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Thursday, May 4, 2023

Summer 2023 Registration is open! Click here to view our current offerings.
*NEW* Summer Session II Course Added — Performing America
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1878 - Thomas Edison's Phonograph shown for 1st time at Grand Opera House

1904 - Charles Rolls meets Henry Royce at the Midland Hotel in Manchester, England. Go on to form the car manufacturer Roll-Royce. 

1959 - First Grammy Awards: Perry Como & Ella Fitzgerald win

N.Y. ditches gas stoves, fossil fuels in new buildings in first statewide ban in U.S. The Washington Post.

There Is No Stopping the Allergy Apocalypse. The Atlantic.

Met Gala 2023: All the Best Queer Looks. Them.

Kwabena Slaughter, You and you and you, 2021, peripheral photography

This month, we are proud to feature Kwabena Slaughter, a 4th year PhD candidate in American Studies. Kwabena’s studies bring together his lifelong identities as an artist, engineer, and historian, an unlikely combination that creates a unique perspective in academia. His agenda is to research how social misrepresentations are created, and how to undermine these mechanics of misunderstanding. Kwabena’s work especially appreciates black box theory, which sees the human brain as a black box, which only responds to stimuli, and agnotology, the study of deliberately induced ignorance within culture.

His studies investigate two particular contexts of these mechanizations: the social epistemology of the camera and the historiography of Booker T. Washington. Kwabena’s studies on photography and the camera began in Spring of 2021 and are set to be published in the Journal of Critical Inquiry at the end of this year. His dissertation work on Booker T. Washington dives into the question of how we know what we do and don’t about the American educator, orator, and presidential advisor. By looking into Washington’s creative social network of painters, photographers, engineers, and writers, Kwabena is able to challenge what the general public has been taught about him. For example, a 1902 flier archived in the Library of Congress shows a lecture by Washington comically overshadowed by a church’s cake auction.

In addition to his doctoral studies, Kwabena is also doing work in conferences and performance art. He will be giving his presentation titled “Booker T. Washington in Profile: His Participation in Palmistry and Phrenology Readings, 1903-1905” at this year’s James A. Barnes Graduate History Conference at Temple University. His performing arts project “Practicing Trust and Authority” will be presented at the Heidelberg Center for American Studies in Germany; in the interactive exhibition guests wear custom-made gloves that trigger lighting and sound effects when making physical contact (a technology he is working to patent). Lastly, Kwabena is currently serving as dramaturg for a play about Booker T. Washington’s White House dinner with Theodore Roosevelt, produced by AvantBard Theatre in Arlington, VA.

13th Annual Faculty Honors Ceremony

When: Thursday, May 4, 2023; 4:00-5:00 PM
Where: Jack Morton Auditorium
*Reception to follow from 5:00-6:00 PM

Register Here!

The Office of the Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs is pleased to announce GW’s 13th Annual Faculty Honors Ceremony! Please join us to recognize a diverse group of talented GW faculty and graduate teaching assistants who have shown extraordinary dedication to teaching, research, and service to the university. 

Sociology Research Discussion

When: May 12, 2023; 1:00-3:30 PM
Where: Phillips Hall 411

Register Here!

2023 GW American Studies End-of-Year Celebration!

When: Friday, May 19, 2023; 2:00-3:00 PM
Where: Square 80
*directly following the Graduation Celebration

Register Here! (Required)

Come and celebrate the end of the academic year with the AMST community! Small bites and light refreshments will be served! Graduating and current students are welcome, as well as staff, faculty, and friends.

Professor Gayle Wald’s book was noted by the Washington City Paper in the article “Shout Sister Shout! Demonstrates Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s Songs Good, Bio-Plays Bad.”

Professor Melani McAlister recently gave the 2023 Wellborn Lecture at Florida State University entitled "Fela Kuti in America: Thinking Music and Politics through Religious Studies." In addition, Professor McAlister was awarded a Franklin Research Grant through the American Philosophical Society to support archival research in the upcoming academic year.

Associate Professor Libby Anker’s participation in the event Ugly Freedoms, Enemies Within, and Birchers was recently featured by GWToday in the article “GW Professors Discuss Anti-Democratic Tendencies in the Modern World.” Secondly, Anker’s article "We Go Low" will be published this month in Contemporary Political Theory as part of a symposium on visionary political theory. Lastly, Anker published a Critical Exchange Book Review between her book Ugly Freedoms (Duke 2022) and Jason Frank's The Democratic Sublime (Oxford 2021) in Perspectives on Politics from The American Political Science Association.

