The Program in American Studies offers an interdisciplinary study of the United States and the many ways to interpret the American experience. The program explores the themes, trends and patterns that characterize the American past and present using multiple perspectives and methodologies. You create your own path through the major, which includes courses in history, politics, popular culture, visual studies, law, literature, race and ethnic studies, etc.

Department website

Sofia A. Villenas

Associate Professor

Publications

Books (Edited)

2010 (co-edited with E. Murillo Jr., R. Trinidad Galvan, C. Martinez, J. Muñoz, and M. Machado-Casas) (2010).  Handbook of Latinos and education: Theory, research and practice. NY: Routledge and Taylor Francis Group.

2006 (co-edited with D. Delgado Bernal, C.A. Elenes and F. Godinez). Chicana/Latina education in everyday life:  Feminista perspectives on pedagogy and epistemology.  Albany:  State University of New York Press.  

1999 (co-edited with L. Parker, and D. Deyhle)  Race is ... race isn’t:  Critical race theory and qualitative studies in education.  Boulder, CO:  Westview Press.

Selected Articles and Book Chapters

2020. (with Carolina Osorio Gil). Latinx cultural programming as public pedagogy: Mobilizing cultura (culture) in a small town community in Upstate New York. In J. Hurtig and C. Chernoff (Eds.), Contested Spaces of Teaching and Learning: Practitioner Ethnographies of Adult Education in the United States. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

2019. The anthropology of education and contributions to critical race studies. Equity and Excellence in Education, 52(1), 68-74. https://doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2019.1632758.

2019. Pedagogies of being with: Witnessing, testimonio and critical love in everyday social movement. QSE: International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 39(2), 151-166.

2014. Thinking Latina/o education with and from Chicana/Latina feminist cultural studies: Emerging pathways, decolonial possibilities. In A. Darder & R.D. Torres (Eds.), Latinos and education: A critical reader. New York, NY: Routledge. Originally published in Zeus Leonardo (Ed.), Handbook of Cultural Politics in Education. Sense Publishers (2010).

2013. The legacy of Derrick Bell and Latino/a education: A critical race testimonio. Urrieta Jr., Luis and Sofia Villenas. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 16(4), 514-535.

2013. Race talk and school equity in local print media: The discursive flexibility of whiteness and the promise of race conscious talk. Villenas, Sofia and Sophia L. Angeles. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 34(4), 510-530.

2012. Pedagogies from nepantla: Testimonio, Chicana/Latina feminisms and teacher education classrooms. Prieto, Linda and Sofia Villenas. Equity & Excellence in Education, 45(3), 411-429.

2011. Critical ethnographies of education in the Latino/a diaspora. Villenas, Sofia and Douglas E. Foley. In R. Valencia (Ed.), Chicano school failure and success:  Past, present and future, 3rd edition.  New York and London:  Routledge and Falmer.

2007. Diaspora and the anthropology of Latino education: Challenges, affinities, and intersections. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 38(4), pp. 419-425. Reprinted in Roland Sintos Coloma (Ed.) Postcolonial challenges in education. New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishers, 2009.

2006. Latina feminist postcolonialities:  Perspectives on Un/tracking educational actors’ interventions.  International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 19(5), pp. 659-672.

2006. Pedagogical moments in the borderlands:  Latina mothers and daughters teaching and learning.  In D. Delgado Bernal, C.A. Elenes, F. Godinez and S. Villenas (eds.), Chicana/Latina education in everyday life:  Feminista perspectives on pedagogy and epistemology (pp. 147-159).  Albany:  State University of New York Press.

2005. Between the telling and the told:  Latina mothers negotiating education in new borderlands.  In J. Phillion, M. F. He, and M. Connelly (Eds.), Narrative and experience in multicultural education (pp. 71-91).  Thousand Oaks, CA:  Sage.

2002. Reinventing educación in new Latino communities: Pedagogies of change and continuity in North Carolina.  In S. Wortham, E., Murillo Jr., and E. Hamann (Eds.), Education in the new Latino Diaspora:  Policy and the politics of identity (pp. 17-35).  Westport, CT:  Ablex Publishing.

2002. This ethnography called my back:  Writings of the exotic gaze, “othering” Latina, and recuperating Xicanisma.  In E. St. Pierre and W. Pillow (Eds.), Working the ruins:  Poststructural feminist theory and methods in education (pp. 74-95).  New York:  Routledge.

2001. To valerse por si misma (be self-reliant) between race, capitalism, and patriarchy:  Latina mother/daughter pedagogies in North Carolina.  Villenas, Sofia and Melissa Moreno. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 14(5), pp. 671-687.

2001. Latina mothers and small-town racisms:  Creating narratives of dignity and moral education in North Carolina.  Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 32(1), pp. 3-28.

2000. Other encounters:  Dances with whiteness in multicultural education. Richardson, Troy and Sofia Villenas. Educational Theory, 50 (2), pp. 255-273.

1999. Critical race theory and ethnographies challenging the stereotypes: Latino families, schooling, resilience and resistance.  Villenas, Sofia and Donna Deyhle. Curriculum Inquiry, 29 (4), pp. 413-445. 1996

1996. The colonizer/colonized Chicana ethnographer: Identity, marginalization, and co-optation in the field.  Harvard Educational Review, 66(4), pp. 711-731. Reprinted in 2010, 2000, and 1998 in various edited collections.

