Thursday, Oct 16
Registration open 2-7:30 p.m. (KCC Breezeway)
Preliminary Poets reading (Boitnott Room)
3:00 Sarah Kennedy
3:30 Richard Jackson
4:00 Frederick Lubich
4:30 Dana Kennedy
5:00 John Hoppenthaler
5:45 Welcome (Boitnott Room)
Stan Galloway, Conference Coordinator
Kathy Elick, Chair of English, Bridgewater College
6-7:30 Open reception, music by Loose Gravel
8:00 A Panel Discussion by Claudia Emerson, Chris Mann, and Valzhyna Mort “The Poetics of
Conflict and Reconciliation” (Cole Hall auditorium), reception following (KCC lobby)
Friday, Oct 17
Registration open 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. (KCC Breezeway)
8:00 Welcome (Bowman 101)
Carol Scheppard, Academic Dean, Bridgewater College
Philip C. Stone, President, Bridgewater College
8:30 Session 1A Twentieth-Century American Poets (Bowman 101)
Haswell, Janis (Texas A&M-Corpus Christi) “The ‘Evolution’ of War and War Poetry”
Kinnahan, Linda (Duquesne University) “The Poetry of Mina Loy and Radical Representations of
Poverty”
Duncan, Bryan (Bridgewater College) “‘And I doubt all’: The War at Home in Gwendolyn Brooks’
‘Gay Chaps at the Bar’”
8:30 Session 1B The Nineteenth-Century British Voice (Bowman 109)
Achor, Rebekah (Lebanon Valley College) "Black Beauty: Horses and Humans, Heaven and Hell."
Baker, Michelle (Catholic University) “The War Within: Elizabeth Cook’s Achilles”
Gholami, Mehrdad (Tehran University [Iran]) “Conflict Resolved In ‘The Rime’"
10:00 break (Boitnott Room)
10:30 Session 2A Orality (Bowman 101)
Ajibade, Olusola George (Obafemi Awolowo University [Nigeria]) “Orature in Reconciliation and
Conflict Management” (proxy reading by Jen Payne)
Somers, Paul (James Madison University) “The Ground’s a Harp Strung with Shadows: Music,
Motion and Myth in Fiddledeedee’s Syncretic Narrative Performance”
Somers, Paul (James Madison University) Shelby Stephenson Documentary "July, the Slave Girl"
10:30 Session 2B Diverse Cultures (Bowman 109)
Costandi, Samia (Royal University for Women [Bahrain]) "Some Ethical Dilemmas of
Reconciliation: The Problem of Palestinian Acknowledgment"
Lubich, Frederick (Old Dominion University) “Ecce Homo - Ecce Humanitas: Poetry from the
Concentration Camps"
Scanlon, Mara (University of Mary Washington) "The ‘incinerating eye’ and I in Suji Kwock Kim’s
Notes from the Divided Country"
10:30 Session 2C The Nineteenth-Century American Voice (Bowman 25)
Hill, Candice Jean (Catholic University) "The 'warbling Teller' and the 'antique Volume':
Dickinson's Problems with Biblical Text”
Cain, Vernice (Slippery Rock University) “War Conflict and Reconciliation in the Poetry of Walt
Whitman: The Quaker Influence”
Suter, Geraldine (James Madison University) “’My Substitute for Pistol and Ball’: Questions of
Morality, Passages of Humor in Melville’s Works”
12:01 Lunch (Boitnott Room)
12:45 Chris Mann “May you still see the rainbow in the storm: the creative imagination,
conflict and volatile complexity” (Bowman 101)
2:00 Session 3A The South African Voice 1 (Bowman 101)
Olivier, Fanie (University of KwaZulu-Natal [South Africa]) "The South Africanness of the poetry
of Chris Mann"
Steiner, Dorothea (University of Salzburg [Austria]) “Ingrid de Kok: A Poet's Voice of Healing
from South Africa"
Brown, Molly (University of Pretoria [South Africa]) “Light on Shades: Complex Constructions of
Identity in the Poetry of Chris Mann”
2:00 Session 3B Theory and Practice (Bowman 109)
Kennedy, Dana (Watkins College) “Anne Sexton and Peter Gabriel: Walking toward God on
Mercy Street?”
