ASE Achievements & Core Accomplishments

April/May 2008

ASE FACULTY

John Carlos Rowe has been appointed the next chair of the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity. 

Janelle Wong has agreed to serve as Director of Graduate Studies and Laura Pulido has agreed to serve as Director of Undergraduate Studies in this new administration of the department.  Congratulations and best wishes to our new leadership!

Sarah Banet-Weiser received a 2008 Mellon Mentoring Award for “Faculty to Graduate Mentoring.”

Lanita Jacobs-Huey received a 2008 Mellon Mentoring Award for “Faculty to Undergraduate Mentoring.”

Josh Kun has published "The Ballad of Speedy Gonzalez"-- an essay for a special issue on Music History, for Slate.com; and "A Space For The Possible"-- an essay on the spatial politics of  the 1980s East Los Angeles punk club The Vex--  appearing in the Claremont Museum of Art exhibition catalog, Vexing: Female Voices in East L.A. Punk. http://www.claremontmuseum.org/future.html  

In April, he delivered a Keynote Lecture in American Studies, "Border Sound Files: Music, Globalization, and the US-Mexico Border," at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA, after his book Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America was chosen as a featured book for the college's Senior Seminars in American Studies; and delivered a paper, "The Music of Migrancy" at the 2008 Pop Conference at the Experience Music Project Museum in Seattle, WA, and participated in the conference's Keynote Panel, "Ritmo and Blues: Hidden Histories Shaking Up "American" Pop" which featured musicians Louie Perez (Los Lobos), Raul Pacheco (Ozomatli), panel co-organizer Martha Gonzalez (Quetzal), and El Vez.

http://www.empsfm.org/education/index.asp?categoryID=26

Maria Elena Martinez, one of our active ASE affiliate faculty members from History, has been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure.  Congratulations, Maria Elena!

Viet Nguyen has received an Advancing Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences Grant from USC for 2008-2009. He gave a keynote speech at the Comparative Literature Symposium on War, Empire, and Culture at Texas Tech University, and also gave comments and a talk at the Southeast Asians in the Diaspora Conference at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and the Association for Asian American Studies Conference in Chicago, all in April. In May, he gave a reading of his fiction at the Palo Alto Art Center. His short story, “The Other Woman,” was reprinted in A Stranger Among Us: Stories of  Cross-Cultural Collision and Connection, published by OV Books. His article “Race and Resistance: On Asian American Cultural Politics” was translated and published in Japanese in The Bulletin of the Law Society of Kansai University, number 58 (March 2008).

Manuel Pastor, along with affiliate member Dowell Myers, have been appointed as co-directors of a new USC Center for Immigrant Integration.  The new center has been created by the USC College and the USC School of Policy, Planning, and Development (SPPD) to address the urgent need for knowledge about the successful integration of immigrants.  The center aims to facilitate civic dialogue about the intersecting issues of immigrant settlement, economic mobility, social cohesion and social equity.  Rather than focusing only on new arrivals, the center will promote research and dialogue concerning long-term issues of immigrant settlement, generational succession, incorporation and integration.  The new center was announced at a very successful conference by the ongoing USC Provost Initiative on Immigration and Integration on April 22 which drew about 350 academics, policymakers and community leaders.

Leland Saito has published "African Americans and Historic Preservation in San

Diego: The Douglas and Clermont/Coast Hotels,” in the Journal of San Diego History 54 (2008), pp. 1-15.

George Sanchez has been appointed Director of College Diversity.  The newly created position is designed to coordinate the College’s efforts to increase diversity among faculty and students, by working with academic departments to ensure that recruitment is guided by emerging best practices. Sanchez will also work with national organizations and foundations to develop special programs for diversity.  He will also continue to serve as Director of the USC Center for Diversity and Democracy.

Karen Tongson produced a series of successful, sold out events for Visions and Voices. Collectively billed “Records y Recuerdos: Music and Memory in East L.A.,”  the series included the workshop production of The Butchlalis de Panochtitlan’s first full-length play, “THE BARBER OF EAST L.A” (directed by Luis Alfaro), and a retrospective of the artist, Hector Silva’s work at the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archive. She also signed a book contract with the NYU Press Sexual Cultures Series (edited by Jose Esteban Munoz and Ann Pellegrini) for her first monograph, RELOCATIONS: Queer of Color Suburban Imaginaries. This spring Karen hosted an evening of “suburban music” at LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions), to kick off a series of listening parties curated by Josh Kun. She also delivered a talk at ACLA (The American Comparative Literature Association Annual Conference) about The Carpenters and their musical origins in Long Beach, CA.  In May, Karen has been invited to give a talk at UC Riverside on “Immigrant Soundscapes from Manila to Riverside” as part of the “New Perspectives in Ethnic Studies” series. She will be on leave in 2008-2009 after receiving an Achievement in the Humanities and Social Sciences grant, and an honorable mention for the Woodrow Wilson Junior Faculty fellowship.

ASE Ph.D. STUDENTS

Hillary Jenks has accepted an offer from Portland State University to be a tenure-track assistant professor in its University Honors Program.  Hillary is currently completing her dissertation, "Home Is Little Tokyo": Race, Community, and Memory in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles, under the direction of George Sanchez. Her research and teaching interests include American urban and western history, architectural history, comparative ethnic studies, public history, and historic preservation.  Congratulations and best wishes to Hillary!

