American Studies
 Certificate Program

The Graduate Center
The City University of New York

PAST EVENTS 

2007/2008

SPRING 2008

Monday, 7 April 2008

Skylight Room (Room 9100)
CUNY Graduate Center

6:30-8:00pm

Blackface: Examining the Minstrel Tradition

Participants:

Camille Forbes
author of Introducing Bert Williams:

Burnt Cork, Broadway and the Story of America's First Black Star

Eric Lott

author of Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class

Greg Tate

author of Fly Boy in the Buttermilk; Everything But the Burden:

What White People Are Taking From Black Culture

Mel Watkins

author of Stepin Fetchit: The Life and Times of Lincoln Perry

Moderated by Gary Giddins

author of Weather Bird; Satchmo and Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams

Sponsored by the Center for the Humanities

Information: ch@gc.cuny.edu

Friday 18 April 2008

HACKING THE NATION

10 YEARS OF AMERICAN STUDIES

AT THE CUNY GRADUATE CENTER

Concourse Level

CUNY Graduate Center

10:00am-10:30am—Welcome (Concourse Lobby)

10:30am-11:45am—Two Cultures No More: Science and/as American Studies (C201)

[Chris Leslie, Instructor of Humanities and New Media, Polytechnic University, Moderator]

Sari Altschuler (Ph.D. Program in English, CUNY), "'A Tremendous Oscillatory Mass of Matter': The Body and the Body Politic in Benjamin Rush's Theories of Circulation."

Matthew K. Gold (Assistant Professor of English, New York City College of Technology), "Specimens in the Great Picture Gallery of Eternity":  Photography and
Microscopy in Nineteenth-Century U.S. Culture

Michael D. Phillips (Ph.D. Program in Comparative Literature, CUNY), "Drastic Measures: Anthropometry and the Birth of American Psychology"

11:45am- 1:15pm—Beat on the Brat: Trans-Atlantic Negotiations (C202)

[Duncan Faherty, Assistant Professor of English, Queens College, Moderator]

Robert Kaplan (Ph.D. Program in English, CUNY), "'When Bodys come to touch each other': Francis Hutcheson's Gravitational Benevolence and Early American National Formation."

Jennifer C. H. J. Wilson (Ph.D. Program in Music, CUNY), "...at once pleasant and wrong:" The Reception of La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein in New York, 1867”

Brooks Hefner (Ph.D. Program in English, CUNY), "'When he talks highbrow, he's kidding': Smuggling Ulysses into American Popular Culture Before 1934"

1:00pm- 2:30pm—Object Lessons: American Studies and the Word (C201)

[Mark Noonan, Assistant Professor of English, New York City College of Technology, Moderator]

Kate Wilson (Ph.D. Program in Theatre, CUNY), "American Studies & the History of the Book"

Galina Savukova (Ph. D. Program in English, CUNY), “The Aesthetics and Politics of Screen Words in Silent American Films”

Jonathan Gray (Assistant Professor of English, John Jay College, CUNY), “Text as History and Revolution in Recent Graphic Literature”

1:45pm- 3:15pm—Visual Culture, Spectacle, and the American Imaginary (C202)

[Jean Murley, Assistant Professor of English, Queensborough Community College, Moderator]

Peter Zazzali (Ph.D. Program in Theatre, CUNY), "Robert Montgomery Bird's The Gladiator and Robert Taylor Conrad's Jack Cade as Historical Drama within a Jacksonian Context.".

Rebekah Rutkoff (Ph.D. Program in English, CUNY), “Better Hours, Moving Images and American Magic”

Erin Lee Mock (Ph.D. Program in English, CUNY), Where No One Can Hear You Scream: 1950s Television Brings Horror Into the Home . . . 'Where It Belongs'"

3:30pm- 5:00pm—Plenary Address (Proshansky Auditorium)

Professor Morris Dickstein (Distinguished Professor of English and Theatre, CUNY Graduate Center), "Dancing in the Dark Sounds and Scenes from the Great Depression."

