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American Studies
Letter from the Chair, Dr. A. Gabriel Melndez

Dear American Studies Faculty, Students and Community,

We are nearing the close of another very significant year for
American Studies. In part, it has been a year to get
reacquainted with recent hires, new student cohorts and
campus organizations in my role as Interim Chair while
Alex Lubin is on leave from UNM. It has been both a
pleasure and an honor to work with all segments of our
campus community. American Studies was part of an
exceptional year of growth across the College of Arts and
Sciences. As a result of an unprecedented round of faculty
hires, some 52 new faculty positions were filled this year,
across the college.

In American Studies we are very pleased and excited to have
made two new faculty hires this year. We received some 292
applications for our search in Popular Culture. Our search
was ultimately successful due to the tireless efforts of the
faculty who spent countless hours last December screening the
pool of applicants for the best-qualified candidates to invite for
on-campus interviews. As a result, we hired two exceptional
candidates, who I am pleased to introduce you to here. Dr.
Tony Tiongson, (PhD in Ethnic Studies, UCSD) will be joining
the faculty in the fall of 2012, coming to us from Colorado
College where he heads the Ethnic Studies Program. Dr. Shant
Smalls (PhD in Performance Studies, NYU) asked to delay the
start of her appointment until the fall of 2013, so that she can
complete a Mellon Post-Doctoral Residency Fellowship at
Davidson College. The addition of Dr. Tiongson and Dr. Smalls
brings the total of full time faculty in the department to eight.

Over the last two years American Studies has managed to make
key joint appointments with other programs in the College.
Last year, Dr. Irene Vsquez (PhD History, UCLA) was selected
as the Director of the Chicano/Hispano/Mexicano Studies and
also joins us as an Associate Professor in American Studies. Dr.
Katherine Holscher (PhD, Religious Studies, Princeton
University) will join the faculty in the fall. Dr. Holscher, hired
last year, will hold a joint appointment as an Assistant
Professor in American Studies and Religious Studies. In
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american studies | university of new mexico

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addition, Dr. Judit Kdr of the American Studies program at Eszterhzy College in Eger, Hungary
will be in residency in our department as a Fulbright Fellow. As a result of these appointments
American Studies is now the largest it has ever been in its history.

Likewise, we anticipate the largest graduate student cohort of recent years will enroll in AMST 500,
the pro-seminar (See Graduate Directors Report for details). I want to thank Professor
Schreiber, ASGSA officers and all the graduate students who helped organize the Open House that
took place in April. Their efforts were successful, and as a result, we are looking at enrolling a
promising and talented group of MA and PhD students.

Like all of you, I always delight in reading the many accomplishments of the American Studies
graduate students and recent graduates. Even as the job market continues to be tight and fiercely
competitive, American Studies graduates continue to push ahead with exciting and excellent
research, and the newsletter is again filled with news of significant accomplishments. My long-
standing commitment has been to do as much as possible to help graduate students reach their
academic and career objectives. So this year, when funding became available I initiated a funding
program to support graduate student research and conference presentations. Last fall we were
able to pay conferences fees and incidental costs for students Aurore Diehl, Linda Eleshuk-Roybal,
Kara McCormack, and Tiffany Berger. Each presented papers at the Texas/SW/Popular Culture
Conference that took place in Albuquerque. This spring, we were able to cover travel and other
conference costs for Rachel Levitt to attended the Cultural Studies Conference, Eileen Shaughnessy
and Benjamin Abbott to attend the Queer (In)Security Conference (UC Davis), Andrew Marcum to
attend the Continuums of Service Conference (Seattle WA) and Aurore Diehl to attend the UC
Santa Barbara Music Conference.

Another highlight this year has been the American Studies Lecture series, funded by the
department and organized by Professor David Correia. It goes without saying each of our speakers
lifted us to remarkable and insightful interdisciplinary questions. Finally, among the changes we
have gone through this year has been our move to new office space. American Studies is now on
the fourth floor of the Humanities building. We seem to be getting used to moving around and
enjoying all of the new space.

Faculty News

Dr. Amy Brandzel
We have a lot to look forward to in regards to the growth in the
department, and I feel so very lucky to have Irene Vasquez as a part
of our crew this year, with two more folks coming in the following
few years. Notably for Gender and Sexuality Studies minded
students, we will soon have a second scholar who specializes in
queer theory, Shant Paradigm Smalls. She will be essential in the
process of building Queer Studies at UNM. As for my own
scholarship, I enjoyed creating a roundtable at ASA this year to
begin the process of challenging the field of Queer Studies for its
cranky demeanors, which is a polite way of describing the reign of
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elitist left critique in the field. Graduate student Rachel Levitt was an essential part of the
roundtable, as was former UNM faculty member Karma Chvez, and I think our critiques are off
to a good start. Moreover, I am very grateful for Women Studies and American Studies for
granting me a release from teaching this year to finish up my manuscript, Against Citizenship: Queer
Intersections and the Violence of the Normative. I am also beaming with pride as I recently learned I
was awarded the OSET New Teacher of the Year Award, which is directed at tenure-track
teaching. I plan to continue to earn this accolade in my teaching next year, including two graduate
seminars: Feminist Theories and The Violence of the Normative.


Dr. David Correia
This year has been my first as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in
American Studies at UNM, and I can say without exaggeration it
has been one of the most fulfilling years in my professional career.
In the fall I applied for and was awarded a grant from the Center
for Regional Studies for a project to create a new scholarly journal
to be housed in the Department of American Studies.

The grant allowed me to hire a graduate student (Berenika
Byszewski) to work as fellow on the project. Our first task was to
create a new interdisciplinary organization were calling the
Environmental and Economic Justice Working Group. The EEJWG is an interdisciplinary, cross-
campus group comprised of faculty and graduate students planning the journal. Read Berenikas
summary of the EEJWG in this issue of the newsletter. One of the first projects of the EEJWG will
be a fall 2012 mini-conference at UNM that will bring community activists and scholars together in
order to plan the journal and also to help us find ways to link our scholarship to local and regional
activism. Look for an announcement early in the fall.

