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New Directions Panel Schedule
8:30 – 9:00 – Breakfast9:00 – 10:00
10:00 – 11:00
11:00 – 12:00
12:00 – 1:00 – Lunch 1:00 – 2:00 – Faculty Panel
2:00 – 3:00
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Monday, February 25, 2013
2013 Panel Schedule
Thursday, February 21, 2013
New Directions Proposal: Oppositional Appropriation: Toward an Ethics of Appositional Writing
Ryan Clark will present "Toward an Ethics of Appositional Writing."
Abstract:
Drawing heavily from the work of various feminist moral philosophers, I make an argument for what I call appositional writing, which uses appropriative methods (cut-up, erasure, collage, homophonic translation) to craft ethically reparative poetry, and which places emphasis on considerateness and an awareness of power relations within each specific act of appropriation. As I illustrate the central tenets of appositional writing, I will explain three risks that may lead such a project to become ethically problematic, or even outright damaging to the overall climate of trust; I refer to these risks as the Risk of Arrogance in Appropriation (or the Risk of Exceeding Permissions), the Risk of Asymmetrical Power Relations, and the Risk of Exceeding Reasonable Responsibility. Appositional writing runs the risk of damaging the climate of trust by assuming more than what one might reasonably expect to claim as one’s own. Asymmetrical power relations along sociopolitical lines between author and source material may magnify this issue. The case of Raymond McDaniel’s Saltwater Empire will serve as an example of an ethically problematic work of appropriative writing that fails to adequately consider these risks. McDaniel’s book is but part of a larger and compelling trend toward documentarian investigation in contemporary poetry, and as more and more writers turn toward appropriation and documentary as a means toward political opposition and advocacy for disempowered populations, it becomes important to consider the ethical impact of these practices--both positive and negative.
Ryan Clark wants to make a pun. He thinks about puns while working on his dissertation, while teaching and studying at Illinois State University, while eating cereal (Cheery Hose?). In his poetry he is largely concerned with homophonic translation, the reparative potential of appropriative writing, and how poetry responds to violence and subjugation, symbolic and otherwise. Ryan is a 4th year doctoral student in English Studies specializing in creative writing, although, understandably, part of him wishes he'd just settle down and be a linguist. His poetry has appeared in Fact-Simile, Monkey Puzzle, and Seven Corners, and is forthcoming from Tenderloin.
Abstract:
Drawing heavily from the work of various feminist moral philosophers, I make an argument for what I call appositional writing, which uses appropriative methods (cut-up, erasure, collage, homophonic translation) to craft ethically reparative poetry, and which places emphasis on considerateness and an awareness of power relations within each specific act of appropriation. As I illustrate the central tenets of appositional writing, I will explain three risks that may lead such a project to become ethically problematic, or even outright damaging to the overall climate of trust; I refer to these risks as the Risk of Arrogance in Appropriation (or the Risk of Exceeding Permissions), the Risk of Asymmetrical Power Relations, and the Risk of Exceeding Reasonable Responsibility. Appositional writing runs the risk of damaging the climate of trust by assuming more than what one might reasonably expect to claim as one’s own. Asymmetrical power relations along sociopolitical lines between author and source material may magnify this issue. The case of Raymond McDaniel’s Saltwater Empire will serve as an example of an ethically problematic work of appropriative writing that fails to adequately consider these risks. McDaniel’s book is but part of a larger and compelling trend toward documentarian investigation in contemporary poetry, and as more and more writers turn toward appropriation and documentary as a means toward political opposition and advocacy for disempowered populations, it becomes important to consider the ethical impact of these practices--both positive and negative.
Ryan Clark wants to make a pun. He thinks about puns while working on his dissertation, while teaching and studying at Illinois State University, while eating cereal (Cheery Hose?). In his poetry he is largely concerned with homophonic translation, the reparative potential of appropriative writing, and how poetry responds to violence and subjugation, symbolic and otherwise. Ryan is a 4th year doctoral student in English Studies specializing in creative writing, although, understandably, part of him wishes he'd just settle down and be a linguist. His poetry has appeared in Fact-Simile, Monkey Puzzle, and Seven Corners, and is forthcoming from Tenderloin.