Friday, April 18
Room TBA
6:30pm

Second Annual American Studies Movie Night

Details TBA

Thursday, 8 May
Segal Theatre
6:00pm

A Reading and Discussion with Harriet H. Alonso (History/GC&CCNY)
Robert E. Sherwood, The Playwright in Peace and War
(U of Massachusetts Press, 2007)

Sponsored by Library Associates, Ph.D. Program in History, American Studies Certificate Program

Friday, 9 May
Certificate Programs Office (Room 5109)
1:00-3:00pm

American Studies Certificate Program

Dissertation Colloquium and General Meeting

TWO ROUGH PATHS DIVERGING IN A WOOD

AMERICAN STUDIES AND THE QUESTION OF MODERNITY

Participants:

Kristen Case (English)
"'A Bird's Life': Pragmatism in the Field of Twentieth Century American Poetry"

Brooks Hefner (English)
"You've Got to Be Modernistic: American Vernacular Modernism, 1910-1937"

FALL 2007

Friday, September 28
Certificate Programs Office (Room 5109)
12:00-2:00pm

American Studies Certificate Program General Meeting



Friday, October 26
Certificate Programs Office (Room 5109)
1:00-3:00pm

American Studies Certificate Program General Meeting

Thursday, November 1
Proshansky Auditorium
6:00-8:00 pm

WRITING MUSICAL LIVES

Four eminent music critics and biographers discuss the problems and pleasures of writing about the many lives of musicians.

Participants include Holly George-Warren, author of Public Cowboy No. 1: The Life and Times of Gene Autry; Gary Giddins, author of Weather Bird, Satchmo, and Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams; David Hadju, author of Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn and Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña and Richard Fariña; and Margo Jefferson, Pulitzer Prize–winning critic and author of On Michael Jackson.

Moderated by Marc Dolan, Associate Professor of English & Coordinator of the American Studies Certificate Program, The Graduate Center, CUNY.

Sponsored by the American Studies Certificate Program and the Center for the Humanities.
Listen to this event from the Center for the Humanities Audio Archive

Friday, December 7

Certificate Programs Office (Room 5109)
1:00-3:00pm

Dissertation Colloquium & General Meeting
THE WORK AND THE ACT: AMERICAN STUDIES AND THE INSCRIPTION OF PERFORMANCE

Participants:

Galina Savukova (English)
“The Aesthetics and Politics of Screen Words in Silent American Avant-Garde Cinema”

Kate Wilson (Theatre)
”The Industrial Playscript in the United States, Inkwell to Internet”

2006/2007

SPRING 2007

Friday, 13 April 2007
Segal Theatre
4:00-6:00pm
Free and open to the public

Timothy J. Gilfoyle
A Pickpocket’s Tale:
The Underworld of 19th-Century New York

Timothy J. Gilfoyle is a professor of history at Loyola University, who specializes in American urban and social history.

A Pickpocket’s Tale (W.W. Norton, 2006) received the Dixon Ryan Fox Prize from the New York State Historical Association, was a selection for the Book-of-the-Month Club, the History Book Club and the Quality Paperback Book Club. Called “instructive and chilling” by the Washington Post, it was named one of the "Best Books of 2006" by the Chicago Tribune and the London Times.

Gilfoyle is also the author of Millennium Park: Creating a Chicago Landmark and City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790-1920, winner of the Nevins Prize and the Dixon Ryan Fox Prize. He has published numerous articles in journals and serves as co-editor of the Journal of Urban History.

