American Studies
News Archive
Graduate School Open House scheduled for August 1, 2009
Posted on 07/01/09
Grad School Open House is Saturday, August 1 from 10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Tour the campus, get your parking pass, your student id, etc.
When: 10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. in the University Rooms of the Student Center.
MA in American Studies (MAST) Program Open House -
Where: Room 5074 at the Social ...
Time:12:30 pm-2:00 pm Saturday, August 1st
Location:Kennesaw State University, Social Science Bld Room 5074
RSVP - 678-797-2504 or cmille72@kennesaw.edu
Spring 2010 Admissions for MAST
Posted on 05/28/09
The M.A. in AS program announces a Spring 2010 admission cycle for the program. All application materials are due in the Graduate Admissions office by November 1, 2009.
You can find info on how to apply here:
http://www.ksu-amst.com/documents/how_do_I_apply.doc
The Masters of Arts in American Studies –– drawing from disciplines that include history‚ sociology‚ foreign languages‚ communications‚ business‚ literature and art –– is designed to attract professionals working in local cultural sites such as museums‚ national parks and public history venues and in non−profit and corporate organizations whose programs reach diverse audiences in the U.S. and abroad. The degree also targets high school teachers who want to focus their graduate studies in the humanities rather than on pedagogy‚ as well as students from abroad interested in studying American culture.
Graduate Research Assistantships available for 2009-10
Posted on 05/13/09
Students who have applied to the MA in American Studies (MAST) program for this coming year are invited to apply for our Graduate Research Assistantship (GRA) program. Besides offering a tuition waiver and a stipend, this is a great opportunity to work on AS-related projects and build your portfolio.
A Graduate Research Assistantship (GRA) is a learning opportunity for MA in American Studies (MAST) students which supports professionalism in the context of the program and provides financial support. A MAST GRA works with one or more faculty members on projects related to the faculty member’s research, public scholarship, university or professional service, or teaching.
For more information, see the Graduate Research Assistantship (GRA) link on the AMST website.
Second Deadline for Fall 2009 Admissions
Posted on 03/24/09
The M.A. in AS program announces a second deadline for Fall 2009 admission to the program. All application materials are due in the Graduate Admissions office by May 1.
You can find info on how to apply here:
http://www.ksu-amst.com/documents/how_do_I_apply.doc
The Masters of Arts in American Studies –– drawing from disciplines that include history‚ sociology‚ foreign languages‚ communications‚ business‚ literature and art –– is designed to attract professionals working in local cultural sites such as museums‚ national parks and public history venues and in non−profit and corporate organizations whose programs reach diverse audiences in the U.S. and abroad. The degree also targets high school teachers who want to focus their graduate studies in the humanities rather than on pedagogy‚ as well as students from abroad interested in studying American culture.
Business, Culture, and Society Series 2009-2010: “The Global Consumer”
Posted on 03/11/09
Featuring programs on topics ranging from salsa music to Bollywood Cinema to advertising in the global marketplace, Kennesaw State University’s annual Business, Culture, and Society series will revolve around “The Global Consumer” theme during the 2009-2010 school year. As one of several co-sponsors of the cross-campus interdisciplinary series, the American Studies Program will launch “The Global Consumer” in September and October 2009 with events organized by American Studies faculty.
Although it has Caribbean roots, salsa has evolved into a music and dance phenomenon from New York to Tokyo. An examination of the music’s global significance will serve as a vibrant introduction to important series themes such as cultural cross-fertilization in artistic production and leisure activities. Our program on salsa will feature a lecture and class visits by Marisol Berríos-Miranda, an ethnomusicologist from the University of Washington. Berríos-Miranda co-curated the museum exhibit, “American Sabor: Latinos in U.S. Popular Music,” which originated at Experience Music Project in Seattle and is currently on view at the Miami Museum of Science. She also contributed to the important anthologies, Situating Salsa: Global Markets and Local Meanings in Latin Popular Music, and Musical Migrations: Transnationalism and Cultural Hybridity in Latin/o America. Our program on salsa will culminate with a concert and dance, tentatively scheduled for Sept. 17, 2009.
