Dear Frosh, 

I’m thrilled to announce a special RACE & CITIZENSHIP in AMST  faculty panel on Mon. Feb. 10, 4:15-6, Downey 113, featuring Professor J, Kehaulani Kauanui, Professor Amy Tang, Professor Laura Grappo, and me.  Amazing Almond Cookies From Lucibellos in New Haven and Fresh Apple Cider from Lyman’s Orchards in Middlefield will sweeten the food for thought. Please join us in this gathering of American Studies critical energy, especially if you’re considering looking into the critical power and scope of American Studies as a major.  AMST asks the big questions!

Best, Professor Pfister

***

Race and Citizenship in American Studies

 Joel Pfister, Amy Tang, Laura Grappo, J. Kēhaulani Kauanui

(Also featuring Great Almond Cookies and Fresh Apple Cider) 

Monday, February 10^th, 4:15-6pm, Downey 113

Come learn what American Studies can tell us about race and citizenship.  Panelists will explore this crucial field in both historical and contemporary terms and discuss new research directions. Topics include settler colonialism and the structural legacy of slavery, Native Studies, Latin@ Studies, Asian American Studies, and comparative work with African American Studies. 

Joel Pfister has published five books and two are on American Indians:  Individuality Incorporated: Indians and the Multicultural Modern (2004) and The Yale Indian:  The Education of Henry Roe Cloud (2009).  These books explore how government policies and programs to “citizenize” (a popular word in the late 19th and early 20th centuries) diverse people called “Indians” were linked to gender construction, heteronormative family life, emotional life, “individualizing,” class formation, and, very important, real estate acquisition and the shaping of workers.  He is Chair of American Studies and Olin Professor of English and American Studies.  

Amy Tang has been Assistant Professor of English and American Studies at Wesleyan since 2009. She teaches courses on contemporary Asian American literature and culture, on race and representation, and on literary and cultural theory. She is completing a book, Repetition and Race: Asian American Literature and the Politics of Form, which explores the relationship between aesthetic form and politics in the era of liberal multiculturalism. She holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University (2009) and a B.A. from Harvard University (1994). 

Laura Grappo began teaching at Wesleyan in American Studies in Fall 2013.  She came from Dickinson College, where she was an assistant professor of American Studies.  Grappo earned her undergraduate degree from Wesleyan in 2001 and her Ph.D. from Yale in 2011.  She is currently working on a book titled, Home and Other Myths: A Lexicon of Queer Inhabitation.  Grappo teaches courses in Latina/o Studies, Queer Studies, and cultural theory.

J. Kēhaulani Kauanui is an Associate Professor of American Studies and Anthropology. She is the author of Hawaiian Blood: Colonialism and the Politics of Sovereignty and Indigeneity (Duke University Press, 2008). She is one of six founders of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, and is a current member of the American Studies Association National Council. Kauanui has also worked as producer and host of a public affairs radio program through WESU and widely syndicated, “Indigenous Politics: From Native New England and Beyond.” She also collaborated with a group of Wesleyan students on an anarchist politics radio show, “Horizontal Power Hour,” which is now re-launching with a new team as “Anarchy on Air” in February 2014.

Sponsored by the American Studies Department and the American Studies Majors Committee