SASA Program

SASA 2009 Beginnings and Renewals: Locating American Studies

Southern American Studies Association Biennial Meeting George Mason University Fairfax, Virginia February 12-14, 2009

Thursday, February 12th—12:30 to 1:45 pm

Session 1—The Culmore Literacy and Popular Education Project: Melding Community and University Knowledges in Northern Virginia

Chair: Lisa Rabin, George Mason University

Lisa Rabin Noelia Olivera, George Mason University Catherine Berrouet, George Mason University

Session 2—Repositioning Later 20th-Century Southern Literature

Chair:

Fairies and Prophets: Finding Ireland in Flannery O’Connor Amy Ward Bricker, The Catholic University of America

The Fairy Tale Way Douglas Tells Can’t Quit You, Baby Rebecca Hall, Baylor University

Alan Birkelbach’s "The Former Poet Laureate Said": Texas Culture, Time, and Artistry Matt Koch, Texas Christian University

Session 3—Panel Title TBA

Chair:

Sport and Business—American Games. A Discourse Analysis. Karsten Senkbeil, Heidelberg Center for American Studies

Thursday, February 12th—2:00 to 3:15 pm

Session 4—Religion, Spirituality, and 20th-Century Southern Literature

Chair: Catherine E. Saunders, George Mason University

"Because He Dared to Know": Reconstructing Exclusive Religion in James Baldwin’s Another Country Alissa Bourbonnais, George Mason University

"A Trap Laid All About You By The Lord": Religious Dissent as Cultural Crisis in Flannery O’Connor and Richard Wright David M. Monteith, University of Western Ontario

"Woman Chasing Her God": Ritual, Renewal, and Violence in Linda Hogan’s Power Lydia R. Cooper, Monmouth College

Session 5—Videogames and Narratives of American Conflict

Chair: Mark Sample, George Mason University

Playing in Front of the Fault Lines: Speculative Video Gaming and Contemporary Warfare Marc Ruppel, University of Maryland

Negotiating Cultural Difference in Videogames and the War on Terror Zach Whalen, University of Mary Washington

The Virtual Camp: Political Prisoners in American Videogames Mark Sample, George Mason University

Session 6 Caribbean, Hemispheric, Transgressive Souths

Chair:

Outlaw Scenes: Acting Out in Early American Theatre Culture Peter P. Reed, University of Mississippi

The Garden of Eden in Our Own Backyard: US Expansionism and Religious Discourse in William Cullen Bryant’s "A Story of Cuba" Sally Giles, University of California at San Diego

Toward a Spatial Poetics of "broken/ Souths": Mexico, the U.S. South, and American Studies Michael Dowdy, Hunter College/CUNY

Thursday, February 12th—3:30 to 4:45 pm

Session 7—Abolitionist Icons and Post Civil War Responses to Slavery and Racism

Chair: Eric J. Richardson, North Carolina Central University

Witness to the Execution: Spectatorship, Narrative Power, and the Making and Unmaking of Christian Martyrs in William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator Brian Santana, George Washington University

Angelina Grimke and the Fate of Abolition Joseph Kelly, College of Charleston

"Contending Methodists and New South Industrialists: Revival, rapprochement, and the 1872 National Camp Meeting for the Promotion of Lokiness in Knoxville, Tennessee" Samuel Avery Quinn, University of Tennessee at Knoxville

"A Failure of Love": Racism and Original Sin in Love in the Ruins Adrienne Akins, Baylor University

Session 8—Queer/Rural/Cosmopolitan Southern Identities

Chair: Karen L. Cox, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

William Alexander Percy and the Emergence of a Queer Southern Identity Benjamin E. Wise, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Rural Cosmopolitans: The Southern Agrarians and Europe, 1929-1937 Sarah Milov, Princeton University

Love and Marriage? Exploring Sexual Desire in Welty and Creekmore Annette Trefzer, University of Mississippi

Session 9 —Using and Building Digital Archives for American Studies Teaching and Research: A Roundtable and Discussion

Chair: Doug Eyman, George Mason University

Doug Eyman Robert K. Nelson, University of Richmond Tom Scheinfeldt, George Mason University

Thursday, February 12th—5:00 to 7:15 pm

Welcome: Annette Trefzer, Eric Gary Anderson, others

Session 10—Pouring Tea: Black Gay Men of the South Tell Their Tales

A one-man performance by E. Patrick Johnson (Northwestern University)

Friday, February 13th—9:00 to 10:15

Session 11—Anti-Slavery Narratives

Chair: Violet H. Bryan, Xavier University of Louisiana

Mastering the Land: Georgic as Defense of and Resistance to Slavery in James Grainger’s The Sugar Cane and Olaudah Equiano’s Narrative Eric Lamore, University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez

The Tyrant’s Equal: William Wells Brown as Master of Clotel Morgan Richards, West Virginia University

