American Studies Newsletter
Introducing Janis Appier
Janis Appier, an assistant professor of history, is a new member of the American Studies committee. She received a Ph.D. in History from the University of California riverside in 1993 and was assistant professor of at the Ohio state University for four years before joining our History Department in 1999. Since arriving on campus, she has taught courses in twentieth-century U.S. history, such as "The 1960s in America," and courses in U.S. women's history, such as "Women and Work." Her research interests focus on dynamics of gender, race, class, ethnicity, and culture in public policy and social reform, particularly in the areas of crime and criminal justice. Her publications include a book published in 1998 by Temple University Press, Policing women: The Sexual Politics of Law Enforcement and the LAPD, and an essay, "Armed and Dangerous? Policewomen and Guns," in The Right to Bear Arms, edited by Michael C. C. Adams and James Westheider (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, forthcoming).
Publications and Presentations
Janis Appier, a specialist in recent American history and women's history, is a new member of the American Studies committee whose undergraduate background was in American Studies. Her essay, "Armed and Dangerous? Women, the Police, and Guns," dealing with the long controversy surrounding the arming of policewomen, was recently accepted for publication in an anthology on the Second Amendment.
Chris Holmlund (Modern Foreign Languages and Cinema Studies) is the author of two forthcoming publications: Impossible Bodies: Femininity and Masculinity at the Movies (Routledge 2001), and Contemporary American Independents: Red, White and Blue?, co-edited with Justin Wyatt (Routledge 2002). She presented "Latinas in LaLa Land," to the Society for Cinema Studies Conference in Chicago in 2000, and "Generation Q's ABCs: Queer Indie Feature Films" at the Society's 2001 Conference in Washington, DC. She traveled to Wellington, New Zealand in November 2000 to present "'Dolly' Dialectics" at the Film and History Conference and gave a presentation entitled "Marketing 'Dolly'" at the SCREEN Conference in Glasgow, Scotland in June 2001.
Benita Howell (Anthropology) recently completed editing the 35,000-word tourism section of the Encyclopedia of Appalachia to be published in 2002 by University of Tennessee Press. Her edited volume illustrating multidisciplinary approaches to regional studies, Culture, Environment, and Conservation in the Appalachian South, is forthcoming from the University of Illinois Press in spring 2002. She attended the Kentucky-Tennessee American Studies conference in April 2001 and presented a paper on Franklin Webster Smith, the Bostonian who initiated the colonization project that became the Rugby colony of British author and statesman Thomas Hughes. Howell is consulting on a NEH planning grant to develop cultural interpretation for Uffington House, the Rugby home of Thomas Hughes's aged mother and his niece Emily.
Mark Hulsether (Religious Studies), in addition collaborating with our counterpart American Studies faculty in Swansea during the fall of 2000, received an ICE grant (with Misty Anderson, English) to develop a multidisciplinary course in cultural studies. He presented a paper, "Bridging the Gap Between Cultural Studies and the Study of Religion," at the Congress of the International Association of History of Religions in Durban, South Africa, in August, 2000. The Presbyterian Historical Society awarded his book, Building a Protestant Left, Christianity and Crisis Magazine, 1941-1993, its Francis Makemie Award for the outstanding book relating to American Presbyterian/Reformed history.
Chuck Maland (English and Cinema Studies) planned a World War II Film Festival for the Pigeon Forge Symposium on World War II and wrote an accompanying program guide on Hollywood and American culture during World War II. A forthcoming volume from Indiana University Press, John Ford Made Westerns: Filming the Legend in the Sound Era, will include his essay on the evolution of the film director's reputation from the 1920s to his death in the 1970s. In May, he will attend the Cinema Studies conference in Washington, DC and present a paper on crime films made during the McCarthy era by leftist filmmakers critical of contemporary American life.
Summer Institute on the American South
Charles Aiken (Geography) and Kurt Butefish, coordinator of the Tennessee Geographic Alliance, will co-direct a four-week summer institute for K-12 teachers entitled "Cultural Diversity of the American South," funded by a National Endowment for the Humanities grant. Additional funding has been committed by the National Geographic society Education Foundation. The four-week institute will provide 25 K-12 teachers, selected from public and private schools throughout the U.S., the opportunity to study and experience first-hand the increasingly complex and diverse American South. Led by experts on southern geography, history, politics, archaeology, physical environments and ethnicity, the institute will show how geography is interrelated with other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Participants will be required to incorporate materials from the institute into their teaching, offer in-service workshops to other teachers in their school systems, and serve as resources in their local communities.
Contact Information
Dr. Michael Fitzgerald, Chair
Professor of Political Science
1009 McClung Tower
Knoxville, TN 37996-0410
Phone: (865) 974-7049
Fax (865) 974-7037
Email: mfitzge1@utk.edu