SLU American Studies Department

Congratulations to Kate Piatchek, an alum of our doctoral program. Dr. Piatchek recently won a leadership award for her work increasing student success as Department Chair of Gateway English and English Composition at Indian River State College.

Indian River State College Advancing education, training and economic development.

The last few weeks of the semester were FULL of events and short on Facebook posting energy. Shown here: senior thesis presentations, some awards ceremonies, and our end of year party. See photo captions for details!

Our senior majors are giving their thesis presentations this Friday!

Our MA alum Carlos Ruiz Martinez visited Dr. Kate Moran's Immigration class this week. Carlos is Director of Immigrant Services at St. Francis Community Services here in St. Louis and is completing his dissertation on race, religion, and the U.S. Sanctuary movement for the Religious Studies Department at the University of Iowa. We love when our alum come back into our classrooms in their new roles!

Last week was spring break for SLU, and several American studies faculty and grad students attended the Missouri History Conference in Columbia, MO. Pictured here is a slide from Heidi Ardizzone’s talk on St Louis activist Charles Anderson, an illustration from Ben Looker’s paper for the St Louis Euchre panic, and a copy of Ben’s anthology on St Louis progressive activism, co-edited with Amanda Izzo.

Congratulations to Dr Mary Maxfield, Postdoc in SLU Women's and Gender Studies Department. Mary has been awarded the College of Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Teaching Award (Humanities).

Cathryn Stout (PhD, 2018) wrote an essay on her experiences as a student at Wellesley Collage when the film *Mona Lisa's Smile* was being filmed there. Dr. Stout is currently Chief of Communications and Broadcast Services with Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

The behind-the-scenes battles that dimmed "Mona Lisa Smile" - The Wellesley News My philosophy professor insisted on starting each class with meditation. But as I attempted to “focus on my breath,” I...

Please join us for our annual American Studies Holiday Party!

We will gather on Friday, December 8th, from 3:00-6:00 pm in the second-floor common area of Adorjan Hall (right outside ADJ 244, the American Studies Seminar Room).

The party is open house: please come for the entire time, or just stop by when you can.

Delicious food will be provided. If you would like to bring a snack or dessert to share, please do! Or if you would like to just bring yourself, please do! We know how busy this time of year is, especially for students, so please come when and however you can. Friends/colleagues/children/loved ones are all welcome.

Dr. Tandra Taylor received her PhD in 2022 and has been teaching in the Department of History at SIUE as an Instructor and then Assistant Professor. This year she took a leave from teaching to serve as SIUE's Interim Director of their Institute for Community Justice and Racial Equity. This article from their student paper features an interview with Dr. Taylor.

‘Racial healing is the heart of racial equity’: Tandra Taylor’s mission to create narrative change East St. Louis local Tandra Taylor, assistant professor for the Department of History, was named interim director for SIUE’s Institute for Community Justice and Racial Equity.

Greetings friends and followers! We're back! There have been a lot of changes in the two years or so since we stopped updating regularly. With the help of some student workers, we will resume regular posting this week with some of those changes, new departmental events, student achievements, and alumni news. We could use help with the last one, especially those of you who are further out, whether by time or location.
--posted by Heidi Ardizzone, the new/old/interim department chair.

Come out and join the new SLU Americanist Working Group! Be sure to RSVP by April 28th! See the attached flyer for more info!

Good afternoon everyone! Please see the attached flyer for The Annie Malone Symposium, in which our own Gregory S. Carr will be the guest panelist! Please make plans to attend if you can!

SLU American Studies Department updated their phone number.

SLU American Studies Department updated their address.

Good day, American Studies graduate students and friends! We would like to encourage you to peruse our great assortment of Graduate level classes and to REGISTER for them coming this Spring! Please see the attached flyer for more information and please feel free to contact one or more of the professors teaching this Spring!

We are back for a new semester at SLU and we expect to resume regular postings here in the next few weeks. In the meantime, we have wonderful news to share: In July the Provost reversed his decision! Our undergraduate programs will now continue to flourish and grow. We are deeply thankful to everyone who offered their support; we heard a lot about how much our classes and our community have meant to so many people, and that was truly wonderful.