“Bollywood” may be most familiar these days for its association with the recent Academy- Award-winning film, Slumdog Millionaire. But “Bollywood” is one of the main channels through which India has been globalizing, drawing from elements of other societies’ popular cultures while also sending out products reflecting those exchanges. Coming to KSU in mid-October 2009 to help us understand these processes will be Sangita Gopal, who teaches courses on film and literature at the University of Oregon. Gopal recently co-edited Global Bollywood: Travels of Hindi Song and Dance, which traces the influence of the Bollywood aesthetic around the world. She has also published articles on cultural exchange in cyberspace, and is currently writing a book entitled Post-Nuptial Contracts: Conjugality and Nationalism in South Asian Literature and Film.
The Business, Culture, and Society series, “The Global Consumer,” will continue throughout the school year with programs on consumption and technological change, global discrepancies in health care, and advertising in a globalizing world, among other topics.
Board of Regents approves Master of Arts in American Studies at KSU
Posted on 12/07/08
In fall 2009, Kennesaw State will start offering a new Master of Arts in American Studies‚ an interdisciplinary degree designed to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse work force in northwest Georgia. The new degree‚ approved by the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia at its Nov. 10 meeting‚ brings to 21 the number of master’s−level programs offered at Kennesaw State. KSU is the only university in the USG to offer such a degree.
The Masters of Arts in American Studies –– drawing from disciplines that include history‚ sociology‚ foreign languages‚ communications‚ business‚ literature and art –– is designed to attract professionals working in local cultural sites such as museums‚ national parks and public history venues and in non−profit and corporate organizations whose programs reach diverse audiences in the U.S. and abroad. The degree also targets high school teachers who want to focus their graduate studies in the humanities rather than on pedagogy‚ as well as students from abroad interested in studying American culture.
See the KSU news releases here.
Elledge Wins Award
Posted on 08/22/08
Last June, Jim Elledge’s A History of My Tattoo, a book-length poem, won the 2006 Georgia Author of the Year Award in Poetry and the Lambda Award for Best Gay Poetry in 2006. The “Lammie” is awarded to books published throughout the U.S. It was also a finalist for the Thom Gunn Award for gay poets, sponsored by the Publishing Triangle. He read a section from the book at the Decatur Book Festival in September. A History of My Tattoo is anchored in that moment of history when the lives of Vietnam vets and the juggernaut of HIV/AIDS intersected. During the summer, he spent two weeks at the University of Chicago on a CETL grant, conducting research on gay life in the Windy City from approximately 1890 to 1930 for his critical biography of outsider artist/novelist Henry Darger.
Elledge is Professor of English, Director of the Professional Writing Program, and an American Studies Program Affiliate.
American Studies program affiliates funded by CETL
Posted on 04/29/08
This was an award-winning year for American Studies program affiliates. In Spring 2008, KSU’s Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning funded work by Professor of English Linda Niemann, Assistant Professor of Foreign Language Ernesto Silva, and Associate Professor of History LeeAnn Lands.
Niemann’s award will allow her to spend Fall 2008 completing her third book, entitled Railroad Noir: Railroading at the End of the Century in the American West. Silva’s project, “Global and Local Perspectives between the US and Chile: A Cross-Cultural Comparative Study of Environment and Culture” will involve four undergraduates in comparing American and Chilean perspectives on environment, geography, and culture. Silva, co-investigator Nancy Hoalst-Pullen (Geography and Anthropology), and the four undergraduate researchers will visit Chile in July 2008. Lands will work with four to eight undergraduate researchers investigating housing landscapes in metropolitan Atlanta in Summer and Fall 2008.
Ed Chan spends a year as guest professor at Kobe College
Posted on 04/29/08
American Studies program-affiliate Ed Chan will spend the next year as the endowed Drake Guest Professor in Comparative Literature at Kobe College in Japan. Chan plans to use film, literature and television in his classes to explore cultural exchanges between Japan and the U.S.. In and outside of his classes, Chan will be asking students to write about, explore, and analyze the way they see American culture.
Chan sees the position as helping to fulfill KSU’s “Get Global” initiative, part of a larger project to enhance global learning opportunities.
