Thrusday, October 16, 2003

* Indicates Hartford Resource Committee Event or Sponsorship

 

8:00 - 10:00 AM

The Challenge to University Administration: Understanding Interdisciplinary Departments and Cross-Departmental Programs in the Humanities (Roundtable)

Sponsored by the Committee on American Studies Programs, this roundtable discussion will focus on the administrative issues unique to interdisciplinary departments and cross-departmental programs. The Committee on American Studies Programs feels that this is an especially opportune moment for such a discussion, with several American Studies programs being up for review this year and with the recent decision by the National Research Council to begin ranking American Studies Programs. Roundtable participants include:

CHAIR:
Barry Shank, Department of Comparative Studies, The Ohio State University
PANELISTS:
Simon Bronner, Interim Director, School of Humanities, Distinguished Professor of American Studies and Folklore, Pennsylvania State University, Capital College

Johnnella Butler, Associate Dean and Associate Vice Provost, Professor of American Ethnic Studies, University of Washington, Seattle

Michael Cowan, Senior Advisor to Chancellor and Professor of American Studies and Literature, University of California, Santa Cruz

Cathy Davidson, Ruth F. DeVarney Professor of English, Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary studies, and Director of the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke University

 

10:00 - 11:45 AM

Violent Subjectivities and the Nation

CHAIR:
Louis Mendoza, Department of English, Classics and Philosophy, University of Texas, San Antonio
PAPERS:
Maria Josefina Saldaña-Portillo, Department of English, Brown University
Wavering on the Horizon of Social Being: The Indian, the Mexican, and the Southwest

Sheila M. Contreras, Department of American Thought and Language, Michigan State University
Indias and Violence: Writing Indigenous Identity in Chicana Critical Discourse

Miranda Joseph, Department of Women's Studies, University of Arizona
Debtors to the Nation: Criminalization, Incarceration and Primitive Accumulation

Sandra Soto, Department of Women's Studies, University of Arizona
A Run for the Border: The Commodification of Violence in Transnational Greater Mexico

COMMENT:
Louis Mendoza, Department of English, Classics and Philosophy, University of Texas, San Antonio

 

10:00 - 11:45 AM

Performance of Reality and Struggle: Race, Violence and the Urban Landscape

CHAIR:
Harry Elam, Department of Drama, Stanford University
PAPERS:
Stephanie Batiste, Department of English, Carnegie Mellon University
Stacks of Obits: Affective Responses to Murder in Los Angeles

John L. Jackson, Department of Cultural Anthropology, Duke University
Vending Violences: The Commodification of Space, Race, and Entrepreneurship in Harlem, 2003

Judith Michelle Williams, Department of African and African American Studies, University of Kansas Cia do Communs: To Be Young, Gifted and Black in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2003

COMMENT:
The Audience

 

10:00 - 11:45 AM

Participating in Mass Media: Consumption, Gender, and the Production of Citizenship

CHAIR:
Toby Miller, Department of Cinema Studies, New York University
PAPERS:
Mark Andrejevic, Department of Communication Studies, University of Iowa
Cybernetic Viewing: The Work of Online Fans

James Hay, Department of Speech Communications, University of Illinois
Consuming Passions and Inconsolable Spaces: Television and the Kitchen

Laurie Ouellette, Department of Media Studies, Queens College, City University of New York
Judge Judy: Neoliberalism and Injustice on Daytime Television

Michael Palm, Program in American Studies, New York University
Phoning Alone: Talk Radio, Domestic Labor and the Cultural Citizenship of Angry, White Men

COMMENT:
Toby Miller

 

10:00 - 11:45 AM

Citizens, Subjects, and Exclusions

CHAIR:
Susan Ryan, Department of English, University of Louisville
PAPERS:
Janet Holtman, Department of English, Pennsylvania State University
The Functioning of Poor White Delinquency in the Antebellum South: A Genealogy of "White Trash"

Yu-Fang Cho, Department of Literature, University of California, San Diego
Violence, Citizenship, and the Transnational Politics of U.S. Women's Cultures of Benevolence, 1890s-1910s

Craig Robertson, Institute of Communications Research, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
"The Passport Nuisance": The Documentation of U.S. Travelers and the Production of National-Citizens 1870-1930

COMMENT:
Susan Ryan

 

10:00 - 11:45 AM

Pedagogy: Teaching American Studies

CHAIR:
Robert Nelson, American Studies Program, Rutgers University, New Brunswick
PAPERS:
Jo Paoletti, American Studies Department, University of Maryland, College Park
Adapting an Introductory American Studies Course for Student Learning Styles

Sharon O'Brien, Director of American Studies, Dickinson College
Teaching the Writing of Memoir and Personal Essays in American Studies

Ramona J. Coleman, Department of Ethnic Studies, Bowling Green State University
Belonging in the Bahamian College Classroom: Examining the Relationship between American Teachers and Bahamian Students through Poetry

COMMENT:
Robert Nelson

 

10:00 - 11:45 AM

The Body in Pain: Suffering and Belonging in the New Nation

CHAIR:
Carolyn Sorisio, Department of English, West Chester University Pennsylvania
PAPERS:
Nancy Lusignan Schultz, Department of English, Salem State College
Bodily Betrayals: Ann Mattingly's Disease, Suffering and Miraculous Healing, Washington City, 1824

Kathleen Kennedy, Department of History, Western Washington University
Bodily Pain and Memories of Nation Making: Catholics and Indians in the Protestant Historical Imagination

Susan J. Pearson, Department of History, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
"The Unequivocal Physiognomy of Pain": Animal Pain and Animal Rights in Nineteenth-Century Animal Protection Movement

COMMENT:
Carolyn Sorisio

 

10:00 - 11:45 AM

Home Bodies: Gender, Geopolitics and Expertise Post 9/11

This roundtable seeks to articulate feminist analyses of our current socio-historical, cultural, and geopolitical conditions and to make visible feminist views and strategies of intervention that have been debilitatingly sequestered from particularly critical debates, such as the U.S.A's "global war on terrorism" or its "Patriot Act."