Nicole Hodges-Persley received a 2008 Mellon Mentoring Award for “Faculty to Undergraduate Mentoring” for her work as an Adjunct Faculty in the USC School of Theatre.  In addition, she won a 2008 Final Summer Dissertation Award to complete her Ph.D.  Nicole has also accepted an appointment as a Visiting Professor under a Teaching Fellowship in American Cultures at Loyola Marymount University. She will graduate this year and join LMU in the fall.  Congratulations Nicole!

Terrion Williamson is the inaugural winner of the 2008 Ninfa Sanchez Memorial Graduate Prize for her paper, “Blackness, Death and the Pleasure Principle: Of “Nappy-Headed Hos” and the Serial Murder of African American Women.”  This paper was nominated for the award by Professor Dorinne Kondo, and was produced in American Studies 680: Interdisciplinary Research Seminar in Cultural Studies in Spring semester 2007.

The total number of Ford Fellows now in our Ph.D. program is up to seven students, a record number for any Ph.D. program in any field in the nation.  Imani K. Johnson has just been awarded a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship for 2008-09.  Orlando Serrano has just been awarded a Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship (three years of funding).  Congratulations to each of them!  The other Ford Fellows in the program are Genevieve Carpio, Michelle Commander, Chrisshonna Grant, Anthony Rodriguez, and Abigail Rosas.

A total of seventeen of our Ph.D. students received 2008 Diversity Placement Assistant Awards: Jungmiwha Bullock, Genevieve Carpio, Wendy Cheng, Michelle Commander, Laura Fujikawa, Chrisshonna Grant, Perla Guerrero, Jesus Hernandez, Todd Honma, Anjali Nath, Sionne Neely, Anthony Rodriguez, Abigail Rosas, Anton Smith, Micaela Smith, Tasneem Siddiqui, and Cam Vu.  These grants are, in the College's words, "designed to help our continuing doctoral students from underrepresented groups land top caliber placements. These funds are available to support activities such as, but not limited to, the following: Sending a student to a prestigious summer institute; Sending a student to work for a summer or semester with a revered colleague at another institution; Providing summer support for research with a faculty mentor which results in a publication; Small interdisciplinary dissertation writing or publications workgroups."  Congratulations to each winner!

Wendy Cheng has received the Oakley Fellowship, a USC Graduate School Endowed Fellowship for 2008-09.

Thang Dao and Mark Padoongpatt both gave excellent papers at the Southeast Asians in the Diaspora Conference at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Robert Eap has received a Foreign Languages and Area Studies Scholarship to attend the Southeast Asian Summer Studies Institute in Madison, Wisconsin.

Emily Hobson has received an Outstanding Achievement Scholarship of $5,000 from the USC Lamba Alumni Association. It's been a great year for Emily, who also has been appointed as a Dissertation Scholar at UC Santa Barbara's Women's Studies Program for 2008-2009.

Phuong Nguyen has been awarded a Final Year Dissertation Fellowship from the USC Graduate School.

Mark Padoongpatt has received the Beaumont Fellowship, a USC Graduate School Endowed Fellowship for 2008-09.

Anthony Rodriguez, along with his DPS award, has received  the Visual Studies (VSGC) Summer Research Award.

Margaret Salazar and Glenda Flores (Soc) recently sponsored the well attended graduate students of color graduate outreach conference at Cal State Northridge. They also received an outstanding committee chair trophy from the Graduate and Professional Students Senate.

ASE UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS

Divinity Barkley, graduating senior in African American Studies and Political Science, took top honors in the humanities category at the 10th annual Undergraduate Symposium for Scholarly and Creative Work for her project, “Kaya Hip-Hop in Coastal Kenya: The Urban Poetry of Ukoo Flani.” That paper was also selected as one of two inaugural winners of the 2008 Ninfa Sanchez Memorial Undergraduate Awards in American Studies and Ethnicity by the ASE Undergraduate Studies Committee.  The paper was nominated for the award by Professor Francille Wilson and was produced in her class, American Studies 499: Special Topics: The African Diaspora, in Spring semester 2008.  This fall she plans to return to Africa to start a program benefiting teenage girls in Kampala, Uganda.

Adriana Resendez, graduating senior in American Studies and Ethnicity, has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to study issues of gender and race in Guatemala next year.  Her senior thesis, “’Here we are all the same?’: Pre and Post-migration Intra-Ethnic Relations Among Guatemalan Women,” was selected as one of two inaugural winners of the 2008 Ninfa Sanchez Memorial Undergraduate Awards in American Studies and Ethnicity by the ASE Undergraduate Studies Committee.  The paper was nominated for the award by Professors Macarena Gomez-Barris and Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, her two advisors for her thesis, and was produced in the two classes set up for senior honors thesis production, American Studies 492 and 493, taught by Professors George Sanchez and Alexis Isfahani-Hammond, in Fall 2007 and Spring 2008 respectively.

On Thursday, April 17th, nine of our undergraduate majors presented their Senior Honors Thesis to a standing room only crowd that included faculty, graduate students, undergraduate students, and parents and family.  The nine Honors students, along with their thesis titles are:  Susan Baxter, “Drugs and the Shaping of 1960s Counter-Culture”; Megan Cadena, “Multiracial Southern Californians and Their Identity in Racialized Neighborhoods”; Eduardo Coronel, “Latino Terms of Identification and Their Meaning for Racial/ Ethnic Identity”; Lilia "Christina" Espinoza, “Representation(s) of Education-seeking Latinos/as in Literature and Popular Culture”; Jeanette Garcia, “Motown and Its Relationship to the Civil Rights Movement”; Joanna Lin, “Asian Food, Cookbooks, and the Commodification of the American Diet”; Paige Reilly, “Grassroots Poets in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s”; Adriana Resendez, “Migration of Women from Guatemala and Their Racial, Ethnic and Class Differences”; Elizabeth Stinnett, “Social Class Pressures and the Molding of a Lifestyle of Extravagance in Southern California.”