G. Gonzalez offered reflections on a century of Mexican migration
Posted on 04/14/08
Noted scholar Gilbert G. Gonzalez, author of “Guest Workers or Colonized Labor?: Mexican Labor Migration to the United States,” offered reflections on a century of Mexican migration to students and faculty on April 3rd and 4th. A professor of social science and head of the University of California-Irvine’s Chicano Studies Program, Gonzalez’s published works include the books Guest Workers or Colonized Labor?: Mexican Labor Migration to the United States; Culture of Empire: American Writers, Mexico, and Mexican Immigrants, 1880-1930; and Chicano Education During the Era of Segregation.
In the two sessions at KSU, Gonzalez highlighted the often overlooked Bracero program, the U.S.-Mexico partnership in which more than 4 million Mexican farm laborers came to work in American fields during World War II to ease purported agricultural labor shortages. Gonzalez pointed out that the Bracero program and recently proposed guest worker programs mirror patterns of other colonial nations in the world.
The sessions were sponsored by KSU’s Shaw Chair of Business and Economic History, American Studies Program and the A.L. Burruss Institute of Public Service and Research.
HSS expands its interdiscplinary programs
Posted on 12/07/07
The College of HSS currently houses six interdiscplinary academic programs, including American Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, Peace Studies, Africa and African Diaspora Studies, Asian Studies, and Environmental Studies (with the College of Science and Math). Students or faculty interested in these programs can visit the HSS Interdisciplinary Program suite in SO2005.
From left to right, AADS faculty members Oumar Cherif Diop, AADS Coordinator Nuru Akinyemi, and American Studies faculty member Linda Niemann.
American Studies program pursues relationship with Hassan II University
Posted on 11/05/07
KSU is currently formalizing a relationship between the Moroccan-American studies program between Hassan II University, Ben M’sik, Casablanca, Morocco and our transnationally-focused American studies program. 
Supported by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences the effort is seen to have potential links to other departments and programs in the College. In October of 2007, American Studies faculty members Nina Morgan and Sarah Robbins traveled to Hassan II, along with HSS Dean Richard Vengroff and museum specialist Cindy Vengroff. The team gave lectures on American politics, popular culture, and museum studies, and held planning sessions supporting future collaborative work. KSU will sign an agreement with Hassan II later this year, establishing formal relations between our two universities.
Beowulf earns 4-star review at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival
Posted on 10/08/07
The British Theatre Guide gave a four-star review for Beowulf at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Scotland (August 2007), directed by Assistant Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies and American Studies program affiliate Hannah Harvey. Harvey led a group of KSU students in their original storytelling adaptation of the epic poem. The Edinburgh Fringe is the world’s largest international performance festival.
Harvey is currently directing an original adaptation of Appalachian coal miners’ stories, Out of the Dark, at KSU. The play previously earned three Year’s Best awards (for Actor, Production, New Play) for its NC production (Independent Magazine). Her recent co-authored book chapter, “Hot Bodies on Campus: The Performance of Porn Chic” (Hannah Harvey and Karen Robinson) appears in Pop Porn: Pornography in American Culture (Greenwood Press).
Chan receives 2007 Battisti Award
Posted on 09/30/07
The Society for Utopian Studies has awarded Assistant Professor of English and American Studies program affiliate Ed Chan the 2007 Eugenio Battisti Award for the Best Article in Utopian Studies. Chan will receive the award for “Utopia and the Problem of Race: Accounting for the Remainder in the Imagination of the 1970s Utopian Subject” at the Society for Utopian Studies meeting in Toronto.
The SUS Eugenio Battisti Award for the Best Article recognizes Eugenio Battisti (1924-1989), a much beloved scholar of utopian studies and the founder of the Associazione internazionale per gli studi sulle utopie.
Reeve publishes “Crossing Borders, Finding Common Ground”
Posted on 09/30/07
Kay Reeve, Professor of History and AS program affiliate, published “Crossing Borders, Finding Common Ground: Interdisciplinary Approaches and Sources for Teaching Western History” in the spring 2007 volume of Journal of the West. The article describes the AMST3750 Regional American Cultures course on the American West that Reeve co-taught with Professor of English and AS program affiliate Linda Niemann. The course, as Reeve describes, “used a combination of primary documents, scholarly essays, literary fiction, visual texts, such as film and fine art as texts, and a combination of traditional lecture and guided class discussion” to help students “reconstruct their own definitions of the West and what is Western.”