Dear friends, alumni, community. This will likely be the last post in my own voice as Heidi Ardizzone, Department Chair. After serving for two terms (six years) I have stepped down and am looking forward to returning to full-time teaching and research as well as a long-delayed sabbatical leave in Spring 2022.

Please join me in welcoming Dr. Emily Lutenski who will be taking over as Department Chair as of today. We are all grateful for her service to the department. Being chair involves a lot of meetings and redtape wrangling and report writing. But it also means nurturing faculty, supporting students, and thinking long term about our programs. It was my great pleasure to see both Emily and Kate Moran through tenure and promotion, and into supported research leaves that allowed them to focus on new scholarship and projects.

Recent and current students know that the Department Chair has traditionally also served as Graduate Coordinator. One of the first things I did as chair was to make Emily the Undergraduate Coordinator but I was happy to continue doing the Graduate Coordinator work. But I added the title to my position, with college approval, in part because I wanted the dual role to be visible as it was always my longer term goal to separate out the two positions. Beginning in Fall 2021, Kate Moran will be serving as Graduate Coordinator, and Ben Looker will step in as Undergraduate Coordinator. Flannery Burke will take over as Internship Coordinator.

I will still be here, of course. I will continue to mentor our teaching Graduate Assistants, to work with the Public Humanities Working Group and our Public Humanities Initiative, to participate in departmental decisions which have always been largely shared. But I am excited to be teaching both an undergraduate course (Gender, Race, and Social Justice) and a graduate course (Race and Citizenship in the Midwest) this Fall, and to be spending significant time this summer completing some publication promises and plans and next spring plotting out some new directions for my research.

Yesterday I attended the moving memorial service for Dr. Jonathan Cedric Smith and listened to our PhD alum David Suwalsky, S. J., and our undergraduate Justice Hill speak about the impact Jonathan had on them. I was reminded again of the importance of communities within an institution, of what it means to serve an institution that has let you down in some ways and upheld you in others, and of the importance of meeting each other first and always as people.

I am beyond grateful to have found this community, and hope we will soon be able to announce some good news in our ongoing discussions with the provost about our BA programs. The outpouring of support from students, colleagues, former students, former faculty, FRIENDS of former students, alum who took ONE CLASS with us has been incredible. We don't yet have an official decision, but when we do, we will certainly let you know.

Much love,
Dr. Heidi Ardizzone
Associate Professor,
American Studies, Saint Louis University

Folks in St. Louis: arrangements for Dr. Jonathan Smith’s memorial service have been announced. Wednesday June 30th at 10am in Chaifetz Arena.

We have been shocked and devastated this weekend to learn of the sudden death of Dr. Jonathan Smith. Jonathan began his SLU career in American Studies and continued to be a champion for the humanities and social justice, bringing his passion to everything he did.

'A mentor to many': SLU vice president of diversity dies on Juneteenth Jonathan Smith was an assistant professor of African American Studies who helped create the Clock Tower Accords at St. Louis University following the protests of Mike Brown's death.

American Studies celebrates SLU's May 2021 graduates! Among them are BA majors Beatrice Beirne, Bailey Foreman, Erin Kahle, and Zoe Probst; BA minors Megan Hisey, Conor Van Santen, and Kirsten Bourbon; MA recipients Billy Critchley-Menor and Kendyl Schmidt; and last--but certainly not least--Cindy Reed, PhD. We are so proud of your achievements and that that we played a role in them. We can't wait to see the great things that come next for all of you!

Congratulations to American Studies majors Beatrice Beirne, Alyssa Cook, Bailey Foreman, Erin Kahle, and Zoe Probst, who successfully presented their senior capstone research in front of a Zoom/live audience of about 45 people on May 7, 2021!

This is a major milestone towards their BA graduations, which for Beatrice, Bailey, Erin, and Zoe will come on May 22, 2021, and for Alyssa will happen in May 2022. The presentations these students gave were based on the 30-40-page projects they have completed over the course of this semester, including original interdisciplinary research in American culture and extensive processes of drafting and revision.

Beatrice Beirne’s thesis is titled “For Work, For Rest, For Selfies: Solidarity Portraiture and Capitalist Photography in Post-Automation America.”

Alyssa Cook’s thesis is titled “The Politics of Nostalgia in Dominican American Literature.”