Klarman Hall
226 McGraw Hall
svillenas@cornell.edu
607/288-3037

Departments and programs

Keywords

education, critical race studies, public pedagogy, Latin@/x diaspora, women of color/decolonial feminisms, narrative

 

Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon

Associate Professor

Klarman Hall
250 Goldwin Smith Hall
lv48@cornell.edu
607/255-8349

Departments and programs

Anna Marie Smith

Professor

Klarman Hall
ams3@cornell.edu
607/607-227-4074

Departments and programs

Samantha Noelle Sheppard

Associate Professor

Klarman Hall
423 Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts
sheppard@cornell.edu

Education

BA (2007), Dartmouth College 

MA (2009), University of California Los Angeles

PhD (2014), University of California Los Angeles

Departments and programs

Links

Keywords

feminist, gender, and sexuality studies

Martin Allen Shefter

Professor Emeritus

Klarman Hall
shefter@cornell.edu

Education

  • Ph.D., Harvard University, 1970
  • B.A., summa cum laude in Government and distinction in all subjects, Cornell University, 1964

Departments and programs

Vilma Santiago-Irizarry

Associate Professor

Publications

Academic Articles
2008 Transnationalism and Migration: Locating Sociocultural Practices Among Mexican Immigrants in 
the United States. Reviews in Anthropology 37(1):16-40.
2005 Language Rights. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latinas and Latinos in the United States 2:466-472.
2003 Binary Oppositions: Re-Inscribing Ethnoracial Hierarchies in Institutional Settings. Journal for Latin 
American Anthropology 8(2):174-194.
2003 Environmentalism, Identity Politics, and the Nature of 'Nature'. Latino Studies 1(1):47-78.
2002 Transcending Dichotomies: How to do anthropology in real life/Transcendir les dicotomies: com fer 
antropologia a la vida real. Revista d'etnologia de Catalunya 20:64-73.
Books
2001 Medicalizing Ethnicity: The Construction of Latino Identity in a Psychiatric Setting. Ithaca, NY: 
Cornell University Press (CUP).
Chapters
2013 Labels, Genuine and Spurious: Anthropology and the Politics of Otherness in the United States. In 
Anthropology and the Politics of Representation. Gabriela Vargas-Cetina, ed. Pp. 78-97. Tuscaloosa, AL: 
The University of Alabama Press.
2007 Reflexivity and Visual Media: Entanglements as a Productive Field. In Doing Anthropology in 
Consumer Research. Patricia L. Sunderland, Rita Mary Taylor Denny, authors. Pp. 205-209. Walnut 
Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.
2001 Deceptive Solidity: Public Signs, Civic Inclusion, and Language 'Rights' in New York City (and 
Beyond). In Mambo Montage: The Latinization of New York City. Agustín Laó-Montes and Arlene Dávila, 
eds. Pp. 449-473. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

Klarman Hall
212 McGraw Hall
vs23@cornell.edu
607/288-2047

Education

  • Anthropology, NYU
  • Certificate in Movement Analysis, Laban Centre (Goldsmith's College, University of London)
  • J.D., University of Puerto Rico Law School.

Departments and programs

Elizabeth Sanders

Professor Emerita

Klarman Hall
mes14@cornell.edu
607/255-2305

Departments and programs

Shirley Samuels

Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies

Klarman Hall
250 Goldwin Smith Hall
shirley.samuels@cornell.edu
607/255-3994

Education

  • University of California, Berkeley, PhD
  • University of California, Berkeley, MA
  • University of California, Berkeley, BA

Departments and programs

Links

Keywords

American women; women's fiction

Nick Salvatore

Maurice and Hinda Neufeld Founders Professor in Industrial and Labor Relations, Emeritus

Klarman Hall
nas4@cornell.edu
607/255-2240

Departments and programs

Nick Salvato

Professor

Publications

Academic articles:

  • Queer Structure, Animated Form, and Really Rosie. Camera Obscura, 2018
  • Big Glove: Televisual Dissociation and Embodied Performance. Criticism, 2015
  • Feeling So Unusual: Cyndi Lauper and Queer Affect. Mosaic, 2015
  • Cringe Criticism: On Embarrassment and Tori Amos. Critical Inquiry, 2013
  • Fag Hag: A Theory of Effeminate Enthusiasms. Discourse, 2013
  • The New Old Rush: Berlin's Bonanza. Theater, 2012
  • A Horse's Husband: David Greenspan's Queer Temporalities and the Politics of Same-Sex Marriage. Theatre Survey, 2011
  • "Ta daaaa": Presenting Pig Iron Theatre Company. The Drama Review, 2010
  • Editorial Comment: The Age of Gossipdom. Modern Drama, 2010
  • Prosthetic Intimacies: Television, Performance Studies, and the Makings of (a) Life. Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, 2010
  • Out of Hand: YouTube Amateurs and Professionals. The Drama Review, 2009
  • On the Bubble: The Soap Opera Diva's Ambivalent Orbit. Camera Obscura, 2007
  • Uncloseting Drama: Gertrude Stein and the Wooster Group. Modern Drama, 2007
  • Tramp Sensibility and the Afterlife of Showgirls. Theater, 2006
  • Louis Zukofsky's Old English Sources for “A”‐23. Notes and Queries, 2002

 

Book Chapters:

  • Camp Performance and the Case of Discotropic. In After Queer Studies: Literary Theory and Literary Interpretation. Cambridge University Press, 2019
  • Closet Television, Queer Hooperman. In Closet Drama: History, Theory, Genre. Routledge, 2018

 

Books:

  • Television Scales. punctum books, 2019
  • Obstruction. Duke University Press, 2016
  • Knots Landing. Wayne State University Press, 2015
  • Uncloseting Drama: American Modernism and Queer Performance. Yale University Press, 2010
Klarman Hall
232 Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts
ngs9@cornell.edu
607/254-5398

Departments and programs

Links

Keywords

20th century aesthetics and culture; modern drama; theatre and performance; queer theory; popular representations of gender and sexuality; histories and theories of melodrama

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