Panelists at Fall GSI Colloquium Celebrate the Diversity of UT Academic Centers
Four panelists at the fall Graduate Student Colloquium urged their colleagues to seek out opportunities to be involved with UT Austin’s many interdisciplinary academic centers, where graduate students may broaden their perspectives, enrich their studies, and forge social, scholarly, and professional relationships with peers and faculty. Sharing the stories of their trials and triumphs as graduate students arriving at a large, diverse campus, the panelists struck a common theme: graduate study can be expanding even as it demands specialization.
Kritika Agarwal found in the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies a place to call home after she arrived from Angelo State University to begin a master’s program. With research interests concerning caste and marriage in India, the South Asian diaspora in the United States, and sexuality and women in religion, she found scholarly encouragement and support in the center’s interdisciplinary approach to advancing knowledge and understanding of women’s lives and gender’s role in structuring society. Recent center initiatives of interest campus wide have addressed topics such as the role of marriage in men’s and women’s health, American women’s constitutional rights, changing sex roles in Mexico, and contributions of women in literature and art.
Ken MacLeish moved from the East Coast to complete a master’s degree in folklore and public culture in UT Austin’s anthropology department, which is associated with the Center for Cultural Studies. As a doctoral student, MacLeish is pursuing research into the representation of war in American popular culture, for which he draws upon the center’s commitment to disseminate cultural studies scholarship and research reflecting UT Austin’s interdisciplinary intellectual life. The center facilitates contact with affiliated faculty from many areas, including English, ethnomusicology, Asian studies, history, Mexican-American studies, communication, radio-television-film, and theatre.
Matthew Sayers, with a master’s degree in religious studies from Florida State University, is a doctoral candidate in Asian studies, with research interests in ancient Indian religions, death and dying, and interactions of religious traditions. Through the South Asia Institute, Sayers is connected to a resource center committed to fostering understanding and exchange with South Asia as a region influential in global culture, economics, and politics. With funding from a Title VI grant from the Department of Education, the institute shares an association with Title VI centers at Cornell, Syracuse, Columbia, Penn, Virginia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Chicago, California-Berkeley, and Washington.
Jackie Smith moved from northern California to pursue research interests in critical race studies, social movements, and feminist theory. The Center for African and African American Studies, associated with the anthropology department, is committed to advance scholastic and community engagement addressing the cultural, sociopolitical, economic, and historical experiences of Africans and their descendents. The center facilitates contact for Smith with 52 faculty members in 12 schools and departments. With a master’s specialization concerning New York African American photographer James VanDerZee, Smith’s dissertation research centers on two themes: African Americans’ entrepreneurial and documentary engagement with photography during the early twentieth century and identity politics informing the use of portraiture as a means of protest and self-affirming community engagement.