BATTLEGROUNDS

HOSTED BY THE GRADUATE PROGRAM IN AMERICAN STUDIES APRIL 26, 2013, RUTGERS-NEWARK, CONKLIN HALL 175 UNIVERSITY AVE, NEWARK, NEW JERSEY

A TRANSDISCIPLINARY CONFERENCE

Battlegrounds are hallowed grounds to somecommemorations are held, souvenirs are sold. But battlegrounds are not simply physical places; they are also constructed, and often immaterial spaces. This conference takes as its starting point the diversity of the term battleground and seeks to explore both the material and immaterial battles that are part of American Studies scholarship. Hosted by the Graduate Program in American Studies, Battlegrounds is a transdisciplinary graduate student conference that brings together work from diverse disciplines and approaches. Our panels gather academic work from History, Literary Studies, Affect Studies, Animal Studies, Gender Studies, and Histories of Architecture. We invite faculty and students to participate in a day of conversationculminating in a roundtable discussion led by Professor Jason Cortesaround the history and contemporary signification of the concept of the battleground. SCHEDULE 9:00-10:00 breakfast @245 conklin 10:00-11:30 panel 1 @233 conklin sound and taste in city and suburban space 11:30-11:45 coffee break @ 245 conklin

11:45-1:15 panel 2 @233 conklin materiality, visuality, and war 1:15-2:15 lunch @ 245 conklin 2:15-3:45 panel 3 @233 conklin gendered bodies and national sexualities in literary and social space 3:45-4:00 coffee break @ 245 conklin 4:00-5:30 panel 4 @233 conklin design and discontent 5:30-6:00 roundtable @233 conklin w/ professor jason cortes 6:00-7:30 reception @245 conklin

PRESENTER BIOS
PANEL 1: SOUND AND TASTE IN CITY AND SUBURBAN SPACE Paul Edwards, The Sound of Violence: Anxiety in the Suburbs (PhD Candidate, American and New England Studies Program, Boston University). Paul Edwards work has been published in TheBlack Experience in America, Vol 2.("Memory of the Civil War in Popular Song.") He has performed at Newport Folk Festival and Lincoln Center and has worked as a director/producer at Audible Inc. in New Jersey. He is the recipient of the Martin Luther King Fellowship at Boston University, and his work looks into the "historic atmosphere" of different movements with a focus on the American Interwar period. His methodology relies on Jungian psychology and sound theory to emphasize the importance of place in people's lives. Thomas E.Moomjy, Jail Walls and 12 Bars: Perceptions of Criminality in Classical Blues (PhD Candidate, Rutgers UniversityNewark).Thomas E.Moomjys research and writing explores intersections of US military and cultural imperialism in music and film. Other interests include British Romanticism, blues music, and philosophies of humanism. His writing has appeared in Modern Fix Magazine and the poetry zine ZComposition. Mary Potorti, To Feed the Revolution: The Black Panthers Fight For Food (PhD Candidate, American and New England Studies Program, Boston University). Mary Potortis dissertation work situates hunger and the politics of food at the center of African American struggles for freedom during the 1960s. PANEL 2: MATERIALITY, VISUALITY, AND WAR Amy Lucker, "Photojournalism and War: Comparing Photographs of Vietnam with Those of Korea in the Mainstream Press" (PhD Candidate, American Studies, Rutgers University-Newark). Amy is the Head of the Library at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. Her research interests include: the impact of the Vietnam War on U.S. culture and arts, as well as broader questions surrounding Vietnam, Korea and the Cold War era in the U.S. Sean DiLeonardi, "The Battleground of the Body in Lost" (MA Candidate, University of Colorado at Boulder). Sean's research interests include modern and contemporary American literature, with a specified focus on body studies and torture. Molly Rosner, "Censorship, Advice, and the Space Between: Regulating Womens Letters during World War II" (PhD Candidate, American Studies, Rutgers University-Newark). Molly's research interests are 20th century urban history and oral history and material culture. She has worked as a researcher and educator at public institutions around NYC. Molly also writes a blog called "Brooklyn in Love and At War" in which she analyzes and offers historical context to letters her grandparents wrote to each other during World War II while her grandmother lived in Brooklyn and her grandfather was in the Navy.

PANEL 3: GENDERED BODIES AND NATIONAL SEXUALITIES IN LITERARY AND SOCIAL SPACE Erica Tom, "Western Subversions: Performances of Masculinity and Historical Complexity in Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses" (PhD Candidate, American Studies, Rutgers UniversityNewark). Erica Toms forthcoming chapter, "Pasture Pedagogy: Reflections from the Field on Embodied Teaching," in Mira Katz's edited collection, Moving Ideas: Multimodal Learning in the Classroom and Communities, analogizes embodied learning in equine and academic contexts, illustrating how embedded different communicative modalities are in configuring meaning. She is an educator, editor, equine trainer, poet, and co-founder of the feminist discussion group, Locating Lysippe, located in Sonoma County, California. Austin Gallas, "Wise Ones: Gender, Sex Work and Private Reform in Early 20th Century New York City, (MA in Humanities and Social Thought, New York University). Austin Gallas is graduating this May with a Master of Arts in Humanities and Social Thought from the John W. Draper Interdisciplinary Program at New York University, and will begin his PhD candidacy in Cultural Studies at George Mason University in the fall. In his work, Austin explores American historical records to recast contemporary understandings of gender, sexuality and state violence. In the summer of 2011, he worked as a research intern with the Organization for Visual Progression, a small non-profit based in Queens, NY and Colombo, Sri Lanka that connects grassroots advocates in diverse regions of Sri Lanka with film equipment and production training. Haruki Eda, "The Battleground Beyond the Closet: State Homosociality and Representations of Korea (PhD Candidate, Department of Sociology, Rutgers-New Brunswick). Haruki Eda was born and raised in Japan, went to college in San Francisco, and received a Master's of Science in Gender, Development and Globalization from London School of Economics and Political Science.

