The 2013 New Voices Committee Welcomes You
An interdisciplinary conference devoted to monstrosity and
its discursive corollaries, villainy and aberration, seems at first
to be counterintuitive. Above all, the monstrous marks a site of
exclusion. It signifies what cannot be accepted, what cannot be
tolerated, what cannot be discussed. Thus it seems like such an
exclusionary concept could not serve as the basis of inclusive
dialog across myriad academic disciplines. Yet, as a glimpse at
the presentations listed in these pages attests, the themes of
monstrosity, villainy, and aberration have proven to be
immensely conducive to communication across disciplines. At
this conference, attendees will hear presentations from not just
language and literary studies, but also history, philosophy,
religious studies, and political science.
So what accounts for the fruitfulness of these themes? Our
world is full of monsters, villains, and aberrations. It always
has been and always will be. But monsters and the like no
longer dwell solely under beds and inside closets. They are no
longer limited to Frankenstein, Dracula, or Leatherface.
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Culturally, we are steeped in monstrosity and obsessed with the
abnormal in every aspect of our lives. Even as we fear monsters,
scorn villains, and shun what isn’t normal, we identify with ,
root for, and embrace all of these things. Monstrosity is
arguably the key to understanding not only our present, but its
relationship to the past and the future.
This conference could not have been possible without the
hard work, dedication, collaboration, and ambition of all those
who have volunteered to help plan New Voices 2013. Nor could
this conference have been possible without the assistance and
encouragement of the English department faculty and staff, the
Graduate English Association, and our graduate student
community. And we also owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to
all those office administrators and graduate directors in
departments both here at Georgia State University and at
countless other universities throughout the country. They helped
to spread the word.
Thus, with the collaborative achievements of the
aforementioned people, the New Voices Conference continues its
annual tradition at Georgia State University, providing graduate
students from all disciplines and from across the country the
opportunity to present their latest research and creative work.
On behalf of the GEA and the New Voice Committee, it is our
pleasure to welcome you to “Monsters, Villains & Aberrations:
A Conference of Dark Proportions.”
A Welcome from Dr. Paul Schmidt:
Many thanks to all of you who supported the New Voices
2013 Conference by attending, presenting, providing funding, or
simply spreading the word. It has been a pleasure working with
Valerie and Shane and the other graduate students who are
members of the GEA and the New Voices Organizing committee.
Be sure to thank them and congratulate them.
The New Voices Conference is a growing tradition in the
Department of English at Georgia State University, giving
students and faculty an opportunity to share in each other’s
research in a public venue. I am excited about this year’s
conference--"Monsters, Villains, and Aberrations: A Conference
of Dark Proportions’--as it will give participants the chance to
experience one another’s nightmares in a safe, academic
atmosphere.
This conference has always been a cross-disciplinary
endeavor, and this year should be no different. We hope that you
will enjoy listening to frightening and monstrous (yet still
somehow scholarly) voices from a variety of disciplines, as we
work toward a deeper understanding of how the homicidal, the
horrific, the twisted, the aberrant, and the villainous find their
way into our everyday lives.
