Panels & Presentations

Robert Siegel read his essay, "Tragedy and Anti-Tragedy, The Modern Anti-Hero and the Post Modern Non-Hero," at the Second Annual Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities, January 8-11, 2004 at the Renaissance Ilikai Waikiki Hotel in Honolulu, Hawaii.  Siegel said, "A visitor to ECU recently read a paper entitled 'Postmodern Humanism.' The very title drew some mild laughter, belying my colleagues' disbelief in the compatibility of these two modes of thinking.  During the question and answer session, I asked why postmodernism is so hostile to tragedy.  The speaker wasn't sure but ventured a hypothesis: that, perhaps, our era could no longer cope with that form.  A few days later, a colleague stopped me and said that our era was not the issue, but, rather, postmodernism's quarrel with tragedy had to do with a deficiency in tragedy, which he explained as an overblown self-importance that can easily manipulate an audience or reader.  From the postmodern point of view, tragedy is somewhat sentimental, dishonest. This criticism invites a comparison between the postmodern movement in theater, from the seventies to the present, and dramas in the modern, tragic mode, post WWII through the sixties."

On Friday, January 9 at the University of Toulouse-Le Mirail, Julie Fay presented, "From Troubadours to Troublemakers: Contemporary American Poets" at Espaces et terres d'Amérique, organized by Nathalie Dessens and Wendy Hardin.  Faye spoke about "the emergence of the Expansive movement (New Formalist and New Narrative), and the idea of 'founding' a movement as Dick Allen, Frederick Feirstein, and Frederick Turner claimed to have done at New York City's Minetta Tavern. Expansive Poetry, when it first appeared, was sometimes charged with primarily being a male genre.  But this false impression was quickly put to rest with the assertion of Expansive Poetry's obvious major influence from Elizabeth Bishop and the ascendancy of slightly younger women writing poems that fit the genre."

On January 21, the first research presentation for spring 2004 was held in the faculty lounge.  Shahla Naghiyeva (our visiting Fulbright scholar, poet/translator) and Donna Lillian talked about their writing/research.  Fulbright scholar Naghiyeva will give a lecture on her translation research, titled, "A Comparative Approach in Poetry Translation of Azerbaijan and American Literature," at 4 p.m. Monday, Feb. 23, in 1031 Bate.

On October 23, 2004, Laura Micciche delivered "Race and Affect in Professional Life" at the 4th Biennial Feminism(s) and Rhetoric(s) Conference at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.  Micciche says, "Working from the most recent Minorities in Higher Education, the annual status report published by the American Council on Education, I dealt with the overwhelmingly white landscape of the profession.  My interest was in asking how academic cultures enact racialized emotions that exclude and invite, alienate and unify.  The central question I was thinking through asked what it would mean to investigate emotion as a racialized dimension of our workspaces."  At the December 2003, MLA Convention in San Diego, Micciche, a member of the CCCC's Diversity Committee, delivered "Diversity and Emotional Cool."  Micciche says, "The paper looked at how discourses of diversity emit what I call (borrowing from Peter Stearns) emotional cool as a means for creating harmonious, controlled environments in which people avoid explosive confrontations that might unveil the unruly emotions resulting from systemic inequality.  My thinking in this paper sought to complicate the expectation of emotional cool by suggesting that academic emotional culture often has a less than harmonious racialized content, often operating invisibly or through exercises in decorum."

Margaret Bauer was a panelist at the the Council of Editors of Learned Journals session at the MLA conference on December 28 in San Diego, CA.  The panel focused on "The Place of Belletristic Writing in Scholarly Publishing."  NCLR has won 2 of CELJ's awards--Best New Journal in 1994 (Alex Albright, Editor, Eva Roberts, Art Director), and Best Journal Design in 1999 (Mary Thiesen, Art Director, Bauer, Editor).  At this conference, CELJ discussed creating a new category of awards for literary magazines (awards are currently focused on scholarly journals).

Philip Rubens participated in the web-teleconference IEEE AdCom (Administrative Committee) meeting of PCS (Professional Communication Society) in January.  Rubens is the chair of the IEEE Web Education Initiative.  He reported to the board on ongoing activities aimed at creating an international website designed to help non-native writers of English, who publish in scientific and professional journals, prepare better texts.