New Directions Proposal: Literary and Film Examples of Mimicry and Hybridity
Curt Hagegeorge will present "Literary and Film Examples of Mimicry and Hybridity."
Abstract:
Three primary literary texts including The Mimic Men (1967) by Vidiadhar Surajprasad “V. S.” Naipaul (1932-Present), The Satanic Verses (1988) by Salman Rushdie (1947-Present), and My Son the Fanatic (1994) by Hanif Kureishi (1954-Present), are considered to be premier literary works that relate to aspects of cultural mimicry within hybrid spaces. Mimicry occurs within the hybrid spaces due to an immigration pattern where the people who are arriving in Britain from the post-colonial periphery nations are typically arriving to begin their lives at the bottom of the social strata. In effect, these hybridized spaces become places of cultural conflict and thus resistance to the secular ways of the West. This dichotomous essentialist approach to what is portrayed as being polar opposites, between cultural worlds of East and West, a continuum exists, and within this continuum is where hybridity emerges and resistance resides. In each work, the characters are struggling to find an acceptable form of resistance within the hybrid spaces of the post-modern world. Perhaps it is this globalized diversity that has ushered in such profound social changes is what the fundamentalists are striking against the most within these works. Basically, the quest for cultural purity is a problematic proposition within a world of increasing hybridity. Each story portrays characters who find their own way towards an acceptable form of resistance within the hybrid spaces of the post-modern world as a form of hybrid resistance. "
Curt Hagegeorge: English Studies, TESOL
Abstract:
Three primary literary texts including The Mimic Men (1967) by Vidiadhar Surajprasad “V. S.” Naipaul (1932-Present), The Satanic Verses (1988) by Salman Rushdie (1947-Present), and My Son the Fanatic (1994) by Hanif Kureishi (1954-Present), are considered to be premier literary works that relate to aspects of cultural mimicry within hybrid spaces. Mimicry occurs within the hybrid spaces due to an immigration pattern where the people who are arriving in Britain from the post-colonial periphery nations are typically arriving to begin their lives at the bottom of the social strata. In effect, these hybridized spaces become places of cultural conflict and thus resistance to the secular ways of the West. This dichotomous essentialist approach to what is portrayed as being polar opposites, between cultural worlds of East and West, a continuum exists, and within this continuum is where hybridity emerges and resistance resides. In each work, the characters are struggling to find an acceptable form of resistance within the hybrid spaces of the post-modern world. Perhaps it is this globalized diversity that has ushered in such profound social changes is what the fundamentalists are striking against the most within these works. Basically, the quest for cultural purity is a problematic proposition within a world of increasing hybridity. Each story portrays characters who find their own way towards an acceptable form of resistance within the hybrid spaces of the post-modern world as a form of hybrid resistance. "
Curt Hagegeorge: English Studies, TESOL
Thursday, February 7, 2013
New Directions Proposal: "Beaming the Dream" Holocaust Memory as Gendered Intergenerational Trauma in a Digital Age
Susan M. George will present "'Beaming the Dream' Holocaust Memory as Gendered Intergenerational Trauma in a Digital Age."
Abstract:
This paper explores the relevance of gendered Holocaust trauma as a cross-generational phenomenon in literature. Utilizing Nava Semel's 2009 hybrid novel "And the Rat Laughed," I explore how her revolutionary work transcends conventional, linear narrativity and the "Holocaust script" in order to transfer an authentic telling of trauma for contemporary audiences. I address the importance of trauma temporality as digital hybridity frameworked by Semel's use of prose, poetry, song, screenplay, blog post, email and even the material body in an attempt to transfer meaning. Semel's work forms a springboard to disproving the supposed "impossibility" of speaking intergenerational Holocaust trauma. Through this non-linear, hybridized telling, memory repeatedly "reclaims" the body as it is transferred across genres of writing. Through my analysis, I re-evaluate the role of the digital-material body at intersections of silenced and speaking traumatic memory in this
unusual work.
