the young people's professor

Somewhere along the way this site became a "ballroom blog". That was never really my intention. For those of you who who have tuned into this site over the past few months and have found yourself yearning for more substantive cultural commentary rather than just pretty-pictures, my apologies go out to you. Navigating my dual lives as a scholar-in-training and bootleg socialite has been a bit difficult lately. And (un)fortunately its time for me to hang up my coat as "Frank Mizrahi" for a while. At this point in my life 100% of my energies are focused on my intellectual growth and development. That means more reading, writing, and research and a lot less of everything else.

However, I do have plans to launch a new site, www.canbefrank.com, which will hopefully be up by the summer time. It will be much easier to navigate (i know this blog is getting out of control!) and should have a nice mix of black pop culture and quasi-academic "musings" on various topics. But for the next few months, i doubt i'll be blogging much.

Last semester marked my final semester of coursework. This semester my primary focus is preparing for qualifying exams, which are in April. "Qualifying Exams" is a fancy phrase used to describe the stage in a Ph.D. student's life when he or she must demonstrate their "mastery" of several bodies of academic literature to a committee of professors. Basically, "quals" (as they are effectively referred to) are a test of how qualified one is to call themself a "scholar" in a particular field. After a few changes, I'm taking qualifying exams in three areas:

1. Performance Studies: Critical Approaches to Performativity and Performance (my "required" area)
2. U.S. Ethnography: Ethnographic Approaches in American Studies (my "method" area)
3. New Directions in Critical Race Theory: Queer of Color Critique (my "theory" area)

Even though i'm no longer required to take classes, as an added "prep" for my exams I decided to audit two seminars in the American Studies department: Caitlin Zaloom's course, "U.S. Ethnography: Urban Ethnography in American Studies" and Maria Saldana's "New Trends in American Studies." Now normally only a mad-man would take classes the semester that he is preparing for qualifying exams, but because both of the courses fit-in so nicely with my exam area topics, I decided that the extra classes are a bonus rather than a distraction.

Between now and April, I'll be spending my days and nights reading and re-reading the following books, all of which are on my field lists.

One way all of you can actually help me prepare for exams is by asking me questions about the relationships between any of these texts. Hey, it couldnt hurt.

Wish me luck and be good.
Frank Leon Roberts

FIELD 1:
New Directions in Critical Race Theory: Queer of Color Critique
Examiner: Jose Esteban Munoz, Chair, Department of Performance Studies

This area approaches “queer of color critique” as an alternative and newer body of literature emerging at the interstices of postcolonial, critical race and queer theory. Special attention will be paid to this emergent mode of inquiry as both a genealogical development and conceptual and theoretical break from the traditional objects/sites/fields of inquiry endemic to “queer theory’. As such, the emphasis here is on theories and histories of sexuality that are configured within and through histories of racial formation, globalization, transnationalism, and colonialism. How has the “queer” in “queer theory” moved from simply a loose reference to dissident sexuality in general to an index of various anti-relational and anti-normative formations within the social, including, but not limited to race?

I. Towards a Queer of Color Critique: Theoretical Frameworks, Methods, and Approaches
Book Length Studies:

• Alexander, Jacqui. Pedagogies of Crossing: Mediations on Feminism, Sexual Politics, Memory, and the Sacred. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.
• David Eng, Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian-America . Durham: Duke University Press, 2001.
• Ferguson, Roderick A. Aberrations in Black: Toward A Queer of Color Critique. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004.
• Gopinath, Gayatri. Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005.
• Munoz, Jose Esteban. Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.
• Namaste, Viviane Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
• Quiroga, Jose. Tropics of Desire: Interventions from Queer Latino America. New York NYU Press, 2002.
• Rodriguez, Juana. Queer Latinidad: Identity Practices, Discursive Spaces. New York: NYU Press, 2003.
• Somerville ,Siobhan. Queering the Color Line: Race and the Invention of Homosexuality. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000.
• Johnson, E. Patrick. Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.

Edited Collections:

• _________. (with Judith Halberstam and Jose Esteban Munoz, Eds.) “What’s Queer about Queer Studies Now?” Social Text, Oct 2005.
• E. Patrick Johnson and Mae Henderson. Black Queer Studies: A Critical Reader. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.
• Phillip Brian Harper et al., eds., “Queer Transexions of Race, Nation, and Gender,” special issue of Social Text, nos. 52–53 (1997)

Articles:

• Alarcón, Norma. "Conjugating Subjects in the Age of Multiculturalism," in Mapping Multiculturalism, ed. Avery F. Gordon and Christopher Newfield. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996, 127-48
• Cohen, Cathy. “Deviance as Resistance: A New Research Agenda for the Study of Black Politics”. Du Bois Review, 1:1 (2004) 27-45.
• Munoz, Jose Esteban. “Feeling Brown: Ethnicity, Affect, and Performance.” Theatre Journal 52.1 (2000) 67-79.