"She knew she was loved in the jail": The Intersecting and Conflicting Rhetorics of Slavery and Imprisonment in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Keith Green, Rutgers University at Camden

A Psychoanalytic Reading of Desire and Agency in Jacob’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Morrison’s Beloved Susan L. Hall, Washington and Lee University

Session 12—New Approaches to Canonical American Literary Texts

Chair:

Using the Body to Locate the Self: The Way in which Women’s Bodies are Authored in three of Kate Chopin’s Stories Lisa Vernoy, University of California at San Diego

Reexamining Norris: The Satirical Comedy in McTeague Stephanie McQueen, Trinity College (CT)

In Memoriam Paul Newman. Family in the American south through drama and [censored] film: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Sweet Bird of Youth Patricia Fra-López, University of Santiago de Compostela

Session 13—Renewing Representations of Outsiders through Art

Chair: Rich Megraw, University of Alabama

Scalping: Trans-Atlantic Cultural Exchange and the Wildly Successful Buffalo Bill Cody John Agricola, Warner-Westervelt Museum

"Halleluiah I’m a Bum:" Hoboes, the IWW, and Constructions of Masculinity Audrey Coleman, University of Alabama

Histories Buried in Clay: Appropriation, Cultural Diffusion, and the Pottery of Jerry Brown Sarah Melton, University of Alabama

Session 14—From the Big House to Big Boxes: Mapping the Sprawling South

Chair: Anthony Hoefer, Georgia Institute of Technology

"Once You Taste the Geometry of a Church in a Cul-de-sac": David Berman, Ambivalence and Melancholy in the Contemporary South Matthew Mace Barbee, Bowling Green State University

Walker Percy as the Prophet of Southern Sprawl Anthony Hoefer, Georgia Institute of Technology

Murder in/Murdering the Country: Celestine Sibley and Suburban Sprawl Margaret T. McGehee, Presbyterian College

A Backward Movement? Early Environmentalism around Atlanta Christopher Sellers, SUNY at Stony Brook

Friday, February 13th—10:30 to 11:45

Session 15—Down Low No More: Patrick Johnson's Sweet Tea and the Recognition of Black Gay Male Southern Voices

Chair: Keith Clark, George Mason University

Interior Decorating: Black ‘Gay’ Men, Homophobia, and Homespace Kenyatta Graves, University of Maryland and George Mason University

Sweet Tea with HIV: The Taste and Its Meaning Ron Simmons, President/CEO, Us Helping Us

A Little Sugar in the Southern Bowl: Sweet Tea and the Revision of Black Gay Male Subjectivity Keith Clark

Respondent: E. Patrick Johnson, Northwestern University

Session 16—Visual Cultures

Chair:

Nexus of Narcissism: Women’s Beauty Magazines and the Media of Modernity Joseph Malherek, George Washington University

Cool Culture/Cold War: The Visual Culture of the American Pavilion at Expo 67 Sara Doris, Northeastern University

Transpacific Renewals: Filming Vietnamerica in the New Millenium Edward Tang, University of Alabama

Session 17—Reimagining Identities: Native, African, Hybrid, Personal

Indigenous and African Historic Intersections in the Colonial Southeast Shape Contemporary Identities Stephanie A. Sellers, Gettysburg College

Impure Lineage: Reimaging Hybridity in John Neal’s Rachel Tyler David Karosick, Georgia State University

Personal Identity in the Study of Folklore Meg Nicholas, George Mason University

Session 18—Relocating the American Wilderness and Frontier

Chair:

Errands into the Wilderness: The Idea of Order on the Atlantic Frontier Paul Witkowsky, Radford University

The Southern Plantation as Frontier in William Gilmore Simms’ The Yemassee and John Pendleton Kennedy’s Swallow Barn Julie Kares, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale

Faulkner's wilderness and the I-AM that IS "outside the text." (tentative title) Dave Williams, George Mason University

Friday, February 13th—11:45 to 12:30

Break

Friday, February 13th—12:30 to 1:45

Session 19—Keynote Address:

Title TBA Phil Deloria, University of Michigan

Introduced by Annette Trefzer, University of Mississippi and SASA President

Friday, February 13th—2:00 to 3:15

Session 20—The Story of Silence: Reading the Oral Tradition through Colonial/American Print Culture

Chair: Mary Shelden, Virginia Commonwealth University

"No Cross in His Blood": Miscegenation and Gender Anxiety in Last of the Mohicans Mary Shelden

Birthing Across Boundaries: Stories and Silences of Early Virginia Childbearing Andrea Westcot, College of William and Mary

Gabriel’s Voices Meriah Crawford, Virginia Commonwealth University

Session 21—Southern Sexualities

Chair: John Wharton Lowe, Louisiana State University

Les Fantastiques: CircumCaribbean Sexualities in the Works of Lafcadio Hearn John Lowe

Broken Stories: Desire, Freaks, and Legitimation Crises in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter Susan V. Donaldson, College of William and Mary