ASE Achievements & Core Accomplishments

February/March 2008

ASE FACULTY

Ruth Wilson Gilmore received a 2007 Outstanding Book Advancing Human Rights honorable mention from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights, for her book Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis and Opposition in Globalizing California (University of California Press).  Also, she will lecture in three countries during the last two weeks of February. In Lebanon she will present a public lecture, "Understanding The U.S.'s Addiction to Prisons", and several seminars at the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud Center for American Studies & Research at the American University of Beirut. She will then travel to Lisbon to present new work at the European Social Science and History Conference, where she has also been invited to participate in a roundtable discussion on the future of cities. Her final stop will be at the London School of Economics where she will present new research at a workshop of engaged international scholars from the global north and south.

Sarah Gualtieri has been awarded the ACLS Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellowship for next year.  The title of her project is “The Lebanese in Los Angeles: Migration and Transnationalism in a Multi-racial Landscape.”  In addition, Sarah’s article “Becoming ‘White’: The Foundations of Syrian/Lebanese Ethnicity in the United States,” has been republished in a collection of essays entitled “Other Souths: Diversity and Difference in the U.S. South, Reconstruction to the Present” (University of Georgia, 2008).

Clara Irazábal published an edited book, Ordinary Places, Extraordinary Events: Democracy, Citizenship, and Public Space in Latin America (New York/ London: Routledge/ Taylor and Francis, 2008), and an article, “Latino Communities in the United States: Place-Making in the Pre-World War II, Post-World War II, and Contemporary City” (with Ramzi Farhat), in the Journal of Planning Literature 22:3 (February 2008).

Josh Kun spoke at the Jewish Music Forum in New York on Feb. 22nd on a roundtable panel on “Creating ‘New’ Jewish Sounds.”

Maria Elena Martinez gave a talk titled “El discurso de la limpieza de sangre en la Nueva Espana: continuidades y rupturas” at the Colegio de Mexico, Mexico’s most prestigious research institution.  It was by invitation and as part of the symposium on the topic “purity of blood” in Mexico and Spain organized by scholars from Mexico, Germany, and South America.

Tara McPherson's edited collection, Digital Youth, Innovation and the Unexpected, has just been published by MIT Press.  The volume was produced as part of the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning Initiative and features work by USC faculty Ellen Seiter, Anne Balsamo and Steve Anderson.  She has recently been named as one of three editors of a new MacArthur-sponsored publication, The International Journal of Media and Learning, also from MIT Press.  Tara was also appointed to a three-year term as a member of the Cinema Journal editorial board.  Over the past several months, Tara has served as an external reviewer of the Humanities division at MIT, where she is a member of the Humanities Visiting Committee, and of the film department of Dartmouth College.  In the fall, she served as a reviewer for digital humanities grant competitions for the NEH and for the MacArthur Foundation. Tara recently received a substantial planning grant from the Mellon Foundation to develop a proposal for a multi-university digital hub in support of work in visual culture.  She will be working with scholars from Brown, NYU, Rochester and UC-San Diego.  The grant is administered through the Institute for Multimedia Literacy.  She is also, with Phil Ethington, the recipient of a Zumberge research award for a project exploring new forms of digital publication, analysis, and archiving.

Viet Nguyen has received a fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study for 2008-2009. His short story, “Someone Else Besides You,” was published in Narrative Magazine (Winter 2008) and is also available online at www.narrativemagazine.com. In January, he went to Seoul to lecture on “The Authenticity of the Anonymous” at a symposium co-organized by Viet Le, transPOP: Korea Vietnam Remix. He has recently been appointed to the Editorial Board of American Literary History, as a Contributing Editor to the Heath Anthology of American Literature, and to the Advisory Board of the Encyclopedia of Asian American Literature from Greenwood Press.

Manuel Pastor received two grants recently: the first from the California Community Foundation for the project “What’s Next? Regional Approaches to Immigrant Integration in the Absence of Comprehensive Federal Reform,” ($49,000, 2007-2008); the second was from the Hewlett, Annenberg and Energy Foundations for “Environmental Justice and Climate Change: Understanding the Problem, Considering the Alternatives,” co-PI with James Sadd, Occidental College, and Rachel Morello-Frosch, UC Berkeley, ($210,000).  He also published "The Color in Miami:  Building Grassroots Leadership in the U.S. Global Justice Movement" (with Tony LoPresti, UCSC), Critical Sociology, 33 (2007): 795-831.  This was also a busy period for writing opinion pieces with three being published: “Company Help Banks See Opportunities Amid Challenges,” Los Angeles

Business Journal, January 28, 2008; “Wise Advice: Find a Penny, Pick It Up,” with Amy Chubb, Fresno Bee, December 29, 2007; and “The New Electoral Stars,”  San Francisco Chronicle, December 5, 2007.

Ricardo Ramirez was profiled by Diverse: Issues In Higher Education as one of 10 emerging scholars under 40 in the publication’s annual edition recognizing rising stars in academe. The Jan. 10 issue includes an article describing Ramírez as having “gained national recognition for his research on the voting and political behavior of individuals across racial and ethnic lines.”  In addition, he published (with Matt A. Barretto) a Los Angeles Times opinion piece for February 7, 2008 entitled “The Latino vote is pro-Clinton, not anti-Obama.”