Russell, Richard Rankin (Baylor University) “Imagining a New Province: Seamus Heaney’s
Creative Work for BBC Northern Ireland Radio, 1968-1971”
Pagani, Karen (University of Texas-Austin) “Marginalized Prophet Figures: The Encyclopedists
and the Possibility of Forgiveness as a Secular (and not Secularized) Ideal”
2:00 Session 3C The Early American Voice (Bowman 103)
Kinnahan, Thomas (Duquesne University) “ 'When hell’s terrific region scream’d anew': The
Destruction of the Pequots in Timothy Dwight’s Greenfield Hill (1794)"
Tweedy, Clarence (University of Mary Washington) "The Skin, The Flesh: the (Re)narration of
Trauma and Self Identity in Elizabeth Keckley's Behind the Scenes"
3:30 break (TBA)
4:00 Session 4A Claudia Emerson and Peers (Bowman 101)
Kennedy, Sarah (Mary Baldwin College) "Re-imagining the Past To Re-Visualize the Present: An
Examination of Historical Poetry"
Hoppenthaler, John (East Carolina University) "'You don't hate the South? they ask. You don't
hate it?': Natasha Trethewey's South."
Simpson, Lynne (Presbyterian College) "Grave Departures: Loss and Reconciliation in Emerson's
Late Wife and White's The Clearing."
4:00 Session 4B The Word as Tool (Bowman 109)
Johnson, Sandra (Zayed University [United Arab Emirates])"'Folded in a Single Party': The
Emptying of Words"
Legg, Ray (Bryan College) “The Devil’s Advocate? The Vanity of Human Wishes from Solomon to
Tom Wolfe”
Garrison, Laura (Catholic University) “‘Glowing Within’: The Poet as Sacrificial Monastic in Annie
Dillard’s Holy the Firm”
4:00 Session 4C Twentieth-Century American Poets (Bowman 103)
Boudidah, Nadia ([Tunisia]) “The Paradoxes of Poetic Confessions: Sylvia Plath and the Dilemma
of Life”
Hoff, Ann K. (University of Alabama-Birmingham) “Infinite Mischief: Confessional Poetry and
Catholic Reconciliation”
Corrigan, Paul (North Carolina State University) “Complicated Spirituality in Geography III”
6:00 Banquet honoring the poets (Boitnott Room)
8:00 Claudia Emerson reads from her poetry (Cole Hall), reception following (KCC lobby)
Saturday, Oct 18
Registration open 7:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. (KCC Breezeway)
8:00 Don Maclennan reads Notes from a Rhenish Mission (recorded) (Bowman 101)
8:30 Session 5A The Biblical Role (Bowman 101)
Schmidt, Mark (Liberty University) “Conflict and Reconciliation in the Hebrew Acrostic Poem
Psalm 119”
Bross, Addison (Lehigh University) “Jesus, the Samaritan Woman, and Nonviolent Methodology”
Zare, Mohammad Mehdi (Bandar Abbas Azad University [Iran]) “Cultural Adaptation in
Translation of the Bible”
8:30 Session 5B Legendary Heroes (Bowman 109)
Carlson, Eric (University of South Carolina-Aiken) “Shouldering the Burden of Peace: Violent
Reconciliation as a Christian Concern in Beowulf”
Blanchard, Jane (Westminster Schools of Augusta, Georgia) “Poetic Jousting, or, Reading
Spenser”
McDonald, Kevin (Bridgewater College) A Pinch for a Flinch, but Your Honor Bears a Stroke to
the Throat: Ridicule that Maims in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
8:30 Session 5C American Fiction (Bowman 103)
Sellars, Rachel (East Tennessee State University) “Solitude Versus Loneliness: James Wright’s
Struggle to Distinguish Between the Two Emotions”
Hensley, Julie (Eastern Kentucky University) "The (Re)New(ed) Christian Aesthetic: How a New
Wave of Literary Journals Explores a Secular Christianity"
Nisly, Lamar (Bluffton University) “Reaching for Security: Inappropriate Quests for Certainty in
Percy’s Lancelot and DeLillo’s White Noise”
10:00 break (Boitnott Room)
10:30 Session 6A Mid-Twentieth-Century Poets (Bowman 101)
Martin, Bill (Niagara University) "W. H. Auden's Horae Canonicae: Meditations on Man's
Indifference to Human Suffering"
Utell, Janine (Widener University) "The Poet Speaks to the Philosopher: Collage as Christian
Poetics in Auden's The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard."