I also developed and taught a graduate seminar called The Politics of Property. The seminar has
been a critical examination of law and property and follows key themes in my book, Properties of
Violence: Law and Land Grant Struggle in Northern New Mexico. I recently submitted the finished
manuscript of the book for inclusion in the University of Georgias series on the Geographies of
Justice and Social Transformation, a series that includes books from David Harvey, Don Mitchell
and others. The book is scheduled for a spring 2013 release.

It has also been a busy travel year for me. I presented papers at conferences at Clark University in
Worcester, MA, at the CASAR conference in Beirut, at the ASA in Baltimore and at the AAG in
New York. I gave an invited lecture at the University of Kentucky and was invited to UC Davis in
March to participate in a workshop on my scholarship with faculty and graduate students of the
Environments and Societies Initiative. I have also had the opportunity to provide service to the
American Studies Department as chair of the lecture series. Between the fall and spring we
brought six scholars to campus for lectures and meetings with faculty and students. Many thanks
to Miles Cleaver, who has worked hard as a graduate assistant for the lecture series. You can read
his summary of the series in this newsletter. Also, thanks to Farah Nousheen who did all the hard
work on my new website. Check out her work at www.unm.edu/~dcorreia. Finally,
congratulations to Melanie Armstrong for defending her dissertation this fall. Hers was the first
dissertation defense on which I had the privilege to sit as a member of the department.
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Dr. Jennifer Denetdale learned much during her first year
as the Department Undergraduate Advisor. She shared information
about the American Studies major and minor at a career fair in the
fall. Dr. Denetdale continues to work on several research projects,
including an analysis of the 2010 Navajo presidential election where
Navajo voters pondered the question of leadership, tradition, and
gender discrimination. She is delighted to be working with Suzan
Harjo and the National Museum of the American Indian, in
Washington D.C., on an exhibit of American Indian treaties. She is
also working with co-editor Mishuana Goeman on an anthology of
Native feminists essays, to be published by Paradigm Publishers.

Dr. Alyosha Goldstein
I was on sabbatical for the fall semester. During this time I conducted
research and wrote portions of my book manuscript on genealogies
of contemporary U.S. colonialism and the jurisprudence of settlement
and foreclosure in our present era of economic crisis. I continued
editing a volume on comparative formations of U.S. colonialism that
is now off to the press for comments from reviewers. I also worked
on the final production stages of my first book, Poverty in Common:
The Politics of Community Action during the American Century,
published this spring by Duke University Press. I had the
opportunity to launch my book as part of a new authors panel at
New York University with Alondra Nelson and Mabel Wilson. In April, I moderated a panel on
Settler Colonization Past & Present featuring the fabulous Jennifer Denetdale and Michael
Yellow Bird for the Indigenous Book Festival at UNM. Audra Simpson (Columbia University) and
I organized a series of three panels on Sovereignty, Property, Affect for the upcoming Native
American and Indigenous Studies Association conference in June, where Ill also be presenting a
paper drawn from my current book project. Looking forward to the fall, I have been appointed to
a three-year term on the Graduate Education Committee of the American Studies Association. At
UNM, in addition to my work in American Studies, I will begin serving as the Associate Director
of the BA/MD Combined Degree Program.

Dr. A. Gabriel Melndez
This year I saw the completion of The Writing of Eusebio Chacn, a
compilation of the writings of Eusebio Chacn (1870 1947), a central
figure in the Nuevomexicano, pre-statehood, literary arts movement that
I co-published with Dr. Francisco Lomel, Chair of the Department of
Spanish and Portuguese at UCSB (see book jacket). I was invited to
submit and placed four encyclopedia entries in the Encyclopedia of
Latino Culture edited by Charles Tatum for Oxford University Press. At
ASA Baltimore, I was an invited panel member for Roundtable on
Graduate Education sponsored by the Graduate Education Committee
of the American Studies Association. Also this year, I gave the following presentations: (Book
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signing and talk) Santa Fe Nativa, for Middlebury Colleges New Mexico Summer Program (St.
Johns College Campus) Summer, 2011; (Lecture) The Spanish-language Press in the Southwest
for a course taught by Dr. Steve Martnez, New Mexico Highlands University, Santa Fe Branch
(Santa Fe Community College Campus) November 2011; (Invited speaker): Literacy as Freedom:
The Spanish-language Press in the Southwest for the Esperanza Lecture Series, Bilingual/ESL
Program, Northern New Mexico College, Espaola, New Mexico April 19, 2012.

My writing and research this year is leading to my completion of two other book projects in
progress. One is the childrens book The Legend of Ponciano Gutirrez and the Mountain Thieves,
which is under contract with UNM Press, the other is a single-author critical study titled Chicano
Hidden Cinema: Film Dramas in the Borderlands, which is under contract with Rutgers University
Press.

This past year I taught AMST 508 Seminar on Cultural Autobiography and Life Narrative, and
in the spring I offered AMST 560 Critical Discourse on the Southwest. I am serving as chair of
two new doctoral committees (Olurunsiwa and Eleshuk-Roybal) and I co-chaired the dissertation
of a PhD candidate (Gravagne) who will graduate in May 2012. I was also asked to chair a new
MA thesis committee (Holtkamp), and I serve as faculty advisor for two new graduate students.
My continuing graduate committee workload includes serving as chair of seven dissertation
committees and serving as a member of three MA committees.

Dr. Rebecca Schreiber
This year has been a busy one! In addition to my role as DGS, I served as
a member of the Lecture Series Committee with David Correia and
Jennifer Denetdale. I organized a talk and brown bag by Professor
George Ydice, who is Chair of Modern Literature and Language at the
University of Miami.

