Cultural Studies Newsletter

Purnima Bose, Program Director Newsletter Anne Delgado, Volume 15 Fall 2010/Spring 2011 Graduate Assistant

Ballantine Hall 419 Bloomington, Indiana Director’s Note 47405-6601

(812) 855-0088 [email protected] The Cultural Studies Pro- dress by Frances Aparicio. McTaggart, and Dianne gram has had a busy In early March, Cultural Feeley, along with col- spring, collaborating with Studies faculty members leagues from IU, will speak different programs to or- Radhika Parameswaran, on the contemporary Inside this issue: ganize three separate con- Ranu Samantrai, and relevance of Marxist ferences. Vivian Halloran, Purnima Bose, along with analysis. (The conference director of the Asian Susan Seizer and Rebecca schedule is inside). S. Cha- Director‘s Note 1 Manring, organized a con- and Upcoming American Studies Program rusheela will deliver the ference on ―South Asian Events and Cultural Studies fac- keynote on ―Rethinking ulty member, headed an Feminist Studies‖ as part Marxism in Times of Tur- In the Press and 2,3 initiative, with colleagues of an effort to initiate a moil,‖ which considers at the Podium from the American Stud- scholarly dialogue among recent events in Egypt, South Asianists located in Images and Public 4 ies, Asian American Stud- Algeria, Libya, and Wis- ies, Cultural Studies, and the Midwest. Invited par- consin as a conjoining of Culture Native American and In- ticipants included Liz Wil- the crisis of capital accu- In the Press, 5 digenous Studies pro- son, Tithi Bhattacharya, mulation with the crisis in Brantlinger- grams, to organize an Lucinda Ramberg, Srimati legitimacy in governance. Naremore Award ―Ethnic Studies Research Basu, and Rini Bhatta- Believing that the current and Travel Award Workshop‖ for graduate charya Mehta. moment makes cultural Recipients, students on February 18- methods in the Marxist Cultural Studies On April 1-2, 2011, the Graduate 19, 2011. The workshop tradition propitious, S. Students brought together graduate Cultural Studies Program Charusheela will consider students from across the will hold its annual confer- what kinds of alternative Cultural Studies 6 disciplines for a stimulat- ence on this year‘s topic: analyses make sense this Conference ―Cultural Studies and Schedule ing discussion of their time around. works-in-progress, and Marxism.‖ Janet Sorensen, Laura E. Lyons, Ursula Cultural Studies 7 featured a keynote ad- —Purnima Bose Conference Description Upcoming Events April 1-2 Cultural Studies and Marxism Conference (see pp. 6-7). New Faculty 8 April 18 Georges-Claude Guilbert, a professor of American Studies, Gender Studies, and Cultural Studies at University Francois Rabelais – Tours, will give a public lecture, ―Mama Mia!: Dancing Queen Indeed. When Gay Subtext is Gayer than Gay Text‖ on Monday, April 18th, at 4:00 pm in Woodburn 120. Page 2 Cultural Studies Newsletter