George Sanchez delivered the keynote address at the “Connecting Communities: The University and Multi-Ethnic Civic Engagement” Conference at the University of California, Irvine.  His address was titled “Challenging the Borders of Civic Engagement: Ethnic Studies and the Meaning of Community Democracy.”  He is also very honored to have served as a judge of projects submitted for History Day at the Hollenbeck Middle School in Boyle Heights this month.

Ellen Seiter (ASE Affiliated Faculty/ Cinematic Arts) is editing a new book series “Technologies of the Imagination: New Media in Everyday Life” with Digital Culture Books, a collaboration between the University of Michigan Press and Library.   The series, co-edited with Mizuko Ito, investigates what it means to be living and growing up in an era saturated with digital media.  Through detailed studies of everyday practice, this series will feature work that offers a vivid and grounded perspective on contemporary culture, paying particular attention to the point of view of children and youth.  The series, launching Spring 2008, represents an innovative approach to digital publishing and copyright:  authors in the series will be licensed under Creative Commons and the books will appear both in print and for free online.

Francille Rusan Wilson has been appointed to the Los Angeles Commission on the Status of Women by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and was confirmed by the L.A. City Council earlier this month. Wilson will serve a five-year term on the commission, which assists in assuring women have full and equal opportunity to participate in city government and promotes the general welfare of women in Los Angeles.  She has also received the Mary McCleod Bethune Excellence in Education Award from Our Authors Study Club, the Los Angeles branch of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History.

ASE Ph.D. STUDENTS

Michan Connor, ASE Ph.D. Candidate, has accepted a tenure-track Assistant Professor position with the Interdisciplinary Studies Program in the School of Urban and Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Arlington.

Adam Bush was awarded a $3000 grant from the College Deans Office through their Graduate Professionalization Initiative to present a performance this semester (with Ruthie's urging and financial support) of a premier of a piece by artists/musicians/poets Dwight Trible and Kamau Daood, celebrating African American community arts in Los Angeles.

Jeb Middlebrook published the chapter "Run-DMC" in the 2007 Greenwood Press Icons Series book Icons of Hip Hop: An Encyclopedia of the Movement, Music, and Culture.  The chapter situates the rap-rock group Run-DMC as pivotal to the crossover appeal of a contemporary Black aesthetic.  Middlebrook also wrote the chapter "Rhyme and Reason: The Making of a White Anti-Racist Rap Group" in the forthcoming book and charitable project Struggling for Direction: White Anti-Racism and Accountability to be published by Crandall, Dostie & Douglass Books, Inc. "Rhyme and Reason" analyzes Middlebrook's experiences as a performance artist and solidarity activist, and provides lessons for multiracial alliances and movement building.  The proceeds from Struggling for Direction will fund the post-Katrina rebuilding of the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond, a nationally recognized anti-racism training and organizing institution based in New Orleans.  Middlebrook also recently accepted two invitations to perform and lecture at Yale University on "Creating Anti-Racist Culture on Campus", to lecture at Loyola Marymount University on "Introduction to Whiteness Studies", and to perform and keynote at the Privilege and Identity Conference at the University of San Diego and the White Privilege Conference sponsored by the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs.

Micaela Smith successfully completed the Los Angeles Marathon on Sunday, March 2, 2008 with the support of her family and friends.

Anthony Sparks, ASE Doctoral student, has been nominated for a 2008 NAACP Image Award.  He is nominated in the category Outstanding Writing for a Dramatic Series for his work on the television series Lincoln Heights.   Specifically, the nomination is for his work as the writer, along with the executive producer, on the show's season two finale, entitled "The Vision". "The Vision" tells the story of a young visual artist's attempt to intervene in a (fictional) city's gang war.

November/December 2007

The third annual Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index has ranked the USC Department of American Studies and Ethnicity in fifth place among American Studies Ph.D. programs and departments in the nation.  Our department is the highest ranked department at USC, along with Music, Oceanography, Public Health, and Family and Human Sciences.  This index can be found at: http://chronicle.com/stats/productivity

ASE FACULTY

Bill Deverell, ASE affiliate faculty member, won a 2007 General Education Teaching Award from the College of Letters, Arts & Sciences.

Rosa-Linda Fregoso has just signed an advanced contract with Duke University Press for a book to be co-editing with Cynthia Bejarano entitled, Gender Terrorism: Feminicides in the Américas.

Macarena Gómez-Barris has had two articles recently published in peer-reviewed journals:  “Torture Sees and Seeks: Guillermo Núñez’s Art in Chile’s Transition,” ContraCoriente: A Journal of Social History and Literature, Fall. 5:1 (Fall 2007), pp. 

86-107; and (with Clara Irázabal), 2007, “Bounded Tourism: Immigrant Politics, Consumption, and Traditions at Plaza Mexico,” Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change, 5:3 (November 2007), pp. 186-213.

Jane Iwamura has won the 2007 Raubenheimer Junior Faculty Award for showing unusual promise in the areas of research, teaching, and service to the University.  This is the highest award of recognition for all aspects of faculty life that the College awards to junior faculty.

Lanita Jacobs-Huey also won a 2007 General Education Teaching Award from the College of Letters, Arts & Sciences.  Recipients are chosen on the basis of course statistical evaluations and student comments on evaluation forms, course syllabi, and evidence of rigorous grading.

Kara Keeling’s book, The Witch's Flight: The Cinematic, the Black Femme, and the Image of Common Sense, has been published by Duke University Press and is now available for purchase and classroom use.

