ACADEMIC YEAR 2006-2007
Doctoral students in American Studies at the University of Minnesota are engaged in multiple community action and academic activities. American Studies students are always accomplishing and doing more than teaching their own classes or assisting professors in their classrooms, taking classes, writing dissertation chapters, and filling out grant applications and graduate school forms. Like the Department staff who support them and the professors who guide them, American Studies students balance adult personal lives, scholarly passions, and public engagements with integrity, innovation, and a critical eye. This site is dedicated to appreciating and commending American Studies PhD students by making their accomplishments part of the public they seek to challenge and support.
Beginning with those students who have either graduated or who have been in the program the longest, below you will find listings of the most recent accomplishments of the PhD students in the Department of American Studies at the University of Minnesota. Following some of the links will take you to various organizations and associations, articles, commentary, and/or images related to a particular student's contribution. Please note that the list below includes only those who submitted contributions and all images were added by the site's designer. Critical Contributions will be updated twice annually.
Contact the site designer, Lisa Arrastía, for more information.
WENDY GENIUSZ
GRADUATING CLASS of 2006
Wendy entered American Studies with the 2000 cohort. Her dissertation, Decolonizing Botanical Anishinaabe Knowledge: A Biskaabiiyang Approach, examined the ways Ojibwe plant knowledge is portrayed in the academic record and preserved in Anishinaabe communities with the goal of finding ways to decolonize this knowledge and make it more accessible to Anishinaabe people.
Kudos are due to Wendy. Before graduating, she was hired as an Assistant Professor of American Multicultural Studies at Minnesota State University-Moorhead. Congratulations, Wendy!
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COHORT 1999
DAVID A. GRAY
FSA-OWI photography by John Vachon.
"Negro Boy, Cincinnati, Ohio" (1942 or 1943)
PUBLICATION: "New Uses for Old Photos: Renovating FSA Photographs in World War II Posters." American Studies (forthcoming).
PRESENTATIONS:
-“Cultivating Cooperative Dispositions: Motivational Posters in the Industrial Workplace, 1923-1948.” Industrial Relations Center. University of Minnesota. 30 March 2007.
-"Teaching History and Visual Literacy through World War II Posters.." Mid-America American Studies Association conference: Teaching as if American Studies Matters. Kansas City, Missouri. April 2007.
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COHORT 2000
MEGAN FEENEY
MAASA Graduate Student Representative
PUBLICATION: “Enseñándolos a Ver: Hollywood in Havana and the Birth of a Critical Practice, 1897-1933." The Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies. 15.3 (December 2006).
PRESENTATION: Megan proposed, helped to plan, and presented “Teaching History and Film at St. Olaf College” at this year’s MAASA (Mid-America American Studies Association) conference: Teaching American Studies. Kansas City. 13-14 April.
STEPHEN YOUNG
AWARD: Teaching Commendation from English Composition Program. 21 September 2006. Congratulations, Stephen!
PRESENTATION: “If I Only Knew Then… Pedagogical Advice for/from Graduate Instructors Teaching Across the Academy." Mid-America American Studies Association Annual Conference: Teaching as if American Studies Matters. Kansas City, Missouri. 13 April 2007.
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COHORT 2001
JILL DOERFLER
AWARD: Jill recently accepted the Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship in American Indian Studies for next year at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Congratulations, Jill!
OTHER NEWS: Jill plans to defend her dissertation, “Fictions and Fractions: Reconciling Tribal Citizenship with Cultural Values Among the White Earth Anishinaabeg,” this summer. She will present “"White Earth Anishinaabe Authors: Identity, Survivance and Postindians” at Indigenous Studies in May."
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COHORT 2002
PAMELA BUTLER
AWARD: Received the 2007 Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship in Women's Studies from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. Congratulations, Pam!
PRESENTATIONS:
-Association for Asian American Studies national conference. April 2007.
-National Women's Studies Association conference. June 2007.
KIM PARK NELSON
PUBLICATIONS:
-"Periglacial Appalachia: Paleoclimatic Significance of Blockfield Elevation Gradients, Eastern U.S.A.” with Frederick E. Nelson and Michael T. Walegur. Permafrost and Periglacial Processes. 18 (2007): 1-13.
-“Shopping for Children in the International Marketplace: The Economics of Transnational Adoption” in Outsiders Within. Eds. Jane Jeong Trenka, Chinyere Oparah, and Sun Yung Shin. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2006.
CLICK HERE to hear Kim read her essay at the Outsiders Within Book Release Party in Minneapolis, MN. The essay provides an academic analysis of the situation, and the challenges and opportunities to be discovered.
