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Online giving is secure, speedy and simple. Click the area you would like to support and you will be redirected to the website of KU Endowment, the non-profit fundraising organization that supports KU.
For information on other ways to give, please visit the KU Endowment web site. Or for information on other opportunities to assist the Department, please contact Henry Bial, at (785) 864-4011 or hbial@ku.edu.
David M. Katzman Graduate Scholarship Fund
American Studies Fund
This fund is our only unrestricted expendable fund and is indispensable to sponsor and fund visiting lectures; provide hospitality for faculty and student lectures, meetings, and retreats; host receptions on campus and at the American Studies Association meetings; offer minimal support for graduate student travel to conferences and for research; support faculty and graduate student recruitment; and fund other program initiatives and needs.
Norman and Anne Yetman Scholarships
The Norm and Anne Yetman Fund was established to honor Norm’s commitment to graduate education with a student-oriented dissertation award and an endowment fund substantial enough ultimately to support an advanced graduate student writing his or her dissertation in American Studies.
Tuttle Lecture Fund
The Tuttle Lecture will contribute to the University of Kansas a uniquely open forum. Many lectures on campus are dedicated to celebrating American capitalism, but this series will give a different view. The Tuttle Lectures will not be censored by the donor and will provide a unique forum for free speech at KU. We count on your generous support to the Tuttle Lecture Fund to ensure that the annual Tuttle Lecture will continue to make a major contribution to intellectual life and political consciousness at KU. Please note that we will continue to list your donations in future programs for the Tuttle Lecture.
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David M. Katzman Graduate Scholarship Fund |
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American Studies Fund
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Norman and Anne Yetman Scholarships
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Tuttle Lecture Fund
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A message from Henry Bial, Chair of the Department of American Studies.
A funny thing happened on the way to the website: a guy came up to me and said, “What is American Studies anyway? Do you, like, study America?”
No, I told him, we study Americans.
You mean, like presidents and generals, novelists and Nobel laureates?
Sometimes, I said, but mostly we study important Americans.
We study the Americans who fight for civil rights, like the subject of Randal Jelks’ new biography, Benjamin Elijah Mays, Schoolmaster of the Movement. We study the Americans who are fighting for their communities, like the East Saint Louis families Jennifer Hamer writes about in Abandoned in the Heartland. We study the Americans who build women’s health clinics in New York and we study the Americans who build lowriders in Austin. We study the Americans who cross borders and barricades, the Americans who have been marginalized, oppressed, and excluded, the Americans who have been told they are too old, too female, too foreign, too poor, too Jewish, too broken… but who never stop trying, never stop singing, never stop praying, never stop voting, never stop teaching, never stop believing.
Your generous contributions to our endowment funds help us to give voice and value to these important Americans. The Tuttle Lecture Fund, for example, recently brought noted historian Darlene Clark Hine from Northwestern University to Lawrence to present her research on black professional women’s health care activism in the segregated South. The newly combined Katzman-Yetman Opportunity Fund helps enable the research activity of our graduate students, who daily expand the range of Americans to whom our field must pay attention, and this year we are pleased to be able to offer the first Harmon Award for undergraduate research, given by Chico Herbison (MA ’80, PhD ’06) in honor of his parents. In a more general way, contributions to the American Studies Fund support a wide range of activities, from faculty research to student-centered celebrations, from DVDs and software for use in lectures to bringing noted scholars and other guests to Lawrence to share their insights with our students and with the broader campus community.
In times like these, it is increasingly vital that our students, our state, and our culture recognize that there are many ways of being an important American, and many lessons to be learned by studying them. Thank you for helping us to pursue this goal.
Thank You,
Henry Bial
Chair, Department of American Studies
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