Panels & Presentations

For "The Market and the College" panel of the MLA Committee on Community Colleges, Rick Armstrong presented his paper, "The Ethics of Unfamiliarity: The Value of Unfamiliar Texts in a Buyer's Market," at the annual meeting of MLA in New Orleans, December 28, 2001. "In the paper, I argue against the teaching of popular culture in the composition classroom because such an approach merely reinforces students' own narrow pool of knowledge." Armstrong says, "Such an approach also participates in fulfilling customer expectations by making learning an easily digestible commodity. Conversely, teaching canonical texts, which is dubbed a 'conservative approach' by some can actually subvert the students' beliefs of easily consumed education by making them deal with the difficult and unfamiliar."

On October 18, 2001, at the 22nd annual meeting of the Middle Atlantic Writers Association (MAWA) in Columbia, MD, Reginald Watson presented "The Changing Face of the Mulatto in 20th Century Literature: the White/Jewish Mother as Tragic Mulatto Figure."  Watson says, "In these memoir-novels (James McBride's The Color of Water and Danzy Senna's Caucasia), I argue that the White/Jewish mother, when she marries a black man and bears biracial children, has to endure the same ostracism and isolation that was endured by tragic mulattos represented in early 20th century literature." He observes, "The literary mulatto image has a new face, a changing image that now, ironically, is symbolized by the White/Jewish mother."

Pat Bizarro delivered "Some Applications of Perception Theory in Responding to Student Writing" on November 3, 2001, at the Midwest Modern Language Association meeting in Cleveland. According to Bizarro, "Reception Theory is a particular approach to reading that places the 'work' and what it means in a virtual position between the reader and the text. I simply ask the question: what would happen if we read student writing differently, since the tools for reading we currently use are one set of many such possible tools?"

On December 28, at the MLA conference in New Orleans, Angelo Restivo presented a paper co-authored with Richard C. Cante of UNC-Chapel Hill entitled "Gay Pornography and Non-Synchronism," as part of the panel "The Voice in Cinema: Theorizing Speech, Silence, and Sound on Film." According to Restivo, "The paper is part of a much larger project that examines how the analysis of  'all-male' porn can deepen our understanding of the social and ideological functions."

Laureen Tedesco spoke on "The Dream Job I Got: The All-Children's Literature Position at East Carolina University" at the session for job seekers at MLA this December 2001 in New Orleans.  Tedesco's paper followed the arc of her successful job search, describing how the three-year process culminated in a satisfying and challenging tenure-track job.

Michael Aceto presented "Statian Creole English: A History with Grammatical Features" in San Francisco, January 4, 2002, at the annual meeting of The Linguistic Society of America & Society of Pidgin and Creole.