PANEL 4: DESIGN AND DISCONTENT Rowena I. Alfonso, "Battleground Buffalo: African Americans and the 1967 Buffalo Riot" (Ph.D. Candidate,Department of History,University of Toronto).Rowenas dissertation is tentatively titled, "Race and the Rust Belt: African Americans in Buffalo, 1945-1975," which examines racial discrimination in post-World War II Buffalo, NY and the struggle of African Americans against it. Rowena has taught the first-year survey course, American History to the Civil War, at the University of Toronto-Scarborough. Her research interests include African American history, race and Afrodiasporic identities. Blanca Serrano Ortiz de Solrzano, "Between Limit and Possibility: Cuban Transformed Buildings and Objects in the Works of Ernesto Oroza, Carlos Garaicoa, and Los Carpinteros" (Ph.D. Candidate, History of Art, The Institute of Fine Arts, New York). Blanca Serrano works on Cuban modern and contemporary art. Her current research focuses on the culture of recycling and crafts in post-revolutionary Cuba. Blanca also holds a professional certificate in arts administration from NYU, and she has museum experience from her internships in the curatorial departments of El Museo del Barrio, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Brooklyn Museum, as well as from her collaboration with the Picasso Museum in Mlaga, Spain. She is the student coordinator of the Colloquium on Art in Spain and Latin American at the Institute of Fine Arts, and has translated The Art of Painting in Colonial Quito, edited by Suzanne Stratton. John Johnson, Hospitality, hotels, and house building: suburban gateways, underground dance music, and the cultural dynamics of defining urbanity in Newark, New Jersey (PhD Candidate, American Studies, Rutgers University-Newark). Johns work analyzes the history of Newarks storied Jewish enclave, Weequahic. John situates the decline of the middle class community within municipal efforts to improve the city through urban renewal. He examines Black and Jewish responses to the production of the second ghetto in Newarks private housing market. A scholar of Newark, John has also examined hotels, underground dance culture, and the fluidity of race, religion, sexuality, and class in the space of Newarks famed Club Zanzibar.

ABOUT PROFESSOR JASON CORTES

Assistant Professor, Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies, Graduate Program in American Studies, Program in Women's and Gender Studies Jason Cortes began his duties as an Assistant Professor of Spanish and US Latina/o Studies in the Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures at Rutgers University-Newark in the Fall of 2009. Prior to Rutgers, he held academic appointments at Yale University, Brown University, and UMass-Boston. His areas of interest include: Caribbean literature, US Latina/o literature, Contemporary Spanish American literature, Comparative literature, Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, and Critical Theory. He is also in the process of completing a book manuscript entitled: Macho Ethics: Masculinity and Self-Representation in LatinoCaribbean Narrative. Macho Ethics examines the vicissitudes and ambiguities behind literary authorship/authority and masculinity as critically staged through writing in the narrative prose (novels, chronicles, and short stories) of Latino-Caribbean authors starting in the 1980s. Beyond this book project, he has also been at work on a second manuscript tentatively entitled Loving Death: The Necrophilic Imagination in Latin/o America. In this book, he analyzes the relationship between necrophilic obsessions (corpses, cemeteries, autopsies, funerals, etc.) and cultural production in the Americas.

SPECIAL THANKS TO AMERICAN STUDIES GRADUATE STUDENTS FOR ORGANIZING THIS CONFERENCE, THE GSGA, AND AMERICAN STUDIES FACULTY MEMBER, JASON CORTES.

THE AMERICAN STUDIES PROGRAM

AT RUTGERS-NEWARK

American Studies scholarship emerges from academic research and a commitment to engagement with a broad public on campus and in surrounding communities. Our faculty is grounded in literature, history, sociology, anthropology, political science, economics, Spanish, and Portuguese studies. In their research and teaching, they explore topicssuch as Latino masculinity, urban history and theory, contemporary Spanish American literature, feminist and queer theory, women and gender, African American literature, jazz history, environmental history, and performance studies. At Rutgers-Newark, we support students and faculty in multidisciplinary approaches to research and analysis. Researchers visit local andnational archives, attend public meetings and performances, conduct oral history interviews, and carry out ethnographic fieldwork. All our students, whether they are preparing for careers in the academy or the public sector, are asked to consider the diverse publics that their scholarship can serve and the many forms in which the fruits of their research can be disseminated.We welcome applications from current students who wish to pursue a career within the academy or the public sector, as well as from engaged professionals in the field who seek to strengthen their scholarly and career opportunities.