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Thursday, January 17, 2013
4:00 pm – 6:30 pm
Conference Kick-off
University Center – Room 460/65
Shane McGowan- New Voices 2013 Co-Chair:
Welcome
Dr. Randy Malamud- English Department Chair:
Opening Remarks
Valerie Robin- New Voices 2013 Co-Chair:
Acknowledgements
GSU Faculty Research Roundtable
Dr. Nate Atkinson, Department of Communication
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"Action Comics" 101: How to Film an Atomic Bomb"
Dr. Ashley Holmes, Department of English
“Monsters, Villains, and Aberrations” Beyond the Classroom:
The Risks and Rewards of Going Public with Pedagogy
Dr. Mark Noble, Department of English
“How to Read a Doppelganger: or, Getting to Know Your
Gothic Self”
Registration
8:30 am – 9:00 am
Friday, January 18, 2013
Session 1
9:00-10:15 am
Panel 1: Reshaping Life, Reality, and Belief
Room 465
Moderator: Valerie Robin
“Snowcrash: Multiple and Erased Bodies in Cyberspace”
Marcia Bost - Georgia State University
“The Touch of Slimy Surfaces: Intersubjectivity and Video
Games”
Cameron Kunzelman - Georgia State University
“‘If the Real DS Ever Returns, Do You Promise that You Will
Still Treat Me as a Friend and Love Me?’: Ernst Cassirer’s
Philosophy of Symbolic Forms and Psychopathologies of
Depersonalization”
Karen McCarthy - Emory University
“Propaganda and Goffman’s Face-to-Face Interactions”
Mike Perazzetti - University of West Georgia
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Panel 2: Here There Be Monsters: Lessons from
the GSU Writing Studio
Room 470
Moderator: TBD
“The Multiple Roles of a Tutor: Monstrous Problem or the
Source of Heroic Strength?”
Kelly Elmore - Georgia State University
“Writing Anxiety: The Monster Lurking in the Writing
Center”
Samantha Jakobeit-Meaux - Georgia State University
”Fear and Loathing in the Land of Punctuation”
Helen Cauley – Georgia State University
"The Intimidation Monster: Tutoring Non-traditional Students
in the Writing Studio"
Jimisha Relerford - Georgia State University
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Panel 3: The Dark Side of Rhetoric: Reflections
on the Aberrations
Room 480
Moderator: Laura Anderson
“Literacy and Liberation: Aberrations of Radical Education
inside and outside the Classroom”
Diana Eidson - Georgia State University
“Word Monster”
Sarah McArthur Smith - Georgia State University
“What Bedevils Rhetoric in America?”
Anne Melfi - Georgia State University
Session 2
10:30-11:45 am
Panel 1: Reimagining the Techno-Monster: A
New Media Literacy Roundtable
Room 465
This roundtable explores using New Media in
first-year composition classrooms.
Pete Rorabaugh - Georgia State University
Valerie Robin - Georgia State University
Jen Vala - Georgia State University
Natasha Walker - Georgia State University
Panel 2: (Re)Figuring Criminality and Villainy:
Faces of Evil Past and Present
Room 470
Moderator: Zachary Rearick
“The Bad and the Ugly: The Born Criminal in Cesare
Lombroso’s Criminal Anthropology”
Guilherme Sanches de Oliveira - University of São
Paulo
“Healing the Scarred Villain: Political Correctness and the
Rehabilitation of the Deformed Villains of Literature and
Pop-Culture”
Ryan Prechter - Georgia State University
“Revealing and Derailing the Urban Machine: Dennis
Lehane’s Patrick Kenzie”
Anna Toms - University of Missouri-Kansas City
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Panel 3: Back inside the “Filthy Workshop of
Creation”: Reconsidering Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein
Room 480
Moderator: Shane McGowan
“Victor Frankenstein and His ‘Adam’: More Monster than
Man’”
Burnes Ray - Georgia State University
“Monsters and Their Makers: Reading Frankenstein as
Feminist Allegory”
Kristin Petersen - Emory University
“The ‘Disgusting’ Body: A Transgender Reading of Affect in
Frankenstein”
Anson Koch-Rein - Emory University
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Session Break
12:00 pm - 1:15 pm
Session 3
1:30 pm – 2:45 pm
Panel 1: Textual Transformations: Examining
the Impact of Modal and Generic Shifts
Room 465
Moderator: Zachary Rearick
“The Brief and Bloody Resurrection of Mme. L’Espanaye: An
Exercise in Structuralism within the Context of Short Storyto-Film-Adaptation”
Joe Anderson - Georgia State University
“Scary Sounds: Symbols of Evil”
Thomas LaPorte - Georgia State University
“Rewriting the Vampire Myth in Seth Grahame-Smith’s
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”
Tabitha Sheffield – Mississippi State University
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Panel 2: Monstrous Works: Undergraduate
Papers Inspired by Readings from the Monsters
V-Series Reader
Room 470
Moderator: Dr. Brandy Ball-Blake
Each of the following presentations was originally written in
fulfillment of an assignment for an English 1101 or 1102
course that used the Monsters V-Series reader. Each
presentation will be accompanied by commentary from the
instructor who made the assignment.