II. Usable Pasts: Women of Color Feminisms and Radical Queer Men of Color

• Beam, Joseph, ed. In the Life: A Black Gay Anthology. Alyson Publications, 1986
• Anzaldua, Gloria and Cherrie Moraga, eds. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. Kitchen Table Press, 1983
• -----------------------. Borderlands/La Frontera, Aunt Lunte, 2^nd edition, 1999.
• Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Speeches and Essays. Crossing Press, 1984.
• Smith, Barbara. ed., Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology.NY: Kitchen Table, Women of Color Press, 1983.
• Hemphill, Essex, ed. Brother to Brother: New Writings by Black Gay Men. Alyson, 1991.

Articles:

• Crenshaw, Kimberle. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Anti-discrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Anti-Racist Politics.” Feminist Legal Theory: Foundations, ed. D. Kelley Weisberg. Philadelphia: Temple University Press,1993.
• --------------------------. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color”. 43 Stanford Law Review, 1241 (1993)
• Hutchinson, Darren Lenard. “Out Yet Unseen: A Racial Critique of Gay and Lesbian Legal Theory and Political Discourse,” 29 Connecticut. Law Review 561-645 (1997)

III. Queer Diasporas

• Kaur Puar, Jasbir. “Transnational sexualities and Trinidad: Modern bodies, National Queers.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1999.
• La Fountain-Stokes, Lawrence Martin. “Culture, representation, and the Puerto Rican Queer Diaspora.” Ph.D. dissertation. Columbia University, 1999.
• Manalansan, Martin. Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.

Edited Collections:

• Cruz-Malave, Arnaldo and Martin Manalansan, eds. Queer Globalizations: Citizenship and the Afterlife of Colonialism. New York: New York University Press, 2002.
• Eng, David L. and Alice Y. Hom, eds. Q & A: Queer in Asian America. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998.
• Sanchez Eppler, Benigo and Cindy Patton. Queer Diasporas. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000.
• Paur, Jasbir. Ed. “Queer Tourisms: Geographies of Globalization”. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies.Vol. 8, No. 1-2. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002.
• Elizabeth A. Povinelli and George Chauncey, eds., “Thinking Sexuality Transnationally,” special issue of GLQ 5, no. 4 (1999);

Articles:

• Grewal, Inderpal and Caren Kaplan. “Global Identities: Theorizing Transnational Studies of Sexuality." GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 7.4 (2001): 663-79.
  
• Alexander, M. Jacqui. "Not Just Anybody Can Be A Citizen: The Politics of Law, Sexuality and Postcoloniality in Trinidad and Tobago and the Bahamas." Feminist Review 48 (1994): 5-23.

Field 2:
Ethnography in American Studies
Examiner: Tavia Nyong’o, Assistant Professor of Performance Studies

The area focuses on the theory and practice of ethnography within an American Studies context. Special attention is given to ethnography as a methodological strategy for approaching key debates in American Studies such as consumption, citizenship, class, neoliberalism, conversativism, race, privacy, urban renewal/governance, and publics/counterpublics. The first section highlights both classic and newer works which have defined and shaped the contours of American Studies as a contemporary mode of inquiry. The second and third sections focus on texts which have centered on various “keywords” in the field, as well as ethnographic case studies. Finally, the fourth section draws perspectives from U.S. anthropology to consider the methodological and ethical implications of ethnography “at home”.

A. What Is American Studies? Foundational Frameworks, Methods, Approaches
Edited Collections:

1) Donald Pease and Robyn Wiegman eds., The Futures of American Studies

• Donald Peace and Robyn Wiegman, “Futures”
• Jan Radway, “What’s in a Name?”
• Michael Denning, “Work and Culture in American Studies”
• George Lipstiz, “Sent for You Yesterday, Her e You Come Today”: American Studies Scholarship and the New Social Movements
• Eric Cheyftiz, “The End of Academia: The Future of American Studies”

2) Lucy Maddox, ed., Locating American Studies: The Evolution of a Discipline

• Henry Nash Smith, “Can ‘American Studies’ Develop a Method?”
• Gene Wise, “‘Paradigm Dramas’ in American Studies: A Cultural and Institutional History of the Movement”
• Robert F. Berkhofer Jr., “A New Context for a New American Studies”
• George Lipsitz, “Listening to Learn and Learning to Listen: Popular Culture, Cultural Theory, and American Studies”
• Alice Kessler-Harris, “Cultural Locations: Positioning American Studies in the Great Debate”

