Release Party for TPP volume 7

Join us for the release of a new volume of TPP! Text, Practice and Performance is the peer-reviewed, student-edited journal of the Americo Paredes Center for Cultural Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

April 8, 2009, 2-4pm
EPS 2nd floor lounge

Refreshments and free copies of the journal will be offered at the release party. Meet the editorial board and learn about the call for papers for our upcoming volume!

The new volume is also online at http://studentorgs.utexas.edu/tpp/archives.html.

“‘What do you mean I speak better Mandarin than you? I’m American!’: Heritage Mandarin Speakers in Taipei, Taiwan”

The Américo Paredes Center for Cultural Studies presents a talk by Foreign Language Education PhD candidate Daniel Steve Villarreal .

Monday, December 1, 12-1pm
E. P. Schoch building – EPS 1.128
University of Texas at Austin

Dan Villarreal, Ph.D. Candidate in Foreign Language Education, has been traveling to Taipei, Taiwan for work, language study, and fun for the last couple of years. While studying at the Mandarin Training Center of National Taiwan Normal University in the summer of 2007, he noticed that were a lot of students from Mandarin-speaking families studying there as well. His curiosity turned into an exploratory study in which he sought to find out why Chinese people would travel to another Asian country to study their own language, and what makes some of them more skilled at Mandarin than others. Dan’s presentation is a combination of his fledgling steps toward a dissertation and “How I Spent My Summer (and Christmas) Vacation(s).”

“Culture Jamming: Ideological Struggle and the Possibilities for Social Change ”

The Américo Paredes Center for Cultural Studies presents a talk by Radio Television Film PhD candidate Afsheen Nomai.

Monday, November 24, 12-1pm
E. P. Schoch building – EPS 1.128
University of Texas at Austin

Culture jammers tend to critique dominant ideologies and ways of life by appropriating the languages, images, and texts of the dominant and inflicting them with a critical bent. It can be a rather nuanced and subtle way of attempting to bring about social and cultural change. How the activists associated with the Yes Men, Adbusters Media Foundation, and the Billboard Liberation Front critique the prevailing modes of globalization, consumerism, and advertising is the focus of analysis here, with special attention paid to the challenges their tactics face. Can consumerism be challenged by selling a shoe? Can prevailing policies overseeing world trade be changed by a World Trade Organization “official” suggesting people eat hamburgers made of reconstituted human waste? These are only a few questions raised when considering the actions of culture jammers who, in their quest to bring about progressive change, mimic what they wish to alter.

“Publishing and Cultural Politics: Russia and Argentina in the 1920s.”

The Américo Paredes Center for Cultural Studies presents a talk by Comparative Literature PhD candidate Marina Potoplyak.

Monday, November 17, 12-1pm
E. P. Schoch building – EPS 1.128
University of Texas at Austin

“Publishing and Cultural Politics: Russia and Argentina in the 1920s” explores how the 
1920s institutionalization of the literary public 
sphere, and rapprochement between the state and 
literary groups mediated by influential cultural 
figures, helped to usher in 
anti-democratic regimes of the 1930s in Russia 
and Argentina. The 1920s was a decade of 
remarkable artistic and literary achievements in 
both countries, marked by intense debates over 
the future of the national culture and the essence of national identity. The analysis of the dominant trends in 
publishing in these two apparently very 
different countries sheds light on the striking similarities between 
cultural processes in Russia and Argentina.

“Scenes of Secrecy/Scales of Hope”

The Américo Paredes Center for Cultural Studies presents a talk by Queens College, CUNY, Professor Patricia Clough.

Monday, November 10, 12-1pm
E. P. Schoch building – EPS 1.128
University of Texas at Austin

“Scenes of Secrecy/Scales of Hope” offers a psycho-geographic tracing of personal and cultural trauma set in a genealogy of family relations, immigration, racial and gender difference. Moving from 1950’s urban planning in a borough of New York City to present day national governance of counter-terrorism and security, Clough explores affects of fear, despair and hope in geographies of intimacy.

Patricia Ticineto Clough is professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at the Graduate Center and Queens College of the City University of New York. She is author of Autoaffection: Unconscious Thought in the Age of Teletechnology (2000); Feminist Thought: Desire, Power and Academic Discourse (1994) and The End(s) of Ethnography: From Realism to Social Criticism (1998). She is editor of The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social, (2007). Clough’s work has drawn on theoretical traditions concerned with technology, affect, the unconscious, timespace and political economy. She is currently working on Ecstatic Corona an ethnographic historical research and experimental writing project about Queens New York. Clough is joined by students at Queens College who are also doing work on where they live in Queens and the parts of the world they or their families come from.

“Artaud’s Daughters in New Media Culture”

The Américo Paredes Center for Cultural Studies presents a talk by Theatre & Dance PhD student Heather Barfield.