In Press and at the Podium: Recent Activities of Cultural Studies Faculty

Purnima Bose was an essay entitled Michael Dylan Foster invited participant at a sym- "Extraordinary Renditions: recently received the IU posium on ―Academia and Toward an Agency of Outstanding Junior Faculty Activism‖ at Wesleyan Uni- Place," in Shakespeare After 9 Award. versity on February 11, -11: How Social Trauma 2011. She also presented Shapes Interpretation, eds. Ilana Gershon just edited her paper, ―Love Marriage, Julia Reinhardt Lupton and a special issue of the Journal Neo-Liberalism, and Indian Matthew Biberman, Mellen of Linguistic Anthropology 20 American Chick Literature,‖ Press 2010. (2) called Media Ideolo- at the South Asian Feminist Charnes‘s doctoral student, gies. The volume explores Studies Conference at Indi- Maura Smyth, who gradu- how the concept of lan- ana University on March 5, ated in December and who guage ideologies can Nick Cullather’s The 2011. At the annual Cultural Charnes nominated for a be useful for thinking about Hungry World: Amer- Studies Association meeting Fellowship with the Harvard the relationships between ica’s Cold War Battle in March 2011, she will be a Society of Fellows, was the people's beliefs, attitudes against Poverty in Asia speaker on a panel, recipient of this prestigious and strategies about media ―Petroleum Plots and Criti- post-doc, for 2011- and their actual media prac- cal Corporate Studies.‖ She 2014. Maura is the first tices. Gershon‘s article in has been invited to give a IU PhD to receive the Jun- this collection is "Breaking talk at the University of ior Fellowship from the Up Is Hard To Do: Media Washington in May. Bose Harvard Society of Fellows, Ideologies and Media published an essay, ―From according to Provost Karen Switching." Gershon also Humanitarian Intervention Hansen. received the IU Outstanding to the Beautifying Mission: Junior Faculty Award. Afghan Women and Beauty Nick Cullather‘s recent Without Borders‖ in Gen- book, The Hungry World: Jason Baird Jackson has ders, and has an article, America's Cold War Battle recently published an article ―Transnational Resistance against Poverty in Asia, re- on "Boasian Ethnography and Fictive Truths: Viren- ceived two prestigious and Contemporary Intellec- dranath Chattopadhyaya, prizes: the Society of Histo- tual Property Debates" in Agnes Smedley, and the rians of American Foreign the Proceedings of the Ameri- Indian Nationalist Move- Relation‘s Robert H. Ferrel can Philosophical Society and a ment‖ which will be simulta- Book Prize and the Organi- chapter on Native American neously published in The zation of American Histori- dress in The Berg Encyclope- Journal of South Asian History ans‘ Ellis W. Hawley History dia of World Dress and Fash- and Culture and Babli Sinha‘s Book prize. The Ferrel Prize ion. Last year he was elected edited volume on South recognizes ―distinguished to the Executive Board of Asian Transnationalisms. scholarship in the history of the American Folklore Soci- Angela Pao’s No Safe American foreign relations, ety and spoke at a number Spaces: Re-casting Claudia Breger recently broadly defined‖ whereas of conferences, including the Race, Ethnicity, and co-edited Empathie und the Hawley Prize ―is Academix 2010 conference Nationality in Ameri- Erzählung. [Empathy and awarded annually for the organized by Apple Com- can Theater Narrative.] Freiburg/ best book-length historical puter to explore open ac- Breisgau: Rombach, 2010 study of the political econ- cess issues in higher educa- with Fritz Breithaupt. omy, politics, or institutions tion. He is finishing work on of the United States, in its a book about the history of Linda Charnes published domestic or international the Yuchi Nation and editing an essay in the book Shake- affairs, from the Civil War the journal Museum Anthro- speare Studies, Vol. 33, 2010, to the present.‖ pology Review. entitled "Shakespeare and the Gothic Strain"; and an Volume 15 Page 3

