Panels & Presentations

Karen Baldwin presented "Help Find Elvis! Ivory-billed Woodpecker Legends -- Reenacting or Revising Extinction?" at the June, 2006 meeting of the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research in Copenhagen, Denmark.  Photo montages of the ISCLR conference and scenes of Copenhagen appear at  (http://www.ecu.edu/ncfa/kbh2006/montages%201-8.html).  Baldwin's research on the legend complex of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker incorporates the September 2006 announcement of  the rediscovery of the thought-to-be extinct bird in Florida.  On September 30, Baldwin was a featured speaker for the education series of lectures at Goose Creek State Park, where she presented an illustrated talk, "The Ivory-billed Woodpecker: Legend and Reality."  Baldwin also delivered an essay about this research at the American Folklore Society annual meeting in Milwaukee, WI, in October, where she chaired the panel titled, "Minimal Narratives and More."

In addition, Baldwin presented "Folk Art at Home in Community," at the Roanoke Rapids Public Library on September 6, and on November 16, she presented "Snakes in the Collards at the Supermarket: Legends in Contemporary North Carolina" at the Tyrrell County Public Library.  Both of these illustrated talks were sponsored by the North Carolina Humanities Council.

Erica Plouffe-Lazure presented "The Fragmented Trousseau: Rosa Coldfield's Design in Absalom, Absalom!" at the South Atlantic Modern Languages Association conference in Charlotte, NC, Nov. 10.  According to Plouffe-Lazure: "Since its publication in 1936, William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! has been viewed by critics as a story about the Compsons and the Sutpens.  A careful reading of this work would also place Rosa Coldfield, with her desire for legitimacy and need for belonging and voice, at the very center of the novel. The tragic tale that Rosa tells Quentin Compson is not simply an impassioned, uninformed 'aside' to the main text, as some critics have suggested, but it is at the very heart of Absalom, Absalom!.  This essay examines how Rosa Coldfield, a motherless Southern spinster 'long embattled in virginity,' plays a central role in the novel.  The essay also describes how she empowers herself and achieves a literary 'motherhood' by finally 'giving birth' to her life story.  Moreover, Rosa uses several strategies to carry out her design, comparable to those used by her nemesis, brother-in-law, and 'nothusband' Thomas Sutpen. Rather than being one of the ghostlike 'ladies' of whom Mr. Compson speaks, Rosa Coldfield appropriates and exploits the conventions of Southern society and crafts a plan that will recast her life, not as a ghost-like being who failed in every aspect of Southern womanhood, but rather as a woman who was able to further, at long last, her family legacy."

Catherine Smith conducted an invited policy writing workshop for the Roosevelt Institution, a student organization at UNC-Chapel Hill on November 19.  Described as the nation's first student thinktank, the Roosevelt Institution was founded in 2004 by students at Stanford University, and has quickly expanded to include 120 chapters on university campuses throughout the United States.  Members collaborate to create policy papers published in the Institution's journal, the Roosevelt Review.  The goal of the Institution is to reinvigorate the political dialogue with fresh ideas from America's college students. It has two missions: to act as a conduit for student ideas to reach the policy discourse, and to train students on public policy and leadership and give them the idea that their conclusions are relevant.  Please see:  http://rooseveltinstitution.org/

Lorraine Hale Robinson conducted several presentations on the Miracle and Mystery Play cycles of the medieval period in England and on the poetry by Henry VIII -- on December 1 at the First Baptist Church on Middle Street in New Bern, NC, sponsored by the Craven arts Council, and on December 10, at the Palmer Marsh House in Bath, NC, sponsored by the North Carolina Historic Site at Bath.  Both presentations included historical performances of the texts.

C.W. Sullivan III presented "Seuss on the Loose: Folklore on the Internet" at the October 2006 annual meeting of the American Folklore Society in Milwaukee, WI.   According to Sullivan: "We all know that the internet is changing the way or ways in which we communicate.  Since the field of folklore defined itself over 100 years ago, we have been dealing with traditional materials transmitted in informal ways.  Children and adolescents do not get their folklore from Brunvand's The Study of American Folklore or from a university archive, or other such places.  Heretofore, we children's folklorists have dealt with the materials that we believed children and adolescents passed on orally or by customary example within their high-context group.  But children have ready access to the internet in ways that they do not have access to textbooks and folklore archives, and there is no reason not to believe that a young person could google Dr. Seuss, find the parodies, and orally transmit them, perhaps as his or her own, to other members of the group.  There is cause for further study ..."   Sullivan's paper and the rest of the papers from that children's folklore panel will be published in an upcoming issue of Children's Folklore Review.

Julie Fay read her poetry "Two Languages" at the "Fulbright Alumni:  Expressions in Civil Society" -- the 29th Annual Conference of the Fulbright Association on November, 3-5, in Marakesh, Morocco.  Fay also visited poetry and American Civilization classes at the Université de Toulouse - le Mirail, France, and worked on future collaboration for a global writing class.

Will Banks organized and chaired the Advanced Writing session: "Sexuality and Visual Rhetoric in the Advanced Writing Curriculum" at the South Atlantic Modern Language Association Annual Convention in Charlotte, NC, on November 10.  Presenting on that panel were Robin Martin and Clancy Ratliff.  At the conference, Banks also read his essay "Ethos, Agency, and Young Writers in the Blogosphere," which, according to Banks, "examined the literacy practices of young writers, and in particular how students 'perform self' and 'establish authority' in writings for audiences outside of school settings."  Further, at the Annual Meeting of the National Writing Project, Banks participated in a roundtable discussion titled "Going Public in the Digital Age."  The roundtable consisted of NWP teachers from around the country, all of whom were co-facilitators on the "Writing about Technology" professional writing retreat in Nebraska City, Nebraska.  This session focused on what publishing means to teachers in an age of digital distribution and explored methods of "publishing" beyond traditional print-based journals and books.  Banks also participated in a leadership team meeting for the "Writing about Technology" professional writing retreat to be held Summer 2008.  For more information, please see: http://www.writingproject.org/cs/nwpp/print/nwp_e/168