The 13th Annual Miami University English Graduate and Adjunct Association (MEGAA) Symposium

Megaa Symposium

Friday, March 4th, 2016  |  Bachelor & Kreger Halls  |  8:45AM - 4:45PM 
RSVP: Facebook Event Page


SCHEDULE

8:00-8:45:  Check-in* and Breakfast—Bachelor Reading Room (337) 
*Check-in table will be open all day
8:45-9:45:  Panels A & B

Panel A
Biopower, Biopolitics, Resistance—BAC 341
 Chair:  Andrew Hebard, Associate Professor of English and Director of the Literature Program

Presenters 
"The ‘Hidden Part of Intersection’ Between Foucault and Agomben" – Jason Walsh, Philosophy
"Analyzing Stand Your Ground: Race, Law, Gender" – Ben Hillin, Philosophy
"Against Equality: Against Biopower, Against Sovereign Power" – Jason Walsh and Ben Hillin

Panel B
Circulating the Archives—BAC 250
 Chair:  Michele Simmons, Associate Professor 

Presenters:
"Messy Archives: Questioning an Archive of Queer, Rural Literacy" – Caleb Pendygraft, Composition and Rhetoric
"Circulating Conformity: Tracing Conformity versus Openness in the Materiality of Circulating Discourse" – John Silvestro, Composition and Rhetoric 
"The ’Happy, Amenable Savage’: US Pacific Nuclear Testing and the People of Rongelap" – Megan Schoettler, Composition and Rhetoric

10:00-11:00:  Panels C, D, & E

Panel C
Binaries and Rituals—BAC 250
 Chair:  Madelyn Detloff, Professor of English 

Presenters: 
"Nirvana as Resisting Binarism: Exploring a Buddhist Approach to the Literary Text" – Samitha Senanayake, English Literature 
"Finding Utopian Subjecthood in Margaret Cavendish's The Convent of Pleasure" – Audrey Bader, English Literature 
"there was no blood" – Isaac Pickell and Molli Spalter, Creative Writing 

Panel D
Trauma of Racialized Bodies—BAC 341
 Chair:  Stefanie Dunning, Associate Professor of English

Presenters: 
"Inheritance of Abuse: Exploring Trauma and the Female African-American Body" – Erin Jamieson, Creative Writing
"Sexualized Racism and the Mistreatment of Black Male Bodies in Black Boy and Invisible Man" – Devin Fairchild, English Literature

Panel E
Comparative Rhetoric in the Everyday—BAC 131
 Chair: Linh Dich, Assistant Professor 

Presenters: 
"Comparative Rhetoric in Everyday Life: Under the Context of 'Globalization'" – Yuanyuan Li, Composition and Rhetoric
"Discursive Construction of Gender-Conformity in Media: A Rhetorical Exploration" – Chulin Zhang, Composition and Rhetoric 
"Rhetorics in Exile: Looking, Listening, and Looking Again at the Everyday" – Angela Glotfelter, Composition and Rhetoric 

11:15-12:15:  Panels F, G, & H

Panel F
Social Perspectives in Varying Places—BAC 134
 Chair:  Tim Lockridge, Assistant Professor of Composition and Rhetoric 

Presenters: 

"A Guide to Understanding Conformity and Resistance: Tips from a Social Psychologist" – Kurt Schuepfer, Pyschology
"Faking It and Going Wild: Performance of (Unintelligible) Sexual Desire" – Rachel McNealis, Psychology 
"The Vault of Resistance: Dark Matter in Composition Spaces" – Rich Shivener, English Composition 

Panel G
Past and Future:  Creative Engagement with Memory—BAC 250
 Chair:  TaraShea Nesbit, Assistant Professor of Creative Writing
 
Presenters: 
"Songs of Amy" – Tammy Atha, Creative Writing/Poetry 
"In Our Own Words: Poetry of Hoosier Consciousness" – Jessica Marshall, Creative Writing/Poetry 
"A Doctor’s Daughter" – Christopher Maggio, Creative Writing/Fiction 