In Press and at the Podium: Recent Activities of Cultural Studies Faculty

De Witt Douglas Kilgore reproduction as a book Social Justice: Revisioning Aca- and Ranu Samantrai are the chapter in the 2010 volume demic Accountability with Joe co-editors of a "Special Sec- Women Worldwide: Transna- Parker and Mary Romero tion on Octavia E.Butler" for tional Perspectives on Women, (SUNY Press, June 2010). the November 2010 of Sci- edited by Janet Lee and She also co-edited Science ence Fiction Studies. SFS is Susan Shaw. She served as Fiction Studies #112, special the premier peer-reviewed an evaluator at the National section on Octavia Butler journal in its field. Butler Fulbright Screening Com- with De Witt Douglas was a prominent writer of mittee meeting in New Kilgore (volume 37, part 3, science fiction, a winner of York in late fall 2010, and November 2010). the MacArthur Foundation she joined the editorial "Genius" Award, and the boards of the journals Criti- Jon Simons recently pub- first African American cal Studies in Media Commu- lished From Agamben to Ranu Samantrai’s woman to come gain fame in nication and Communication Zizek: Contemporary Criti- Interdisciplinarity and the genre. Monographs. She presented cal Theorists (Edinburgh Social Justice: a paper at the annual cul- University Press, 2010). This Revisioning Academic In 2010, University of Michi- tural studies conference in is the third and final volume Accountability gan Press published Angela Berkeley, California, and of a series that Simons has Pao‘s No Safe Spaces: Re- gave two invited talks, one edited about critical theo- casting Race, Ethnicity, and at University of Texas- rists. For this volume, Nationality in American Thea- Austin and the other at Simons wrote the introduc- ter. Trinity University in San tion. Antonio. Simons has also edited two Radhika Parameswaran other popular guides to has two recent publications In 2010, Phaedra critical theory: From Kant to from fall 2010: a co-authored Pezzullo edited Cultural Lévi-Strauss: The Background encyclopedia essay Studies and the Environment, to Contemporary Critical The- "Women's Movement Media Revisited. London: Routledge ory and Contemporary Critical in India" published in the (previously published as a Theorists: From Lacan to Said. Sage Encyclopedia of Social Special Issue of Cultural Stud- He has also recently been Movement Media and a jour- ies, 22.3-4, May 2008.) awarded an Indiana Univer- nal article "The Rise of India sity, College of Arts and and China: Promising New William Rasch recently Humanities Institute, (2010- Directions for Global Media published two articles: 11) Travel Research grant Studies" in Global Media and "Enlightenment as Religion" for a project on ―Images of Communication. She also has in New German Critique 108 Peace in the Israeli Peace two forthcoming publica- (Fall 2009), 109-31 and Movement.‖ tions: a book chapter ―E- "Justice, Amnesty, and the raceing Color: Gender and Strange Lessons of Indiana University Press Transnational Visual Econo- 1945." Ethics and Global recently published Rakesh mies of Beauty" in the NYU Politics v. 3, no. 3 (2010), Solomon‘s Albee in Perform- Jon Simons’s From Press book Tracking Visibilities 239-54. Rasch‘s article, ance. ―A premier playwright, Agamben to Zizek: and another book chapter "Theory after Critical The- Edward Albee is also a gifted Contemporary Critical "Producing Cosmopolitan ory,‖ is forthcoming in The- director. Albee in Perform- Theorists Citizens" in the Routledge ory after Theory, ed. Jane ance details Albee's directo- book Making the University Elliott and Derek Attridge rial vision and how that vi- Matter. Her previously pub- (Routledge, 2011). sion animates his plays. Hav- lished article "Global ing had extraordinary access Queens, National Celebri- Ranu Samantrai co- to Albee as director, ties" (2005) was selected for edited Interdisciplinarity and (Continued on page 5) Page 4 Cultural Studies Newsletter IMAGES AND PUBLIC CULTURE: THE IN/VISIBILITY OF AMERICA’S 21st CENTURY WARS

As America enters the twenty first century the scene is being set for a paradoxical and simultaneous normalization and spectacularization of war. Instead of war being an exceptional state for America (which has been at war for roughly one quarter of its existence), war is becoming the normal state of affairs for the USA, which is currently still engaged in its longest ever war, in Af- ghanistan. The militarization of American society proceeds apace, with continued centrality of the military-industrial complex and the prioritization of international and homeland security among the country‘s political goals. Yet the nature of America‘s 21st century wars fought by vol- unteer, professional armed forces means that, first, large portions of the domestic public experience war only at a distance, so that war seems abstract, somewhat of an afterthought, or to have disappeared; and, second, that it can be fought without sacrifice by the vast majority. 21st century war is very different from the ―total war‖ of the 20th century. An obvious example of the disap-