“Needle in the Hay”
Max Fine with Sara Hughes - Georgia State
University
“Why Should We Continue to Hide Hyde?”
Biju Ezeonwuka with Sara Hughes - Georgia State
University
“From Human to Beast: The Monster in Oldboy”
Seung Lee with Thomas Breideband - Georgia State
University
Panel 3: Disturbing Domesticity: At Home with
the Supernatural, the Uncanny, and the Queer
Room 480
Moderator: Shane McGowan
“Elizabeth Bowen and the Watchful Vitality of Objects”
Dana L. Miller - Georgia State University
“Domestic Fetishism and Supernatural Rituals: Defense
Mechanisms in Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in
the Castle”
Meagan Frey - University of Tennessee-Chattanooga
“Identification with the Monster: An Alternative Reading of
The Uninvited and The Haunting”
Sarah Boslaugh - Kennesaw State University
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Session 4
3:00 pm – 4:15 pm
Panel 1: Race and Otherness in Late-19th and
20th-Century Literature
Room 465
Moderator: Deborah S. D’Cruze
“Ideologies of Race, White Supremacy, and the Black Body
as a Tool of Protest In Charles W. Chestnutt’s The House
behind the Cedars”
Zaab Para - University of West Georgia
"’And a Mighty Thing It Is’: Race, Class, and Civil Rights in
Mother to Mother and ‘Where Is the Voice Coming From?’’”
Jessica Temple - Georgia State University
“‘I Wanted a Female Friend to Go with Us, a Good StoutHearted woman, Who Can Look Danger in the Face:’
(Re)classifying The Bondwoman’s Narrative as Female
African-American Gothic”
Anna King - Georgia State University
Panel 2: Harnessing the Power of Monsters:
Using the Monsters V-Series Reader in FirstYear Composition (GTA Mentoring Session)
Room 470
Moderator: Dr. L. Andrew Cooper
Sara Hughes - Georgia State University
Thomas Breideband - Georgia State University
Shane McGowan - Georgia State University
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Panel 3: Sex and the Modern Monster:
Queering Gender and Sexuality
Room 480
Moderator: Zachary Rearick
"Death and Transformation: Trans-Phobia and Fear of Gender
Instability in Horror Films”
Dudgrick Bevins - Kennesaw State University
“Denying the Outing: Pitch Perfect and the Future of Coming
Out”
Daren Fowler - Georgia State University
“Talking about Fetishes: A Case for Photo Elicitation in the
Study of Sexual Fetishism”
Samantha Allen - Emory University
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Keynote Address
Mapping
Disavowal:
A Rhetorical Frame
for Monstrosity
Brandy Ball Blake
and L. Andrew
Cooper
Editors of the
Monsters V-Series
Reader
Room 470
4:30-5:30 pm
Mentoring
Brandy Ball BlakeSession
and L. Andrew Cooper
Editors of the Monsters V-Series Reader
Room 470
Mentoring Session
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Saturday, January 19, 2013
Registration
Session 1
1:00 pm – 1:30 pm
1:30 pm – 2:45 pm
Panel 1: From Reel to Real: Lacanian Readings
of Monstrosity and Aberration in Cinema
Room 470
Moderator: Dr. Calvin Thomas
“‘I’m Deranged’: Music as Catalyst for the Primal in David
Lynch’s Oeuvre”
Mary Grace Elliott - Georgia State University
“Jekyll and Hyde before the Mirror”
Shane Smith - Georgia State University
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“The Call of the Lamella in David Lynch’s Lost Highway”
Seth Hagen - Georgia State University
“The Phallic Mother and Human Abjection in Ridley Scott’s
Alien”