CHAIR:
Gina Dent, Department of Women's Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz
PANELISTS:
Anjali Arondekar, Department of Women's Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz

Ritu Birla, Department of History, University of Toronto

Lok Siu, Department of Anthropology, New York University

Neferti X. Tadiar, Department of History of Consciousness, University of California, Santa Cruz

COMMENT:
The Audience

 

10:00 - 11:45 AM

Iconic Violence, National Belonging

CHAIR:
Nancy Isenberg, Department of History, University of Tulsa
PAPERS:
Martin Berger, Department of Art History, State University of New York, Buffalo
Dismembered Bodies and the Promise of National Coherence

Jim Neighbors, Department of English, Wofford College
Forging a Republic: The Remains of Consent in Early Nineteenth-Century American Iconography

Katherine Adams, Department of English, University of Tulsa
"A Dangerous Plaything": The Public Corporeality of Margaret Fuller

COMMENT:
Bruce Burgett, American Studies, Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, University of Washington

 

10:00 - 11:45 AM

Votes for Women: Historicizing American Suffrage Literature 1883-1917

CHAIR:
Liette Gidlow, Department of History, Bowling Green State University
PAPERS:
Elaine Frantz Parson, Department of History, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh
Black and White: Race and the Southern Suffragist

Michael Epp, Department of English, University of Alberta
Circulating Women's Proper "Spear": Marietta Holley, Suffrage and the Politics of Stereotypes

Mary Chapman, Department of English, University of British Columbia
The Politics of Quotation: The Sturdy Oak

COMMENT:
Liette Gidlow

 

10:00 - 11:45 AM

Violence in Domesticity

CHAIR:
Mary Battenfeld, American Studies Program, Wheelock College
PAPERS:
C. Kayte Young, School of Architecture, Rice University
HOUSE/BROKEN: Debbie Drechsler's Daddy Girl and the Crisis of the House

Mark C. Smith, American Studies Department, University of Texas, Austin
Alcohol, Family Violence, and Belonging: The Dog Who Didn't Bark

Rafia Zafar, Department of English, Washington University, Saint Louis
"Murder in the Kitchen": The Dilemma of the Gastronome

COMMENT:
Mary Battenfeld

 

10:00 - 11:45 AM

Political Violence and Public Memory: Human Rights, Literature, and Justice

CHAIR:
Jeannie Chiu, Department of English, Pace University
PAPERS:
Sonia Torres, Instituto de Letras, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil
Meaningful Acts: Terrorists, Artists, and States

Greg Mullins, American Studies Program, Evergreen State College
Public Memory of State-Sponsored Violence: The Ghosts of Michael Ondaatje, Julia Alvarez and Edwidge Danticat

Joseph Slaughter, Department of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University
Travesty of Human Rights, Burlesque of Bildung: Sovereignty and Self-Possession in Arturo Arias's After the Bombs

COMMENT:
Jeannie Chiu

 

10:00 - 11:45 AM

Making Space: Re-Constructing latinoamericanidad in Canada

CHAIR:
Michelle Habell-Pallán, American Ethnic Studies, University of Washington
PAPERS:
Gloria Patricia Dias Barerro, Department of Social and Political Thought, York University
Migrant Latina Exotic Dancers and the Complicity of the Canadian State

Vannina Sztainbok, Latin American Coalition Against Racism (LACAR)
Making Space: Re-Constructing latinoamericanidad in Toronto

R. Magaly San Martin, Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education, University of Toronto
"If You Don't Like It Here, You Can Leave" or Rhetorical Devises of Exclusion in Racialized Processes of Nation Building and Their Significance to Political Protest

COMMENT:
Jaime Cardenas, Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, Seattle Central Community College

Michelle Habell-Pallán

 

10:00 - 11:45 AM

Braided Dreams, Tangled Nightmares: Young Women of Color, Gendered Violence, and Resistance

CHAIR:
Sunaina Maira, Program in Asian American Studies, University of California, Davis
PAPERS:
Víctor Ríos, Department of Ethnic Studies, University of California, Berkeley
"What About the Girls?!": Female Youth Organizers in Oakland, California

Lena Carla Gutekunst, Program in Cultural Studies, University of California, Davis
Gendering the Delinquent Citizen: Female Youth Writers Behind Bars on State Violence and the Desire to Belong

Pablo Gonzalez, Department of Anthropology, University of Texas, Austin
Zapatismo and U.S. Women of Color Politics in Chiapas: Race, Gender, Autonomy, and Violence Within "People of Color" Internationalism

COMMENT:
Sunaina Maira

 

10:00 - 11:45 AM

Bonds of Manhood: White Masculinity and American Indian Captivity

CHAIR:
June Namias, Department of History, University of Alaska, Anchorage
PAPERS:
Andrew Lopenzina, Department of English, University of New Hampshire
Crossing the Threshold: Masculine Silences in John Williams's The Redeemed Captive

Jeanne Holland, Department of English, University of Wyoming
How to Succeed in America: Hybridized Masculinity in John Gyles's Memoirs of Odd Adventures,Strange Deliverances, Etc.