pearance of the sacrifice of war was the Bush administration‘s ban on the photographing of the IMAGES AND coffins of dead US service people being returned home. A key aspect of the normalization of war PUBLIC CULTURE: in the 21st century is that it is made visible and legitimated through popular, commercial, medi- UNDERSTANDING ated culture. War occupies the contemporary public sphere in the forms of films, video games, IMAGES ACROSS military emblems in daily photojournalism (boots), military brands of vehicles (Hummer, Jeep), THE HUMANITIES camouflage clothes worn as fashion, advertisements in which corporations brand themselves with their contribution to America‘s military power (such as Boeing). War is also made visible to the public through highly managed access by journalists to the conflict arena, while the representation of war is significant for the ratings and profitability of the news media and journalism. The in/visibility of war also renders the imaging of peace more problematic, in that if peace is con- ceived as the absence of war, then in the current cultural imaginary to some extent war is peace. What is the significance of this simultaneous in/visibility of war? Does it produce a particular visual grammar and aesthetic sensibility? Does it constitute a new form of the militarization of society that operates almost imperceptibly in visual, public culture? How do its spectacles serve to hide the costs of war at the very time that it displays representations of war? What space does it leave for critical dissent of war and advocacy of peace?

The workshop will have three foci, each informed by the guests we plan to bring to Bloomington (in some cases guests have expertise in more than one focus). We will explore conceptually the ways in which America‘s wars are paradoxically both present and absent, actual and virtual, visible and invisible. We will study different visual media and popular culture genres through which For more informa- America‘s publics experience war, such as film, video games, and photography. We will engage tion, please contact with critical practices of the visual arts that also function as public art, in particular photography Dr. Jon Simons: that renders visible some of the experiences of war that the processes and structures that we [email protected] have studied under our other foci have made in/visible. In this way we aim not only to gain a new, critical understanding of in/visible wars but also to resist and challenge in/visibility by devel- oping critical practices of public engagement.

The workshop will consist of a series of some eight guests, who will lead a seminar with the workshop participants. The guests will also be asked to make a public lecture while on campus, so their scholarship can be made accessible to a wider community of faculty and students.

The workshop is being supported by a Remak New Knowledge Seminar grant, by a Themester co-curricular program grant, by the Center for Integrated Photographic Studies and the Depart- ments of Communication and Culture, Gender Studies, and Political Science. Volume 15 Page 5

