The aim of the Americanist Speakers and Colloquium Series (ASCS) is to bring prominent speakers to campus who have done and continue to do path breaking work in the fields of American literature and American Studies. In the 2007-2008 year, the ASCS will bring Assosciate Professors Elisa Tamarkin (UC-Irvine) and Xiomara Santamarina (Michigan), Professor Michael Elliott (Emory), and Professor Saidiya Hartman (Columbia) to campus. By engaging these scholars in both public lectures and intensive seminars, we additionally hope to provide undergraduate and graduate students with the opportunity to work with prominent scholars from outside the University. This year’s invited scholars provide the opportunity to consider race, ethnicity, and U.S. civic identity from a variety of critical fields, including ethnography, Native and circum-atlantic studies, cosmopolitanism, political theory, critical race theory, and art, and from the 18th to the 21st centuries.

 

The primary sponsor the Series will be the Americanist Literature and Culture Research Circle, a research group of graduate students and faculty members who work with literature, texts, and artifacts produced within the United States. Based in the Department of English, the group’s events are organized by five graduate students advised by Professors Russ Castronovo and David Zimmerman. We host an active listserv with over 200 members, including scholars in the Departments of History, Sociology, and Comparative Literature and reference librarians who specialize in the University’s American holdings. Members regularly share research questions, ideas for possible archival sources, and help ascertaining the implications of various lines of inquiry. Through our programming and our listserv, the Research Circle aims to fulfill some of the functions met by American Studies departments on other campuses.