Janet Dean, Department of English and Cultural Studies, Bryant College
Captivity, White Masculinity, and Possession in John Filson's The Adventures of Col. Daniel Boon

COMMENT:
June Namias

 

12:00 - 1:45 PM

American Exceptionalism, Another Look (A Roundtable)

This roundtable offers an opportunity for Americanists to canvas the validity of the exceptionalist hypothesis, and to review and reassess the current status of the term in dialogue with a collegial audience.

CHAIR:
Alan Trachtenberg, Department of English, Yale University
PANELISTS:
Sacvan Bercovitch, Department of English, Harvard University

Jeffrey Stewart, Department of History and Art History, George Mason University

James Livingston, Department of History, Rutgers University

Marilyn Young, Department of History, New York University

Seth Fein, Department of History, Yale University

COMMENT:
The Audience

 

12:00 - 1:45 PM

Re-Orienting Orientalism: Asian Americans, Market, and Cultural Citizenship

CHAIR:
Anthony W. Lee, Department of Art History, Mount Holyoke College
PAPERS:
Anne S. Choi, Department of History, Swarthmore College
Embracing the Oriental: Korean Immigrant Entrepreneurship Before World War II

Shiho Imai, Department of History,Brown University
Cultivating the "Yellow" Market: Hawai'i's Japanese American Consumer Culture and the Perception of Race, 1920-1941

Chiou-ling Yeh, Department of History, San Diego State University
Selling and Buying Chineseness: Commercialism and Identity Politics in San Francisco's Chinese New Year Festivals, 1980s-1990s

COMMENT:
Robert George Lee, Department of American Civilization, Brown University

 

12:00 - 1:45 PM

The Emotive Body and Subjectivity at the Intersections of Race, Gender, Nation, and Sexuality

CHAIR:
Richard Lowry, Department of American Studies, College of William and Mary
PAPERS:
Jane Caputi, Department of Women's Studies, Florida Atlantic University
"Take Back What Does Not Belong to Me": Social Inequality, Identity, and the "Transmission of Affect"

Cedric Gael Bryant, Department of English, Colby College
Between "True Love" and the "Nastiness of Life": Anger, Agency, and the Racialized Emotive Body

Barbara Shaw Perry, Department of American Studies, University of Maryland, College Park
Geographies of Pain, Narratives of "Resistance": Women's Sexuality in the Caribbean Borderlands

COMMENT:
Richard Lowry

 

12:00 - 1:45 PM

Exclusions and Inclusions: Constructing/Confronting Cultural Violence in the Plantation Fiction of Postbellum America

CHAIR:
Jon-Christian Suggs, Department of English, City University of New York, Graduate Center
PAPERS:
Jack Shuler, Department of English, Brooklyn College
In Quotes: A Critique of Thomas Nelson Page's Colonial Discourse in Marse Chan

Mark J. Noonan, Department of English, Queens College
Double-Edged Violence in the Century Tales of Joel Chandler Harris

Shawn Lavery, Department of English, Borough of Manhattan Community College
Debunking Mythology: Charles Chesnutt's Conjure Woman and the Plantation Tradition

COMMENT:
Daniel J. Opler, Department of History, New York University; Managing Editor, Columbia Journal of American Studies

 

12:00 - 1:45 PM

Domestic Communities, Domestic Security, and Cultural Violence in Cold War America

CHAIR:
Jodi Dean, Department of Political Science, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
PAPERS:
Alan Nadel, Department of Language, Literature, and Communication, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Televisual Citizenship: Disneyland as the Town Hall of the Cold War West

Dina Smith, Department of English, University of Kentucky
The Imaginary Institution of the Trailer

Donald Pease, Department of English, Dartmouth College
The Homefront Uncanny: Domestic Violence, the "Feminine Mystique" and Touch of Evil

COMMENT:
Jodi Dean

 

12:00 - 1:45 PM

The Violence of Not Belonging: Transnational Engagements with Native American Women in Nationalist, Historical and Activist Studies

CHAIR:
Vera B. Palmer, Department of English & Native American Studies Program, Dartmouth College
PAPERS:
Andrea Smith, American Culture and Women's Studies Programs, University of Michigan
Native American Feminism and Sovereignty/Nationalism

Audra Simpson, Department of Anthropology, McGill University
The Benevolence of Self-Government: Mohawk Women, the Problem of Community Recognition and the First Nations Governance Act in Canada, 2001

Jennifer Nez Denetdale, Department of History, University of New Mexico
Chiefs, Presidents, and Princesses: Gendering Navajo Nationalism

COMMENT:
Vera B. Palmer

 

12:00 - 1:45 PM

The Politics of Death and Destruction: Racial, State, and Regional Violence in 18th- and 19th-Century America (in memorium of Clark Davis, he remains listed as commentator)

CHAIR:
John Herron, Department of History, University of Missouri, Kansas City
PAPERS:
Joshua Piker, Department of History, University of Oklahoma
Killing Peaceful Indians: The 1759 "Massacre" of South Carolina's Cherokee Hostages

Gregory S. Jackson, Department of English, University of Arizona
Representing the Somers Mutiny: Sentimental Discourse, Social Contract, and Constitutional Law in Antebellum America

Lisa Tendrich Frank, Department of History, Florida Atlantic University
A Spirit of Dogged Sullen Resistance: Domestic Violation and Feminine Patriots during the American Civil War

COMMENT:
Clark Davis, Department of History, California State University, Fullerton

 

12:00 - 1:45 PM

Violent Epistemologies

CHAIR:
Susan Lurie, Department of English, Rice University
PAPERS:
Paula Harrington, Department of English, Marymount College of Fordham University
Eating Our Own: Twain's "Cannibalism in the Cars"

Jonna Eagle, Department of American Civilization, Brown University
Circling the Wagons: Violence and Identification in the American National Imaginary

