Graduate Certificate | American
Studies Dissertation Fellowship | The
Futures of American Studies Institute |
Spring Conference
Each spring, the American Studies Program sponsors a conference held in conjunction with the American Studies graduate workshop. In coordination with sponsoring faculty, graduate students help to design and organize the conference. Graduate students are also invited to be full participants in the conference.
Questions of Legacy: Making Sense of the 2008 Presidential Campaign
April 17, 2009 ● The Curb Center at Vanderbilt (125 Buttrick Hall)
Please join us as scholars from a variety of disciplines come together to share their analyses of how issues of race, gender, and class were discussed during the 2008 presidential campaign.
Given the frequent charges of racism, sexism, and xenophobia leveled at and by almost all of the leading candidates and their campaign staffs, what did the 2008 campaign teach us about the way such matters are coded and/or otherwise talked about now (vs. in the 1960s or 1980s, for example)? What opportunities, if any, were there for new discourses concerning class, race, and gender? How can we identify, measure, and evaluate these discourses? In short, how far have we come . . . or not?
10 a.m. Opening Remarks
10:30-11:30 a.m. Presidentialism, Public Spheres, and Intellectuals to Fill Them
Houston A. Baker, English, Vanderbilt University
11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. The 2008 Election and the Uneasy Triumph of the New Class
James A. Aune, Communication, Texas A&M University
1:30-2:30 p.m. Adopting and Adapting Feminism: Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and the 2008 Presidential Campaign
Tasha Dubriwny, Women’s Studies and Communication, Texas A&M University
2:30-3:30 p.m. From King to Obama
Keith Gilyard, English, Pennsylvania State University
3:45-5:00 p.m. Roundtable
Moderated by Martin Medhurst, Communication, Baylor University
5:00-6:00 p.m. Reception (Buttrick Atrium)
Academic* Activist* Community* Collaborations: a Roundtable, a two-day event co-sponsored by our American Studies Program and the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair endowment, will highlight productive models for connecting activist, volunteer, and academic communities. The conference will assist the American Studies community at Vanderbilt in building volunteer work and/or activism experiences into their teaching, and making useful pedagogical connections between that work and intellectual and active models of citizenship. More generally, the conference aims to help the larger Vanderbilt community think about what's involved in developing fruitful, ethical, and effective pedagogical and research models in collaboration with the local activist and volunteer communities.
The guest speakers come from an array of disciplinary perspectives and professional experience, including Africana studies, human/economic geography, political science, English, environmental science, and a nonprofit advising firm. Each speaker has extensive experience in working with communities local to their home institution and/or their research, and in organizing productive collaborations between researchers and educators, and activists and volunteers.
Speakers include:
Anna Bartel
Assoc. Director, Harward Center for Community Partnerships
Bates College
Lewiston, ME 04240
Joy James
John B. and John T. McCoy Presidential Professor and Chair of Africana Studies
College Professor in Political Science
Williams College
Williamstown, MA
Amy Koritz
English Department
Tulane University
New Orleans, LA
Wolfgang Natter
Professor, Political Science; Director, Alliance of Social, Political, Ethical, Cultural Thought (ASPECT) and Center for Democratic Planning and Participatory Research
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA
William R. Stott, III
Director, Albemarle Ecological Field Site
Manteo, NC 27954
Research Professor, Carolina Environmental Program
Chapel Hill, NC
Todd Vogel, Ph.D.
Co-Executive Director, International Sustainability Institute
Seattle, WA
Karen Werner
Core Faculty, Goddard College
Visiting Lecturer, University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Smith College
Goddard College
Plainfield, VT
Academic* Activist* Community Collaborations will begin at 1 p.m. on Thursday, February 21, with a tour of Nashville hosted by local activists (Urban Epicenter, Homeless Power Project and Kilowatt Ours). After the tour, we'll have a banquet dinner at Vanderbilt. On Friday, we'll conduct a roundtable discussion with the seven featured speakers. Each speaker will have a one-hour time slot, with 30-40 minutes for their paper/comments and the remaining time for participant discussion. Lunch will be provided.