Terri Nicholson - Georgia State University
Panel 2: Monsters, Magic, and Marvels in Folk
Literature and Folk Art of the Americas
Room 465
Moderator: Zachary Rearick
“Changó’s Daughter: The Role of Orisha Parentage in
Dreaming in Cuban”
William Michael Lake - Georgia State University
"Festival and Massacre: Staging Excess in Mapa Teatro's Los
Santos Inocentes"
Camilia Aschner-Restrepo - Emory University
“Uktena: The Horned Serpent of the Southern Appalachian
Mountains”
James A. Owen - University of Georgia
Panel 3: Determined to Undermine Myths:
Making Monsters in Pedagogy
Room 480
Moderator: Steven Sams
“Monsters in Our Minds: Critical Thinking as Modern-Day
Mythbusting”
Laura Anderson - Georgia State University
“Pedagogy and Determinism: Making Monsters”
Robert Manfredi - Georgia State University
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Session 2
3:00 pm – 4:15 pm
Panel 1: Postmodern Villainy: Terrorism, Mass
Murder, and the Contemporary Image of Evil
Room 465
Moderator: Valerie Robin
“‘Almost a Creature’: Evil in Aurora”
Mikaela Malsin - University of Georgia
“The Evil Up Close: John Updike’s Terrorist”
Levin Arnsperger - Emory University
“Monstrous Others, Ghostly Terrorists, and the Haunting of
National Security Law”
Nick J. Sciullo - Georgia State University
“Monsters Underground: The Weathermen, Aberrant
Subjects, and the Pursuit of Liberation in Counter-Cultural
Space”
Brittany Leach - University of Georgia
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Panel 2: “I Want My MTV”: Gendered
Monstrosity and Social Dysfunction on the
Postmodern Small Screen
Room 470
Moderator: Deborah S. D’Cruze
“‘’Our Men Are Soldiers, Our Women Are Leaders’:
Rearticulating Gender Norms in MTV’s Teen Wolf”
Maria Suzanne Boyd - Georgia State University
“Taking the ‘Goosebumps’ out of Goosebumps: Contradictory
Gender Epistemologies in Postmodern Children’s Horror
Television”
Zachary Rearick - Georgia State University
“Where Do the Cockroaches Come From?: Anomie and
Innovation in AMC’s Breaking Bad”
Patrick Osborne – Florida State University
Panel 3: History Is Written by the Heroes:
Lessons from the Dark Side of History
Room 480
Moderator: Shane McGowan
“Descent into Monstrosity: The Mind of Gaius Caligula”
Thomas J. McIntyre - Georgia Southern University
“The Dodo in the Long Eighteenth Century: An Exploration
of the Monstrous Gray Ghost outside of the English
Sentimental Eye”
Charles Hoge - University of Denver
“Night of the Living Dead: Animated Skeletons in Tomb
Sculpture”
Jared Hansen - University of Alabama at Birmingham
“Questing the Beast: The Darker Side of the Arthurian Beast
Glatisant"
Malorie Sponseller – Georgia Southern University
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6:00-7:30 PM @ Java Monkey in
Decatur, GA
A Chorus of Creative Voices
Select Readings of Fiction and Poetry
featuring
L. Andrew Cooper, author of Burning the
Middle Ground
Kathy Kincer, host of the poetry show Melodically
Challenged on 88.5 FM
Alex Gallo-Brown
Stephanie Devine
Java Monkey 425 Church Street Decatur, GA 30030
Java Monkey is conveniently located right across from the
Decatur MARTA station.
Please note that following our fiction and poetry event, there will be an
unofficial conference wrap party in downtown Decatur. See the
Presenters’ FAQ in your conference welcome packet for locations and
times.
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