In Press and at the Podium: Recent Activities of Cultural Studies Faculty

(continued from page 3) Cultural Studies: Criti- argues that Piñeiro offers a cal Methodologies 10(6): 423- nuanced critique of the ex- Rakesh H. Solomon reveals 427; cesses of consumer culture how Albee has shaped his "Consumption in an Age of and their differential impact plays in performance, the Globalization and Localiza- on social subjects. In its attention he pays to each tion" in Beyond the Consump- conclusion, the essay grap- aspect of theater, and how tion Bubble. Edited by Karin ples with the capacity of his conception of the key Ekstrom and Kay Glans, McOndo literature, in par- plays he has directed has Routledge Interpretive Mar- ticular, and, more generally, evolved over a five-decade keting Research. the novel as a commodity career. Solomon pays care- "Consumption Embedded in form to provide a serious ful attention to the major Culture and Language: Impli- analysis of neo-liberalism. Rakesh Solomon’s Al- works, from The American cations for Finding bee in Performance Dream and Zoo Story to Al- Sustainability" in Sustainabil- Cultural Studies bee's best-known work, ity: Science, Practice and Pol- Travel Awards Who's Afraid of Virginia icy, 6(2): 1-11. Woolf?, as well as to later plays such as Marriage Play In 2009, Wilk co-edited Ligia Bezerra to present and Three Tall Women. The Time, Consumption and Every- her research at the 2010 book also includes inter- day Life: Practice, Materiality National Popular Culture & views with Albee and his and Culture with Elizabeth American Culture Confer- collaborators on all aspects Shove and Frank Trentmann ence and the 2010 Ken- of staging, from rehearsal to and in 2010, he co-edited a tucky Foreign Language performance.‖ special issue of Environ- Conference. mental Communication, Michiko Suzuki's (EALC) "Food, Culture and the En- Katarzyna Chmielewska book, Becoming Modern vironment: Communicating to present her paper ―Now Women: Love and Female about What We Eat" It‘s Personal‖ at the 2010 Michiko Suzuki’s Identity in Prewar Japanese with Andrew Opel and Jo- Console-ing Passions Con- Becoming Modern Literature and Culture sée Johnston. ference. (Stanford University Press, 2010) has been selected as a Shannon Bennett to pre- 2010 Choice Outstanding Brantlinger- sent her paper on ―The Academic Title. She has also Politics of Mobbing‖ at the received the Association for Naremore Prize 2010 annual meeting of the Asian Studies Northeast Organization of American Asia Council Japan Studies Ligia Bezerra has been Historians. Grant for summer awarded the Brantlinger- 2011 to travel to Tokyo Naremore prize for her libraries to work on an arti- essay, ―Everyday Life in the Cultural Studies cle about late McOndo World.‖ Bezerra Graduate Students 1930s representation of considers Claudia Piñeiro‘s female bodies, eugenics and Las viudas de los jueves in the purity. context of the Argentine Anne Delgado‘s article economic crisis at the turn ―Bawdy Technologies and Richard Wilk’s Time, Richard Wilk recently of the twenty-first century. the Birth of Ectoplasm‖ will Consumption and published a number of arti- Noting that the novel repre- appear in the Fall 2011 issue Everyday Life cles, including: sents the transformation of Genders . "Power at the Table: Happy and privatization of urban Meals and Food Fights" in space in Buenos Aires, she Page 6 Cultural Studies Newsletter

Cultural Studies Annual Conference Schedule, April 1-2

FRIDAY, April 1 (Ernie Pyle Auditorium, Room 220) 4:00-6:00 pm; Opening Keynote Delivered by S. Charusheela, “Rethinking Marxism in Times of Turmoil”

FRIDAY SATURDAY, April 2 in the Faculty Club on the Second Floor of IMU Opening Keynote: 10:00 am-12:00pm; Panel I: Marxism and Cultural Analysis S. Charusheela  Laura E. Lyons, ―‗I'd Like My Life Back‘: BP, Corporate Personhood and the Inti- Ernie Pyle mate Public Sphere‖ Auditorium Room  Patrick Dove, ―Muddying the Waters: The Politics of Populism in Peronist Ar- gentina‖ 220  Lessie Frazier, ―(Counter) Revolutionary Cultures‖ Moderator: Nick Williams

12:30pm: Screening of "The Word in the Woods"

1:00 pm-3:00 pm; Panel II: Marxism and Social Movements

 Gardner Bovingdon, ―What‘s Class Struggle Got to Do with It? Social Mobiliza- tion and Framing‖  Dianne Feeley, ―Building Feminist Consciousness in a Male Workplace‖  Jeff Gould, ―Marxism and Christian Base Communities: Notes from Morazan,El Salvador‖ Moderator: Micol Siegel

SATURDAY 3:15 pm--5:15 pm; Panel III: Marxism and History Panels 1, 11, and  Janet Sorensen, TBA  Ursula McTaggart, ―Change as Code for Black Radicalism: Barack Obama and 111 in the Faculty Right-Wing Charges of Socialism‖ Club at  Matt Guterl, ―Class Passing and Cosmopolitanism in the Age of Globalization‖ Moderator: Patrick Brantlinger IMU Featured Speakers

Invited outside speakers include: Dianne Feeley (UAW and Against the Current) Laura E. Ly- ons (University of Hawai‘i), Ursula McTaggart (Wilmington College), and Janet Sorensen (University of California, Berkeley). S. Charusheela (University of Nevada) will deliver the keynote address which will consider the ―return‖ to Marx and the political limitations of a too-easy embrace of economic determinism for cultural analyses. Volume 15 Page 7