At the ASA conference this fall in Baltimore Curtis Marez and I put
together a panel on Everyday Media and Practices of Popular Power,
which also included Sasha Costanza-Chock and Ricardo Dominguez. As
part of the panel I presented a paper on Strategies of Visibility: Dream
Activists, Deportation and Discretion. In early December, I gave a talk entitled Truth Claims of
the Visible and the Artifice of Equality at the Looking at Arts, History and Place in the U.S.-
Mexico Borderlands conference held at University of Arizona. Both of these papers comprise
parts of chapters within my book manuscript Migrant Lives and the Promise of Documentation. This
spring my essay Confronting Regimes of Legality in Sanctuary City/Ciudad Santuario, 1989-
2009 was published in Radical History Review as part of a special issue of the journal on Calling
the Law into Question: Confronting the Illegal and Illicit in Public Arenas. This summer I plan to
do further research on the art project Sanctuary City/Ciudad Santuario, 1989-2009, which is
being transformed from an exhibition into a website. In terms of professional service, this year I
served as a manuscript reviewer for Duke University Press.

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Dr. Michael Trujillo
My research continues my longtime focus in ethnography,
Chicano/a Studies, and representation. It also poses an
intervention into broader debates concerning race; nation;
American Studies; and our disciplines relation to Latin
American Studies and Latin America. I have tentatively titled
the project Dialectical Americas: Compelling Symmetries in New
Mexican and (Latin) American Studies. For this project, I have
begun preliminary fieldwork in Chimay, NM. I have also
drafted an article that confronts peculiar symmetries in New
Mexican, Mexican, and Argentine ethnographies. I am
intending to write another concerning debates surrounding
development of northern New Mexicos Santuario de Chimay as a site of American spiritual
renewal. This project joins an ongoing book project titled City of Violence: Ciudad Jurez in the US
and Latin American Imagination. I am also editing a posthumous novel by New Mexican author Jim
Sagel titled The Hole that Never Empties/El hoyo que nunca se vaca.


New Faculty Welcome

Dr. Irene Vasquez
I have enjoyed the 2011-2012 academic year with colleagues, students,
and staff members in American Studies and Chicano Hispano Mexicano
Studies. My teaching and research specializations include the social
histories of Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Afro-Mexican/Latino
relations, U.S. Social Movements, Women of Color Feminisms, and
Intercultural and Interethnic Collaborations. In spring 2012, I had the
opportunity to teach a number of my research foci in the Introduction to
Chicana Studies. The course also utilized new social media. I had a
blast and learned so much from the students enrolled in this class. Over
the next few months, I will be working on several projects. I will
continue to complete final edits on a co-authored manuscript titled Aztlan Making: The Chicana/o
Movement: Ideology and Culture, 1966-1977. In addition, I will interview several undocumented queer
activists from California and Chicago. I will update and maintain a blog site, featuring compelling
social issues that inform the field of Chicana and Chicano Studies. ook it up at xicana-
ostudiesblogspot.com.
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Featured Faculty Publications

The Writings of Eusebio Chacn (Pas Por Aqu Series)
A. Gabriel Melndez
University of New Mexico Press, March 2012

This collection of Eusebio Chacns writings brings together all
published and written materials found, displaying his versatility
with samples of his work as an accomplished orator, translator,
essayist, historian, novelist, and poet.


Amy Brandzels essay Haunted by Citizenship: Whitenormative Citizen-
Subjects and the Uses of History in Womens Studies was published in the
Fall 2011 issue of Feminist Studies. Despite the fact that Womens Studies and
Womens History have worked diligently to address whiteness and
imperialism within their respective disciplines, this article demonstrates that
their shared domain, the intellectual history of feminism, remains an
inherently flawed project.



Laura Halls article Wild Companions on the Trail was published in the
spring 2011 issue of Chronicles of the Trail. She writes of the article, The
agricultural skills of the Native Americans who domesticated a wide range of
crops from a land of little rain is well documented. In this article I examined
the use of these plants by Native Americans and Hispanos along the Camino
Real. Archaeology and traditional recipes confirm that wild plants formed a
critical part of the diet even after agriculture was well established in the
Southwest. Laura Hall is a lecturer in American Studies. She teaches
Introduction to Southwest Studies and a course on Foods of the Southwest.



Poverty in Common: The Politics of Community Action During the
American Century
Alyosha Goldstein
Duke University Press, April 2012
Poverty in Common suggests new ways to think about the relationship
between liberalism, government, and inequality with implications for
popular debates over the end of welfare and neoliberalism in the United
States.


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Department News
Review of the American Studies Lecture Series-Spring 2012
By Miles Cleaver

During the spring semester of 2012, American Studies at UNM played host to three visiting
scholars as a part of the Departments ongoing lecture series. The guest speakers for the semester
included Dr. Genaro Padilla, from the University of California at Berkeley; Dr. Andy Doolen from
the University of Kentucky; and, Dr. Mark Rifkin, from the University of North Carolina at
Greensboro. American Studies faculty members, Michael Trujillo, David Correia, and Jennifer
Denetdale, invited these three scholars to UNM, respectively. The lectures this semester were co-
sponsored by the ASGSA, and various other Departments, programs,
and institutes at UNM, including Anthropology, English, Spanish &
Portuguese, CHMS, IFAIR, and Center for the Southwest.

On April 6
th
, Dr. Genaro Padilla gave the first talk of the spring lecture
series, entitled Reading a Spanish Colonial Epic From a Chicano
Context: Villagrs Historia de la Nueva Mxico, 1610 at UNMs
Hibben Center. Gaspar Prez de Villagr was a member of Juan de
Oates expedition to reoccupy New Mexico following the Pueblo
Revolt, and as such he was an eyewitness to and a participant in the
events that followed. Dr. Padilla offered a compelling reading of
Gaspar Prez de Villagrs work as poetic dissent from the official
Spanish colonial narrative of Oates subjugation of Acoma Pueblo. Moreover, Dr. Padillas work
on Villagrs epic stresses its importance as a historical document that is frequently ignored in the
often-acrimonious contemporary debates over Oates enduring legacy in New Mexico to this day.