Deborah Elizabeth Whaley, Center for Cultural Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz
For Those Who Claim Not To See: "O," Epistemological Solipsism, and the "New" Neo-Liberalism

Vivian M. May, Women's Studies Program, Syracuse University
Violent Epistemes, Critical Pedagogies: Literature, (Un)Knowing, and Social Change

COMMENT:
The Audience

 

12:00 - 1:45 PM

Real? Representations of Racial Violence: Surreal, Fantastic, and Popular Alternatives to Social Realism

CHAIR:
Gene Jarrett, Department of English, University of Maryland, College Park
PAPERS:
Omayra Cruz, Literature Department, University of California, San Diego
Compromising Pam Grier and the Fantastic Popular Legacies of Radical Politics

Adalaine Holton, Literature Department, University of California, Santa Cruz
Fantastic Narratives of Slavery and Freedom: Ghosts, Time Travel, and Satire

Michelle Morton, Literature Department, University of California, Santa Cruz
Surrealist Historiography: Alejandro Morales' Reto En El Paraíso

COMMENT:
Gene Jarrett

 

12:00 - 1:45 PM

Belonging to Books: The Cultural Politics of Homemade Books in the NineteenthCentury

CHAIR:
Meredith McGill, Department of English, Rutgers University
PAPERS:
Karen Sanchez-Eppler, Department of American Studies, Amherst College
"This Journal Which is in Fact a Book": Child Bookmakers on the Rigors of Play and Literacy

Thomas Augst, Department of English, University of Minnesota
Life as an Object: Diaries and the Moral Economy of Print Culture

Ellen Gruber Garvey, Department of English, New Jersey City University
Belonging and Possessing: Nineteenth-Century Scrapbooks and Extra Illustrated Books

COMMENT:
Meredith McGill

 

12:00 - 1:45 PM

La Falla de la Comunidad/The Failure of Community

CHAIR:
Blanca Silvestrini, Department of History, University of Connecticut, Storrs
PAPERS:

Guillermo Irizarry, Departments of Spanish and Portuguese, Yale University
Cadavers Encountered: Identification and Community in Latina/o Literature

Alicia Schmidt Camacho, American Studies Program, Yale University
The Violence of Citizenship

COMMENT:
Blanca Silvestrini

 

12:00 - 1:45 PM

Race and the Politics of Publishing

CHAIR:
Evelyn Nien-Ming Chi'en, Department of English, University of Hartford
PAPERS:
Ifeona Fulani, Department of Comparative Literature, New York University
The Caribbean Woman Writer and the Politics of Style

Dalia Kandiyoti, Department of English, College of Staten Island, City University of New York
Mean Streets, Drug Lords, and Barrio Noir: Diaspora Politics and the Contemporary Literary Marketplace

Cynthia Tolentino, Department of English, University of Oregon Cultural Authenticity, Area Studies, and the Politics of Knowledge-Production: Mary Kawena Pukui and 1950s Hawai'i

COMMENT:
The Audience

 

12:00 - 1:45 PM

Democratizing Art and Media: Three Perspectives on Cultural Policy in the United States

CHAIR:
Siva Vaidhyanathan, Department of Culture and Communication, New York University
PAPERS:
Patricia Aufderheide, Center for Social Media, American University
Moving Image Media for Social Action: Policy Constraints and Opportunities

Thea Petchler, Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies, Princeton University
The National Endowment for the Arts and Black Expression in the 1970s

Michael Wakeford, Department of History, University of Chicago
Art Education and Expressive Selfhood in Postwar America

COMMENT:
Siva Vaidhyanathan

 

12:00 - 1:45 PM

American Studies 101: Dismantling Epistemic Violence and Creating a Learning Community

CHAIR:
Karin Michele Thomas, Programs in American Studies & African American Studies, Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg
PAPERS:
David Anthony Tyeeme Clark, American Studies Program & The Center for Indigenous Nations Studies, University of Kansas
Making the Invisible, Visible: Indigenizing the Introduction to American Studies

Quentin Miller, Department of English, Suffolk University
Divided States: Teaching the Breaks in the American Myth

Richard Schur, Interdisciplinary Studies Center, Drury University
A "Kinder and Gentler" Epistemological Violence: Creating Community in the Introductory Classroom

Michael Willard, American Studies Program, Oklahoma State University
Concrete Consequences of Myths and Symbols: The Introductory American Studies Course and Histories of Symbolic Violence

COMMENT:
Karin Michele Thomas

 

12:00 - 1:45 PM

The Cold War and American Memory

CHAIR:
H. Bruce Franklin, Department of English, Rutgers University, Newark
PAPERS:
Catherine Gunther Kodat, Department of English, Hamilton College
The Figure in the Carpet: Choreographing the Cold War

Scott Laderman, Department of American Studies, University of Minnesota
Contrition and Denial at a Vietnamese Museum

David Noon, Department of Social Science, University of Alaska Southeast
When Blowback Takes You Downwind: Don Delillo, Toxic Waste, and Cold War Counter-Narratives

COMMENT:
H. Bruce Franklin

 

2:00 - 3:45 PM

Racial Memory and Media Images: The Persistence of Nostalgia in Representations of the American South

CHAIR:
Herman S. Gray, Department of Sociology, University of California, Santa Cruz
PAPERS:
Libby Lewis, Department of African American Studies, University of California, Berkeley
Memory, Counter-Memory and the Confederate Flag Question in TV News Media

Kameelah L. Martin,Center for African American Studies, University of California, Los Angeles
Ice Cube's Barbershop and the Fallacy of the Civil Rights Icon

Caroline A. Streeter, Department of English & Center for African American Studies, University of California, Los Angeles
Amalgamation and Amnesia in Monster's Ball