Robin D. G. Kelley’s book Yo Mama’s DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America was translated into Japanese by Kosuzu Abe and Katsuyaki Murata and released this year by Hanmoto Publishers (2007).  It includes a new foreword by Kelly written specifically for Japanese readers.  Kelley was invited to take up the Visiting Harmsworth Chair at Oxford University (St. Catherine’s College), for the academic year 2009-10.

Dorinne Kondo received a Humanities and Social Sciences grant from USC for her book in progress (Re)visions of Race. The work combines scholarly and creative writing and focuses on issues of race and performance in the plays of Anna Deavere Smith, Culture Clash, and David Henry Hwang. This past summer, she was involved in fieldwork with Hwang's “Yellow Face,” that had its world premiere at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, and in December she will go to its New York premiere at the Public Theater in New York, where NYU A/P/A Studies will film a post-play interview she will conduct with playwright Hwang.  In November, she speaks at the conference "Embracing Diversity," the 10th year anniversary of the founding of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Stanford, and she will doing dramaturgy for Anna Deavere Smith’s new play “Let Me Down Easy,” for its New York workshop and for the production at the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven.  Hand issues--cubital tunnel--are still a problem, but she has nonetheless returned to playwriting. A substantially revised Act One of her play "Seamless" was read at Moving Arts Theatre in Los Angeles in August. A reading of the entire play will occur in the spring.

Josh Kun published "How We Listen," a dialogue with renowned conductor and Bard College president Leon Botstein about the nature of listening to music in the fall 2007 issue of Guilt & Pleasure Quarterly. Kun and Botstein discussed how listening is affected by being present at a live performance or listening to a recording.  He also published "Abie The Fishman: On Masks, Birthmarks, and Hunchbacks" in the Duke University Press book Listen Again: A Momentary History of Pop Music.  This essay theorizes the history of Jewish musical masquerade and follows the footsteps of a certain Abie The Fishman, from The Marx Brothers to Bob Dylan (with quick stops at Van Halen, Al Jolson, and Woody Allen along the way).  Finally, he organized a conversation with playwright Aaron Davidman in conjunction with The Sundance Institute Theatre Program's work-in-progress reading of “A Jerusalem Between Us,” his play about America, Israel and a question of conscience, directed by Philip Himberg.  This new play takes stock of recent controversies that have divided Americans and American Jews. The play untangles the Rachel Corrie controversy, considers the word ‘apartheid’ reflects on the spirit of Jewish values and wonders what’s left of the Left. Giving voice to different characters he meets along his journey, one man travels from America to the Middle East in search for answers to some of the most provocative questions of our time.

ASE Ph.D. STUDENTS

Viet Le has won a General Education Graduate Assistant Award for teaching during the 2006-2007 academic year.  During that year, Viet taught with Sarah Gualtieri and Leland Saito for AMST 101.  This distinction comes with a thousand dollars and a certificate.  Viet will also be a roundtable participant at the “Southeast Asians in the Diaspora” Conference to be held at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign on April 15-16, 2008.  This two-day conference examines the emerging field of Southeast Asian/American studies, and will be held to coincide with the Association of Asian American Studies (AAAS) conference in Chicago from April 16-20, 2008.

Ulli Ryder is the 2007-08 Graduate Student in Residence for Diversity Outreach at the USC Graduate School.  In this role, she helps coordinate the recruitment of under-represented students to graduate programs at USC and assists current USC graduate students to navigate their way through to the completion of their degrees.

ASE UNDERGRADUATE MAJORS/MINORS

Joanna Lin is a senior majoring in American Studies and Ethnicity and is currently the editor of the Daily Trojan.  She is also writing a senior thesis in American Studies and Ethnicity on ethnofood politics under the supervision of Viet Nguyen.

October 2007

ASE FACULTY

Josh Kun was just named co-editor (with Ron Radano) of the "Re-Figuring American 

Music" book series at Duke University Press.  He also just published an article on Mexico City rock band Cafe Tacuba in The New York Times on October 14, 2007.  He has sponsored various events and projects through his directorship of The Popular Music Project at The Norman Lear Center (www.usc.edu/pmp), and recently participated in a panel for a "Hip Hop America" event through “Visions and Voices” on October 8th.  His upcoming talks include presenting research on Tijuana arts and culture at The Haudenschild Garage in San Diego, as part of their Fuel4Talk series, with photographer Yvonne Venegas and architect/theorist Teddy Cruz; discussing globalization and art with Mexico City artist Carlos Amorales at the Art Forum of the David Rockefeller Center for 

Latin American Studies at Harvard University; and giving a lecture at Dartmouth titled "My Name was José Jiménez: The Afterlife of a Joke," at the No Laughing Matter: Visual Humor in Ideas of Race, Nationality, and Ethnicity Institute conference.

Jane Naomi Iwamura has published "Ancestral Returns: Reexamining the Horizons of Asian American Religious Practice," in Off the Menu: Asian and Asian North American Women's Theology and Religion, eds., Rita Nakashima Brock, Jung Ha Kim, Kwok Puilan, and Seung Ai Yang, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), 107-121, and (with Janelle Wong) "The Model Minority: Race, Religion and Conservative Politics among Asian Americans," Religion and Social Justice for Immigrants, ed. Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press, 2007): 35-49.  She has also received a 2007 project grant (with AMST Affiliate Faculty, Diane Winston) from the College Initiative on Interdisciplinary Projects, Programs and Centers, for "Interdisciplinary Program for the Study of Faith in High Definition."

