Siting A/P/A Studies: A Celebration of Scholars

On November 1, 2019, we celebrated three new books by alumni from the NYU Doctoral Program in American Studies with a series of presentations, one-on-one conversations, and a roundtable discussion.

In Insurgent Aesthetics: Security and the Queer Life of the Forever War (Duke University Press, 2019), Ronak K. Kapadia (University of Illinois, Chicago) shows how Arab, Muslim, and South Asian diasporic multimedia artists force a reckoning with the US War on Terror’s violent destruction and its impacts on immigrant and refugee communities. He was joined in conversation by Nicole R. Fleetwood (Rutgers University).

Manu Karuka’s (Barnard College) Empire’s Tracks: Indigenous Nations, Chinese Workers, and the Transcontinental Railroad (University of California Press, 2019) boldly reframes the history of the transcontinental railroad from the perspectives of the Cheyenne, Lakota, and Pawnee tribes, and the Chinese migrants who toiled on its path. Elizabeth Ellis (NYU Department of History) led the discussion with Karuka.

In A Nation on the Line: Call Centers as Postcolonial Predicaments in the Philippines (Duke University Press, 2018), Jan M. Padios (University of Maryland, College Park) examines the massive Philippine call center industry in the context of globalization, race, gender, transnationalism, and postcolonialism. Nell Geiser (Communications Workers of America) served as her discussant.

A roundtable, featuring all three authors and moderated by Cristina Beltrán (NYU Department of Social & Cultural Analysis), concluded the program.

Learn more at apa.nyu.edu.

Filmed and edited by Alice Ye.