COMMENT:
Arlene R. Keizer, Department of English Language and Literature & Center for Afro American and African Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

 

2:00 - 3:45 PM

Beyond Belonging: Performing the Transnational in Butoh, Blues, and JapanPop

CHAIR:
E. Taylor Atkins, Department of History, Northern Illinois University
PAPERS:
Atsuko Miyawaki, Department of Performance Studies, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University
Dancing Asianness: Butoh, Trans/Nation, Sexuality

Gretchen Ferris Schoel, American Studies Program, College of William and Mary
Bottlenecking: Blues, Global Jams, and the Ecology of the 'Net

Csaba Toth, Department of History, Carlow College
Gender, J-Pop, Japan

COMMENT:
E. Taylor Atkins

 

2:00 - 3:45 PM

Race War and the National Imaginaries of the Americas

CHAIR:
Elizabeth Freeman, Department of English, University of California, Davis
PAPERS:
Gretchen Woertendyke, Department of English, State University of New York, Stony Brook
"The Revolutionary Storm": The Haitian Revolution and The Confessions of Nat Turner

Susan Scheckel, Department of English, State University of New York, Stony Brook
Race, War, and Remembrance: Whitman's Civil War Writings and the U.S. Army Medical Museum

Riché Richardson, Department of English, University of California, Davis
The Birth of a Nation "hood": Lessons from Thomas Dixon and D.W. Griffith to William Bradford Huie and The Klansman, O.J. Simpson's First Movie

Katherine Sugg, Independent Scholar
Indigenous Insurrection and the Uses of Mexicoin Almanac of the Dead

Marisa Belausteguigoitia, Department of Education, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico
Visual Culture, State Violence, and the Zapatista Uprising

COMMENT:
Elizabeth Freeman

 

2:00 - 3:45 PM

Terror and the Word: The Press's Role in Mediating Community Violence

CHAIR:
Merry Ovnick, Department of History, California State University, Northridge
PAPERS:
Mary Elizabeth Strunk, Department of American Studies, University of Minnesota
Secrets of the G-Men Series in American Magazine

Gerardo Licón, Department of History, University of Southern California
Whose Side are You On? Printed Media Representations of the Zoot Suit Riots

Sharon Sekhon, Department of American Studies, California State University, Fullerton
Exposé Violence: The Role of Tabloid Journalism in Building the L.A. Anti-Myth

Beatrice DeGèa, Staff Photographer, Los Angeles Times Mediating Community Terror: One Photographer's Experience

COMMENT:
Richard Edwards, Institute for Multimedia Literacy, University of Southern California, Annenburg Center for Communication

 

2:00 - 3:45 PM

Criminalizing / Sexualizing / Spatializing the Boxing Body: Violence or Belonging?

CHAIR:
Nancy Struna, Department of American Studies, University of Maryland, College Park
PAPERS:
Matthew Andrews, Department of History, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
An Epidemic of Pugs: Crime and Prizefighting in Twentieth-Century San Francisco

Shura Gat, Department of Campus Life, Cornell University
Sexualizing Female Fighting: Violence and Gender in Contemporary Women's Boxing

Benita Heiskanen, Department of American Studies, University of Texas, Austin
Spacing Boxing in Place: Latino/a Fighting in Texas

COMMENT:
C. L. Cole, Gender and Women's Studies Program, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

 

2:00 - 3:45 PM

Don West's Southern Earth

CHAIR:
Rachel Rubin, American Studies Program, University of Massachusetts, Boston
PANELISTS:
James Lorence, Department of History, Gainesville College
Swimming Upstream: The Political Life of Don West, 1929-1941

Chris Green, Department of English, University of Kentucky
Don West and Race in Atlanta, 1946-1948

Jeff Biggers, Independent Scholar
Down Here in Appalachia: Don West's return to the Mountain South, 1965-1992

COMMENT:
Rachel Rubin

 

2:00 - 3:45 PM

Claiming Afghan Women: U.S. Feminism, Cyberspace, and the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) in the Post-9/11 Era

CHAIR:
Myra Marx Feree, Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin, Madison
PAPERS:
Amy Farrell, Women's Studies Program, Dickinson College
The Feminist Majority, Ms., and RAWA: Who Belong in the Feminist Family Tree?

Patrice McDermott, Department of American Studies, University of Maryland Baltimore County
RAWA and the Limits of Human Rights Discourse in Post-9/11 America

Beverly Bickel, Language, Literacy and Culture Program, University of Maryland Baltimore County
No Office Just a Website: Local and Global Interplay on RAWA.Org

COMMENT:
Myra Marx Feree

 

2:00 - 3:45 PM

New Modes of American Imperialism

CHAIR:
Neil Smith, Department of Anthropology, Hunter College, State University of New York
PAPERS:
Ashley Dawson, English Department, College of Staten Island, City University of New York
Brave New Worlds? Biotechnology, Intellectual Property Rights, and New Modes of U.S. Imperialism

Nikhil Pal Singh, Department of History, University of Washington
Toward a Geneology of U.S. Fascism, Post WWII

Harialos Stecopoulos, Department of English, University of Iowa
Putting Africa on Our Map: Contemporary U.S. Culture and the Victorian Imperial Imaginary

COMMENT:
Neil Smith

 

2:00 - 3:45 PM

Community-Based Organizations Respond to State Violence: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

CHAIR:
M. Jacqui Alexander, Gender and Women's Studies, Connecticut College
PAPERS:
Jasbir Kaur Puar, Program in Women's and Gender Studies & Department of Geography, Rutgers University
Homonormativity, Nationalism, and Queer Responses to the War on Terrorism

Amit S. Rai, Program in Literary and Cultural Studies, Eugene Lang College, New School University
Detentions, Police Brutality, and Homeland Insecurity: Organizing for Community Empowerment After 9-11

Christina B. Hanhardt, American Studies Program, New York University
Safety, Sexual Minorities, and the Politics of Anti-Violence

Aleyamma Mathew, National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development
Rise Up! Local Voices, Gathering Strength

COMMENT:
M. Jacqui Alexander

 

2:00 - 3:45 PM

Securing the National Body: A Roundtable on Cold War Immigration Policy

This roundtable brings together a range of scholars from different disciplines and institutions to focus on the McCarran-Walter Act (officially, the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1952), the first major revision of U.S. immigration policy after WWII.