Cultural Studies and Marxism

The Conference: Many accounts of the emergence and development of Cultural Studies accord a central place to Marxism, both as a body of knowledge and as an important ideological component of the New Left. The rediscovery of the writings of Antonio Gramsci, George Luckacs, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor Adorno, among others, along with the formation of the Birmingham Centre for Cultural Stud- ies, led to a general renaissance of Marxist theory and cultural analysis, which in turn resulted in ground- breaking studies of working class culture, the political role of new social movements that were not class based, the power of ideology and mass culture in sustaining existing social relations, and critical analyses of state-authoritarianism. As Cultural Studies crossed the Atlantic and gained an institutional foothold in the United States, some have feared that its engagement with Marxism has been diluted through an over emphasis on the subversive potentialities of mass media and consumer capitalism. The 2011 conference, ―Marxism and Cultural Studies,‖ will explore the role of Marxism in the field. Some questions that moti- vate this year‘s conference are: How do we understand the relationship between the base and super- structure today? Does ideology critique still have an ongoing usefulness? Do globalization and the world recession require new objects of study? To what extent does Marxism provide a utopian impulse for existing social movements? Do iterations of Cultural Studies in South Asia, Africa, Central and Latin America, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe retain a commitment to Marxism and how is this work revitalizing the field more broadly? Does the Marxist imperative to historicize challenge current para- digms of cultural analysis such as the ―New Formalism‖? What exactly does a historical materialist meth- odology enable? How do we articulate media analyses with questions of political economy, geo-politics, and activism? What is the role of the intellectual and Cultural Studies more generally?

The Keynote: The crisis of capital accumulation this time around has been conjoined with a crisis of legitimacy in governance. In Egypt, Algeria, and Libya, a new discourse around governance and State legitimacy has crystallized in popular revolt. In the US as well, the events in Madison provide a more seriously radical response to the crisis of governance than provided by the seemingly-oppositional response available in the Tea-Party rhetoric. Now seems like a good time for us to return to cultural analysis in the grand Marxist tradition. But what type of alternate analysis makes sense this time around? Which elements of the current events can be easily assembled into a story of economic crisis and radical rupture in the dialectic of capitalist revolt? In this talk, S. Charusheela examines the con- fluence of two key strains of discourse—those surrounding economy, and those surrounding geopoli- tics—that have converged to constitute a moment that bears all the marks of a ruptural crisis. Indiana University

Cultural Studies New Faculty Program Arlene Diaz, a Latin American historian, is particularly interested in understanding gender relations and their relationship to broader issues of politics, law, and Phone: (812) 855-0088 race in slave and post-slavery societies such as those of Venezuela and the Carib- E-mail: [email protected] bean. Her research seeks to understand the ways in which Latin American women responded to the limitations imposed on their lives by a pervasive patriar- chal social and political culture, racial prejudice, and poverty from the late eight- eenth to the early twentieth centuries. Diaz’s scholarship has been guided by the need to understand women in their own terms as an essential aspect of explaining the particularities of family organizations and forms of political struggle in Latin America.

In her book, Female Citizens, Patriarchs, and the Law in Caracas, Venezuela, 1786-1904, she examines the debates over the meaning and responsibilities of gender relations http://www.indiana.edu/ that transpired between ordinary people and the official culture during the process ~cstudies/index.shtml of state formation in Caracas, Venezuela between 1786 and 1904. She analyzes the interactions between competing constructions of femininity and masculinity in the government, the court, and the household during a period when liberalism—an ideology that supported the autonomous individual, equality and lib- erty—became increasingly entrenched in Caracas society. Currently, Diaz is in- vestigating discourses of equality among elites and common people in nineteenth- century Venezuela.

Cultural Studies Program Indiana University Ballantine Hall 419 Bloomington, Indiana 47405-6601