Call for Entries

Text Practice Performance, the student-edited journal of the Américo Paredes Center for Cultural Studies at the University of Texas, is currently accepting abstracts and submissions from UT graduate students for our fall 2008 volume!

Submissions are due by March 22, 2008. Please direct all questions and submissions to tpp@www.utexas.edu.

TPP publishes performance-centered essays, book reviews, mixed genre writings, and multimedia works by University of Texas graduate students in all departments. Past themed volumes have explored nostalgic forces within globalization, flawed and slippery ideas of authenticity, and the roles of fusion in emergent culture and performance. We are currently seeking work on borderlands, war zones, values and properties, new forms of identities, public/private life, and experimental forms of writing and critique.

“‘Drinking Flower Wine’ in Taipei Hostess Clubs: Male Fantasy, National Authenticity, and Timelessness.”

The Department of Anthropology is hiring a new Assistant Professor in the Folklore and Public Culture program. The third candidate to visit the campus is Paul Festa, currently teaching anthropology in Hong Kong.

Monday, February 4, 12pm

E. P. Schoch building – EPS 1.128
University of Texas at Austin

Professor Festa’s talk is titled, “‘Drinking Flower Wine’ in Taipei Hostess Clubs: Male Fantasy, National Authenticity, and Timelessness.” He will speak with interested graduate students after the talk.

“Night Shifts: Moral, Economic, and Cultural Politics of Turkish Belly Dance Across the Fins-de-Siècle.”

The Department of Anthropology is hiring a new Assistant Professor in the Folklore and Public Culture program. The second candidate to visit the campus is Oyku Portuoglu-Cook.

Friday, February 1, 12pm
E. P. Schoch building – EPS 1.128
University of Texas at Austin

Professor Portuoglu-Cook’s talk is titled, “Night Shifts: Moral, Economic, and Cultural Politics of Turkish Belly Dance Across the Fins-de-Siècle.” She will speak with interested graduate students after the talk.

“Card Me When I’m Dead”: Identification Papers and the Pursuit of the Good Afterlife in China”

The Department of Anthropology is hiring a new Assistant Professor in the Folklore and Public Culture program. The first candidate to visit the campus is Julie Y. Chu, currently an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the Wellesley College.

Friday, January 18, 12-2pm
E. P. Schoch building – EPS 1.128
University of Texas at Austin

Professor Chu’s talk is titled, “Card Me When I’m Dead”: Identification Papers and the Pursuit of the Good Afterlife in China.” She will speak with interested graduate students after the talk.

“Between Innovation and Imitation: Media, Globalization and Cultural Hybridity in India”

The Américo Paredes Center for Cultural Studies presents “Between Innovation and Imitation: Media, Globalization and Cultural Hybridity in India,” a talk by Radio/Television/Film Professor Shanti Kumar.

Wednesday, November 28, 12-2pm
E. P. Schoch building – EPS 1.128
University of Texas at Austin

Professor Kumar’s research interests include television and new media technologies, global media studies, and postcolonial theory. He is the author of Gandhi Meets Primetime: Television and the Politics of Nationalism in Postcolonial India (University of Illinois Press, 2005) and co-editor of Planet TV: A Global Television Reader (NYU Press, 2003).

“Cultural Alterity of Turkish Roma (’Gypsies’) and Political Dis/Enfranchisement”

The Américo Paredes Center for Cultural Studies presents “Cultural Alterity of Turkish Roma (’Gypsies’) and Political Dis/Enfranchisement: Identity Politics, European Union, and Urban Development,” a talk by Ethnomusicology Professor Sonia Tamar Seeman.

Wednesday, November 21, 12-2pm
E. P. Schoch building – EPS 1.128
University of Texas at Austin

Professor Seeman has done field research in Macedonia, Southeastern Europe and in Turkey on Rom, Turkish, and transnational musical practices. Her recent research interests explore emergent Turkish cultural expressions and ongoing configuration of ethnic and gendered identities in the wake of the European Union accession processes. Her talk draws from fieldwork conducted among Roma communities and organizations in Turkey to explore the dynamics of local, national and transnational politics, and implicates the key role of public performances of music and dance in forging political consciousness.

“Selena’s Memorial and Civic Maintenance in the Borderlands”

The Américo Paredes Center for Cultural Studies presents “Selena’s Memorial and Civic Maintenance in the Borderlands,” a talk by Professor Deborah A. Paredez, Department of Theatre and Dance.

Wednesday, November 14, 12-2pm
E. P. Schoch building – EPS 1.128
University of Texas at Austin

Professor Paredez’s recent work has focused on U.S. Latina/o performance and popular culture. Her articles, “Remembering Selena, Re-membering Latinidad,” (Theatre Journal, 2002) and “Becoming Selena, Becoming Latina” (Women and Migration in the US-Mexico Borderlands, Duke University Press, 2007) comprise part of her forthcoming book, Selenidad: Selena, Latinos, and the Performance of Memory, that explores the afterlife of the Tejana performer, Selena Quintanilla Perez.

“‘I was scared to death’”

The Américo Paredes Center for Cultural Studies presents “‘I was Scared to Death’: A Multi-Dimensional Approach to Genre Studies,” a talk by Radio/Television/Film professor Janet Staiger.

Wednesday, November 7, 12-2pm
E. P. Schoch building – EPS 1.128
University of Texas at Austin

Professor Staiger is the author of several books in media studies, including Media Reception Studies (NYU Press, 2005), Perverse Spectators: The Practices of Film Reception (NYU Press, 2000), and Bad Women: Regulating Sexuality in Early American Cinema (University of Minnesota Press, 1995). She is currently working on a project tentatively titled “Formulas, Affects, and Inflections: A Multi-Dimensional Approach to Film Genre.” This continues her work on gender and sexuality, reception, and institutional studies as part of understanding film and media in culture.

“Transformations of intersubjectivity and emotion in American society”

The Américo Paredes Center for Cultural Studies presents a talk by Bethany Ogdon, visiting speaker.

Wednesday, October 31, 12-2pm
E. P. Schoch building – EPS 1.128
University of Texas at Austin

Professor Ogdon left a tenure-track job at Hampshire College because she wanted to move to Austin. Her research interests focus on current transformations of intersubjectivity and emotion in American society. Her talk concerns “the declining status of love as it now emerges across current scientific research, art production, media representation, and a wide range of recent socio-cultural phenomena.” She is an adjunct professor at St. Edward’s University and is also teaching courses at ACC.

“Network Identity, Power, and Conventions”

The Américo Paredes Center for Cultural Studies presents “Network Identity, Power, and Conventions: How Human Rights Crisis
 Survivors Might Speak and Be Heard on a Global Level,
” a talk by Lena Khor, UT Cultural Studies portfolio student.

Wednesday, October 24, 12-2pm
E. P. Schoch building – EPS 1.128
University of Texas at Austin

Lena Khor is a doctoral candidate in English who is researching the
 possibilities and limits of speaking as a “global” subject in the context of
 identity politics. Her research interests 
include 20th century World Anglophone
 literature, human rights and humanitarian rhetoric, and globalization studies.