Matthew Martinez, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Spatial Structures in the Social Sciences

Using a unique dataset of over 1,600 rap songs spanning 16 years, this project investigates how Hip-Hop has changed over time based on the influence of major record label control as witnessed through changes in lyrical vulgarity. Findings are focused on both the changing structure of commodification avenues in the record industry and subcultural changes in Hip-Hop as experienced through lyrical content modifications.

Colleen Kim Daniher, Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow, Theatre Arts and Performance Studies

This talk considers the politics and aesthetics of performing racial ambiguity in Filipina-American artist Gina Osterloh's photographic portraiture. Through an analysis of pose, posture, and gesture in Osterloh's Shooting Blanks series (2008), Daniher offers some preliminary thoughts on why articulating racial ambiguity as strategic performance matters.

Leticia Alvarado, Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies and American Studies

This talk will offer a brief synopsis of Alvarado's current book project, Abject Performance Aesthetic Strategies in Latino Cultural Production. She will also share cursory thoughts on a developing projects on the figure of the Latina Femme.

“What I Am Thinking About Now” is an on-going informal workshop/seminar series to which faculty and graduate students are invited to present and discuss recently published work and work in progress.

This event has been canceled and will be rescheduled at a later time. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Small states operate at the margins of global concerns and intellectual enquiry yet their large numbers, peculiar features and tenuous existence as ‘sovereign’ states underscore important failings in the global political economy. This presentation charts the myriad challenges confronting small states, their general neglect in development debates, and the various approaches to development on which they have embarked. In so doing, it points to the general failing of existing attempts to theorize small states and suggests alternative approaches to their study.

Coloring the "Boys Will be Boys" Chronicle: Gender, Race, and Early Childhood Behavior Problems Across Two Decades

Jayanti Owens, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Public Policy.

Monica Martinez, Assistant Professor of American Studies and Ethnic Studies

Martinez will discuss her newest manuscript chapter that explores intersecting histories of violent policing regimes in the creation of race in Texas. She will also outline the advances of the digital project Mapping Violence, an interactive platform that recovers and makes visible lost and obscured histories of racial violence in Texas from 1900 - 1930. Her talk will engage questions of method, narrative, segregated histories, and the multiple lives of academic research.

Nicole Burrowes, Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow, History Department

“On the Meanings of Solidarity”

Yalidy Matos, Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for the Study of Race + Ethnicity in America and Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs 

"Racial Resentment" and/or "Immigrant Resentment:" Predicting White Public Opinion on Restrictive Immigration Policy Attitudes

What I Am Thinking About Now: Vanessa Fabien, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Africana Studies and the Cogut Center for the Humanities