Department of American Studies
Dr. Jameson Sweet & Dr. Maya Mikdashi will be in conversation about Sweet’s recently-published volume, Mixed-Blood Histories: Race, Law, and Dakota Indians in the Nineteenth-Century Midwest. The book writes mixed-ancestry Dakota individuals back into tribal histories, and argues that in most cases, they importantly remained Indians and full participants in Indigenous culture and society.
Dr. Jimmy Sweet (Lakota/Dakota) is Associate Professor of American Studies at RU-NB. Dr. Maya Mikdashi is Associate Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and the Director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at RU-NB.
This talk explores a citizen science community documenting and using wild apples for cider production in New York and New England. Combining ethnography with horticultural analysis, it identifies shared selection principles guiding apple foraging. These principles reveal practical, aesthetic, and philosophical values that reflect responses to climate change, land access, agricultural innovation, and sustainable rural food economies.
Maria Kennedy is an Assistant Teaching Professor of American Studies at Rutgers University-New Brunswick and director of the Curation and Cultural Programming certificate.From 2018-2024, Dr. Kennedy served as Administrative Director and Co-Director of the New Jersey Folk Festival at Rutgers University.
Papers circulated before the talk. Please email Sylvia Chan-Malik at scl219@amerstudies.rutgers.edu for a copy.
Please join us to celebrate three newly-published books from American Studies faculty, Jameson Sweet's "Mixed-Blood Histories: Race, Law, and Dakota Indians in the Nineteenth-Century Midwest" (UMinn 2025); Louis Masur's "A Journey North: Jefferson, Madison, and the Forging of a Friendship" (Oxford 2025); and Carla Cevasco's "Violent Appetites: Hunger in the Early Northeast" (Yale 2022).
Thursday Oct 16 12pm – 5:30pm Douglass Student Cen
Cai Barias is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Philippine history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she researches transnational women’s activism through the frameworks of race, diaspora, and nationalism in the 20th century. She is also involved with public history programs in her local community and online through Filipina on the Rise.
Join us for a day of presentations and conversations about the practice of oral history to document the heritage, folk music, and food cultures of South Jersey. Our speakers will discuss how their oral histories contribute foundational material to the projects which support the vitality of artistic communities, occupational traditions, and food cultures that continue to thrive in South Jersey Today.
The Department of American Studies invites you to our Fall 2025 Welcome Lunch. Please join us on Wednesday, September 10 to kick off the semester and to greet new and returning members of the American Studies community.
The Department of American Studies invites you to
Join an afternoon of music from the Albert Music Hall Pickin’ Shed. American Studies Artist Encounter resident musicians Jackson Pines (Joe Makoviecki,guitar, vocals, harmonica and James Black, upright bass) return for a second concert at Douglass Library with their friends Pete Curry, Redbird (aka Danielle Marrone), Josh Werner, and Cranston Dean. Following their previous showcase of Pinelands music traditions, Jackson Pines brings together Albert Music Hall regulars for a pickin’ session to celebrate the music of the Pine Barrens and the fifty year legacy of Albert Hall and the Pinelands Cultural Society.
Join American Studies faculty, RU Career Exploration and Success, and our recent alumni to discuss what a degree in American Studies offers and to explore the exciting career paths our majors and minors have taken following graduation. Alumni and current students will engage in a fun and highly interactive “speed dating” style dialogue, where our alums will talk about how American Studies contributed to their current careers and students will have opportunities to ask each alum about their fields and positions.
Before 1947, baseball, like much of the nation itself, was segregated by race. On April 15th of that year, Major League Baseball took a dynamic step forward, attempting to address past injustices. At Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier playing first base for the Dodgers.
Rudy Carmenaty, Deputy Commissioner of the Nassau
The Department of American Studies is proud to present an advance screening of AMERICAN MUSLIMS: A HISTORY REVEALED on Thursday, November 14, 7-9 PM, at the Rutgers Cinema, Livingston Campus, 105 Joyce Kilmer Ave., Piscataway. Perhaps now, more than ever, we need to understand this untold history, as we chart a path forwards in these terrible times.
Join musical duo Joe Makoviecki (guitar, vocals, harmonica), James Black (upright bass) and their band for an interactive performance workshop as they explore the journey of folksongs from archive to stage and discuss the creative process of working with traditional material in a contemporary context.
Join our workshop with students from American Folklore and Cultural Media Production courses in the Department of American Studies to learn about basic microphone technique and recording tools, and learn about Kogan’s fieldwork experiences.
Please join us to celebrate the publication of the 2nd Edition of "Looking for American on the NJ Turnpike" (Rutgers UP, 2024) with authors Professor Angus Kress Gillespie and Professor Emeritus Michael Aaron Rockland, and Rutgers University Press Executive Editor Peter Mickulas, emceed by Professor Sylvia Chan-Malik. The talk will be from 3-4 pm followed by a wine and cheese reception from 4-5 pm.