Roberto Lint-Sagarena has two books now under contract: (1) his monograph, Arcadia and Aztlán: Religion, Ethnicity and the Creation of History (New York University Press); and (2) a survey of Latino/a Religions in the United States (Praeger).

Clara Irazábal’s article, “Latino Communities in the United States: Place-Making in the Pre-World War II, Post-World War II, and Contemporary City” (with Ramzi Farhat) was accepted for publication in the Journal of Planning Literature 22.3, forthcoming February 

2008. Her edited book, Ordinary Places, Extraordinary Events: Democracy, Citizenship, and Public Space in Latin America (New York/London: Routledge/Taylor and Francis) is forthcoming January 15, 2008.

George J. Sánchez was honored as the first professor to be tapped by the 2007-2008 Mortar Board Class, USC’s chapter of the premier national undergraduate senior honor society.  He has also recently been appointed to the National Advisory Board of Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life.  In addition, he was asked to serve as chair of the first Committee on Graduate Education of the American Studies Association.

Nelly P. Stromquist authored Feminist Organizations and Social Transformation in Latin America (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers) in 2006, along with editing two recent books: The Professoriate in the Age of Globalization (Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2007) and La construcción del género en las políticas públicas: Perspectivas comparadas desde América Latina (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2006).  In addition, she has published nine refereed articles and eleven chapters in books since 2006.

Karen Tongson published her essay, “The Light That Never Goes Out: Butch Intimacies in Lesser Los Angeles” in the Blackwell Companion to LGBT Studies (eds. Haggerty and McGarry), as well as a review essay for the International Journal of Communication on Elana Levine’s book, Wallowing in Sex: The Sexual Culture of 1970s American Television in Fall 2007. She¹s also been on the road delivering a range of invited lectures, keynotes and plenary addresses at Johns Hopkins University, New York University (For the “After CBGB, Now What?: Gender, Sexuality and the Future of Subculture” symposium), Swarthmore College (for the Sager Symposium), UC Santa Cruz, UC Riverside and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.  Back at the USC campus, Karen was recently elected to the College Faculty Council and received a Provost¹s

Arts and Humanities Initiative Grant for a series of performances, titled “RECORDS y Recuerdos: Music and Memory in East L.A.” (featuring The Butchlalis de Panochtitlan in “THE BARBER OF EAST L.A.” directed by Luis Alfaro, and a retrospective of the artist, Hector Silva’s work at ONE, the National Gay and Lesbian Archives).  On November 1, 2007, in collaboration with Alexandra Vazquez at Yale and Christine Bacareza Balance at UCR, Karen is launching a web magazine/blog about pop music and the culture industry titled OH! INDUSTRY (http://ohindustry.blogspot.com).

Francille Rusan Wilson was awarded the Letitia Woods Brown Memorial Book Prize by the Association of Black Women Historians for the best book in African American women’s history for her book, The Segregated Scholars: Black Social Scientists and the Creation of Black Labor Studies, 1890-1950.  She was also re-elected to 3rd three-year term on Executive Council of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (2008-2010), and is a member of the selection committee for the Herbert Gutman Dissertation Prize, co-sponsored by the Labor and Working Class History Association and University of Illinois Press, for the outstanding Ph.D. dissertation in labor and working-class history defended during the 2006-2007 academic year.  This fall, she was a speaker at the History Workshop at the University of Delaware, and delivered an OAH Distinguished Lecture at the University of Alabama in Huntsville on “The History of the Black History Movement: Carter G. Woodson’s Great Cause.”

Janelle Wong has received two major research grants to fund her project, "Faithful Coalitions: Immigrants and Conservative Christian Politics”:  a Russell Sage Foundation Award; and a USC Provost Initiative on Immigration and Integration Project Grant; her  collaborator is Jane Iwamura.

ASE Ph.D. STUDENTS

Michelle D. Commander published an article in the June 2007 issue of American Quarterly: "Ghana at Fifty: Moving Toward Kwame Nkrumah's Pan-African Dream," pp. 421-441.  Her travel to complete the fieldwork for this article was fully funded by a USC College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences' Diversity Placement Assistance (DPA) grant, which she received in early February 2007.

Nicole Hodges Persley had three articles recently published this year, "A Timeline of Hip Hop History " in Icons of Hip-hop: An Encyclopedia of the Movement, Music and Culture  (Westport: Greenwood Press, June 2007), Performance Review "The Color Purple" Theatre Journal (forthcoming December 2007), and Performance Review "The Watts Tower Project" Theatre Journal (December 2007).

Hillary Jenks will have her article, "The Politics of Preservation: Power, Memory, and Identity in an Historic Ethnic Neighborhood," published in Cultural Landscapes: Balancing Nature and Heritage in Preservation Practice. The collection, edited by Richard Longstreth, is forthcoming from the University of Minnesota Press in April 2008.

Anthony Rodriguez, second year ASE Ph.D. student, is also is currently on a Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship.  He, along with Michelle Commander, Abigail Rosas, Genevieve Carpio, and Chrisshona Grant, all recently attended the 2007 Ford Fellows Conference, making up the largest contingent of current Ford Fellows from any single doctoral program in the nation.

Anthony Sparks was a reciepient of the 2006-2007 Walt Disney Studios/ABC Entertainment Writing Fellowship. The extremely competitive fellowship, which selects up to 10 fellows from approximately 2,500 entries, is considered among the most prestigious of fellowships in the entertainment industry and includes a $50,000 award.  Sparks is also a writer for the ABC Family television series, "Lincoln Heights", currently the only (and historically one of the few) television drama series on network or basic cable with a predominantly African-American cast.