Sponsored by the American Studies Certificate Program, Ph.D. Program in History, Center for the Humanities, and the North American Branch of the International Association of Crime Writers

Friday, 11 May 2007
Certificate Programs Office
Room 5109
3:00-5:00pm

Dissertation colloquium/General Meeting
Details TBA

FALL 2006

Friday, 10 November 2006

Certificate Programs Office (Room 5109
2:00-4:00pm

American Studies Certificate Program

Dissertation Colloquium and General Meeting

AMERICAN STUDIES AND/AS/OR GENDER STUDIES

Participants:

Caroline Hellman (English)

”Sanctum Sanctorum: The Alternative Designs and Domesticities of Stowe, Alcott, Cather, and Wharton”

Robert Kaplan (English)

"Manning America: Homoaffective Relations and National Identity in the Early Republic"

2005/2006

SPRING 2006

Friday, 3 February 2006
Room 4406
4:00 to 6:00pm

Nadine Cohodas on Dinah Washington

An Ambivalent Queen: Music, Myth, and Culture 1940-1963

Cohodas is the author of Queen - The Life and Music of Dinah Washington (Pantheon) The paperback edition of this acclaimed biography was published in January 2006.

...essential reading... Queen makes us believe in Dinah Washington's talent and complexity, portraying her as bright flame whose incandescence caused her to burn out too quickly.--The Washington Post

...enthralling....essential reading for people interested in popular culture.--San Francisco Chronicle

..."a much needed portrait....the definitive biography of this important singer."--Publishers Weekly

...a breakthrough portrait. This is highly recommended. --Library Journal

Sponsored by the American Studies and Women’s Studies Certificate Programs and the Ph. D. Programs in English and Music

Wednesday, 29 March 2006
Proshansky Auditorium
7:00-8:30pm

Greil Marcus and Kim Gordon in conversation with Julia Sneeringer

Greil Marcus is the author of the classic Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ‘N Roll Music ("Should be read by anyone who cares about America or its music."-The New York Times), and most recently, Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads. Kim Gordon, the bassist for Sonic Youth, has been featured on The Simpsons. Julia Sneeringer, a professor of History at Beloit College in Wisconsin, is the author of Winning Women's Votes: Propaganda and Politics in Weimar Germany .

Sponsored by the Center for the Humanities and the American Studies Certificate Program

Friday, 12 May 2006
Certificate Programs Office, Room 5109
1:00-3:00pm

American Studies Certificate Program
Dissertation Colloquium
and General Meeting

IS AMERICAN STUDIES NECESSARY?

Participants:

Audrey Raden (English)

’”Were I Not Here’: Thoreau’s Anticipation of Death”

Krystyna Zamorska (English)

”Cultural Mediations: The Ethnographic in Contemporary American Writing”

FALL 2005

Friday, 2 December 2005

Skylight Room (Room 9100)

4pm to 6pm

Reframing the Real: Recent (Re)Visions of American Realism

A Celebration of The Blackwell Companion to American Fiction, 1865-1914

Featuring

Nancy Glazener (University of Pittsburgh)

Realism, Disinterestedness, and the Specter of Liberal Bias

Robert Paul Lamb (Purdue University)
“Little Feminine Weapons”: Reassessing the Realist Woman Writer

John Matteson (John Jay College of Criminal Justice)
“In a Barrel of Odds and Ends It Is Different”:
Recovering and Syncretizing the African American Contexts of Late-Nineteenth-Century U. S. Literature

Sponsored by the Ph.D. Program in English, CUNY American Studies Certificate Program,
New York Metro American Studies Association

2004/2005

SPRING 2005

Friday, 6 May 2005
1-3pm
Certificate Programs Office, Room 5109

The American Studies Certificate Program
of the CUNY Graduate Center

invites you to our
Spring 2005 Dissertation Colloquium
and General Meeting

Christopher Bruhn (Music)

"Ives's Multiverse: The Concord Sonata as American Cosmology"

Matthew K. Gold (English)

"The Culture of Proof: Science, Religion, and Photography in America, 1785-1865"

Friday, 18 March 2005

4-6pm

Skylight Conference Room, Room 9100

Robert A. Gross

James L. and Shirley A. Draper Professor of Early American History, The University of Connecticut, Storrs

"The Transformation of Walden, 1845-1855: The Fate of Social Reform and Political Radicalism in the North."