Susan M. George: I am an MA student in English Studies at ISU focusing on the unexpected uniqueness of women's Modernist literature and culture. I research especially gendered perceptions of the narrated body in time and space and the place of memory, love & trauma in women's literature.
Abstract:
This paper explores the relevance of gendered Holocaust trauma as a cross-generational phenomenon in literature. Utilizing Nava Semel's 2009 hybrid novel "And the Rat Laughed," I explore how her revolutionary work transcends conventional, linear narrativity and the "Holocaust script" in order to transfer an authentic telling of trauma for contemporary audiences. I address the importance of trauma temporality as digital hybridity frameworked by Semel's use of prose, poetry, song, screenplay, blog post, email and even the material body in an attempt to transfer meaning. Semel's work forms a springboard to disproving the supposed "impossibility" of speaking intergenerational Holocaust trauma. Through this non-linear, hybridized telling, memory repeatedly "reclaims" the body as it is transferred across genres of writing. Through my analysis, I re-evaluate the role of the digital-material body at intersections of silenced and speaking traumatic memory in this
unusual work.
Susan M. George: I am an MA student in English Studies at ISU focusing on the unexpected uniqueness of women's Modernist literature and culture. I research especially gendered perceptions of the narrated body in time and space and the place of memory, love & trauma in women's literature.
Monday, December 3, 2012
New Directions Proposal: Rhetorical Realities: Native American Resistance to the Bering Strait Migration Theory and the Political Appropriation of Knowledge
Ryan Edel will present "Rhetorical Realities: Native American Resistance to the Bering Strait Migration Theory and the Political Appropriation of Knowledge"
Abstract: In Red Earth, White Lies, Vine Deloria, Jr., actively challenges the Bering Strait migration theory on the grounds that it is not only insufficiently supported by scientific evidence, but that the theory itself has been used to label the Native American presence in the Western Hemisphere as mere immigration, hence devaluing Native American rights in relation to the later Euro-American colonists. The resulting dispute with scientists is emblematic of a larger cultural disconnect between scientists, nonscientists, and those who appropriate scientific data in order to promote political aims.
I argue that scientists' attempts to position themselves as apolitical has prevented them from resisting (and has at times caused them to actively participate in) the Euro-American misappropriation of scientific evidence to justify the oppression of Native Americans. As a result, Native Americans who would resist the imposed ethos of Euro-American colonization are forced to also to reject the logos of science.
My methodology involves extending Thomas Kuhn's conception of the scientific paradigm to Sharon Crowley's consideration of Christian fundamentalism in order to examine the rhetorical disconnect between scientists of the Francis Bacon tradition and strict followers of Native American and Judeo-Christian creation narratives. I will then discuss resistance to the Bering Strait theory as compared to the Christian-sponsored promotion of intelligent design.
Ryan Edel is a second-year Ph.D. student in creative writing and rhetoric at Illinois State University. In his creative works, he explores science fiction as a way to develop the ""coming-of-age"" story in a rapidly-changing society. His rhetorical focus is on examining the uses of political rhetoric to establish and reinforce common cultural realities.
Ryan is currently the Technology Coordinator for the ISU Writing Program, and his pedagogical goals include utilizing technology to increase and enhance student-to-teacher and student-to-student interactions outside the classroom.
Previously, he earned his MFA in creative writing from Johns Hopkins. He also served five years in the U.S. Army, including three years with the 82nd Airborne Division and a ten-month deployment to Afghanistan.
Abstract: In Red Earth, White Lies, Vine Deloria, Jr., actively challenges the Bering Strait migration theory on the grounds that it is not only insufficiently supported by scientific evidence, but that the theory itself has been used to label the Native American presence in the Western Hemisphere as mere immigration, hence devaluing Native American rights in relation to the later Euro-American colonists. The resulting dispute with scientists is emblematic of a larger cultural disconnect between scientists, nonscientists, and those who appropriate scientific data in order to promote political aims.