Dr. Andy Doolen gave the next talk, on April 6
th
at the SUB entitled,
Captive In Mexico: U.S. Exploration and Empire in Zebulon Pikes
An Account of the Expeditions to Sources of the Mississippi, 1810.
In his talk, Dr. Doolen provided a fascinating and historically
contextualized reading of Pikes memoir as a mirror of the
complicated national discourse around U.S. expansion at the time of
his writing. Specifically, Dr. Doolen examined how Pike
embellished his narrative with racialized and gendered
stereotypeswhile casting himself as an unwitting and willing
transgressor of national boundaries. Dr. Doolen suggested that
Pikes memoir did double-duty, both as a defense of his illegal
incursions into Spanish territory, and as a moral impetus for
asserting U.S. extraterritorial racial superiority in ways that reflected the prevailing political
discourses and debates of his dayparticularly those bent on legitimizing the imperial goal of a
U.S. national manifest destiny over North America.

The final talk of the spring series, entitled When did Indians Become Straight? was given by Dr.
Mark Rifkin, on April 12
th
at the SUB. Dr. Rifkins talk, drawing from his book with the same title,
explored the ways in which the history of U.S. imperialism, and the ongoing legacy of settler
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colonialism in the displacement and dispossession of Native communities from their lands, has
consistently framed Native sexuality as deviant or perverse to undermine Indigenous
sovereignty claims. Dr. Rifkins incisive reading of U.S. Federal Indian policy emphasized that
hegemonic discourses around property holding and heteronormative nuclear family structures, in
particular, have been instrumental in disrupting kinship systems, traditional modes of resource
distribution, and Indigenous forms of governancethereby effectively destabilizing viable
avenues for self-determination of Native peoples.

All-in-all there was an excellent turn-out for each of the talks that were part of the spring lecture
series, both by visitors from the larger-Albuquerque community, and by a wide-range of graduate
students and faculty across a number of different fields and disciplines here at UNM. The
Department of American Studies will be continuing its guest lecture series during the upcoming
academic year, and, as always, all members of the UNM community are encouraged to attend.
Many thanks to each of the guest scholars who took part in the American Studies spring lecture
series, and thanks to everyone who was able to attend their engaging talks this semester!

Miles completed his first year of the graduate program and his research focuses on American
countercultures.

Center for Regional Studies Continues its Longstanding Support of
American Studies Graduates Over a number of years the Center for Regional Studies in
Zimmerman Library, under the direction of Dr. Tobas Durn, has provided American Studies
graduate students and faculty with generous support through a variety of scholarships and
fellowships. Dr. Durn holds a doctorate in American Studies from our department. This
academic year five American Studies students have received awards in the form of Center for
Southwest Studies Fellowships funded by CRS. They are PhD candidates Clare Daniel (CSWR
Digitalization Fellow), Kara McCormack (NHMR Fellow), Caroline McSherry (Office of State
Historian Fellow: CRS Juan and Virginia Chacn Fellowship), Kristen Valencia (University
Libraries Latino/a Fellow), and MA student Aurore Diehl (University Libraries Popejoy Fellow).
This year alone CRS supported fellowships have provided $68,500 in funding to graduate students.
Since 2008, at least eight other American Studies students have also received fellowships and
scholarships that have allowed them to continue their graduate education and helped them meet
their academic degree goals. We wish to acknowledge the decisive role CRS has played over the
years in graduate student success by providing over $240,000 in educational opportunities to
American Studies graduate students.

2012 Awards

Tessa Cordova and Melanie Yazzie Win Faculty of
Color Awards
The Project for New Mexico Graduates of Color hosted the 6th Annual
Faculty of Color Awards Reception on May 9, 2012. Dr. Laura Gmez,
Melanie Yazzie, and Dr. Theresa "Tessa" Crdova were nominated for
research, teaching, mentorship, and service. Melanie Yazzie won the
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award for excellence in service and Dr. Crdova won the award for Teaching Assistant.
Congratulations to all the winners and nominees!

Jordon Johnson Wins Luminaria Award
Jordon Johnson, M.A., M.S.W. is currently a Doctoral Student in
American Studies and working on his dissertation titled Embodying A
Transgender Movement: A Sense of Belonging and Rethinking a Discourse
on Human Rights. He is teaching courses at the University of New
Mexico Gallup Campus in the Human Services Department as well
as the coalition coordinator for the public education campaign in New
Mexico called All Families Matter, which focuses on raising awareness
and visibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender families. He
works closely with local community leaders and multiple
organizations to advance knowledge about LGBT people. He is
deeply committed to developing sustainable community-based
programs and educational efforts in his work especially when
addressing issues of privilege and oppression. Jordon received the Presidential Luminaria Award
for his work to organize the local host team for the 13
th
Annual White Privilege Conference. There
were over 1500 people in attendance this year, which was held at the Albuquerque Convention
Center. This annual conference examines challenging concepts of privilege and oppression as well
as offers solutions and team building strategies to work toward a more equitable world.

Amy Brandzel Wins New Teacher of the Year Award
Every year the Faculty Senate Teaching
Enhancement Committee and the Office of Support
for Effective Teaching get hundreds of nominations
for their highly competitive annual teaching awards.
This year both David Correia and Amy Brandzel
were nominated by numerous students
and colleagues. While being nominated is a
testament to both professors dedication to their
students and their extraordinary skills as instructors,
Dr. Brandzel's ultimate recognition as one of two
professors out of the entire University to receive the "Outstanding New Teacher of the Year
Award" honors her truly exceptional skills as an instructor as well as her dedication to mentoring
graduate students. Among the statements from Provost Abdallah as he awarded Dr. Brandzel this
honor were testimonies from students that told of her gift for teaching, dedication to her
undergraduate and graduate students, absolute brilliance, status as a role model, and ability to
push students beyond what they ever thought they were capable of.