Reeve (far right), speaking at a November 2007 roundtable discussion on “What is American Studies?” with American Studies faculty members Jesse Benjamin and Dede Yow.
Bombingham adopted by university book programs
Posted on 09/30/07
Professor Tony Grooms’ novel BOMBINGHAM has been adopted by three university common book programs for Fall 2007. Freshman students at Marquette University in Wisconsin, SUNY Oswego in New York and Doane College in Nebraska read and discussed Grooms’ novel and related topics dealing with the Civil Rights Movement and race relations.
Lewis publishes history of Little Rock school crisis
Posted on 09/26/07
University of Arkansas Press announces the 2007 publication of Race, Politics, and Memory: A Documentary History of the Little Rock School Crisis by Catherine M. Lewis and J. Richard Lewis.
In 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Arkansas governor Orval Faubus viewed the desegregation of Little Rock Central High through very different lenses. The president worried that displays of rampant racism tarnished the nation’s reputation as a global power and undermined efforts to thwart the spread of communism. The governor sided with his segregationist constituents to guarantee his political survival. For the nine teenagers caught in the middle, Central High was a cauldron of racial tension. These students represented the black and moderate-white community’s desire for social justice. The documents collected in this book—newspaper articles, political cartoons, excerpts from oral histories and memoirs, speeches, photographs, and editorials—help readers understand how this local, southern conflict became a national and international cause.
The documents selected cover the period 1900-2006. Some have never been published before or are in out-of-print sources. Each reveals something significant about the event and its aftermath, while some offer an unconventional or unexpected perspective on the crisis and the issues it raised. A timeline, a list of key players in the crisis, and a selected, annotated bibliography are included.
Catherine Lewis is Associate Professor of History at Kennesaw State University.
Now hiring!
Posted on 09/01/07
KSU is accepting applications for two positions with joint appointments in American Studies. The Dept of History and Philosophy and the American Studies Program are accepting applications for a nine-month, tenure-track assistant professor specializing in the history of Mexico or Central America beginning fall 2008. Specialties of particular interest include labor, transnational migration, and/or community formation. The Dept of English and the American Studies Program are accepting applications for a nine-month, tenure-track assistant professor specializing in Latino Studies beginning fall 2008. Areas of interest include (but are not limited to) transnationalism, diasporas, border studies, hybridity in popular culture and/or hybrid literatures, ethnic studies, cultural difference, politics, theory, or performance.
See http://www.kennesaw.edu/facultypositions/ for full position descriptions and application procedures.
“Don’t Ask What I Shot”
Posted on 07/14/07
In “Don’t Ask What I Shot: How Eisenhower’s Love of Golf Helped Shape 1950s America‚” Lewis takes a close look at Eisenhower’s passion for golf and the impact his dedication to the game had on our national culture. During Eisenhower’s two terms in office the commander in chief played nearly 800 rounds.
Of the seven books she has authored or co−authored‚ Lewis said “Don’t Ask What I Shot” is by far her favorite. “I feel like I’ve reintroduced the president to a new generation‚” she says.
Now hiring!
Posted on 07/14/07
KSU is accepting applications for two positions with joint appointments in American Studies. The Dept of History and Philosophy and the American Studies Program are accepting applications for a nine-month, tenure-track assistant professor specializing in the history of Mexico or Central America beginning fall 2008. Specialties of particular interest include labor, transnational migration, and/or community formation. The Dept of English and the American Studies Program are accepting applications for a nine-month, tenure-track assistant professor specializing in Latino Studies beginning fall 2008. Areas of interest include (but are not limited to) transnationalism, diasporas, border studies, hybridity in popular culture and/or hybrid literatures, ethnic studies, cultural difference, politics, theory, or performance. See http://www.kennesaw.edu/facultypositions/ for full position descriptions and application procedures.
Interested in supporting the study of American cultures?
Posted on 07/14/07
KSU’s Foundation has an account specifically earmarked for American Studies programs and activities. Checks should be made payable to the KSU Foundation and designated to the American Studies Program. Send your donations to Kennesaw State University Foundation, 1000 Chastain Road, Mailbox #9102, Kennesaw, GA 30144.