CHAIR:
Siobhan Somerville, Department of English, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
PANELISTS:
Rachel Buff, Department of History, Bowling Green State University

Margot Canaday, Department of History, University of Minnesota

Mae Ngai, Department of History, University of Chicago

Marian L. Smith, Immigration and Naturalization Service

Marc Stein, Department of History, York University

COMMENT:
The Audience

 

2:00 - 3:45 PM

Revolutionary Violence, Community, and History

CHAIR:
Valerie Smith, Department of English & African American Studies Program, Princeton University
PAPERS:
Matthew J. Christensen, Department of English, State University of New York, Stony Brook
Embodied Histories and Communities of Violence in the Early 1970s Militant African American Left

Jane Elliot, Department of English, Rutgers University
Heir Apparent: The Women's Liberation Movement, the 1960s, and the Re-Temporalization of Revolutionary Genealogies

David Anshen, Department of Comparative Literature, State University of New York, Stony Brook
The Specter that Haunts America: The Striving for Totality in Robert Coover's The Public Burning

COMMENT:
Valerie Smith

 

2:00 - 3:45 PM

Willard Motley Reconsidered

CHAIR:
Michael Denning, American Studies Program, Yale University
PAPERS:
Alan Wald, American Culture Program, University of Michigan
Motley the Marxist: Red, Black and Gay

John Charles, Department of English, University of Virginia
What Has All this Traffic Back and Forth Across Borders Done for Me?: Race, Place, and Sexuality in Willard Motley's Knock on Any Door

Rebecca M. Schreiber, Department of American Studies, University of New Mexico
Resort to Exile: Willard Motley and the Elisions of Cold War U.S. Imperialism

COMMENT:
Marlon Ross, Department of English, University of Virginia

Michael Denning

 

2:00 - 3:45 PM

Re-Thinking Nineteenth-Century Sensationalism

CHAIR:
Shelley Streeby, Department of Literature, University of California, San Diego
PANELISTS:
Benjamin Reiss, Department of English, Tulane University
Sensational Madness: Popular Literature and the Nineteenth-Century Insane Asylum

Peter West, Department of English, University of Wyoming
The No-Spin Zone: The Cultural Work of Sensationalism—Then and Now

David A. Zimmerman, Department of English, University of Wisconsin
Sensationalism, Capitalist History, and Apocalypse

COMMENT:
Shelley Streeby

 

2:00 - 3:45 PM

Communities Reclaiming Violated Environments: Gender/Sexuality and Environmental Justice (Roundtable)

This roundtable will approach the topic of intersections between environmental justice perspectives and gender/sexuality concerns by addressing the following question: How do environmental injustices wreak violence upon families, communities, beloved homes and landscapes?; and, How does environmental justice activism re-establish a sense of belonging within a community, within homes, or the larger environment?

CHAIR:
Rachel Stein, Department of English, Sienna College
PANELISTS:
Valerie Kaalund, Department of African and African American Studies, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Diane-Michele Prindeville, Department of Government, New Mexico State University

Robert M. Verchick, School of Law, University of Missouri, Kansas City

Priscilla Solis Ybarra, Department of English, Rice University

Giovanna Di Chiro, Women's Studies Program, Mt Holyoke College

COMMENT:
The Audience

 

2:00 - 3:45 PM

Blood and Belonging: Racial Violence and Struggles for Equality

CHAIR:
Paul Ortiz, Department of Community Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz
PAPERS:
Derek Chang, Department of History and Asian American Studies, Cornell University "A Contempt of Law, a Love of Cruelty": Region and Racial Violence, 1865-1900

Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Department of History & The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in the Americas, Ohio State University, Columbus
If Trouble Get in Our Way: White Violence and Black Self-Defense During the Civil Rights Movement

Charles McKinney, Department of History, Duke University
"They Lynched a Negro in Hoover Time": Race, Violence, and the Limits of Civic Inclusion in Wilson, North Carolina, 1930-1964

COMMENT:
Paul Ortiz

 

4:00 - 5:45 PM

Race, Space, and the City: Post-World War Two Los Angeles and the Cultural Cold War West

CHAIR:
George Sánchez, Program in American Studies and Ethnicity, University of Southern California
PAPERS:
Eric Avila, César E. Chávez Center for Interdisciplinary Instruction in Chicana/o Studies, University of California, Los Angeles
Playing Indian in Postwar Los Angeles: Realities and Representations

Anthony Macías, Ethnic Studies Department, University of California, Riverside "Bringing Music to the People": Chicanos, Youth Culture, and Municipal Politics in Postwar Los Angeles

Sarah Schrank, Department of History, California State University, Long Beach
"Faceless Art and Raceless Monstrosities": Modern Sculpture and Los Angeles' Postwar Political Landscape

Daniel Widener, Department of History, University of California, San Diego Roots of the Dark Tree: The Black Arts Movement in Cold War Los Angeles

COMMENT:
George Sánchez

 

