American Studies PhD candidate Dominic Dongilli has earned a prestigious Smithsonian Institution Predoctoral Fellowship. He will be spending 2023-24 conducting research and completing his dissertation at the Smithsonian Zoo in Washington DC, studying in the archives and engaging the animals there.

American Studies PhD candidate Peter Larsen, who is also a practicing attorney, was interviewed by KCRG on January 26 about the effects of HF 2. Iowa HF2 is a bill for an act relating to public contracts, public fund investing, and lending practices with certain companies that engage in economic boycotts based on environmental, social, or governance criteria, and including effective date and applicability provisions.

American studies PhD students Glenn Houlihan and John Tappen have an article regarding the critical interdisciplinary engagement with institutions, labor and culture article in the journal Science for the People. https://magazine.scienceforthepeople.org/labor-special-issue/science-work-and-service-work/ This article will be released in full online in January 2023. You can access the full issue now in paperback or digital formats.

American studies doctoral candidate and practicing civil rights attorney Peter Larsen has a guest post in the Pitt Law Center for Civil Rights and Racial Justice newsletter on the U.S. student loan forgiveness program. Find the post here https://www.civilrights.pitt.edu/racial-impact-and-rhetoric-student-loan-forgiveness-peter-larsen

American Studies PhD student Glenn Houlihan won the American Studies Association's 2022 Sports Studies Caucus Graduate Student Essay Prize for "From Placemaking to Profit: Cricket’s Cultural and Commercial Logic in the United States.”

American studies PhD student Glenn Houlihan reviewed Bulls Markets: Chicago’s Basketball Business and the New Inequality, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2018) by Sean Dinces in the September 12, 2022 online edition of the journal Urban Studies. In the book, author Sean Dinces focuses on similarities between the 2020 construction of the SoFi Statium in Inglewood, California -- the most expensive sporting arena ever built -- and 1990s Chicago, where the construction of the United Center served to enrich wealthy sports franchise owners at the expense of low-income city residents. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00420980221121684

Professor Travis Vogan (AMST and JMC) was interviewed for a piece in the September 8, 2022 edition of the New York Times. "How the N.F.L. Stays So Popular, Despite Its Many Scandals" examines why the league stays attractive to fans despite numerous scandals. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/08/sports/football/nfl-football-scandals.html?referringSource=articleShare&smid=nytcore-ios-sharevo

Eric Vázquez has a piece in the South Atlantic Quarterly titled The Technical Fix: Bitcoin in El Salvador. Red the essay at https://read.dukeupress.edu/south-atlantic-quarterly/article/doi/10.1215/00382876-9826018/300929/The-Technical-FixBitcoin-in-El-Salvador

American studies PhD candidate Peter Larsen had a guest essay published in the June 16, 2022 Des Moines Register. https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/columnists/iowa-view/2022/06/16/iowa-supreme-court-diversity-race-gender-ideology-professional/7635280001/

Broadly defined, a mentor is someone who takes a special interest in helping another person develop professionally. An effective mentoring relationship is characterized by mutual respect, trust, understanding, and empathy.