Schedule of Events

Code switching (CS) refers to the practice of alternating between two or more languages in a single text or conversation. In poetry, literary code switching has traditionally been perceived as a mark of distinction, sophistication, and erudition. In the culturally diverse United States of America, there continues to be a lingering idea that code switching between English and Spanish is less “legitimate” than code switching between English and Latin, English and French or English and other more "elevated" languages. However, contemporary poets continue to include English and Spanish code switching in their work, giving readers who know only one language information about another culture and giving readers who know both languages a broader understanding than they might have had if a poem had not included code switching. I used Myers-Scotton’s Markedness Model, an analytic model that identifies the marked and unmarked linguistic choices in English and Spanish CS Hispanic/Latino poetry, to learn more about how CS is used to choose words that best describe intentional meanings and connotations. Myers-Scotton’s model can also be used to analyze code switching as a defamiliarization technique. Doing this in conjunction with studying Viktor Shklovsky’s defamiliarization theory inspired new insights into the advantages of poetic code switching as a means of negotiating an inbred cultural dichotomy.

The gothic genre was born in England in 1764 with the publication of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto. America’s first gothic novel, Wieland, was written by Charles Brockden Brown in 1798. He can be credited with being the first American writer to experiment with gothic conventions. The horror elicited in this novel can best be described as an intense fear caused by reoccurring supernatural phenomena. Washington Irving (1783-1859) and Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849) both used these conventions in their own work. Unlike Irving and Poe, Brown (1771-1810) used his novels to share social commentary, as well as to entertain his readers. This commentary includes concerns with frontier wilderness anxiety, cultural displacement, and fear of Native Americans. Brown does not formally address the negatives that accompany the positive changes emerging from the Revolution, but the experiences and trials faced by the fictional characters in Wieland represent his distaste for the newly formed country and its government. 

Fanfiction, a transformative prose fiction genre that responds to original material, has a reputation for being a heavily (homo)erotic genre written primarily by women for women. Its widespread popularity in Western culture continues to capture scholarly interest, leading to further critical work in feminist, queer, and media studies. The sexual focus in much fanfiction research, however, can easily misrepresent the intentions of a group of very diverse fanfiction writers. As a highly web-based community-centered genre, fanfiction is readily accessible to many different kinds of writers seeking publication and to many different kinds of readers seeking literary entertainment. Given these conditions, fanfiction communities have created spaces where marginalized people can readily contribute and consume the types of fiction that appeal to them. The communities tend to form unrestrained yet mindful recreational environments for everyone involved. Fanfiction writers appear to be more conscientious about narrative implications and about the impact their narratives have on readers than is the case with many prose fiction writers. This is demonstrated through certain reading and writing conventions that make fanfiction unique. Using my research and my insight as a fanfiction community participant, I argue that adopting the literary conventions of the fanfiction genre could make the prose fiction industry a more welcoming and accessible place for all.

My research demonstrated that many authors have made admirable efforts to condense and adapt Shakespeare’s plays for children in print. Their work aims to mitigate the complexities of the plays because early age attention spans and comprehension levels are often limited. The bulk of children’s “Shakespeare books” I read included many illustrations--from scribbles to comic strips. The abundance of pictures in these books support learning theories that suggest children are more engaged with pictures than they are with print. Theater is a medium that infuses a play with life and personality, features that never fail to interest children. The visual stimuli draw children in, making their experiences interactive.  Theater is a moving picture: replete with costumes, real live characters, and an audience environment that immediately immerses children into Shakespeare’s wondrous and enthralling world. Though full text Shakespeare performances for children are not uncommon, I found that there are very few Shakespeare plays adapted for children. One of the exceptions is Tony winner Julie Taymor’s adaptation of The Tempest, a video-taped section of which I will include in my presentation. Taymor’s techniques can serve as models for others who want to adapt and make available more Shakespeare plays specifically for children, an undertaking that will heighten their opportunities to learn more about the playwright and become captivated by his world.

Misinformation has deep and widespread roots. It can be observed not only in inaccurate depictions of written history, but also in media creations that influence the general public. Films are one of the most influential of such creations, as they can potentially cause significant setbacks for social progress through flawed portrayals of individual races. My research aim has been to counter such cinematic distortions by identifying some of the flawed portrayals regarding race in films about the Vietnam War and uncovering truths which challenge these misrepresentations. I have focused on three films that are particularly representative of cinema’s failure to accurately depict the cultural impact of the Vietnam War on African-Americans. The war environments of Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola; 1979), Full Metal Jacket (Stanley Kubrick; 1987), and Good Morning Vietnam (Barry Levinson; 1987) are unreliable depictions of an exceptionally chaotic period in United States history. Exploring faults in these films serves to underscore the obscured effects of both civilian and military conflict on marginalized groups and augments the need to reconsider race relations in a modern context that reaches beyond the presumptions of the past.