4:00 - 5:45 PM

Remapping Sexual Geographies

CHAIR:
Naomi Greyser, Interdisciplinary Program in Women's Studies, University of California, Irvine
PAPERS:
Nan Alamilla Boyd, Women's and Gender Studies Program, Sonoma State University
Male-Impersonations in San Francisco's Queer Nightclubs, 1933-1945

Andrea Levine, Department of English, George Washington University
Serving the State: Male Sexual Subjectivity and the U.S. National Narrative in Junot Diaz's Drown and Jessica Hagdorn's Dogeaters

Liberty Smith, Department of Literature, University of California, San Diego
"I Assure You that I Know Feminine Psychology Well": Queer National Critique in Lucila Gamero de Medina's Amor Exotico

Kelly Diane Williams, Department of English, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Kate Chopin's Women and the Prostitutes of Storyville: Intimacy, Race, and Domesticity in Late Nineteenth-Century Louisiana

COMMENT:
Naomi Greyser

 

4:00 - 5:45 PM

Neocolonial Traumas and Tropes in American and Pacific Sites

CHAIR:
Peter Chua, Department of Sociology, San Jose State University
PAPERS:
Lucy San Pablo Burns, American Studies Department, University of California, Santa Cruz
Not Quite Beyond Miss Saigon: Negotiating Philipina American Identity on Stage

Vernadette Gonzalez, Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies, University of California, Berkeley,
Nerissa S. Balce, Ethnic Studies Program, University of Oregon
Embodying Empire: Bases, Bodies and a Critique of Hardt and Negri's Empire

Robyn M. Rodriguez, Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley
Citizenship Acts: Immigrants and American National Security Post-9/11

COMMENT:
Peter Chua

 

4:00 - 5:45 PM

Beauty and Pain: Aesthetics of/as Violence in the United States

CHAIR:
Robin F. Bachin, Department of History, University of Miami
PAPERS:
Chris Castiglia, Department of English, Loyola University, Chicago
America the Beautiful

Russ Castronovo, Department of English, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Beauty Along the Color Line: Notes Toward a Methodology

Susette Min, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, The Drawing Center
Asian/American Histories: Reconsidering the Role of Aesthetics in the Works of Yun-Fei Ji and Manuel Ocampo

COMMENT:
Robin F. Bachin

 

4:00 - 5:45 PM

Violence Seen and Unseen: The Production of African American Bodies in Hollywood and the Race Film, 1920-1929

CHAIR:
Judith Weisenfeld, Department of Religion, Vassar College
PAPERS:
Rebecca Garden, Department of English, Columbia University
Bodies, Cuts and Frames: Lynching, Rape, and Narrative Consciousness in Oscar Micheaux's Within Our Gates

David Gerstner, Department of Media Culture, City University of New York, College of Staten Island
The Trickster: Micheaux's Radical Bodies and Cinematic Space

Ryan Jay Friedman, Department of English, Northwestern University
"This Debacle of Human Emotion": Hallelujah as Myth and History

COMMENT:
Judith Weisenfeld

 

4:00 - 5:45 PM

Police in America

CHAIR:
Stacy K. McGoldrick, Department of Sociology, Miami University of Ohio
PAPERS:
Gregory P. Downs, Department of History, Northwestern University
Claiming the Yonder World: Slave Patrols and Slave Communities in the Antebellum South

Joseph Varga,Department of Sociology, New School University
Walking the Irrational Beat: Progressive Reform and the NYPD, 1900-1920

Andrea McArdle, School of Law, City University of New York
Policing and the Anti-Terrorist State: Reconceiving Local Policing, Reimagining Communities after September 11

COMMENT:
William Thomas Allison, Department of History, Weber State University

 

4:00 - 5:45 PM

Word of Mouth: A Conversation about Spoken Word

CHAIR:
Rita Urquijo-Ruiz, Department of Chicano Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
PAPERS:
Démian Pritchard, Department of English, Southern Connecticut State University
A Few Words on Spoken Word: Oral Poetry as a Weapon for Social Change

Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, Program in American Culture & Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Speaking Black Latino/a/ness: Race, Performance, and Poetry in Tato Laviera, Willie Perdomo, and Josefina Baez

Laura Gutiérrez, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Iowa
¡Grítalo!: The Performance of Spoken Word and the Commercial Conundrum-Imperative

COMMENT:
Tato Laviera, Poet, Playwright, Composer

Rita Urquijo-Ruiz

 

4:00 - 5:45 PM

U.S. Imperialisms: Old and New

CHAIR:
Christopher Newfield, Department of English, University of California, Santa Barbara
PAPERS:
Courtney Johnson, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Imperialism and its Discontents: The Disenchantment of Three American Imperialists in the Philippines

Ed Martini, Department of American Studies, University of Maryland, College Park
"One Has to Take Sides": The Quiet American and the War on Terrorism

Pierre Guerlain, Université du Maine, Le Mans
New Warriors among American Foreign Policy Theorists

COMMENT:
Christopher Newfield

 

4:00 - 5:45 PM

Transnational Subjects in International Contexts

CHAIRS:

Ulfried Reichardt, Faculty of Letters, Universität Mannheim

Sabine Sielke, Nordamerikaprogramm, Universität Bonn

PAPERS:
Gail Drakes, Program in American Studies, New York University
Soldiers of the Soil: Connecticut's Caribbean Migrant Laborers in the Media, 1943-45

Leslie Shimotakahara, Department of English, Brown University
The Imaginary Ethnic at Home in America: Nabokov's "Pale Fire"

Malini Johar Schueller, Department of English, University of Florida
The Gender of Globalization: Temporality in Contemporary Asian-American Narratives

Tryon P. Woods, Criminology, Law and Society Program, University of California, Irvine
Detroit, Baghdad, and Afro-Asian Connections

COMMENT:
Ulfried Reichardt

Sabine Sielke

 

4:00 - 5:45 PM

The Female Victim

CHAIR:
Lisa Wilson, Department of History, Connecticut College
PAPERS:
Clare Virginia Eby, Department of English, University of Connecticut, Hartford
"Everything's Different When it's Your Own Flesh and Blood": The Rape of Virginia in John Peale Bishop's Act of Darkness

Frederick Whiting, Department of English, University of Alabama
Body of Evidence: "Behind Every Bad Man . . ."