Smithsonian Fellowship Awarded to Andrew Marcum
Andrew Marcum is the recipient of a 2012 pre-doctoral Smithsonian Fellowship. The fellowship is
in-residence and provides funding for the completion of his dissertation research at the
Smithsonian Institutions National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. Andrews
dissertation examines public presentations of disability and Americans with disability in the
contemporary United States. Exhibits on disability history at the Smithsonian, the FDR Memorial
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11
in Washington, D.C., and state-sponsored works honoring Helen Keller (including a statue of
Keller at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center given by the State of Alabama) are the central focus of his
dissertation project.

The New Mexico Musical Heritage Project Wins First Place
American Studies 314 won first place in the Creativity division of the Undergraduate Research and
Creativity Symposium. The students played a Matachines tune from Jemez Pueblo and two
Hispanic dance tunes made popular in the folk world by Cleofes Ortiz from Bernal, New Mexico:
Valse Emiliano and Mi Suegra. The students then spoke with the judges for about one hour about
the process of making a violin, the challenges in learning to play the folk and ritual music of New
Mexico, and their desire to preserve this part of the cultural heritage of New Mexico that has been
slowly disappearing from the musical landscape.

American Studies 314 is in the process of accepting applications from students interested in this 2
and 1/2 year course. The New Mexico Musical Heritage Project is a unique studio and classroom
environment in which students can learn both the art of playing and the craft of making violins
within the rich New Mexican cultural and historical context.

Peter White, an English and American Studies professor, folklorist, and former UNM
administrator, is the director of this interdisciplinary program.

Israel/Palestine Field School Wins Best Panel
Award
Sam Markwell, Farah Nousheen and Melanie Yazzie were
awarded "Best Panel" for their panel "Subversive Education:
Graduate Students Experience and Response to Israel/Palestine
Field School" presented at the 1
st
New Mexico Graduate and
Professional Student Conference. They presented with Sociology
graduate student Rebecca Erickson on their experience in the
2011 Israel/Palestine Field School: "Settler Colonialism and Post-
Colonial Critique". Their roundtable focused on the way the field
school informed their broader research interests and the role of
critical knowledge production and social critique in the
academy. Their panel can be found on YouTube.

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2012 Undergraduates
Undergraduate American Studies students presenting their work at the year-end symposium. Pictured: Shalom,
Audrey, Samantha, Alyssa, Marion and Julie. (Not pictured: Mark and Diego)

Undergraduate Thesis Projects

Shalom Bond, Recipient of Constance Morris
Shortlidge Memorial Award
"Hebrew Brethren": Eastern Sephardim and the
Invention of the American Jew

Audrey Gallas
There is no Mexican law on the subject, only
custom: The State of Native American Slavery and
Servitude in Territorial New Mexico

Alyssa Herrera
Looking beneath the Glossy Surface: The Effects of
Media Advertisements on Womens Body Dissatisfaction and Eating Disorders

Mark Hunter
The Lackluster War on Drugs of the George W. Bush Administration

Samantha Luna, Undergraduate Honor Thesis
An Opportunity for Success: Undocumented Students and Higher Education

Marion McClary
Possessing an Obsession: Representations of the Black Female Body in Popular Culture, Past and Present

Diego Montoya
Violence, Drugs and an Accordian: The Popularity and Impact of Narcocorridos

Julie Weaver
Swedish Immigration and the Influential Roles of Agents and Railroads


2012 Bachelor of Arts

Crystal Abeyta, cum laude (Fall)
Audrey Gallas (Spring)
Lonnie Hendren (Fall)
Alyssa Herrera (Spring)
Samantha Luna, magna cum laude (Spring)
Roxanna Momeni (Spring)
Alexis Ovitt (Fall)
Deadra Wright (Spring
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Graduate Program News

Letter from Director of Graduate Studies By Rebecca Schreiber

This has been a busy and exciting year!

The Open House for prospective graduate students, which was held March 28-30, 2012, was a huge
success, with 13 prospective students in attendance. I want to thank members of ASGSA, especially
Gina Daz for helping to organize the event, as well as OGS for the $2000 grant that enabled us to
bring prospective graduate students to campus. I would also like to thank graduate students who
hosted prospective graduate students, and those who volunteered for the Q&A session. Thanks
also goes to Gabriel Melndez, David Correia, Jennifer Denetdale, and Charlene Porsil who
participated on a panel about Funding and Research Opportunities at UNM.

This year weve had numerous Teaching and Professionalization Workshops for graduate
students. In the fall I organized a conference presentation workshop, an IRB workshop and a
WebCT workshop. In the spring of 2012 we held two workshops, Getting Ready for the Job
Market, led by David Correia in which he instructed graduate students in how to craft a C.V. and
a job application letter. The second workshop was on Grant Applications, and was led by
Michael Trujillo on grant proposal writing.


Michael Trujillo leading the
Grant Applications
Professionalization workshop
on April 27, 2012









A number of current graduate students won awards and received fellowships this year as well.
Jordon Johnson was a recipient of the Third Annual Presidential Luminaria Awards at UNM. The
Luminaria Awards recognize individuals and organizations that have lit the path in areas of
diversity, equity, inclusion, or social justice. Andrew Marcum was a recipient of a Predoctoral
Fellowship from the Smithsonian Institution. The fellowship is in-residence and provides funding
for dissertation research at the Smithsonian Institutions National Museum of American History in
Washington, D.C. Congrats also go to Andrew for being awarded the Deans Dissertation
Scholarship at UNM. Id like to congratulate all of our graduate students who graduated during
the 2011-2012 academic year including Melanie Armstrong, Pam Gravagne, Tessa Cordova, Dina
Gilio-Whitaker, Liza Minno-Bloom, Anzia Bennett, and Berenika Byszewski.