Terrion L. Williamson, J.D., was recently named a 2007-2008 Fellow at USC's Center for Law, History and Culture.  She was also a Fellow during the 2006-2007 school year.

Yushi Yamazaki obtained a Fulbright scholarship and joined ASE this year.

Karen Yonemoto was awarded the FTE North American Dissertation Fellowship, for the second time (2006-07; 2007-08), in addition to her Haynes Dissertation Fellowship.  This fellowship supports graduate students of color who conduct research on religion.

September 2007

ASE FACULTY

Five members of the core faculty of the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity were recipients of 2007 USC-Mellon Excellence in Mentoring Awards, more than any other individual department unit at the university.  Under the category “Faculty Mentoring Graduate Students,” the recipients were Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Stanley Huey, Jr., Ricardo Ramirez, and George J. Sanchez.  Under the category “Faculty Mentoring Undergraduate Students,” the recipient was David Roman.  In addition, David won an award for his mentoring work with junior faculty in the College.

In academic year 2006-07, two assistant professors in the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity, Sarah Gualtieri and Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond, won Zumberge Research Grants to support their ongoing research projects.

Sarah Banet-Weiser had two books published in the last few weeks:  Kids Rule!:  Nickelodeon and Consumer Citizenship (Duke University Press, 2007) and Cable Visions: Television Beyond Broadcasting, eds. Sarah Banet-Weiser, Cynthia Chris and Anthony Freitas (NYU Press, 2007). 

Ruth Wilson Gilmore was elected to the national board of the American Studies Association for a three-year term.  She also was a recipient of a 2007 USC-Mellon Excellence in Mentoring Award for the category “Faculty Mentoring Graduate Students.”

Clara Irazábal published five articles in 2007: “Kitsch is Dead, Long Live Kitsch: The Production of Hyperkitsch in Las Vegas” (Journal of Architectural and Planning Research);  “Neighborhoods in the Lead: Grassroots Planning for Social Transformation in Post-Katrina New Orleans?” (Planning Practice & Research, with Jason Neville); “Urban Design as a Catalyst for Social Change: A Comparative Look at Modernism and New Urbanism” (Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, with Michael Vanderbeek); “Entertainment-Retail Centers in Hong Kong and Los Angeles: Trends and Lessons” International Planning Studies, with Surajit Chakravarty); and “Bounded Tourism: Immigrant Politics, Consumption, and Traditions in Plaza Mexico” (Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change, with Macarena Gómez-Barris). Her book, City Making 

and Urban Governance in the Americas: Curitiba and Portland (2005), was featured by Ashgate in its 2007 40th-anniversary poster called "Ashgate's Top 40 at 40", which presented Ashgate's top 40 human geography titles. Irazábal's work on ethnic and Latino communities in Los Angeles—supported by an Urban Initiative grant, a Pew grant (managed by the Center for Religious and Civic Culture), and an Immigration and  Integration grant—has received significant attention by the media. This year she was commissioned an op-ed piece (Los Angeles Times, with Grace Dyrness), and has been interviewed for several newspapers (New York Times, Nguoi Viet [Vietnamese newspaper], Nueva Magazine); online news services (Reuters); radio (Morning Edition—National Public Radio); and TV news programs (News Extra—KNBC TV channel 4; En 

Contexto—T52 Telemundo).

Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond finished her book, to be published in December 2007:

White Negritude: Race, Writing and Brazilian Cultural Identity (Palgrave-Macmillan, “New Concepts in Latino American Cultures,” December, 2007).  She was also interviewed for a broadcast on NPR which will air some time in the next couple of months, with the subject: “African Diaspora Literature in Brazil and Cuba.” National Public Radio/Modern Language Association Program entitled “What’s the Word?”  Finally, she received a General Education Course Enhancement Award in summer

2007 for a course proposal on Greater Caribbean literatures and cultures.

Jane Iwamura published “Critical Faith: Japanese Americans and the Birth of a New Civil Religion,” in the September 2007 special issue of the American Quarterly, entitled "Religion and Politics in the Contemporary United States," guest edited by Marie Griffith and Melani McAlister.

Curtis Marez recently completed his first year of editing American Quarterly, and is particularly proud of the special issue entitled "Religion and Politics in the Contemporary United States," guest edited by Marie Griffith and Melani McAlister.  In addition, he published “Looking Beyond Property: Native Americans and Photography,” Rikkyo American Studies Journal, Institute of American Studies, Rikkyo University, Tokyo, Japan (2007); and “Mestizo,” Keywords of American Cultural Studies, ed. Bruce Burgett and Glenn Hendler (forthcoming, NYU Press).

Viet Nguyen published “Impossible to Forget, Difficult to Remember: Vietnam and the Art of Dinh Q. Le” in the Bellevue Arts Museum catalogue A Tapestry of Memories: The Art of Dinh Q. Lê. His story “A Correct Life” was published in Best New American Voices 2007, and another story, “The Other Woman,” won the 2007 Fiction Prize from Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and the Fine Arts, where it will be published this fall. He also won a residency from the Djerassi Resident Artists Program in Woodside, CA, for May 2008, and this past summer, he went to Japan on a grant from the Japan-United States Friendship Commission to present lectures at five Japanese universities.