I argue that scientists' attempts to position themselves as apolitical has prevented them from resisting (and has at times caused them to actively participate in) the Euro-American misappropriation of scientific evidence to justify the oppression of Native Americans. As a result, Native Americans who would resist the imposed ethos of Euro-American colonization are forced to also to reject the logos of science.
My methodology involves extending Thomas Kuhn's conception of the scientific paradigm to Sharon Crowley's consideration of Christian fundamentalism in order to examine the rhetorical disconnect between scientists of the Francis Bacon tradition and strict followers of Native American and Judeo-Christian creation narratives. I will then discuss resistance to the Bering Strait theory as compared to the Christian-sponsored promotion of intelligent design.
Ryan Edel is a second-year Ph.D. student in creative writing and rhetoric at Illinois State University. In his creative works, he explores science fiction as a way to develop the ""coming-of-age"" story in a rapidly-changing society. His rhetorical focus is on examining the uses of political rhetoric to establish and reinforce common cultural realities.
Ryan is currently the Technology Coordinator for the ISU Writing Program, and his pedagogical goals include utilizing technology to increase and enhance student-to-teacher and student-to-student interactions outside the classroom.
Previously, he earned his MFA in creative writing from Johns Hopkins. He also served five years in the U.S. Army, including three years with the 82nd Airborne Division and a ten-month deployment to Afghanistan.
New Directions Proposal: Bounded Learning: Systems Theories and the Issue of Transfer
Moria M. Torrington will present "Bounded Learning: Systems Theories and the Issue of Transfer"
Abstract: Sharon Crowley has argued that “[c]ommonplaces are part of the discursive machinery that hides the flow of difference, that firms up identity and sameness within a community."" In the field of writing studies, and, more broadly, rhetoric, commonplaces concerning the existence and nature of learning transfer concretize the community’s identity as one that is able to “help students learn how to write,” and thus, contribute to the shape and efficacy of the general university. Most transfer scholarship in this vein can be traced back to David Bartholomae’s seminal argument that students learning to write must “invent the university” by performing understanding in appropriating both the language and forms suitable to the particular disciplinary contexts of the academy. Though this scholarship enables me to join the conversation on transfer in this presentation, the weight of the learning-in-context commonplace suggests that as a field, our notions have transfer have become, as Crowley puts it, too firm in shoring up our identity. Loosening this commonplace requires attention to other, less dominant discourses of transfer circulating in the field. As such, at issue here are not questions such as “Does transfer happen?” and “If so, how?” but rather how we might theorize this concept in ways that account for the complexities of learning in multiple situations. Given that exigency, my presentation seeks to provide not a framework from which to understand if and how writing students use skills across contexts, but more broadly to bring together general systems theories and activity theories in order to provide a basis for observing how boundaries mediate instances where writers repurpose knowledge and actions.
Moria Torrington is a second year Ph.D. student in composition and rhetoric, with a focus on writing studies, activity theories, and learning transfer.
Abstract: Sharon Crowley has argued that “[c]ommonplaces are part of the discursive machinery that hides the flow of difference, that firms up identity and sameness within a community."" In the field of writing studies, and, more broadly, rhetoric, commonplaces concerning the existence and nature of learning transfer concretize the community’s identity as one that is able to “help students learn how to write,” and thus, contribute to the shape and efficacy of the general university. Most transfer scholarship in this vein can be traced back to David Bartholomae’s seminal argument that students learning to write must “invent the university” by performing understanding in appropriating both the language and forms suitable to the particular disciplinary contexts of the academy. Though this scholarship enables me to join the conversation on transfer in this presentation, the weight of the learning-in-context commonplace suggests that as a field, our notions have transfer have become, as Crowley puts it, too firm in shoring up our identity. Loosening this commonplace requires attention to other, less dominant discourses of transfer circulating in the field. As such, at issue here are not questions such as “Does transfer happen?” and “If so, how?” but rather how we might theorize this concept in ways that account for the complexities of learning in multiple situations. Given that exigency, my presentation seeks to provide not a framework from which to understand if and how writing students use skills across contexts, but more broadly to bring together general systems theories and activity theories in order to provide a basis for observing how boundaries mediate instances where writers repurpose knowledge and actions.