Leonard Cassuto, Department of English, Fordham University
Serial Killers and the Torture of Sentimentality

COMMENT:
Sean McCann, Department of English, Wesleyan University

 

4:00 - 5:45 PM

Cold War Belonging: The Sexual, Gender and Racial Disciplining of the Inter- and Intra-Nation

CHAIR:
Nicholas S. Sammond, Modeling Interdisciplinary Inquiry, Washington University, Saint Louis
PAPERS:
Christopher A. Vaughan, Department of Journalism and Media Studies, Rutgers University
Reinforcing Belonging: U.S. Press Coverage of the Philippine Huk Rebellion

Danielle Glassmeyer, Department of English, Loyola University, Chicago
Maternal Deprivation, Juvenile Delinquency and America's Designs on Southeast Asia

William J. Spurlin, School of English, Communication, and Philosophy, Cardiff University, Wales
Cold War Technologies of Psychic Violence: The Politics of Race, Gender, and Sexuality Under the Cold War Imaginary and Their Redeployment in U.S. Black Nationalism

COMMENT:
Nicholas S. Sammond

 

4:00 - 5:45 PM

Investigating Violence: Race and National Belonging in Contemporary Detective Fiction

CHAIR:
Orathai Northern, Department of English, University of California, Riverside
PAPERS:
Josiane Peltier, Director, Arizona International College, University of Arizona
Race, History and the Art of Everyday Life in Barbara Neely's Detective Fiction

Saundra Liggins, Department of English, State University of New York, Fredonia
The Psychological Violence of Progress: Integration, Anomie, and the Postmodern Detective in Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist (1999)

Tanya González, Department of English, University of California, Riverside
Longing to (Be)Long: Dinosaur Dics and National Violence in Eric García's Casual Rex

COMMENT:
The Audience

 

4:00 - 5:45 PM

Sexual Violence and Belonging

CHAIR:
Chandan Reddy, Department of English, University of Washington
PAPERS:
Glenda Carpio, Departments of Afro-American Studies and English, Harvard University
History and Sex: Scenes of Fellatio in Gayl Jones's Corregidora and Carlos Fuentes's The Old Gringo

Hershini Young, Department of English, State University of New York, Buffalo
Rose-Colored Glasses: Sex and Belonging in Maryse Conde's Heremakhonon

Gillian Harkins, Department of English, University of Washington
Seduction by Law: Sexual Property and Narrative Belonging in Thereafter Johnnie

COMMENT:
Jodi Melamed, Woodrow Wilson Fellow, Department of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University

 

4:00 - 5:45 PM

Belonging to a Culture of Protest: Identity and Community in the 1960s Antiwar Movement

CHAIR:
Winifred Breines, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Northeastern University
PAPERS:
Ian Lekus, Department of History, Duke University
The Intimacy of Organizing: Sexuality, Class, and Social Movement Culture in the "Sea of the Left" During the Vietnam War

Marian Mollin, Department of History, Virginia Technical University
"Creating a "Living Community": Women and Radical Catholic Resistance to the Vietnam War

Amy Schneidhorst, Department of History, University of Illinois, Chicago
"Freeing Ourselves": Women Mobilized for Change and Changing Consciousness in the Vietnam War Era

COMMENT:
Winifred Breines

 

4:00 - 5:45 PM

Death and Discipline at Sea

CHAIR:
Hester Blum, Department of English, Pennsylvania State University
PAPERS:
Amy Lynn Nolan, Department of English, Michigan State University
"The Mystic Diver Goes Where Few Dare to Tread": Charles Johnson's Middle Passage and the Oceanic Feeling

Robert G. Dryden, Department of English, Hillyer College, University of Hartford
Privateers and Pirates: Assessing Legal and Illegal Domains of the Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century Common Sailor

Lori N. Howard, Department of English, Georgia State University "A Strange Pair to Die Together": Love, Death, and Gender Identity in Frank Norris's Moran of the Lady Letty

Peter J. Bellis, Department of English, University of Miami
The World as a Man of War: The Disciplinary Enclosure of Melville's White Jacket

COMMENT:
Hester Blum

 

6:00 - 7:30 PM

Special Session: Rethinking Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk, 1903-2003

A hundred years ago W.E.B. Du Bois issued a challenge that takes on urgent new meanings today: "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line, —the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea." On the centennial of the publication of The Souls of Black Folk, this interdisciplinary critical panel will discuss its significance in a variety of national and transnational arenas. Panelists will consider the connection of Souls to Du Bois's other work, the reasons for its canonization, and the relations between Du Bois's writing and activism, scholarship, and pedagogy, in range of political, literary and historical contexts.

CHAIR:
Nellie McKay, Department of Afro-American Studies, University of Wisconsin
PANELISTS:
Nahum Chandler, Department of English, Johns Hopkins University

Adolph Reed, Department of Political Science, New School University

Vilashini Cooppan, Department of Comparative Literature, Yale University

Stephanie Shaw, Department of History, Ohio State University

COMMENT:
The Audience