Ben Chappell

Smiling man with dark rimmed glasses and dark shirt and sweater
  • Professor

Contact Info

213 Bailey Hall
Lawrence
1440 Jayhawk Blvd.
Lawrence, KS 66045

Personal Links

Biography —

Ben Chappell works in areas of Mexican American studies, critical university studies, vernacular cultural production and performance, and studies of neoliberalism and fascism. He is currently one of two co-editors of American Studies, the quarterly journal, and founded the Ethnography Caucus of the American Studies Association.


 

Education —

Music and Peace Studies, Bethel College, Kansas, 1993
Anthropology, The University of Texas at Austin, 1998
Anthropology, The University of Texas at Austin, 2003

Teaching —

Prof. Chappell's teaching efforts focus on the graduate program and core requirements in the AMS major.

Teaching interests:

  • Mexican American cultural expression
  • Ethnography
  • Cultural Studies
  • Critical University Studies
  • Theories of and Resistance to Fascism

Selected Publications —

Mexican American Fastpitch: Identity at Play in Vernacular Sport. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2021. Winner of the Byron Caldwell Smith award for nonfiction.

Mexican American Baseball in Kansas City, co-authored with Richard Santillán, Gene T. Chávez, Rod Martínez, and Raymond Olais. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Press, 2018. 

Lowrider Space: Aesthetics and Politics of Mexican American Custom Cars. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2012. 

“Aesthetics and the Battle for the Eastside: Google’s Lowrider, Chicano Park, and the Performance of Space.” In The Lowrider Studies Reader: Culture, Resistance, Liberation, and Familia, Anthony Nocella, II, ed. Pp. 15-26. New York: Peter Lang, 2023.

“University Studies: Up Close and Critical.” American Studies 61.2 (2022): 55-69.

“Where is the Place to Gather and be Family?” In Slow and Low: Chicago Community Lowrider Festival. Chicago: Candor, 2021. Updated edition, Slow & Low, 2023.

“Traditions of the Oppressed: Popular Aesthetics and Layered Barrio Space Against the Erasure of Gentrification in Austin.” In The Everyday Life of Urban Inequality: Ethnographic Case Studies of Global Cities, Angela D. Storey, Megan Sheehan, and Jessica Bodoh-Creed, eds. Pp. 87-104. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2020.

“Mexican American Fastpitch.” In Latinos and Latinas in American Sport: Stories Beyond Peloteros, Jorge Iber, ed. Pp. 127-147. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2019.

“The Borders that Cross Us: Ethnographic Sensibilities for Transnational American Studies.” Approaching Transnational America in Performance. Birgit M. Bauridl and Pia Wiegmink, eds. Pp. 35-56. Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Peter Lang, 2016. 

“Lowrider Publics: Aesthetics and Contested Communities.” In The Routledge Companion to Latina/o Pop Culture. Frederick Aldama, ed. Pp. 267-278. New York: Routledge, 2016.

 



 

 

Selected Presentations —

Beijing Foreign Studies University, China, “Why American Studies Needs Mexican American Studies,” 2024.

American Studies Network 20th Anniversary Conference, Beijing, China, “American Studies as Critical Education in an Age of R.O.I.,” 2024.

University of Regensburg, Germany, Center for International and Transnational Area Studies, Leibniz ScienceCampus visiting fellow lecture, “Learning Management and Knowledge Ideologies in a ‘Moment of Danger’ for Universities,” 2022. 

Texas State University, Center for the Study of the Southwest, “Mexican American Fastpitch: Identity at Play in Mid-America,” 2021.

San Diego State University, “Mexican American Fastpitch: Identity at Play in Mid-America,” 2020.