Grant Bain, a 3rd year PhD student currently working on his dissertation, tentatively titled Sentimental Corruption: the Southern Gothic in the Popular Imagination, presented "The Poetics of Sympathy: Thomas Wolfe's Class Consciousness" at the Southern Writers Symposium, February 27-28, in Fayetteville, North Carolina. "The Poetics of Sympathy: Thomas Wolfe's Class Consciousness" argues that Thomas Wolfe’s novels, especially Look Homeward, Angel and You Can’t Go Home Again, explore class conflict by situating their protagonists variously within lower-, middle-, and upper-class surroundings, thereby allowing each form of class consciousness to speak to the reader. Wolfe attempts to portray the true common lot of humanity, without compromising depictions of the material conditions under which different groups and individuals exist.
|
Amy Schmidt, a 2nd year PhD student, presented "The Performing of a Southerner: Negotiating the Boundaries of Genre, Identity, and Power in Lillian Smith’s Killers of the Dream" at the Northeast Modern Language Association's 40th Convention in Boston, Massachusetts, February 26 –March 1. Amy’s presentation explores Smith’s description of the practice of segregation as a scripted drama, with actors unconsciously moving through the everyday motions that serve to perpetuate oppression. Despite her insistence on the unnatural performance of whiteness, Smith employs biological determinism in her depictions of blackness. The significance of Smith's text is that she reveals the Authority that presides over Jim Crow's everyday dramas as visible and unnatural. She also exposes myths about white superiority as inaccurate, but acknowledges that as symbolic truths they are operative and have material consequences.
Iris Shepard, a 2nd year PhD Student, presented “Re-visioning Jane Eyre: Twentieth Century Visual Adaptations of Jane Eyre, Reinforcing Dominant Ideologies” at the Media in 19th and 20th Century Literature Graduate Student Conference at the University of Tulsa, March 6-7, 2009. The aim of the conference was to engage with literature through the various lenses that we, as citizens of the 21st century, embrace every day. “Re-visioning Jane Eyre: Twentieth Century Visual Adaptations of Jane Eyre, Reinforcing Dominant Ideologies” focuses on four filmic adaptations of Jane Eyre from 1944 to 1997 and two illustrated adaptations geared specifically towards child readers. Tellingly, in the film adaptations and the versions directed towards a child readership, the ambiguity of the original text disappears. Jane Eyre has become an object lesson reinforcing male dominance and a lack of subjectivity for marginalized populations, including women, children and disabled people.
Eve Williams, a 1st year PhD student, presented “The Societal Purposes of Education: Understanding the Literacy-Authority Connection” at The Expanding Literacy Studies Conference at Ohio State, a conference designed to encourage interdisciplinary discussion on the subject of literacy and to use the discussion to help further and improve the role of literacy and society. “The Societal Purposes of Education: Understanding the Literacy-Authority Connection” asserts that traditional understandings of the interaction of literacy and authority suggest that literacy is either a weapon for submission or a tool for empowerment. Eve’s presentation explores a third option: that literacy aids identity development which, in turn, allows for an understanding of and interaction with authority.