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american studies | university of new mexico

14
2012 Graduates

Doctor of Philosophy

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"Bio+Teiioi: Secuiity, Science, Simulation"

/0")"+$ 12 34)5-6$ (Spiing)
"0'./"$#-$/ 1%',&"# !'-&': Ritual Nemoiialization Along the
2#3*-/ 0'#4 $' 5*'""# 6$'-&"/"

7$*"#$ 8)$6$.%" (Spiing)
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"The Becoming of Age: Bow Biscouises of Aging anu 0lu Age
in Contempoiaiy Populai Film Both Reinfoice anu Reimagine
the Naiiative of Aging as Becline"


Master of Arts

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"BPv vaccination anu the Phaimaceuticalization of Public
Bealth"

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"Colonizing Chaco Canyon: Napping Antiquity in the
Teiiitoiial Southwest"

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"Panhe at the Ciossioaus: Towaiu an Inuigenizeu
Enviionmental }ustice"

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"An Affiont to 0ui Shaieu Bumanity: The Tiibal Law
anu 0iuei Act (2u1u) anu the Politics of Settleu
Nulticultuialism"



American Studies Graduate Student Association (ASGSA)

This year the American Studies Graduate Student Association (ASGSA) was headed up by Gina
Daz, Rachel Levitt, Eileen Shaughnessy, and Benjamin Abbott. Thanks to the amazing work of
these students as well as Raquel Madrigal, Sam Markwell, and
Miles Cleaver, ASGSA was able to support graduate students and
their important work in American Studies. ASGSA helped fund
seven peoples travel to conferences as well as thesis and
dissertation research totaling $1,350. In an attempt to help graduate
students be more competitive grant writers, the leadership within
ASGSA spent hours looking over travel grant applications and
gave detailed feedback.

In addition to helping support graduate students academic
endeavors, ASGSA was able to help co-sponsor several talks by
noted scholars and artists this year including A Xicana Codex of
Changing Consciousness: A Literary & Visual Art Presentation
with Cherre Moraga and Celia Herrera Rodrguez; Reading a
Spanish Colonial Epic from in a Chicano Context: Villagr's
Historia de la Nueva Mexico, 1610 with Genaro Padilla; On the
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15
Road to Chihuahua: US Exploration and Empire in Pikes An Account of the Expeditions to
Sources of the Mississippi, 1810 with Andy Doolan; and When Did Indians Become Straight?
with Mark Rifkin.

Within the department, ASGSA now has a standing graduate student representative at faculty
meetings who is charged with presenting the faculty with graduate student concerns and agenda
items. ASGSAs faculty representative worked with faculty to: increase support for graduate
student teaching excellence; encourage the nomination of graduate students for university wide
teaching awards; host a recruitment event for prospective graduate students; and help craft
professionalization workshops preparing students for independent research, grant writing, and
going on the job market.

This year we also helped coordinate graduate student contributions to next years new ACS book
list and the Departments 2012-2013 Lecture Series. As the departments graduate student
association, ASGSA hopes to continue working with and for American Studies graduate students
to increase the quality of students teaching portfolios, professionalization training, and funding as
well as increase transparency at all levels of the University. We are especially looking forward to
seeing everyone at next years First Friday Forums!

To get involved with ASGSA and network with other American Studies graduate students contact
Gina Daz or Rachel Levitt at: ginadiaz@unm.edu or relevitt@unm.edu.

Graduate Student News

Benjamin Abbott
On November 18, I presented the paper Biological Binaries and
Limitless Liberty: Discourses on Gender and Labor in the Partido
Liberal Mexicano as part of the Fall 2011 Student Organization for
Latin American Studies Brown Bag Series. On March 2, I presented
the paper Straight Utopia and the Shadow of the Queer:
Narratives of Gender, Sexuality, and Labor in the Partido Liberal
Mexicano at the 3rd Annual Critical Knowledge Symposium. I
presented this same paper on April 14 at the New Mexico Queer
Student Summit and on April 21 at 2012 CL/CS Graduate Student
Conference. At the April 23-24 New Mexico Graduate and
Professional Student Conference, I participated in the panel
entitled Feminist Seminars: Students' Works in Progress and
discussed the essay Wither Radicalism? Epistemological Correctness, Political Action, and the
Imperial Academy." Finally, on May 4, I gave the paper These People Are Savages: Anarchism,
Rationality, and the Violence of Property at the Queer (In)Security Conference in UC Davis. At
the edge of the academy, I have been participating in the Occupy Wall Street movement via
(un)Occupy Albuquerque since its inception in October 2011. The (un)Occupy critique of settler
colonialism and white supremacy draws on and resonates with critical American studies
scholarship. During December 2011, I took part in Occupy the Ports at Long Beach. With Food Not
Bombs I share meals and radical literature on street each week.

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16
Teresa Cutler
Besides working on my dissertation, I managed to get few other projects underway. I wrote a
chapter for an upcoming academic book on the Globalization of Dance that will be published by
Palgrave later this year. I also presented a paper on Cult Film at the Southwest/Texas Popular
Culture and American Culture Association this March. I will be speaking May 19 at an awards
event for writers in Vetralla, Italy, as part of the prizes for new writers in a contest. Finally, I began
a new class, Cult Film, this semester and will be teaching it again in the summer and fall for
Cinematic Arts.

Gina Daz
In summer 2011, Gina Daz investigated the papers of two artists
housed at the Stanford University Library, research funded by
UNMs Feminist Research Institute that resulted in a paper
entitled Accessing Xicana Aesthetic Activism, which was
presented in their colloquium series. In addition to teaching Raza
Genders and Sexualities, a 300-level CHMS course this year, Gina
presented two other works in progress: Queering Chicana
Lesbian Indigenist Visual Culture: Marginal Eyes and the
Performance of Resistance at the Cornell University History of
Art Graduate Student Symposium; and Empowering Women?:
Querying Art Museum Praxis in the Museum of International Folk
Arts Gallery of Conscience at the Wells College Womens and Gender Studies Colloquia. A
fellowship from UNMs Centro de la Raza made travel to NY possible. Gina also attended the
Conference of Ford Fellows and presented research at that meeting. Finally, she curated the
Women of Color Shorts Program for the local queer film festival and was a discussant at The Guild
Theaters screening of !Women Art Revolution.

