American Studies at Brown University

10/21/2025

Join us in Nicholson House on October 29th and 30th for our annual Tam Tran Distinguished Lecture Series with this year’s guest speaker, Kaiama Glover!

06/12/2025

Alumni News:

Makana graduated from Brown's American Studies PhD program in 2024. She will be starting as an Assistant Professor of U.S. & Indigenous History at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo History Department on August 1st this year. She is excited to continue research and teaching that critically examines the relationship between American-ness and Indigeneity that began for her at Brown's American Studies Department.

04/03/2025

Join us in Nicholson House on April 8th and 9th for our annual Tam Tran Distinguished Lecture Series with this year’s guest speaker, Ana Raquel Minian

03/07/2025

Please join us for an exciting lineup of events from Monday-Tuesday, March 17-18 with Tao Leigh Goffe on her new book, Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis. We will begin with a collaborative workshop on 3/17 at 6pm, followed by a book talk on 3/18 at 12pm, and a book talk and conversation with Professor Brian Meeks on 3/18 at 4pm. Food and refreshments will be provided, we hope to see you there!

In Dark Laboratory, Dr. Tao Leigh Goffe embarks on a historical journey to chart the forces that have shaped the Caribbean: the legacy of slavery, indentured labor, and the forced toil of Chinese and enslaved Black people who mined the islands’ bounty for the benefit of European powers and at the expense of the islands’ sacred ecologies. Braiding together family history, cultural reportage, and social studies, Goffe radically transforms how we conceive of Blackness, the natural world, colonialism, and the climate crisis. In redressing the twin apocalypses of racism and climate catastrophe, Dark Laboratory becomes a record of the violence that continues to shape the Caribbean today. But it is also a declaration of hope, offering solutions toward a better future based on knowledge gleaned from island ecosystems, and an impassioned, urgent testament to the human capacity for change and regeneration.

Tao Leigh Goffe is a London-born, Black British award-winning writer, theorist, and interdisciplinary artist who grew up between the UK and New York. Her research explores Black diasporic intellectual histories, political, and ecological life. She studied English literature at Princeton University before pursuing a PhD at Yale University. She lives and works in Manhattan where she is currently an Associate Professor at Hunter College, CUNY. Dr. Goffe has held academic positions and fellowships at Leiden University in the Netherlands and Princeton University in New Jersey.

02/06/2025

Congratulations to Matthew Guterl for his new appointment as Brown’s Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion!🎉

Read more details here: https://www.brown.edu/news/2025-02-06/guterl

01/09/2025

We are excited to share that Thomas Dai, a PhD alum, has a book coming out January 21st.

In Take My Name but Say It Slow, Thomas Dai attempts to chart the geographies of an unmappable life. He writes of a river that runs only in the mind and a q***r map housed on the internet; of love carved on the rocks of Taipei and Arizona; of pounding the racetrack in Wenzhou, watching his grandfather fade from the world. He recounts a relationship that would literally go the distance from the American Southwest to China and back again, and a road trip chasing the memory of Vladimir Nabokov, the writer and lepidopterist. As he reflects on the paths his parents took to build a life in America, he also asks what it means to “return” to a place he never felt he could claim as his own. Incisive and gorgeously written, Take My Name but Say It Slow offers a fresh perspective on placelessness, yearning, and belonging, and introduces a sparkling new literary talent.

12/20/2024

Congratulations to Edwin Rodriguez for the successful defense of his PhD dissertation, “Siempre Esperando: Technologies of Displacement in El Salvador and the DMV,” co-chaired by Susan Smulyan and Elena Shih, with Sandy Zipp rounding out the dissertation committee.🎉👏🏽

10/29/2024

Congratulations to our doctoral alumnus, Anni Pullagura (2022), on her appointment as the Margaret and Terry Stent Associate Curator of American Art at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia.

ATLANTA, Oct. 15, 2024 — Today, the High Museum of Art announced the appointment of Anni Pullagura, Ph.D., as its Margaret and Terry Stent associate curator of American art. Pullagura currently serves as the inaugural postdoctoral fellow, offered jointly by the Yale Center for British Art at Yale ...

05/17/2024

Please join us this evening at 5pm for a Retirement Zoom Party for Professor Susan Smulyan!

Zoom is the leader in modern enterprise video communications, with an easy, reliable cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, chat, and webinars across mobile, desktop, and room systems. Zoom Rooms is the original software-based conference room solution used around the world in board, confer...

05/08/2024

Congratulations to Elena Shih for winning the Meenakshi Narain Excellence in Research Mentoring Award! This award recognizes Brown faculty "who have shown exceptional commitment in mentoring undergraduate researchers, as well as for their promotion, encouragement, and training of diverse students in undergraduate research." We all know it is well deserved!!!

05/08/2024

Congratulations to Professor Kevin Escudero for winning a Salomon Faculty Research Award *and* an Early Career Research Achievement Award from Brown's OVPR!

2024 Research Achievement Award Winners Brown University's researchers are making a significant impact in the world by advancing knowledge through their achievements, discoveries, and contributions. Every year, distinguished Brown scholars are nominated for Research Achievement Awards by their colle...

04/22/2024

Dear far-flung AMSTonians, please mark your calendars for a Zoom toast in honor of Susan Smulyan on the occasion of her retirement. Friday, May 17, 2024, 5 PM Eastern time, via:

Zoom is the leader in modern enterprise video communications, with an easy, reliable cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, chat, and webinars across mobile, desktop, and room systems. Zoom Rooms is the original software-based conference room solution used around the world in board, confer...