Hart, Henry (College of William & Mary) "Seamus Heaney – Resolving Conflicts."
10:30 Session 6B Contemporary American Poets (Bowman 109)
Winslow, Rosemary (Catholic University) “Forming the Unspeakable: Metaphor and Parable in
the Poetry of Trauma”
Way, Julie Sorge (Bridgewater College) "’So Here I Am, in the Middle Way’: Middleness and T. S.
Eliot”
Muir, Clive (Winston-Salem State University) “This Light Takes Long: Poems from a Tempered
Self”
10:30 Session 6C Literary Ethnicity (Bowman 103)
Aito, Ofure (Covenant University [Nigeria]) “The Poet as a Mediator of Reconciliation in
Conflicts: Christopher Okigbo’s Poetry”
Olaiya, Kolawole (Hampden-Sydney College) “… In the Name of the Son”: the Son as Scapegoat
in African Literature”
Facknitz, Susan (James Madison University) “Poetic Parallels: Two Poets of the American War in
Iraq”
12:01 Lunch (Boitnott Room)
12:45 Valzhyna Mort reads
2:00 Session 7A The Dramatic Voice (Bowman 101)
van Vuuren, Marijke (University of Pretoria [South Africa]) “Getting Away with Murder?”
Stovall, Bill (Bridgewater College) “The Problem of Ascribing Kingship in Shakespeare’s Henriad”
Walsh, Edmund (Catholic University) “Crisis of Social Values in Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens”
2:00 Session 7B The Voice from Eastern Europe (Bowman 109)
Jackson, Richard (University of Tennessee-Chattanooga) “What Are Poets For?”
Eck, Rachel (Lebanon Valley College) “Creating a Space: How Poets React to Political Pressure”
Dolin, Alexander (Akita International University [Japan]) “Russian Poets Facing Apocalypse”
(proxy reading by Becca Henderson)
2:00 Session 7C The Seventeenth Century Voice (Bowman 103)
Robinson, Daniel (Widener University) "'The One Just Man Alive': Milton and the Poetics of
Virtuous Rebellion"
Doerksen, Teri Ann (Mansfield University) "Infernal Intrigue: Spenser, Milton, and the Poetics of
Religious Conflict"
Blanchard, Jane (Westminster Schools of Augusta, Georgia) “Evocative Milton, Promoter of
Virtue and Value.”
3:30 break (TBA)
4:00 Session 8A The Other American Voice (Bowman 101)
Tann, Donovan (Temple University) “Language, Conflict, and Tolerance in Camilo José Cela's La
Familia de Pascual Duarte"
Mosley, Philip (Pennsylvania State University) "Butterfly and Tiger: Colonialism, Religion, and
Loss in Octavio Paz and Rosario Castellanos,"
Luckenbill, Rachel (Lebanon Valley College) "Taken Apart and Put Back Together: Redemption
in Joy Harjo's Poetry"
4:00 Session 8B The South African Voice 2 (Bowman 109)
Trinya, Kontein (Rivers State College of Education [Nigeria]) “The Poet as Prophet” (proxy
reading by Becca Henderson)
Olaoluwa, Senayon S. (University of Witwatersrand [South Africa]) “Beyond Exile and Return:
The Dynamics of Post-Aparthied Reconciliation in Serote's Freedom Lament and Song”
Manyaka, Joe (University of Johannesburg) “South African Poetics and Reconciliation”
4:00 Session 8C The Novelist (Bowman 103)
Kalua, Fetson (University of South Africa) “The Idea of Reconciliation in Alexander McCall
Smith's The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Series”
Quinlan, Eileen (Notre Dame College) “Reading Pain as a Door to Peace: A Gen Ed Lit Class Turns
Personal and Public”
Bessetti, Gina (Duquesne University) “Individual Power and Social Change: Christianity’s
influence on Faulkner’s Dilsey and Wright’s Mrs. Thomas”