Aurore Diehl, second year MA student, is also finishing up
her second year as the Thomas L. Popejoy Fellow at the Center
for Southwest Research. This spring she gave three presentations:
Metal Queen Memoirs: Life-Writing and Gender in Hard Rock
and Heavy Metal Music at the Southwest/Texas Popular
Culture/American Culture Association Conference held here in
Albuquerque; Power Chords and the Crisis of Globalization:
Neoliberalism, Youth Disenfranchisement, and Heavy Metal
Music at the Music and Crisis Interdisciplinary Graduate
Conference hosted by the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study
of Music at the University of California, Santa Barbara; and The
University Occupied: An Overview of Campus Unrest at UNM in
the 1960s and 70s at the Center for Regional Studies 2012 Fellows Colloquium held in UNMs
Zimmerman Library.

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17

David Holtkamp
The second year of the MA Program has certainly seen some
major changes both personally and professionally. My wife
Michele and I have a beautiful baby boy Sebastian. He certainly
keeps us on our toes! During the summer in 2011, I had the
opportunity to work as a seasonal archaeological technician at
Pecos National Historical Park in northern New Mexico. There I
was fortunate to access, document, and organize materials that
will serve as the basis for my thesis project. The thesis topic is a
postcolonial critique of the archaeological excavation, interpretation, and preservation of an
Ancestral Puebloan ceremonial structure (kiva) within the confines of the 17th and 18th century
Spanish mission church. My plan over the summer is to write up a preliminary report of this
project to present at the 75th annual Pecos Archaeological Conference, which will be held at Pecos
National Historical Park in August 2012. Additionally I am attending the annual New Mexico
Historical Society conference in Santa Fe in May 2012 during the celebration of New Mexicos
Centennial Statehood celebration.

Rachel Levitt
This year Rachel Levitt presented her work at three conferences and she has been involved in
various kinds of departmental service. At the American Studies Association Rachel participated in
a roundtable discussion entitled Cranky Demeanors and Reparative Relations: Imagining a
Politics of Responsibility and Accountability for Queer Studies. Adding to the panels theorizing
of what a reparative affiliation might look like in queer studies, Rachels presentation called for
rejecting the cranky elitism that has become common in queer studies while still honoring and
preserving forms of queer disidentification in scholarly channelings of the affect that underwrites
queer objections to homophobia. Rachel also presented her work on Queer Native Studies at the
Cultural Studies Association and will be presenting a co-written paper with Jessica Fishken-
Harkins at the Native American and Indian Studies Association. In addition to sharing her work
at conferences, Rachel has co-directed the Postcolonial Queer Studies reading group as well as
served as co-chair of the American Studies Graduate Student Association for the past two years.


Raquel Madrigal
Hi ya'll! Professors Rebecca Schreiber, Michael Trujillo and Alyosha
Goldstein have officially signed off on my comprehensive exam
statement and booklist. The two comps fields I have chosen are
within the fields of globalization and class studies. I am deeply
grateful for the indispensable guidance and friendship provided to
me by my committee members since the start of this process. Their
intellectual investment and commitment at this juncture of my
graduate career is most meaningful. I have also been re-awarded the New Mexico Higher
Education Department Graduate scholarship for the 2012-2013 academic year, and lastly, I will be
presenting my paper "Undocumented: Countering the Violence of Neoliberalism on
Undocumented Students in the U.S." at this year's Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social
(MALCS) Summer Institute, which will be held at UC Santa Barbara from July 18-21, 2012.
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american studies | university of new mexico

18
Eileen Shaughnessy
I finished my second year of the masters program in American studies this
spring. It was a busy spring! I began working with the local anti-nuclear
activist organization Citizens for Alternatives to Radioactive Dumping
(CARD) in February, giving presentations in local high schools about the
effects of New Mexicos nuclear industry. In March, I attended the White
Privilege Conference in Albuquerque. In April, I gave a presentation
titled Tracing the Politics of Knowledge Production: Towards a Queer
Interdisciplinarity on the Women and Interdisciplinarity Panel at the
New Mexico Graduate and Professional Student Conference. Also in
April, I was a presenter in the Queer Theory Roundtable- a part of the
LGBTQ Resource Centers Brown Bag Lecture Series. Finally, in May, I was honored to present my
paper Queering the Bomb: Nuclear Weapons, Resistance, and Failure at the Queer (In)Security
Conference at the University of California at Davis. I'm looking forward to heading out on a
short tour of the Southwest with my band Eileen & the In-Betweens this summer and then going
camping in the Grand Canyon.

Graduate Student Groups

Postcolonial Queer Studies Reading
Group
In the Spring of 2010, Dr. Amy Brandzel offered a
graduate seminar entitled Postcolonial Queer Studies.
Inspired by the interest and enthusiasm of her students,
Dr. Brandzel proposed starting a reading group to
continue engaging with the literature base of the
emerging field of postcolonial queer studies. For the
last two years, under the fearless leadership of Rachel
Levitt and Dr. Brandzel, a group of graduate students
and professors from American Studies, English,
Communication and Journalism, Women Studies, and History have met once a month to discuss
cutting edge literature. Since its inception, the group has read 13 books. Among the literature are
works in Queer Native Studies, Queer Diaspora Studies, Queer Migration, and Queer of Color
Critique. The group is dedicated to providing the time and space for a diverse collective of
scholars to come together to engage with research that focuses on the intersections and mutually
constituting logics of settler colonialism, heteronormativity, racism, nationalisms, globalization,
and non-normative sexual and gender identities, collectivities, histories, politics, and
representations. The group is open to anyone interested in learning more about postcolonial queer
studies. If you are interested in participating in the group you can contact Amy Brandzel at
brandzel@unm.edu or Rachel Levitt at relevitt@unm.edu for more information. Or you can check
out the groups website at: https://sites.google.com/site/pocoqueerstudies/home.



