Panels & Presentations

Pat Bizzaro conducted medical writing workshop, "Writing Introductions in Reporting Your Medical Research" at the Brody School of Medicine on Nov. 1, and two workshops -- "Poetry Workshop" and "Flash Fiction Workshop" -- at the Crystal Coast Book Festival in Morehead City, NC, Nov. 2.  Also at the Festival, Bizarro joined with Peter Makuck in a poetry reading and panel on November 3.

The English Department hosted the Annual Conference of the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication, October 11-13. The conference began with a reception and keynote address by Dale Sullivan, Head of the Department of English at North Dakota State University, who spoke about "Growth and Community: A Few Thoughts on the Organics of Professional Communication."  At the conference Alexis Poe Davis served as a panel moderator for "Crossing Borders and Going Global" and Sherry Southard served as moderator for the panel "Our Work/Our World: The Role of Technical Communication in Social Justice." The ECU conference was organized by Jan Tovey and Michelle Eble, co-chairs of the Local Arrangements Committee.

C.W. Sullivan III presented  "'Old Timey' Tobacco Farming in Eastern North Carolina" at the October 2007 meeting of the American Folklore Society in Quebec.  During the talk, Sullivan showed about 50 of his approximately 500 slides and photographs documenting the traditional methods of planting, cultivating, "priming" (harvesting), and curing tobacco that continued to exist in eastern North Carolina in the 1980s and 1990s.  Sullivan's tobacco photographs have also appeared in North Carolina Literary Review and Tar River Poetry and with his essay "Tobacco" in Rooted in America: Folklore of Popular Fruits and Vegetables, edited by David Scofield Wilson and Angus K. Gillespie for U of Tennessee P, 1999.

Joyce Irene Middleton presented "Learning How to Talk with Strangers" at the biennial Feminism(s) and Rhetoric(s) Conference, October 4-6, hosted by the Coalition of Women Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and the University of Arkansas in Little Rock. According to the Coalition: "Drawing inspiration from the 50th anniversary of Central High's integration, the Clinton Presidential Library, Heifer Project International & the Clinton School for Public Service, the conference will explore the question of Feminism(s), Rhetoric(s) and Civic Discourse." Middleton's talk analyzed issues of orality and rhetorical listening in three media events about Hurricane Katrina and 9-11.

Timm Hackett presented "Preventing Plagiarism with Technology" at the 15th Annual Center for Academic Integrity Conference at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, VA, October 18-19.  He also spoke on October 24 for the Women's Studies Program on "Why Fairy Tales Matter."

Thomas Herron gave a talk titled "Where is Ireland in the Renaissance" for the History Graduate Seminar at the National University of Ireland-Maynooth on October 18.

Ken Parille presented "Jason and the Appropriators: Fashion, Photos, and Comics" at the 12th annual Internal Comic Art Forum at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, on October 18. The presentation explored the work of Norwegian cartoonist Jason and the relationship between photography and comics.  Parille was a guest speaker in Bernard Timberg and Nate Vietor's honors film class on October 23, where he discussed Harvey Pekar, American Splendor, and the history of autobiographical comics in America.

