. In addition to asking for financial support, we use our fundraising letters to publicize our programs and panels to constituent departments and ask them to share the information with their students.
3. Statement on Standards
The Students’ Committee would like to thank the National Council for its invitation to us and to the Task Force on Graduate Education to present the revised version of the Statement on Standards in Graduate Education during the National Council business meeting at the Atlanta convention. We would also like to thank the Task Force for the feedback it gathered about the Statement of Standards from American Studies graduate programs across the country. We look forward to discussing with the National Council the possible adoption of the Statement of Standards, and ways that it could be locally implemented. The statement is an outgrowth of the Students’ Committee’s efforts to assist the ASA in taking a leadership role in defining a coherent set of standards and “best practices” regarding professional conduct and institutional support in graduate programs in American Studies and related fields.
Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia
1. Scheduled Panels
This year the Students’ Committee will sponsor three panels designed to address the needs and concerns of the association’s student members.
a. “Interdisciplinary Methodologies: A Roundtable”
The Students’ Committee proposed this roundtable discussion on interdisciplinary methodologies in order to meet the needs of graduate students and scholars who are undertaking the challenge of interdisciplinary scholarship. Panelists Michael Cowan, Corey Capers, David Silver and Janet Davis will use their diverse personal and academic backgrounds to help articulate what interdisciplinary methodologies entail, while also detailing the necessity of this type of scholarship, the importance of interdisciplinary scholars communicating their work to a broader public sphere beyond academia, and the obstacles or problems facing these kinds of scholars. In particular, the panel is focusing on the ways in which working or speaking across disciplines and cultural spaces can develop new scholarly directions or re-examinations of older discourses; recognizing the importance of such works necessitates the analysis of what interdisciplinary methodologies are and the ways in which they are employed.
b. “Academic Job Interviews in American Studies: A Demonstration Workshop”
Year after year, this panel continues to be one of our most well-attended and frequently requested events. It stages a demonstration of an academic job interview in American Studies, in which a mock job search committee interviews a potential candidate for a typical American Studies position. This year, the mock interview will be for a position in media studies, with an emphasis on issues of gender and sexuality. The interview demonstration workshop has traditionally been a valuable opportunity for both the ASA graduate student constituency and the wider ASA community. Students gain pivotal practical insight into the job application and interview process, while the American Studies community has a chance to reflect on its own institutional practices and their ramifications for the profession and its future.
c. “Regional Racial Formations: At the Crossroads of Race, Space, and Place”
In keeping with the 2004 annual meeting theme, “Crossroads of Cultures,“ the Students’ Committee proposed this panel concerned with the conflict, collaboration, and cultural borrowing between racial formations at multiple geographical scales, most particularly the region. This panel is part of the Students’ Committee’s efforts to integrate into our usual offering of conventional “service” panels a forum dedicated to innovative student work in an important area of intellectual inquiry. The panel is representative of the Students’ Committee’s broader commitment to develop both the intellectual and professional needs of our student constituencies. The panel incorporates key geographical concepts of scale, region, movement, and borders to address the formation of racial categories and hierarchies. In doing so we broaden the increasingly interdisciplinary audience at the ASA by targeting those interested in space and geography in addition to more traditional emphases on history and literature.
2. Hospitality Lounge
For the eighth consecutive year, the Students’ Committee will again sponsor its Hospitality Lounge. The Hospitality Lounge, offered on Friday and Saturday mornings of the conference, serves as a networking space for graduate students. The Lounge was initially organized in response to student feelings of isolation at the meeting and their requests for informal meeting space. In addition to an informal, students-only networking opportunity, the Hospitality Lounge also features free breakfast, for which the Students’ Committee fundraises for several months prior to the conference.
3. Breakfasts with Champions
For the first time last year, the Students’ Committee offered a discussion series called “Breakfasts with Champions.“ Top scholars in important fields of study met informally with students in the Hospitality Lounge, to discuss their work and the state of their fields, and to give students a rare opportunity to interact with and receive advice from prominent intellectuals who also demonstrate a commitment to mentorship. The series proved very popular, and we are again offering four “Breakfasts,“ this time in the areas of American Indian Studies, Media Studies, Queer Studies and “Activism in/and the Academy.“ The model also appealed to other ASA committees, and we will be co-sponsoring a Breakfast called “Lifting As We Climb,“ focusing on women of color and the mentor/mentee relationship, with the Women’s Committee, the Minority Scholars’ Committee and the Committee on Ethnic Studies.
Respectfully submitted by the Students’ Committee, 2004-2005
Devorah Heitner, Northwestern University
Adalaine Holton, University of California, Santa Cruz
Andrew Johnston, University of Chicago
Rob Nelson, Rutgers University
Tamiko Nimura, University of Washington
Patricia Roylance, Stanford University (Chair)
Elizabeth Scheps, Brown University
Manu Vimalassery, New York University
Susie Woo, Yale University
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