Conference Q & A for graduate students

Conference Opportunities in American Studies:

a graduate student advising session

Tuesday, January 20

3222 Angell Hall

4 PM

When should you start thinking about conferences? Which should you apply to? Where do you find CFPs and funding? How do you write an engaging abstract and paper? What makes a memorable presentation? Is “networking” worth your while?

The American Studies Consortium warmly invites fellow graduate students working on the history, literature, and culture of the Americas to a peer advising session on navigating academic conferences. Advanced graduate students from the departments of American Culture, English, and History will briefly speak about their experiences attending and presenting at major conferences in their fields, and invite your questions at an informal Q & A session on all aspects of the conference process.

While this session will be geared in particular to conferences relevant to American Studies, it is also intended to provide a friendly forum on finding, applying to, and presenting at academic conferences more generally. Everyone is welcome!

Light refreshments will be provided. 

Tuesday, October 7: faculty and graduate student roundtable on public scholarship

“The American [Public] Scholar”: a faculty and graduate student roundtable 

Tuesday, October 7 

 3222 Angell Hall 

4.30 PM 

“There goes in the world a notion, that the scholar should be a recluse, a valetudinarian, — as unfit for any handiwork or public labor, as a penknife for an axe.” --Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar” (1837) 

Please join the American Studies Consortium for a roundtable discussion on the contemporary meanings and manifestations of American public scholarship. A hundred and eighty years after Emerson’s call to (scholarly) action, what possibilities and pitfalls exist for American citizen-scholars? How are institutions of higher education creating opportunities to re-envision or re-invigorate the relationship of the humanities to public life? University of Michigan faculty and graduate students will discuss the ways in which they are conceptualizing and mobilizing public scholarship, transcending institutional forms, and encouraging civic engagement.

With:
Julie Ellison, Professor of English and American Culture
Petra Kuppers, Professor of English, Theatre and Dance, and Women's Studies
Jacqueline Antonovich, PhD Candidate, History
Jina Kim, PhD Candidate, English & Women's Studies
Amanda Hendrix-Komoto, PhD Candidate, History

Please refer to the Workshop Files section of this site to download an essay by Julie Ellison for this event.

Light refreshments will be served.

Panel Discussion: What is a USist? (Or are you an Americanist?)

September 16, 2013, 4pm, 3222 Angell Hall

Photo by Flickr user GillyBerlin.

What is a USist? (Or are you an Americanist?)
An interdisciplinary panel discussion on approaches to defining and doing work in US/American studies across a wide range of historical periods, featuring:

Xiomara Santamarina, Associate Professor, University of Michigan, English, Department of Afroamerican and African Studies, and American Culture

Aaaron Seaman, University of Chicago, Department of Comparative Human Development

Frank Kelderman, University of Michigan, American Studies

Lisa Jong, University of Michigan, English Language & Literature

Snacks provided!

This event will also serve as our kick-off for the year, so anyone who is interested in suggesting a speaker, a topic of future discussion, or would like to present work this year will have a chance to contribute and find out how to be a part of the USists workshop this year.

Doing Archive Research

April 17, 2013 - Room 3222 Angell Hall, 4pm
Panel presentation and Q&A on doing archive work towards and around your dissertation

Presenters:
Cat Cassel on: Philip K Dick and hassle with archive copyright owners

Dina Karageorgos on: Richard Wright, Sarah Wright, doing interviews, and losing your images

Jesse Carr on: The Arts of Citizenship project, and working with microfilm

Daphna Atias on: Emily Dickinson and finding what you didn't necessarily come to find

Ali Chetwynd on: William Gaddis and hunting down fiction's non-fictional sources

Chelsea Del Rio on: Karate Lesbians and lesbian feminism

Kya Mangrum on: Literary archive work with visual/photographic material