Bailey Foreman’s thesis is titled “Psycho-Pharmaceutical Advertisements and the Prescription of Gender.”

Erin Kahle’s thesis is titled “White Weddings and Green Cards: The American Marriage Industry and Immigration in 90 Day Fiancé.”

Zoe Probst’s thesis is titled “Miss Not-So-Independent: Representations of American Female Sports Fans.”

All of these have a rich primary and secondary source base, show creative applications of interdisciplinary methodologies, and demonstrate surprising analyses of U.S. cultural texts in the service of answering questions about thee roles of gender, labor, race and ethnicity, ability, immigration, and language in the national imagination.

Congratulations, again, to Beatrice, Alyssa, Bailey, Erin, and Zoe on their considerable accomplishments! We look forward to graduation!

Congratulations to Cindy Reed, who successfully defended her doctoral dissertation on May 3, 2021!

Cindy’s dissertation is titled "By Any Means Necessary: Representations of Black Girlhood and Artistic Agency." In it, she examines how black girlhood is best recognized as creative expression in the work of contemporary black women writers.

There were about 40 people cheering Cindy on over Zoom at her defense, which is a testament to her wide-ranging impact as a colleague, friend, and scholar. We are so glad to have been a part of Cindy’s journey through her Ph.D., which will be conferred on May 22.

We look forward to officially calling her “Dr. Reed” from now on and wish her the best in her position as Assistant Professor of English at Southern Illinois University – Edwardsville.

Congratulations again, Cindy!

We’re delighted to see that three American Studies undergraduate students have articles in the new issue of OneWorld, the student-run campus social-justice magazine!

Beatrice Beirne, an American Studies senior-year major (and also chief editor of OneWorld), has a piece titled “Where Are They Now? Refugee Children in the ‘See Something, Say Something Era.’” Read it at https://bit.ly/2R1Vkye

Justice Hill, a junior-year American Studies minor, has an article titled “Resurrection from Insurrection.” Read it at https://bit.ly/3y3oEFp

And Ava Gagner, also a junior-year American Studies minor, has a piece titled “Parks and Revitalization: Providing Mental Health in Urban Spaces.” Read it at https://bit.ly/3baGuvY

Congrats to all three!

Congrats to Amelia Flood, a SLU American Studies PhD candidate, who’s had a paper accepted to a PhD seminar session hosted by the Roosevelt Institute for American Studies (RIAS) in partnership with Leiden University in the Netherlands — to be held virtually in June.

Amelia’s paper interrogates the ways that imperial transition creates multiple readings of identity that challenge empire's functions and hierarchies of agency across scales in a space and place that have been under-considered in the imperial turn in American Studies. The paper considers these issues as they manifested in the 1924 stranding of an Afro-Danish Virgin Islands woman between U.S. colony and mainland in the wake of newly passed, highly restrictive American immigration law. The paper contends this moment reveals both the reach and limits of imperial control over racialized, territorial people as well as the opportunities for subjugated people to exercise agency and resistance in the face of state power.

Two SLU American Studies PhD candidates appeared on a recent panel titled “Perspectives from East St. Louis,” hosted by the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation center at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville. Our department’s participants were Tandra Taylor and Cindy Reed, both currently finishing dissertations in American Studies.

Tandra and Cindy both have links to SIUE also: Tandra is an instructor in SIUE’s History department, and Cindy is an assistant professor in SIUE’s English department.

As SIUE noted, the panel was aimed to highlight both the “lasting impact of poverty” and also the need for “a change in the narrative surrounding the East St. Louis community.” We’re grateful our community members could share their expertise in this conversation.

https://www.riverbender.com/articles/details/sankofa-lecture-series-to-focus-on-perspectives-from-east-st-louis-49539.cfm

Sankofa Lecture Series to Focus on Perspectives from East St. Louis | RiverBender.com EDWARDSVILLE By providing insight on their experiences living in East St. Louis, a group of panelists hope to skew negative misconceptions about the city

Congratulations to SLU American Studies PhD candidate Elizabeth Eikmann, who just was announced as a recipient of a competitively awarded two-year postdoctoral fellowship with Washington University’s American Culture Studies Program. The fellowship will allow Elizabeth to continue her work on turn-of-the-century women’s photography in St. Louis and its role in gender and racial formation in the Saint Louis region.