The pro/con debate about whether or not video games can be considered a narrative art form remains relevant in what is now the eighth generation since their inception. Their rapid evolution has been invigorated by a continuing demand to enrich video game narratives. In the past, hardware and software limitations restricted narrative development. First and second era video games could not handle the inclusion of complex stories and had to rely on external means of explanation in game manuals and guides. Game producers had to be creative to skirt these confines and in the process of doing so, they set high standards for future video game evolution. It wasn’t until the fourth generation, with the implementation of 16-bit processors, that the interactive stories in video games began to challenge academia’s standard narrative conventions. In the sixth, seventh, and eight generations, video games have taken advantage of updated technology to create masterpieces, with a new generation of scholarly critics to engage their quality. Because video games marry narrative with ludic gameplay, because they introduce players to interactive (realistic or surrealistic) worlds where they can directly influence narrative direction, and because audiences interact with video game narratives more than with narrative in any other medium to date, the video game narratives are paving the way for a revolutionary assessment and replacement of some of the exhausted and overused story elements we find in academia today.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and John Muir are among our most influential environmental writers. Collectively, they emphasized the importance of being immersed in and stewards of nature. Their rhetorical styles, however, were relatively diverse. The rhetoric of both Emerson and Thoreau detailed their Transcendental ideology, which emphasized individuality, an awakening of the human spirit, and a symbiotic, responsible relationship with nature. Emerson’s rhetoric was philosophical, academic and abstract, whereas Thoreau, who was more physically immersed in nature than Emerson, may be said to have been less academically eloquent. Thoreau emphasized the observation of nature and was heavily influenced by having lived in the Northeast Indian communities. His rhetoric incorporates a primal ethos and an experiential commitment to nature. John Muir had yet another rhetorical approach. While also intrigued and influenced by Native American tradition, Muir was informed by a Calvinist upbringing and his prose often emulated a Biblical-style rhetoric. Muir regarded the primal ethos as essential, but he added a sacred “Godful” element to his descriptions of the Western wilderness. The divergent rhetorical styles of these three men suggest distinctly different approaches to appreciating nature, furnishing a variety of readers with a heightened awareness of our ethical obligation to preserve and protect it.
 

Relocation to and immersion in new territories always alter the normal order for migrants. Early American migrants, especially women, were often thrust into primitive conditions that necessitated radical domestic adaptation. Three twentieth century novels (My Antonia (1918), Grapes of Wrath (1939), and Tortilla Curtain (1995)) detail three distinct waves of American migration: late 1800s Eastern European migration, the 1930s exodus of Dustbowl refugees to California, and late 1900s migration from Mexico to California following 1980s and 1990s federal immigration reform. The migrant settings in these novels particularize how the female protagonists were forced to take leadership roles in their new environments and were ultimately empowered as a result. In each novel, the failure of patriarchal leadership leads to women replacing men in that role. In Cather’s novel, when Antonia’s father commits suicide after failing to adjust to Nebraskan life, Antonia takes his place. Similarly, Ma Joad is labeled a “citadel” as she becomes the decision maker in Grapes of Wrath. The unique migration setting of Tortilla Curtain drives America Rincon to leave her makeshift river home and enter the labor market. Although America is empowered in some ways, full success is withheld in the end. I propose that this outcome reflects the fact that issues surrounding Mexican immigration have not yet been resolved.
 

The language we speak and write is a way of making meaning of an all-encompassing Reality which we can never fully access.  Like other creative modes, graphic novels, a subgenre of Comics, can broaden our perceptions of that reality and provide us with a deeper understanding of its essence. Graphic novelists such as Art Spiegelman, Will Eisner, and Chris Ware have demonstrated how images can connect readers with various components of this enigmatic reality by intensifying their sensory experiences and deepening their levels of emotional response. Additionally, the very structures of the graphic panels and their frames create a unique syntax which generates auxiliary dimensions of time, space, and sound—intensifying the “reality experience” by juxtaposing diverse elements in a sequential association. My research has reinforced and extended my understanding of the graphic novel as something more than a hybrid of text and imagery that transcends the boundaries of traditional prose—for it also synthesizes icons, language, and the picture plane to thrust readers beyond the limitations inherent in conventional writing. When readers become so profoundly stimulated, their imaginations are emboldened to take their own creative journeys in search of a more comprehensive awareness of the multifaceted reality that surrounds us.