American Studies at Kennesaw State University

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.