3) John Carlos Rowe, ed. Post-Nationalist American Studies

• John Carlos Rowe-, “Postnationalism, Globalism, and the New American Studies”
• Barbara Brinson Curiel, “My Border Stories: Life Narratives, Interdisciplinarity and Post Nationalism in Ethic Studies”
• Henry Yu, “How Tiger Woods Lost His Stripes: Postnationalist American Studies as a History of Race, Migration and the Commodification of Culture”

Book Length Studies:

• George Lipsitz, American Studies in a Moment of Danger
• ----------------, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness
• Phillip Brian Harper, Private Affairs: Critical Ventures in the Culture of Social Relations
• Lisa Duggan, The Twilight of Equality: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Decline of Democracy
• Lauren Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship
• Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics
• Samuel Delaney, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue
• Robin D. G. Kelley, Yo Mama’s Dysfunctional!
• Andrew Ross, No Collar: The Humane Workplace and Its Consequences
• Josh Cun, Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America
• Cathy Cohen, The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and Breakdown of Black Politics
• John Carlos Rowe, The New American Studies
• David W. Noble, Death of a Nation: American Culture and the End of Exceptionalism

B. Approaches to Ethnography in American Studies: Case Studies

• David Grazian, Blue Chicago: The Search for Authenticity in Urban Blues Clubs
  
• Arlene Davila, Barrio Dreams: Puerto Ricans, Latinos and the Neo-liberal City
  
• João H. Costa Vargas, Catching Hell in the City of Angels: Life and Meanings of Blackness in South Central Los Angeles
  
• Paul Stoller, Money Has No Smell: The Africanization of New York City
  
• Sherry Ortner, New Jersey Dreaming: Capital, Culture, and the Class of '58
  
• Tanya Erzen, Straight to Jesus: Sexual and Christian Conversions in the Ex-Gay Movement
  
• Martin Manalansan, Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora
  
• John L. Jackson,Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity
• -----------------, Harlemword: Doing Race and Class in Contemporary Urban America
• Carlos Decena, Queering the Heights: Dominican Transnational Identities and Male Homosexuality in New York City (2004 Dissertation, New York University)
• Micaela di Leonardo, Exotics at Home: Anthropologies, Others, American Modernit
• Mitchell Duneier, Slims Table: Race, Respectablity, and Masculinity
  
• Miranda Joseph, Against the Romance of Community
  
• Jacqueline Nassy Brown, Dropping Anchor, Setting Sail: Geographies of Race in Black Liverpool
  
• Rachel Sherman, Class Acts: Service and Inequality in Luxury Hotels

Articles:

• John L. Caughney, “The Ethnography of Everyday Life: Theories and Methods for American Culture Studies.” American Quarterly, Vol. 34, No.3 (1982), pp. 222-243.
• Michael Moffatt, “Ethnographic Writing About American Culture”, Ann. Rev. of Anthropology, 1992, 21:205-229
• Faye Ginsburg. “Ethnography and American Studies” in Cultural Anthropology, August 2006, Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 487-495
• Mary Helen Washington. "Disturbing the Peace: What Happens to American Studies If You Put African American Studies at the Center?" American Quarterly 50.1 (1998) 1-23

C. Ethnography “at home”: Ethnographic Research Approaches in American Studies
Articles:

• Nelson, L. W. 1996. “Hands in the Chit'lins: Notes on Native Anthropological Research Among African American Women”. In G. Etter-Lewis & M. Foster (Eds.), Unrelated Kin: Race and Gender in Women's Personal Narratives. Routledge Press, pp. 183-199.
  
• Bunzl, Matti. 2004. "Boas, Foucault, and the 'Native Anthropologist,'" in American Anthropologist 106(3): 435-442
  
• Gupta, Akhil, and James Ferguson. 1997. “Discipline and Practice: “The Field” as Site, Method, and Location in Anthropology”. Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science. Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, eds. Pp. 1–46. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  Haniff, Nesha Z. 1985. “Towards a Native Anthropology”. Anthropology and Humanism Quarterly, 10(4): 106-113
  
  
• Jacobs, Huey, Lanita. 2002. “The Natives are Gazing and Talking Back: Reviewing the Problematics of Positionality, Voice, and Accountability among ‘Native’ Anthropologists.” American Anthropologist 104 (3): 791-804
  
• Messerschmidt, D., ed 1981. Anthropologists at Home in North America: Methods and Issues in the Study of One's Own Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• McClaurin, Irma. “Introduction: Forging a Theory, Politics, Praxis and Poetics of Black Feminist Anthropology” in Black Feminist Anthropology, pg. 1-23.
• 
  Narayan, K. 1993. “How Native is "Native" Anthropologist?” American Anthropologist, 95, 671-685.
  