Co-sponsored by the American Studies Certificate Program, the Ph.D. Programs in History and English

Friday, 6 May 2005

1-3pm

Certificate Programs Office, Room 5109

Spring 2004 Dissertation Colloquium
Theme and Participants To Be Announced

FALL 2004

Friday, 29 October 2004

4-6 pm

CUNY Graduate Center, Room 4406

Robert M. Dowling

Assistant Professor of English, Central Connecticut State University

Jean Murley

Assistant Professor of English, Queensborough Community College

“True Crime and American Culture: A Conversation”

Co-Sponsored by the American Studies Certificate Program and the Ph.D. Program in English

Friday, 3 December 2004

1-3pm

Certificate Programs Office, Room 5109

FALL 2004 DISSERTATION COLLOQUIUM

Jonathan Gray (Ph.D. student in English)

"Innocence by Association: Civil Rights and the White Literary Imagination"

Friday, 3 December 2004

4-6pm

Martin E. Segal Theatre

Werner Sollors

Henry B. and Anne M. Cabot Professor of English Literature and Professor of African American Studies, Harvard University

"Notes toward a Cultural History of the American Occupation of Germany"

Co-sponsored by the American Studies Certificate Program, the Ph.D. Programs in English and History

2003/2004

SPRING 2004 DISSERTATION COLLOQUIUM

The CUNY Graduate Center American Studies Certificate Program

invites you to our Spring 2004 Dissertation Colloquium:

Jean Murley (Ph.D. Student in English)

currently tracing the origins of the contemporary True Crime genre in the cultural politics of the 1960s and 1970s

Susan Falls (Ph.D. Student in Anthopology)

currently examining the discourses of scarcity, romance, wealth, and gender in the contemporary diamond market

discussing

Meaning and Danger in Postmodern America

Friday, 7 May 2004, 2-4pm

Room 5109, CUNY Graduate Center

Light refreshments will follow.

WAR AND THE AMERICAN MIND

A year-long series of lectures, panels, and films, exploring the
effect of war on American culture from the nation's prehistory
to the recent past.  All events are free and open to the public.

SPRING 2004 SCHEDULE
FALL 2003 SCHEDULE

The CUNY Graduate Center American Studies Certificate Program

invites you to our Fall 2003 Dissertation Colloquium:

Karen Lemmey (Art History)

"Henry Kirke Brown and the Development of Public Sculpture in NYC, 1846-1876"

Mark Noonan (English) "Reading the Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine: American Literature and Culture, 1870-1893,"

discussing The Idea of a National Art in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America

Friday, 5 December 2003, 2-4pm

Room 5109, CUNY Graduate Center

Discussion facilitated by

Martin Burke Associate Professor of History, Lehman College and The Graduate Center

2002/2003

FRIDAY, MAY 9, 2003:

Spring 2003 American Studies Certificate Program Dissertation Colloquium, American Studies and the New Nation, featuring Duncan Faherty, "A 'Game of Architectural Consequences': The American House and the Formation of National Identity, 1776-1858" and Chris Iannini, "Fatal Revolutions: U.S. Natural Histories of the Greater Caribbean, 1714-1859."

Moderated by Provost William Kelly. 2:00pm, Certificate Programs Office (Room 5109).

TUESDAY, APRIL 15, 2003:

In Search of Bessie Smith

MONDAY-TUESDAY, MARCH 10-11, 2003:

CONFERENCE ON Commentary Magazine
 in the American Jewish Community and American Culture.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2003:

Michael Denning (Yale University), "A Novelist's International."  Denning is the author of Mechanic Accents: Dime Novels and Working-Class Culture in America and  Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century.  Cosponsored by the Ph.D. Program in English. 4:00pm Room 4406

FRIDAY, DECEMBER13, 2002:  

American Studies Dissertation Colloquium: The Popular Arts in the 1930's, with Marc Johnson (Music) and Tom Cerasulo (English) 2:00pm, Certificate Programs Office (Room 5109)

HOME