At the first ECU HumorFest and Conference, Nov  1-3, which featured scholars from 31 universities, 18 states, and four countries, 20 faculty from the English Department presented papers, moderated and/or organized panels.  Leanne Smith presented: "An Early Encounter with Dark Humor: Freshman Composition Students Meet Flannery O'Connor's 'A Late Encounter with the Enemy.'" Marie Farr spoke on "Changes in British Comedy from Somerset Maugham to Caryl Churchill" and moderated the panel on Satire, Camp and Wit.  At the conference, Joyce Irene Middleton organized the panel "Playing in the Dark in Visual Culture: Racial Whiteness and Satire in Mark Twain, Toni Morrison, and Contemporary American and Asian Film Culture" and presented "Whiteness, Satire, and Themes of Racial Passing in Mark Twain and Toni Morrison."  On that same panel, Su-ching Huang presented "The Americanization/Westernization of Jackie Chan: Shanghai Noon as Model Minority Discourse," and Christine Russell presented "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Harvard Law School: A Satirical Look at Legally Blonde."  On the HumorFest panel titled "Medieval and Renaissance Literary Humor" organized by Thomas Herron, Nicole Nolan Sidhu presented "Mary and the Angel Gabriel Get it On: Obscene Comedy in the Medieval Cycle Drama Pageants of the Annunciation."  On the panel organized by Margaret Bauer, "Taboo Humor in Southern Literature," the new Whichard Chair for Spring of 2008, Anne Goodwyn Jones, presented "Taboo for Who(m)?: Southern Humor as a Class Act."  Kristi Southern, Tabitha Slusher, Randall Martoccia, Bob Siegel, Mike Palmer, Javier Reyes, Ken Parille, and Nicole Nolan Sidhu also moderated panels.  Graduate student Courtney Strickland presented "The Politics of Midnight: Political Satire through Fragmented Time in Rushdie's Midnight's Children" and Elizabeth Howland presented "Countering and Perpetuating Woman's Role in the West: The Devil Wears Prada, Bridget Jones's Diary, and Miss Congeniality."  The Outstanding Graduate of 2006, Ellen Rainy Summer Brake presented "The Laughing Season:  The Importance of Agriculture and Nature in Native Appalachian's Women's Humor."

Anthony Holsten and the Greenville Theater Improv performed a dinner theater for the 56 conference scholars, while the HumorFest hosted visits by poet/essayist Andrei Codrescu, dance artist Claire Porter, gubernatorial candidate for the state of Texas and the next President of the United States, Kinky Friedman, and North Carolina novelist and short story writer Jill McCorkle.  John Hoppenthaler introduced McCorkle to students in Joyner library, and Liza Wieland introduced Andrei Codrescu.  Organizers for the HumorFest and Conference included: Resa Crane Bizzaro, Erica Plouffe Lazure, Gregg Hecimovich, Dennis Turner, Randall Martoccia, Lisa DeVries, Susan Moses, Bob Siegel, Thomas Herron, Ken Parille, Margaret Bauer, Mark Sanders, Jill Twark, Bernard Timberg, Patti Weeks, Carol Woodruff, and Tom Douglass.

On November 5, Marie Farr spoke at the Carteret County Library on Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon as part of the "Let's Talk About It" series for the NC Humanities Council.

Catherine Smith, Donna Kain, Heather Ward, and Roberta Thurman of the town of Nags Head, NC, presented "Communicating Hurricanes" at the International Professional Communication Conference in Seattle, WA, September 30-October 3.  According to Smith: "We report an ongoing case study of hurricane risk and hazard communication by emergency managers, local government public information officers, and populations residing in eastern North Carolina's coastal zone.  Our approach is to look at communication about hazards and risks from the perspective of public discourse.  We consider official and unofficial sources in relationship.  For analytic purposes, we distinguish between instrumental (governmental and organizational) and communal (conversational and everyday) strands of public discourse to identify problematic conditions for risk and emergency communication.  Preliminary findings show conceptual and practical value gained by looking at public alerts together with public reception, interpretation, and use of information."

On November 6 in Yadkinville, Kim Quintal presented "The Poorhouse," a talk and a showing of the documentary film made in collaboration with Rex Miller about the poorhouse farm in Yadkin County and those of other poorhouses across North Carolina.  Quintal received a grant from the N.C. Humanities Council to pursue the project while she was a graduate student at ECU.  Please see: The Poorhouse

Seodial Frank Deena gave an invited talk titled "The Global and Diasporic Expansion of the Caribbean through CARIFES" at the First Annual CARIFES (Caribbean Fellowship of Evangelical Students) Convention in New York, October 20.  Deena was also the invited speaker at the Third Conference of SLI in Akure, Nigeria, where he spoke on "A Comparative Exploration of a Biblical View of the Kingdom of God and a Postcolonial View of the Kingdom of Britain" and  "Pauline Epistles" during the weeks of September 14-27.  Moreover, Deena spoke at the First Annual Guyanese Friendship Forum on "Guyanese Culture" and organized two other sessions in which he served as chair at Fort Caswell Beach, NC, August 31-September 3.