Monday, November 3, 12-1pm
E. P. Schoch building – EPS 1.128
University of Texas at Austin

Austin theater company, Rubber Repertory, is pushing the limits of theater and live performance into the 21st century.  In their latest production, The Casket of Passing Fancy, they ardently integrate interactivity without apology.  “You must choose,” demands the Duchess who sits at the helm of the parlor.  You must take your chances and honor the infinite possibilities of presence and liveness; you decide whether you want a tame or taboo offer; you initiate the transaction by raising your hand.   You realize there is a precipice to pass behind those curtains: what will happen to you is a mystery that pumps adrenaline through your excited body.  You must shed some fear about human-to-human contact, stranger-to-stranger relations, in order to fully engage the senses and take pleasure (or pain) in the performance made just for you.  You are thrust from complacent and passive spectatorship.

This production astutely captures the essence of Antonin Artaud’s manifestos on “cruel theater” practices.  Also, because the performances are individual and personal, they are performed only once, aligning with Peggy Phelan’s arguments about the ephemeral nature of performance.   Taboos are temporarily suspended for the sake of pleasure and fetishistic notions of experiencing something “new.”  This theater offers a radical and unique twist on notions of representation and mimesis in live performance.

Heather Barfield is a PhD Candidate in Theater and Dance with an emphasis on Performance as Public Practice.  She has been an active player in Austin theater for over 15 years.

“Trespassers Will be Recruited: Recruitment & Reluctance in the Indian Call Center Economy”

The Américo Paredes Center for Cultural Studies presents a talk by Folklore & Public Culture PhD student Mathangi Krishnamurty.

Monday, October 27, 12-1pm
E. P. Schoch building – EPS 1.128
University of Texas at Austin

In this paper, I detail a chapter of my dissertation dealing with recruitment processes in the Indian call center industry. Based on two years of ethnographic research in the city of Pune in Western India, I investigate the variety of practices that seek to maintain the large number of workers required in this Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry.

Even as revenues from the BPO industry continue to add to India’s GDP, the industry faces high levels of attrition and decreasing caches of labor populations. In this paper, I detail the various steps that potential workers have to go through before becoming a call center worker. This paper analyzes media messages, recruitment drives, interviews, orientation sessions and training agendas to trace the ways in which organizations are seeking to make efficient the process of transformation from a young student to a professional worker. I end seeking to discuss what the absurdity of these increasingly desperate processes means for the future of both outsourcing and this urban worker population.

Join us for a talk by Radio, Television, Film Professor Lalitha Gopalan

The Américo Paredes Center for Cultural Studies presents a talk by Radio, Television, Film Professor Lalitha Gopalan.

Monday, October 13, 12-1pm
E. P. Schoch building – EPS 1.128
University of Texas at Austin

Lalitha Gopalan is the author of Cinema of Interruptions: Action Genres in Contemporary Indian Cinema (2002), Bombay (2005) and 24 Frames: The Cinema of India (2008). Her research interests include national cinemas, international genre cinema, and experimental filmmaking practices. She is on the editorial board of Camera Obscura and is currently working on a book about short films.

“Why Are Transvestites Better Than Women at Making Women Beautiful in Mandalay?”

The Américo Paredes Center for Cultural Studies presents “Pirated Transnational Broadcasting: The Consumption of Thai Television Soap Operas Among the Shan Community in Burma,” a talk by Anthropology Associate Professor Ward Keeler.

Monday, October 6, 12-1pm
E. P. Schoch building – EPS 1.128
University of Texas at Austin

“Many Burmese friends in Mandalay have told me that male to female transvestites are better at making women appear beautiful than women are. They attribute this to the dual nature of the transvestites’ gender and therefore understanding of what is attractive. In believing this of transvestites, Burmese sustain a view of them as being particularly capable of crossing boundaries: in the past, they were employed primarily as spirit mediums but now they cross the boundary between the local and the international in the matter of cosmetics and style.”

Pirated Transnational Broadcasting: The Consumption of Thai Television Soap Operas Among the Shan Community in Burma

The Américo Paredes Center for Cultural Studies presents “Pirated Transnational Broadcasting: The Consumption of Thai Television Soap Operas Among the Shan Community in Burma,” a talk by Anthropology PhD candidate Amporn Jirattikorn.

Monday, September 29, 12-2pm
E. P. Schoch building – EPS 1.128
University of Texas at Austin

“Pirated Transnational Broadcasting” examines the roles of transnational media in the lives of Shan community in Burma with a focus on their consumption of Thai satellite television. It analyzes how the Shan appropriation of transnational television creates a new site of identity transcending national boundaries as well as expressing an ambivalent sense of interaction with mediated modernity. It also demonstrates the role of transnational media as a catalyst for the emergence of Shan migration to Thailand.