Moria Torrington is a second year Ph.D. student in composition and rhetoric, with a focus on writing studies, activity theories, and learning transfer.
New Directions Proposal: Text and Paratext in the Literary Hoax
Jeffrey D. Reints will present "Text and Paratext in the Literary Hoax"
Abstract: Can a fake have real value? Two poetic forgeries appearing in the first half of the twentieth century, the Darkening Ecliptic of Australian prodigy Ern Malley and the avante garde Spectric School of verse, challenge our notions of authenticity by their achievement of literary fame despite their dubious origins. Often dismissed as “crimes” against literature or pranks at the expense of the reading public, these works call into question the implicit trust in the relationship between author and reader.
This paper proposes the rehabilitation of the literary hoax as a legitimate genre, reclaiming these "phony" texts from the dustbin of history. Literary hoaxes will be distinguished from the genres they imitate by their unique features, rather than the purported ethical boundaries that are used to distance them from similar works enshrined in the literary canon. The primary mode of inquiry will be an examination of deployment of prefaces, introductions, and other paratextual elements. The interaction between poem and preface creates a totality of text that is both fiction and nonfiction, verse and prose, thereby problematizing the relationship between author, reader, and text,
Following Bakhtin's theory of the literary chronotope, I will offer a working definition of the genre of the literary hoax that focuses on this uniquely entangled relationship between text and paratext. The continuity of the genre will be established by touching upon it roots in ancient pseudoedpigraphia, its prototypes in early first person novels, and the grand literary hoaxes of the late eighteenth century.
Jeff Rients is a master's student in the area of English literature with a focus on the study of hoaxes literary and otherwise. His interest in this area dates to 2006 when he was the ‘victim’ of a hoax. Ask him about it some time. Since then he has been grappling with why hoaxes bother some people (and not others) and why authenticity is so valued in our heavily constructed and mediated culture.
Abstract: Can a fake have real value? Two poetic forgeries appearing in the first half of the twentieth century, the Darkening Ecliptic of Australian prodigy Ern Malley and the avante garde Spectric School of verse, challenge our notions of authenticity by their achievement of literary fame despite their dubious origins. Often dismissed as “crimes” against literature or pranks at the expense of the reading public, these works call into question the implicit trust in the relationship between author and reader.
This paper proposes the rehabilitation of the literary hoax as a legitimate genre, reclaiming these "phony" texts from the dustbin of history. Literary hoaxes will be distinguished from the genres they imitate by their unique features, rather than the purported ethical boundaries that are used to distance them from similar works enshrined in the literary canon. The primary mode of inquiry will be an examination of deployment of prefaces, introductions, and other paratextual elements. The interaction between poem and preface creates a totality of text that is both fiction and nonfiction, verse and prose, thereby problematizing the relationship between author, reader, and text,
Following Bakhtin's theory of the literary chronotope, I will offer a working definition of the genre of the literary hoax that focuses on this uniquely entangled relationship between text and paratext. The continuity of the genre will be established by touching upon it roots in ancient pseudoedpigraphia, its prototypes in early first person novels, and the grand literary hoaxes of the late eighteenth century.
Jeff Rients is a master's student in the area of English literature with a focus on the study of hoaxes literary and otherwise. His interest in this area dates to 2006 when he was the ‘victim’ of a hoax. Ask him about it some time. Since then he has been grappling with why hoaxes bother some people (and not others) and why authenticity is so valued in our heavily constructed and mediated culture.
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