Manuel Pastor was successful at obtaining two new grants, one from the Ford Foundation called “Just Growth: Linking Regional Equity and Regional Economic Development,” (with Chris Benner, UC Davis), $340,000, grant period 2007-2009, and a subcontract from the University of California, Berkeley, “Building Resilient Regions:  Data Analysis and Network Participation,” part of a larger MacArthur Foundation project entitled “Building Resilient Regions” (PI – Margaret Weir), subcontract: $315,842, 2007-2009.  He published Staircases or Treadmills: Labor Market Intermediaries and Economic Opportunity in a Changing Economy, with Chris Benner and Laura Leete, (Russell Sage Press, 2007) and the forthcoming article, "The Color in Miami:  Building Grassroots Leadership in the U.S. Global Justice Movement" (with Tony LoPresti, UCSC), forthcoming, Critical Sociology.  He was also co-author on Still Toxic After All These Years: Air Quality and Environmental Justice in the San Francisco Bay Area (with James Sadd and Rachel Morello-Frosh), a report that had a significant media splash in the Bay Area and led to several presentations before key policy makers and community leaders.

Laura Pulido’s most recent book, Black, Brown, Yellow and Left: Radical Activism in Los Angeles has won the 2007 Meridian Book Award for the Outstanding Scholarly Book in Geography from the Association of American Geographers.  Last year, it also won a Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Recognition Award.

David Román and Richard Meyer coedited a special double-issue of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, entitled "Art Works," which featured over twenty contributors writing about the role of the literary, visual, and performing arts in queer culture and history.   David also published an essay, "Remembering AIDS: A Reconsideration of the film Longtime Companion," in the volume.  He also published a series of reviews including reviews of Hecuba by Euripides at the Royal Shakespeare Company and Electricidad by Luis Alfaro at the Mark Taper Forum in Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies 31:1 (2006) and and a review of the American Songbook Recital by Audra McDonald at Lincoln Center in Theatre Journal 57:4 (2006), a special issue on "Black Performance" edited by Harry Elam Jr.  In addition, the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) held a special plenary session on his book, Performance in America: Contemporary US Culture and the Performing Arts, at their 2006 national conference.   In 2007 he won two USC-Mellon Awards for Excellence in Mentoring, the first award was for his work with ASE undergraduate students and the second award was for his work with the junior faculty in the College.

George J. Sánchez completed two reports in Summer 2007, “The History of Segregation in Los Angeles: A Report on Racial Discrimination and Its Legacy,” for Scheff & Washington, PC, in the legal case American Civil Rights Foundation v. Los Angeles Unified School District, Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles, Central Division (2007), and “Confronting a Crisis in the Historical Profession” on racial/ethnic diversity in the historical profession, which will appear in the American Historical Association Perspectives in October 2007.  In addition, his comments on a roundtable on “Regionalism: The Significance of Place in American Jewish Life,” were published in American Jewish History (June 2007).  In 2006, he delivered the George A.V. Dunning Lecture for the Historical Society of Southern California, and in 2007, he was awarded a USC-Mellon Mentoring Award for Mentoring Graduate Students, and an Advancing Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences Grant of $25,000 from the USC Office of the Provost.  He has also recently been appointed to the National Advisory Board of Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life.

ASE Ph.D. STUDENTS

Daniel HoSang has won the 2007 Ralph Henry Gabriel Dissertation Prize from the American Studies Association for the best dissertation produced in the field during the last academic year for his dissertation, “Racial Propositions: Genteel Apartheid in Postwar California.”  He will be presented with his prize at the annual awards ceremony of the American Studies Association conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at the Philadelphia Marriott on Friday, October 12, 2007 at 7 pm.  Laura Pulido was his major advisor and chair of his dissertation committee.

Viet Le has won an Anna Bing Arnold Fellowship from the USC Graduate School and a Fulbright Fellowship to Vietnam for academic year 2007-08.

The John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation awards ten dissertation fellowships a year to doctoral students in the social sciences from Caltech, the Claremont Graduate University, UCLA, UC Irvine, UC Riverside and USC.  In 2007-08, three students from the Ph.D. program of the Department of American Studies & Ethnicity won these fellowships, the most from any department at any of these universities.  These three Ph.D. students are Wendy Cheng, Phuong Nguyen, and Karen Yonemoto.

Two ASE Ph.D. students were awarded Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowships in 2007, which include three years of support for their doctoral work.  These students are incoming Ph.D. student Genevieve Carpio and second year student Chrisshona Grant.  They join Abigail Rosas, third year student in ASE, who won this Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship in 2006.

Michelle D. Commander was awarded a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship for academic year 2007-2008.

Hillary Jenks was awarded a USC College Final Year Dissertation Fellowship for 2007-08.  Both Daniel HoSang and Jennifer Stoever were awarded USC College Final Summer Dissertation Fellowships for Summer 2007.  In addition, entering student Adam Bush was awarded a USC College Doctoral Fellowship.

ASE UNDERGRADUATE MAJORS/MINORS

Chris Ferguson, a 2005 USC Renaissance Scholar who majored in American Studies & Ethnicity, was accepted to UC-Berkeley's Ph.D. program in African American Studies and begins his graduate studies this fall.   David Román was his undergraduate advisor.

2006-2007

ASE faculty celebrate the release of five new books!

Performance in America by David Román (Duke University Press)

Black, Brown, Yellow, and Left by Laura Pulido (University of California Press)

From the Kitchen to the Parlor by Lanita Jacobs-Huey (Oxford University Press)

Democracy's Promise by Janelle Wong (University of Michigan Press)

Golden Gulag by Ruth Wilson Gilmore (University of California Press)