Current PhD candidate Kwabena Slaughter wrote for the online project entitled Picturing Black History (led by Ohio State University and Getty Images), which was selected for inclusion in the project's printed book. Abrams Publishing Company will be releasing the book in Fall 2023. The article is titled “Twenty-Two Divided by Seven: Geometry at Tuskegee Institute.”

Current PhD candidate Samantha Silver recently presented a paper at Pop Conference 2023 entitled “Laughing with the Blues: Blues Resonances in the Stand-up Comedy Records of Hattie Noel” for the panel “‘All That We Can Do With This Emotion’”: Spaces of Memory and Embodiment in the Savoy Ballroom, Hattie Noel’s Party Records, and Carly Rae Jepsen’s 'Emotion.’”

Current PhD candidate Aryn Kelly recently presented a paper at Pop Conference 2023 entitled “Remembering the Party: Navigating Embodied Memory of Harlem’s ‘Home of Happy Feet’” for the panel “‘All That We Can Do With This Emotion’”: Spaces of Memory and Embodiment in the Savoy Ballroom, Hattie Noel’s Party Records, and Carly Rae Jepsen’s 'Emotion.’”

Current PhD candidate Camilla Cannon was recently awarded the William P. Heidrich Research Fellowship at the University of Michigan and will be traveling to Michigan to begin their archival research in the coming weeks.

Current PhD candidate Joe Baez was invited to publish in the journal ReVista: The Harvard Review of Latin America. Baez will contribute an article about Laura Aguilar for their fall volume about LGBTQ+ identities in Latin America.

Current MA student Mallory McGovern will have a chapter published in Popular Music in Leeds: Histories, Heritage, People and Places in late 2023. The chapter is entitled "Leeds Punk Through a Feminist Lens."

Current MA student Abby Schulte has accepted a position as the Curatorial and Collections Assistant at Dumbarton House, a historic house museum in DC.

Current MA student Shealyn Fraser has accepted an internship position beginning in June 2023 at the John W. Kluge Center at The Library of Congress.

Alum Vyta Pivo (PhD ‘22) has accepted a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor of History and Theory with the University of Miami School of Architecture. She'll start in Fall 2024, after finishing up at the University of Michigan Society of Fellows. Additionally, this summer, Vyta will participate as a 2023 MacDowell Fellow.

Call for Papers: The 2023 conference of the Southeastern American Studies Association, to be held Sept 28-30 in Atlanta, Georgia, seeks papers addressing any aspect of the theme, “undiscovered country”: colonial, decolonial, catastrophic, utopian, and/or speculative. View more and submit here // Deadline: May 5, 2023.

Call for Applications: Georgetown University invites applications for up to two graduate dissertation fellowships in support of the Mellon Sawyer Seminar, “Creative Placemaking, Black Restorative Ecologies, and Black Spatial Futures” to begin August 2023. Learn more and apply here // Deadline: May 14, 2023.

Call for Papers: The American & New England Studies Graduate Students at Boston University invite you to contribute to Ampersand: An American Studies Journal. They are currently accepting submissions for their Summer 2023 edition, "Colonialism's Long Shadow," with abstracts due by May 19.

Call for Papers: The Massachusetts Historical Society seeks individual paper proposals and session proposals for the 2024 Conrad E. Wright Research Conference on Citizenship. View more details on how to submit here // Deadline: June 13, 2023.

Call for Papers: American Quarterly is seeking papers for their upcoming issue entitled “We Are Not American” Still. To learn more and submit, click here // Deadline: August 1, 2023.

Call for Papers: The 55th Annual Convention of the Northeast MLA, in Boston, seeks session and abstract proposals. To submit a proposal, log in here. Session proposals are due by May 10, 2023, and abstract proposals by September 30, 2023.

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When is the first day of class for next semester?

The Fall 2023 semester will begin on Thursday August 24th. Have a good Summer break everyone! 

What’s the difference between the RTF-EZ and RTF forms?

RTF-EZ and RTF forms are very similar but serve different purposes. The Office of the Registrar helps to distinguish the two. Students can send the RTF-EZ forms directly to the Registrar (emailed or in person). RTF forms must first be sent to the student’s advising office for approval (CCAS).

Like what you see? Have spotlights, kudos, events, or opportunities that you would like to share? We want to hear from you! Navigate to our feedback form using the link below, or more simply, forward your tip to amst@gwu.edu.