  
• Peirano, Mariza G. S. 1998. “When anthropology is at home: The Different Contexts of a Single Discipline”. Annual Review of Anthropology 27, no. 1: 105-28.
• Rodriquez, Cheryl.” “A Homegirl Goes Home: Black Feminism and the Lure of Native Anthropology”, in Black Feminist Anthropology, pg. 233-258
  
• Wikan, Unni. 1991. “Toward an experience-near Anthropology”. Cultural Anthropology 6, no. 3: 285-305
  
• Williams, Brackette. F. 1996. “Skinfolk, Not Kinfolk: Comparative Reflections on the Identity of Participant-Observation in Two Field Situations”. In D. Wolf (Ed.) Feminist Dilemmas in Fieldwork. New York: Westview Press.

Field 3:
Performance Studies: Critical Approaches to Performativity and Performance
Examiner: Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, University Professor of Performance Studies

This exam area focuses on the major debates regarding “performance” as an object and method of analysis, as well as the key texts that established performance studies as an academic discipline. Equal attention is divided between the strand of performance studies organized around early philosophical and linguistic theories of performativity (particulary the work of British philosopher J.L. Austin) as well as the strand working in the "in betweens" of socio-cultural anthropology and art theory (particularly the early colloborations of anthropologist Victor Turner and director Richard Schechner). Consideration is also placed on key concerns in the field such as the relationship between history, memory and performance; methodological approaches to archives, racial and gender performativity, and performance in everyday life.

Book Length Studies:

• Auslander, Phillip. Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture, 1999.
• Austin, J.L. How To Do Things With Words, 1975.
• Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On The Discursive Limits of Sex, 1993.
• ----------------- Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative, 1997.
• ----------------- Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 1999.
• Carlson, Marvin A. Performance: A Critical Introduction, 1996.
• Certeau, Michel de. The Practice of Everyday Life, 1984.
• Cvetkovich, Ann. An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality and Lesbian Public Cultures, 2003
• Felman, Shoshana. The Scandal of the Speaking Body: Don Juan with J.L. Austin, or Seduction in two languages, 2003.
• Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, 1971.
• Hartman, Saidiya. Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth Century America, 1997.
• Jackson, Shannon. Professing Performance: Theatre in the Academy from Philogy to Performativity, 2004.
• Joseph, May. Nomadic Identities: The Performance of Citizenship, 1999.
• McKenzie, Jon. Perform or Else: From Discipline to Performance, 2001.
• Munoz, Jose Esteban. Disdidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics, 1999.
• Pearson, Mike and Michael Shanks. Theatre/Archeology, 2001.
• Phelan, Peggy. Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, 1993.
• Roman, David. Performance in America, 2006
• Roach, Joseph. Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance, 1996
• Schechner, Richard. Between Theater & Anthropology, 1985.
• ------------------------. Performance Studies: An Introduction, 2002.
• ------------------------. Performance Theory, 2003
• Taylor, Diana. The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas, 2003
• Turner, Victor. The Anthropology of Performance, 1986.
• Turner, Victor. Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society, 1974.

Articles:

• Conquergood, Dwight. 1995. “Of caravans and carnivals: performance studies in motion”. The Drama Review, 39 (4) 137-141.
• --------------------------.(2002). “Performance Studies: Interventions and Radical Research” The Drama Review (TDR), 46 (2), 145-156.
• Derrida, Jacques. (1978). “Signature Event Context”. Writing and Difference.
• Diamond, Elin. (1996). “Introduction”. E. Diamond (Ed.), Performance and Cultural Politics, pp. 1-14. New York: Routledge.
• Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. "Performance Studies". Rockefeller Foundation, Culture and Creativity, September 1999.
• Munoz, Jose Esteban. (1995). “Ephemera as Evidence: Introductory Notes to Queer Acts”. Queer Acts: A Special Issue of Women and Performance.
• Phelan, Peggy. "Introduction."The Ends of Performance. Eds. Peggy Phelan & Jill Lane. New York: New York University Press, 1998. 1-22.
• Seqwick, Eve and Andrew Parker. (1995) “Introduction: Performance and Performativity”. Performance and Performativity.
• Schechner, Richard. "What is Performance Studies Anyway?" Ends of Performance. 357-362.
• Strine, M.S., Long, B.W., & Hopkins, M.F. 1990. “Research in interpretation and performance studies: trends, issues, priorities.” Speech Communication: Essays to Commemorate the 75^th Anniversary of the Speech Communication Association. Southern Illinois Press.
• Madison, D. Soyini and Judith Hamera, 2006. “Introduction”. Madison, D. Soyini and Judith Hamera (eds). The Sage Handbook of Performance Studies. Sage Publications.
• Zarrilli, Phillip. 1986. “Toward a definition of Performance Studies: part I”. Theatre Journal 38, no. 3: 372-76.
• ———. 1986. “Toward a definition of Performance Studies: part II”. Theatre Journal 38, no. 4: 493-96.