-“Culture Camps” in The Praeger Handbook of Adoption (Volume 1). Edited by Kathy Shepherd Stolley and Vern L. Bullough. Westport,CT: Praeger Publishers, 2006.
PRESENTATIONS:
-Selection Committee Chair and Proceedings Editor. First International Korean Adoption Studies Research Symposium. International Korea Adoptee Associations Gathering 2007. Seoul, South Korea. 31 July 2007.
-“Transracial and Transcultural Landscapes of Asian American Transnational Adoption” session. Association for Asian American Studies Conference. Paper titled: “Seoul Survivors: Korean American Adoptees in Urban Korea.” NYC. 4-8 April 2007.
-St. John's University Adoption Conference: “Families Without Borders? Adoption Across Culture and Race.” Workshop titled, “Adoption Research from the Inside Out: Making Space for Adoptee Researchers and Professionals.” NYC. October 2006.
PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT:
-Minnesota Still Present Pasts: Korean Americans and the Forgotten War multimedia art exhibit. Oral historian for HERE: The First Portrait Book of Korean Adoptees Living in Minnesota.
HERE Korean adoptee portraits and oral histories are featured as a local component of the exhibit. Intermedia Arts. Minneapolis, Minnesota. 14 April-2 June 2007.
-Interview Contributor. Minnesota Monthly Magazine. "Asian Fusion," on Korean adoption in Minnesota by Elizabeth Larsen. January 2007, pages 75-80.
SOOJIN PATE
First Person Plural (2000). Directed by Deann Borshay Liem
Excerpt from Liem's documentary: Download file.
PRESENTATIONS:
-"Personal Narratives as History: Examining Memory and History in Korean Adoptee Documentaries.” Film and History Conference. 9 November 2006.
-Moderator, Korean Adoptee Filmmaker Panel for Still Present Pasts exhibit at the University of Minnesota. 5 May 2007.
-"Contested Terrains: Memory and History in Korean Adoptee Documentaries." Still Present Pasts exhibit at Intermedia Arts. June 2007
-Interviewed by Martha Vickery for "Film Study Looks at Memory and History in Adopted Koreans." Korean Quarterly 10.3 (Spring 2007): 70-71.
AWARDS:
-American Studies Travel Grant 2006
-Community of Scholars Program Travel Grant 2006
-American Studies Scholarly Research Grant 2006
-Graduate School Thesis Research Grant 2006-2007
-Harold Leonard Film Fellowship 2007-2008
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COHORT 2003
ADAM BAHNER
As he continues to prepare for his preliminary examinations in the fall, in November, Adam was appointed to the Minneapolis Commission on Civil Rights for a two-year term. Click to watch Adam’s Youtube channel.
DANNY LACHANCE
Danny LaChance is Associate Editor of Reach, the magazine of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota.
PUBLICATION: "Last Words, Last Meals, Last Stands: Agency and Individuality in the Modern Execution Process." Law and Social Inquiry (forthcoming).
PRESENTATION: "Punishment and Anxiety in an Age of Consensus." Law and Society Association's Annual Conference. To be delivered at the annual meetings in Berlin, Germany. July 2007.
RYAN MURPHY
PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT:
- Ryan is on the program committee for the Working Class Studies Association, to be held in Saint Paul from 14-17 June at Macalester College.
-“THE REVOLTING QUEERS.” A group of local artists, activists, and intellectuals are working together to build and artistic and activist critique of the gay pride festival that will debut as a demonstration within the parade itself. Their activism will build on the scholarly work of intellectuals from Lisa Duggan and Rod Ferguson to Janet Jakobsen and Gayatri Gopinath, and so many others who have criticized a gay activist movement demanding "equality" via an agenda of consumption and domesticity. Ryan and the group will be staging a "funeral" for gay politics, noting its tragic death amongst floats for granite countertops, Ikea, and Target. A benefit social and scholarly lecture by Lisa Duggan on the weekend of 31 March will be the first Revolting Queers event.
OTHER NEWS: Ryan is co-editing with Michael Franklin, Larry Knopp, Kevin Murphy, Jennifer L. Pierce, Jason Ruiz, and Alex Urquhart, a volume of scholarly essays tentatively titled, Queer Twin Cities. University of Minnesota Press, 2008. QTC is an interpretive project of the Twin Cities LGBT Oral History Project. The editors will place themes emerging from the over 100 ethnographic interviews in the context of emerging conversations in queer studies and related fields, notably critical geography, queer of color critique, woman of color feminism, and political economy.