The award is for researchers engaged in “study of Saint Louis and the American story.” Read more about Elizabeth and the award at the page linked below. We’re thrilled at this major recognition for Elizabeth’s work, and as well as the opportunity provided here to further her research during the two-year postdoc at WashU!

https://amcs.wustl.edu/news/three-postdoctoral-fellowships-awarded

Three Postdoctoral Fellowships Awarded

An exciting new book is out by Dr. Mark Kruger, a 2001 graduate of our SLU AmStudies PhD program! It’s titled “The St. Louis Commune of 1877: Communism in the Heartland” — now available for pre-order. As the jacket explains, “Not only was 1877 the first instance of a general strike in U.S. history; it was also the first time workers took control of a major American city”.

Jacket blurbs include praise from eminent thinkers such as David Roediger, Paul Buhle, Mark Rudd, and others. And one of these is our department’s own Sister Elizabeth Kolmer, PhD, professor emerita of American Studies at SLU.

As Sr. Kolmer writes: “Mark Kruger has made a significant contribution to understanding the events of the St. Louis area in the late nineteenth century. Not since 1966, with the publication of The Reign of the Rabble, have we heard some of the details of those violent and fearful days. Now some fifty years later we receive, in a sense, the details of the details. . . . It is [Kruger’s] use of a diversity of sources that gives this work its richness.”

https://www.left-bank.com/book/9781496228130

The St. Louis Commune of 1877: Communism in the Heartland (Paperback) Following the Civil War, large corporations emerged in the United States and became intent on maximizing their power and profits at all costs. Political corruption permeated American society as those corporate entities grew and spread across the country, leaving bribery and exploitation in their wak...

Our PhD alumnus Rob Wilson (2007) has led a group of faculty at the University of Missouri-St. Louis marking Women’s History Month by guiding students in chalking names of diverse change-making women across US history onto the campus’s outdoor spaces. The event Rob facilitated, and the student research that went into it, took inspiration from a 2004 project in New York City commemorating names of women lost in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Read the full coverage below.

https://blogs.umsl.edu/news/2021/03/29/chalk-with-us/

'Chalk With Us' strives to bring awareness of prominent women in history to St. Louis - UMSL Daily Approximately 30 students, faculty and staff gathered on campus last week to chalk the names of historical women and their accomplishments across campus.

The name of Dr. Regina Faden, a 2000 doctoral graduate of our department, has been all over the British and US news lately.

Archeologists have just discovered “evidence of one of the oldest permanent English settlements in North America,” reports the UK’s Daily Mail newspaper — a submerged settlement site located in St. Mary’s, Maryland. Our own Dr. Faden is executive director of the Historic St. Mary’s City Commission. Given her position and her expertise, she’s been called upon by numerous journalists and podcasters to comment upon and contextualize the archeological discovery.

Dr. Faden is one of many SLU AmStudies alums working in the worlds of public history and public humanities. You can check out the Daily Mail piece below.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9389177/Marylands-earliest-colonial-settlement-built-1634-discovered-90-years-searching.html

Colonial Maryland settlement from 1634 found after 90 years of study Archaeologists uncovered evidence of a fort from 1634 in St Mary's City, Maryland, one of the first permanent English settlements in the New World, including fence posts and cannonballs.

Congrats to current SLU AmStudies doctoral candidate Mary Maxfield, who has an essay in the recently released nonfiction anthology “Sweeter Voices Still: An LGBTQ Anthology from Middle America” (Belt Publishing 2021). The book is edited by Ryan Schuessler and Kevin Whiteneir Jr. We’re excited to see a department community member’s work appear within this exciting new collection of essays. Check out this title on the publisher’s website linked below!

https://beltpublishing.com/products/sweeter-voices-still

Sweeter Voices Still: An LGBTQ Anthology from Middle America Middle America—the Midwest, Appalachia, the Rust Belt, the Great Plains, the Upper South—is a q***r place, and it always has been. Sweeter Voices Still is an anthology featuring q***r voices from the cities, farms, and suburbs of these regions. Within these pages you'll find these truths: Transg...