Panels & Presentations

Alex Albright organized and hosted an "In Concert" event, Friday, October 17, in Wright Auditorium.  The musical program featured the U.S. Navy Showband, the North Carolina A&T Jazz Combo, and a Trans-Generational Jam with members of the A&T Combo and U.S. Navy jazzmen from the U.S. Navy B-1 Band Veterans. The concert recognized the significance of the U.S. Navy B-1 Band formed during the WWII era and memorialized Walter F. Carlson, Jr., B-1 bandsman and director of the A&T band for six decades.  The U.S. Navy B-1 Bandsmen were the first African Americans to serve at rank other than galley or steward in the modern Navy.  The B-1 was also the first all black band comprised of American-born sailors.  B-1 veterans served as band directors at many black schools before integration, including C.M. Eppes in Greenville; W.A. Patillo in Tarboro; Booker T. Washington in Rocky Mount; Queen Street in Beaufort; Adkins in Kinston; Frederick Douglass in Elm City, and South Ayden.  The program was sponsored by the Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences, and the College of Fine Arts and Communication, and Academic Library Services.  The band has named ECU's Special Collections as its archival home.

Gregg Hecimovich presented, "Riddling Scripture: Parlor Games, Religion, and Dickens's Great Expectations," at the Eighth Annual Dickens Symposium hosted by the Dickens Society at Oakland University in Rochester, MI, Oct.10-12.  The three-day conference is a premiere international symposium gathering some of the best Dickens scholars from around the world.

Seodial Deena delivered his plenary lecture, "Multicultural and Postcolonial Interpretations Caribbean Literature and Its Environment," at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Conference of the Association of Caribbean Studies in Lima, Peru, July 26-31, 2003.  His essay, "Another Way of Teaching that Other Literature," was heard at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Conference of the Association of Caribbean Studies in Lima, Peru, July 26-31, 2003 where Deena also chaired a panel titled "Beyond the Caribbean."  Earlier in the summer, Deena presented "Diversity at East Carolina University" at the CFLN Annual Conference, Fort Collins, Colorado, July 18-20, 2003.

Margaret Bauer read a paper on Ellen Glasgow's The Sheltered Life and William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily," titled "A Rose for Eva, too: Two Sheltered Lives," at the Southern Women Writers conference held at Berry College in Rome, GA, October 16.  The paper was excerpted from a chapter of her book manuscript on Faulkner, his contemporaries and ours.  Bauer writes, "It is not surprising that critics have not remarked upon the echoes of Faulkner's 'A Rose for Emily' (first published in 1930) in Ellen Glasgow's 1932 novel The Sheltered Life.  One cannot at first imagine two more different characters than Faulkner's grotesque Emily Grierson and Glasgow's romantic Eva Birdsong; however, recognizing the parallels in the authors' descriptions of these two works' settings, in the roles of Emily and Eva in their respective communities, and in the cover-up in each work of the murders that these women commit reveals the common guilty party:  the community whose ideals -- or need for ideals -- ultimately drive these two women into madness."

Tom Douglass presented "Film Adaptations of the Work of Davis Grubb" at the 4th West Virginia Film Festival held at the Landmark Studio Theater in  Sutton, WV, October 4-11.  Douglass shared Grubb's collection of 118 sketches he made for Charles Laughton's visualization of The Night of the Hunter, starring Robert Mitchum and Lillian Gish, and a special trailer featuring Andrew McLaughlin's adaptation of Davis Grubb's Fools' Parade, starring Jimmy Stewart and Arthur Kennedy.  On October 12, Douglass also participated in the West Virginia Book Festival held in Charleston, WV, reading from his biography-in-progress, Davis Grubb, the Necessary Angel.

Pat Bizzaro, along with three elementary school teachers from Girganis Elementary School, delivered "An Integrated Writing Program, K-5, at Girganis Elementary School" at the annual meeting of the North Carolina English Teachers Association in New Bern, October 10. Bizzaro also conducted writing seminars for the Brody School of Medicine, Sept. 9, on "Medical Writing Processes," based upon case study work Bizzaro has done with a physician/researcher, and another seminar, Oct. 14, on "Getting Started with Your Medical Writing."  Earlier in the summer, Bizzaro also presented "Representations of WAC" at the annual meeting of the Council of Writing Program Administrators held in Grand Rapids, MI, July 12.

Mike Hamer and Marty Silverthorne presented "Eight Wheels and Nowhere To Go," a concert of original poems and songs, at the Emerge Gallery on Evans Street on Friday, June 13.

C.W. Sullivan III read a paper, "Folklore from Nineteenth-Century Irish Convict Diaries," at the annual meetings of the American Folklore Society, October 2003, in Albuquerque, NM.  Sullivan discussed the ways in which Irish convicts being transported to Australia used traditional songs, stories, and rhymes to give voice to their political attitudes in a repressive situation.  This paper is part of Sullivan's on-going research into Irish convict diaries, the first part of which was published as Fenian Diary: Denis B. Cashman on board the Hougoumont, 1867-1868 (Dublin: Wolfhound, 2001).