ALEX URQUHART
Currently Alex is working on an article that examines the role of public health in articulating modes of accumulation. He is specifically looking at an 1874 small pox epidemic in Minnesota, known as the “Indian and Lumberjack” epidemic. Alex argues that although this outbreak was not truly an epidemic, it caused a large stir in Minnesota and served to culturally construct American Indians as children.
In addition to the research for this article, Alex is also looking at a Black sex worker in the Twin Cities and how her story is used to dismantle the Minnesota’s welfare state as well as how her story argues for certain forms of flexible accumulation as a public health goal.
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COHORT 2005
AWARD: Teaching Commendation from the University of Minnesota English Composition Program. January 2007.
PUBLICATIONS:
-“Capital’s Daisy Chain: Exposing the Chicago Corporate Coalition.” Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies (forthcoming).
-“This is American and Strange: Mediated Responses to the (American Indian) Child.” The Capilano Review. Series 2.47 (fall 2006): 79-83.
-“Gangster.” XCP: Cross-Cultural Poetics 15/16 (2006): 210.
-With Cathryn Merla Watson and Richa Nagar. Review of Black, Brown, Yellow, and Left: Radical Activism in Los Angeles, by Laura Pulido. Antipode (forthcoming).
-Review of Ties that Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom, by Tiya Miles. XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics (forthcoming).
-“Ties that Bind: An Interview with Tiya Miles.” Monthly Review Zine. 5 March 2007.
PRESENTATIONS:
--“Capital’s Daisy Chain: Exposing the Chicago Corporate Coalition.” Working Class Studies Association Annual Conference. 14 June 2007.
-“Critical Literacy, Critical Pedagogies, and Educational Constructions.” Department of Education, EDUC 209: Educational Psychology. Davis & Elkins College. Elkins, W. VA. 23 March 2007.
-Odyssey Charter School. Denver, CO. “The Gap and the Hairy Gorilla: The Myth of America’s Achievement Gap.” 5 February 2007.
EMILY SMITH
PUBLICATION: “Shaping Children or Attitudes: A Review of Surgically Shaping Children,” ed. Erik Parens. Medical Humanities Review (Spring 2007).
JASMINE KAR TANG
PRESENTATION: With Cathryn Merla Watson. "Critical Race Pedagogy." Mid-America American Studies Association Annual Conference. Kansas City, MO. 14 April 2007.
Abstract - The participants in this roundtable are American studies graduate students who are interested in the pedagogical implications of race in higher education. In a moment when such institutions are increasingly influenced by neoliberal ideology, which functions to corporatize the university, how do we teach students to critically interrogate constructions of difference in ways that illuminate rather than obscure historical-structural systems of oppression? This roundtable seeks to move beyond reactive teaching formulations and hypothetical scenarios. How can we design curricula, lead discussions, and structure our courses in ways that enable and nurture critical consciousness in the face of persistent colorblindness and liberal multiculturalism that undermine the critical treatment of difference?
OTHER NEWS: Jasmine was admitted to University College Dublin, Clinton Institute Summer School, which will bring together scholars and graduate students from around the world to engage in wide-ranging discussion in the interdisciplinary field of American Studies. 16-22 July 2007.
CATHRYN MERLA WATSON
Más(s) Color Student Coordinator
AWARD: Winner of the Ford Pre-Doctoral Fellowship. Felicidades, Catie!
PUBLICATION: With Richa Nagar and Lisa Arrastía. Review of Black, Brown, Yellow, and Left: Radical Activism in Los Angeles, by Laura Pulido. Antipode (forthcoming).
PRESENTATIONS: With Jasmine Kar Tang, "Critical Race Pedagogy." Mid-America American Studies Association annual conference. Kansas City, MO. 14 April 2007.
See partial abstract from JASMINE KAR TANG above.
KARISSA WHITE
AWARD: Winner of the Ford Pre-Doctoral Fellowship. Congratulations, Karissa!
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COHORT 2006
James P. Brown
ARTICLE: "The Disobedience of John William Ward: Myth, Symbol, and Political Praxis in the Vietnam War Era" American Studies (forthcoming).
JULIANA PEGUES
PRESENTATION: "Workers and War: The Connected Histories of Japanese American Internment and the Mexican Bracero Program." Association for Asian American Studies. NYC. April 2007.
COMMISSIONED PLAY: "Q&A.” Produced by Mu Performing Arts and the Jerome Foundation. Reading: January 2007 (workshop), July 2007 (full play). Contact Juliana this summer for more details at