2010 Undergraduate Literature Conference

Friday, April 9, 2010 

Breakfast, Room 512, 8:30 AM 

Opening Remarks, Room 501 by John Twyning, English Department Chair, 8:50 AM 

Session One (Panel 1) 9:00 – 10:00 AM 

1. Transtextual Mediations: Examining Influence Room 501 

Alicia Broudy: “Women, Cuckolds, and Gender Dynamics in Troilus and Cressida” 

Lena Frey: “An Exploration of Wordsworth‟s Romantic Child in the Films of Michael Haneke” 

Jennifer Macasek: “From Rabbits to Reflections: Mulan and Cross-Cultural Girlhood” 

Moderator: Megan Roth 

Session Two (Panels 2 – 3) 10:15 – 11:15 AM 

2. Public Identities and Private Prejudices in Medieval and Early Modern Literature Room 501 

Chelsie Koppenhaver: “Women, Seen and Heard: Public and Private Speech in The Tragedy of Mariam, The Fair Queen of Jewry” 

Sarah Reagle: “Sexy and Cunning: Boccaccio's Women” 

Rebecca Stern: “Anti-Semitic Undertones in William Langland's Piers Plowman” 

Moderator: Jayson Myers 

3. Studying Abroad as an English Literature Major, Q & A Room 512 

Panelists: Candice Hingley (Australia), Jennifer Macasek (China), and Jennifer Sweeney (Czech Republic) 

Moderator: Kerry Mockler 

Session Three (Panel 4) 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM 

4. Resistance and Resurrection in Twentieth-Century Texts Room 501 

Jarrett Eakins: “Navigating The Waste Land: Eliot's Plea against Resurrection” 

Maria Seger: “'Imposing on Me an Image of Myself': Using Adaptation to Resist Racial Stereotypes in Césaire's A Tempest” 

Jennifer Sweeney: Matilda: The Feminine Ideal as Tactical Resistance against Foucault's System of Punishment” 

Moderator: Rebecca Stern 

Lunch, Room 512 12:30 – 1:15 PM 

Session Four (Panels 5 – 6) 1:15 – 2:15 PM 

5. Early American Literature and the Cultivation of American Identities Room 501 

Joshua Barsczewski: “Memorable Mediocrity: Why Anne Bradstreet's Is the First Truly American Voice” 

Stephen Green: “Titillating the Puritan Audience with Deceptive Innuendoes: The Implied Threat of Rape in Mary Rowlandson's Captivity Narrative” 

Gavin White: “Franklin's Masks, Emerson's Universal Self, and the Enigma of American Identity” 

Moderator: Anna Gilchrist 

6. The Rights of Sympathy: Imagining the Human in Victorian Literature Room 512 

David Breingan: “Sympathy for the Devil: Attraction and Repulsion to Mr. Hyde in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” 

Kathryn Plazek: “To Free or Not to Free, That Is the Question” 

Elaine Short: “Jenny Wren in Dickens's Our Mutual Friend” 

Moderator: Eva Jiang 

Snack, Room 501 2:15 – 2:30 PM 

Session Five (Panels 7 – 8) 2:30 – 3:30 PM 

7. Espionage, Blood Sports, and Epistemology: Reading as Transformation Room 501 

Stephanie Carmichael: “The Language of Espionage” 

Brittany Franckowiak: “Transforming How We Know: The Experience of Song of Myself” 

Elizabeth Reali: “Transcending Contradiction: Thoreau's Imagination of Animal Food and Blood Sports” 

Moderator: David Breingan 

8. The Fantasy Studies Fellowship: Negotiating Human Development through Literary Fantasy Room 512 

Tiffany Mooney: “Ghosts, Childhood, and Identity in Time of the Ghost” 

Andrea Sciulli: “Language and Its Influence in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings” 

Leann Elaine Rerko: “Whole New Worlds: Portals in the Time of the Ghost and Howl’s Moving Castle” 

Kate Johnston: “Heroes in Modern Fantasy: Assessing J.K. Rowling‟s Hermione Granger” 

Moderator: Lilly Osthoff 

Session Six (Panel 9) 3:40 – 4:40 PM 

9. Lost in the Labyrinth: Theories of Language and Dialogue Room 501 

Steven J. Dayoub: “Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age: A Theoretical Walk through Our Time” 

James Spears: “Diplomacy, Dialogue, and a Dictionary: Defining an Approach to Metalinguistics through Frances Burney's Evelina” 

Nora M. Walsh: “'This sort of dialogue'—The Politics of Speech in Evelina” 

Moderator: Sarah Bagley 

Session Seven (Panel 10) 4:45 – 5:45 PM 

10. Lost Boys and Hapless Girls: Imagining the Nineteenth-Century Child across Time Room 501 

Eva Lupold: “Whitman's Forgotten Children: Relocating Constructions of American Childhood in Leaves of Grass” 

Gabriella Maiello: “Death of Childhood: A Production Based on Gorey's The Hapless Child” 

Lindsay Rosenberg: “Peter Pan: 'Betwixt-and-Between' as Cult Necessity” 

Moderator: Hilary Penigar 

Closing Remarks, Room 501 by Shalini Puri, Literature Program Director 5:45 PM