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19
Environmental and Economic Justice Working Group (EEJWG)


May Day end of the semester meeting at Tractor Brewing Company- back row, from left to right: Miles Cleaver, David
Correia, Laura Garrison, Jeff Warren, Berenika Byszewski front row, from left to right: Geneva Smith, Sam Markwell,
and Pip Lustgarten

This semester saw the creation of the new Environmental and Economic Justice Working Group
(EEJWG), an interdisciplinary working group comprised of UNM faculty and students that will be
permanently housed in the Department of American Studies. The major aim of the Working Group
is to link scholarly research to community-based organizations working in New Mexico. We
imagine the Working Group as a vehicle that will advance a variety of collaborative projects with
academic and activist organizations. Initial projects of the EEJWG include La Jicarita, an online
journal under development, and a mini-conference on environmental and social justice tentatively
scheduled for October 2012.

La Jicarita, founded in 1996, is a journal of environmental and cultural politics with a focus on
natural resource struggles in New Mexico. This year, the journal could no longer continue print
production and has become an online journal in cooperation with UNM and the Working Group.
In addition to the political reporting and writing that La Jicarita is known for, the new version will
include a peer-reviewed scholarly journal, produced by the Working Group, with articles that
address issues related to New Mexico politics, economics, natural resources, and culture. David
Correia is the first faculty head of the Working Group and part of the editorial collective at La
Jicarita. Berenika Byszewski received funding from the Center for Regional Studies to support the
development of the Working Group and online journal.

The first two meetings of the EEJWG were a great success, with graduate and undergraduate
students from American Studies and Anthropology as well as community faculty in attendance.
At the meetings we brainstormed strategies and potential avenues for the development of the
Working Group, the journal, and the mini-conference. Since our first meeting in early March 2012,
David Correia, Sam Markwell (American Studies) and Laura Garrison (Anthropology) have
published articles online: check them out at www.lajicarita.wordpress.com. Please contact
Berenika at berenikab@yahoo.com if you are interested in becoming part of the EEJWG.
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20

Alumni News

Wesley Chenault
In October 2011,
Wesley Chenault was
appointed head of
special collections and
archives at Virginia
Commonwealth
University's James
Branch Cabell Library,
in Richmond, Virginia.
Chenault is charged
with building the Library's collections with
pointed interests in under-represented
communities. Previously, Chenault served as
research associate for the Auburn Avenue
Research Library on African American
Culture and History in the Atlanta-Fulton
Public Library System and collaborated with
librarians, archivists, community historians,
citizen supporters and others to build and
expand access to collections related to
African-Americans in Georgia. As archivist
at the Kenan Research Center in the Atlanta
History Center, his work developing LGBT
collections was notable. Earlier professional
experiences with the National Endowment
for the Humanities and Georgia State
University focused on collections related to
women's studies, oral histories and materials
documenting minority business and civic
leaders in Georgia. Chenault holds a Ph.D. in
American Studies from the University of
New Mexico.

Barbara Hussey (BA, 2002) has co-authored
with Judy Liddell, Birding Hot Spots of Central
New Mexico. Covering the Rio Grande
corridor, Sandia and Manzano Mountains,
Petroglyph National Monument, and
wetlands south of Albuquerque (including
crane and waterfowl haven Bosque del
Apache), the book offers twenty-nine
geographically organized site descriptions,
including maps, photographs, and trail
diagrams. Along with general descriptions of
each area, the authors list target birds;
explain where and when to look for them;
give driving directions; provide information
about public transportation, parking, fees,
restrooms, food, and lodging; and give tips
on availability of water and picnic facilities
and on the presence of hazards such as
rattlesnakes, bears, and poison ivy. Published
by Texas A & M University Press, the book is
part of their W. L. Moody, Jr. Natural History
Series. Hussey and Liddell are now writing a
second birding site guide covering northern
New Mexico.

Donna Knaff (2006) is doing a post-doctoral
fellowship as a military historian at the Joint
POW/MIA Accounting Command in
Honolulu, Hawaii, and my book, Beyond
Rosie the Riveter: Women of World War II in
American Popular Graphic Art, will be
coming out May 17, from University Press of
Kansas.

Katherine J.
Lehman (Ph.D.,
2007) recently
published her
book, Those
Girls: Single
Women in
Sixties and
Seventies
Popular Culture,
with the
University
Press of
Kansas. The book is based on her
dissertation, and she is grateful to everyone
at UNM who offered inspiration and support
for her research. Her article on televisual
postfeminism and motherhood appears in the
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21
new textbook Race/Gender/Class/Media (ed.
Rebecca Ann Lind, Pearson). Her newest
projects consider images of women, sexuality
and feminism in the Sixties-themed series
Mad Men and Pan Am. She is assistant
professor of Communications at Albright
College in Reading, PA, where she also co-
directs the Women's and Gender Studies
program.

Darwin Marable (PhD, 1980), American
Studies/History of Photography, currently
writes art and photography reviews for The
World and I Online (Washington D.C. Times)
and has also written extensively for a variety
of photography/art publications. Marable
has taught at San Francisco State University,
UC Berkeley Extension among others and is
currently teaching Surrealism and American
Photography at the Osher Lifelong Learning
Institute at California State University, East
Bay. He has also organized and curated a
variety of art and photography exhibitions. In
addition, he has served as a board member of
the Contra Costa County Arts Commission
since 2001.

Jeremy Ricketts (PhD, 2011) has been hired
as an Assistant Professor of English at Bethel
University in Tennessee! He'll start teaching
there in the fall.

Barbara Witemeyer (2002) has been a
volunteer at the Indian Pueblo Cultural
Center since 1988. She would like to invite
everyone to come to the IPCC to see the
current Centennial exhibit 100 Years of State
and Federal Policies and their Influence on
Pueblo Nations. This comprehensive exhibit
features original treaties, archival
photographs, and interactive videos. This is
an excellent place to learn about the
Southwest Pueblo peoples journey as
Sovereign Nations within New Mexico from
Statehood up to the present time.








AMERICAN STUDIES
MSC03 2110
425 HUMANITIES
ALBUQUERQUE, NM 87131-0001
PHONE: (505) 277-3929
FAX: 505-277-1208

Department Administrator:
Sandy Rodrigue
amstudy@unm.edu