Panel H
Thorny Conformities:  Troubling Relationships, Domestic Dangers, and Inappropriate Resistances —BAC 358
 Chair:  Katie Johnson, Professor 

Presenters: 
"Single Troubles in Grace and Frankie" – Michelle Christensen, English Literature 
"Reflections on a Cat Called Tom Jones (For Bootsy, Oriole, Funny Face, Monkey, Sam, Sugar, Spice, Punkin, Sophie, Buster, Yogi, ylvia, Esther, Nelly, Charlie, Camilia)"  – Evan Fackler, English LIterature 
"The Biopolitics of Home part One" – Katy Shay, Creative Writing/CNF
12:15-1:15:  Lunch—Bachelor Reading Room (337)
1:15-2:15:  Keynote Address—Kreger Hall 319*
  • Speaker:  Ann Elizabeth Armstrong,  Associate Professor Theatre 
    "Feeling for Reality: Rehearsing the Role of the Ally in Freedom Summer 1964"

One of the most creative campaigns of the Civil Rights movement, the Mississippi Summer Project of 1964 brought America’s (mostly) white privileged youth to Mississippi, using their presence to shine the national spotlight on injustices in the South. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee recruited college students from all over the country, framing the entire state as a stage for their most ambitious direct action protest. Yet, these students (volunteers) would encounter violence and hostility they had never imagined. At Oxford Ohio’s Orientation session, how would SNCC activists quickly train these naïve college students for facing perils in Mississippi? This paper looks at nonviolent role playing, group singing, story telling and other rehearsals for protest -- those semi-private back stage spaces where embodied performance becomes an essential tool for rehearsing solidarity. 
2:30-3:30:  Panels I, J & K

Panel I
No Family is Safe:  Questions of Sexual Deviance and Kinship in Original Short Fiction—BAC 246
 Chair:  Daisy Hernández, Assistant Professor of Creative Writing 

Presenters: 
"Icarus Drowning" – Samantha Edmonds, Creative Writing/Fiction 
"The Aunt" – Ryan Smith, Creative Writing/Fiction 
"Witch House Oranges" – Katie Knoll, Creative Writing/Fiction 

Panel J
Ecologies of Advocacy”—Kreger Hall 319
 Chair:  Erin Edwards, Assistant Professor of Literature 

Presenters: 
"Ecofeminist Constructs in Toni Morrison’s Jazz" – Michael Auterson, English Literature 
"Coetzee’s Purposefully Confounding Dialectics: Animal Rights in Disgrace, and The Lives of Animals" – Casey Kuhajda, English
"'Here is All the Space We Have Left’: Mapping Empire in Zeina Abirached’s A Game for Swallows" – Nona Landis, English Literature 

Panel K
Empire Narratives—BAC 341
 Chair:  Nalin Jayasena, Associate Professor of English Literature

Presenters:
"The Seasons of Trouble, Remembering for the Other and Humanitarian Journalism" – Dinidu Karunanayake, English Literature 
"Interspecies Geography: Hunting, Territoriality, and Gender in William Somervile’s The Chase" – Tyler Groff, English Literature 
"'Her Deparved Appetites': The Abjection of Female Desire in the Poetry of Aphra Behn and the Earl of Rochester" – Mosisah Mavity, English Literature 

3:45-4:45:  Keynote Address--Kreger Hall 319*
  • Speaker:  Theresa Kulbaga, English Associate Professor and Faculty Affiliate in American Studies & Women’s Studies
    "Self Help, Self Hurt: Inspirational Memoir in an Age of Anxiety"

In this paper, Kulbaga examines the convergence of life narrative and self-help discourse in contemporary U.S. culture. Self-help memoirs feature “inspirational” narratives of trauma and transformation that construct new gendered subjects and new affective normativities that are well suited to the individualist ethos of neoliberalism. However, she argues, self-help memoirs sometimes fail to conform to the normative script, revealing instead the violence of everyday oppression for women and people of color.

*Bachelor lecture halls were unavailable, sorry for any inconvenience