Queering Katrina: Gay Discourse of the Disaster in New Orleans Gary Richards, University of Mary Washington

Session 22—Images, Myths, and Stereotypes

Chair: Mark Sample, George Mason University

The Flag and Our Fathers: Iwo Jima and Recent American Memory Rich Megraw, University of Alabama

Moonshine in Appalachia Richard A. Straw, Radford University

NASCAR hits the big screen: Images, myths, and stereotypes in Days of Thunder, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, and Cars Wanda Little Fenimore, Randolph College

Session 23—Racial Politics and Cultural Representations of Integration

Chair:

And the South Will Rise Again: Presenting the Politics of Race in Children’s Literature Marlyn Thomas, Morgan State University

Representations of Little Rock’s Central High School Desegregation: Autobiographical Acts and Historical Memory Janelle Collins, Arkansas State University

"All cats bee gray": Privacy, Integration and the Law in Postwar Black American Fiction Shelly Eversley, Baruch College, The City University of New York

Friday, February 13th—3:30 to 4:45

Session 24—Locating Barack Obama

Chair: Michael Malouf, George Mason University

The Tragic Mulatto Then and Now: from Clotel to Barack Obama Catherine E. Saunders, George Mason University

Whitewashing Appalachia: Media Representations of Region, Race, and the 2008 Presidential Election Katherine E. Ledford, Appalachian State University

The Americanness of Network Neutrality: Examining political rhetoric and regulatory policy Karen Petruska, Georgia State University

Session 25—Bodylore: Beauty Magazines, Food Addicts, and Post WW2 Prescriptive Classroom Films

Chair:

"The dinner table is no place for discontent": Post-WWII Prescriptive Classroom Films and American Youth Culture Jessamyn Neuhaus, SUNY at Plattsburgh

Special Considerations under the Lord Zackary Vernon, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Waiting for Myself to Follow: Narrative Reconstructions of the Body Jennifer Spitulnik, George Mason University

Session 26 Performing Political and Public Authority

Chair:

"The Ghost in the Cage": Containment and the Cold War South in The Southern Mystique Nelson Hathcock, Saint Xavier University

The Meaningless Mob: Flash Mobs, Slash Mobs, and What They (Don’t) Mean Emily Dufton, George Washington University

From Page to Stage: what emerges 'in between' politics and art in George Packer’s Betrayed Mark Chou, University of Queensland

Social Status and the Future of Public Authority Shannon Portillo, George Mason University

Session 27—Recovering African American Cultural History

Chair:

Object Lessons in Race at the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute Sarah Anne Carter, Harvard University

Dark Whites: Confederative Service as Exemplified by the Soldier’s Pensions Awarded to the Free Person of Color Community in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia Eric J. Richardson, North Carolina Central University

"My Man’s An Undertaker": Funeral Directors in African American Life Suzanne Smith, George Mason University

Friday, February 13th—5:00 to 5:15

Critoph Prize Awards Ceremony and Information Session

Friday, February 13th—5:15 to 6:30

Session 28—A Colloquy with Woody Holton on Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution

Chair: Dennis Moore, Florida State University Terry Bouton, University of Maryland, Baltimore County Woody Holton, University of Richmond Michael Meyerson, University of Baltimore School of Law Rosemarie Zagarri, George Mason University

Saturday, February 14th—9:00 to 10:15

Session 29—Appalachian Photographs, the New Deal, and American Nostalgia

Chair:

Representing Folk: The FSA Photographs, the Index of American Design and American Identity Malgorzata Rymsza-Pawlowska, Brown University

"Don’t We Look Just Like Appalachia?": Memory, Identity, and Regional Difference in Appalachian Photographs C. Melissa Anderson, Emory University

Time Travel: Doris Ulmann’s Appalachian Photographs and American Nostalgia Ellery Foutch, University of Pennsylvania

Session 30—Looking Backward: Progressive and Conservative Tendencies in Southern Women's Self-Definition

Chair: Tynes Cowan, Birmingham-Southern College

Embattled Images: Gender Construction in Civil War Memoirs Victoria E. Ott, Birmingham-Southern College

Never Mustered Out: Women’s Resistance to National Reconciliation Caroline E. Janney, Purdue University

The New Woman and the Old South: Women’s Literacy Clubs in Turn-of-the-Century Birmingham Tynes Cowan

Session 31—Locating Ethnic Cities

Chair: Elizabeth Schroeder, College of William and Mary

Forgetting Your Identity: Ethnic Options in the Chicagoland Area Anna Kuroczycka Schultes, University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee

Blacks and Browns in a White City: African American and Mexican American Community Building in Early Twentieth-Century Austin, Texas Jason McDonald, Truman State University

Gwendolyn Brooks’ Double V Campaign: Civil Rights and Urban Renewal Elizabeth Schroeder

Session 32—Not Wilting Magnolias: Exploring Early White Southern Female Identities

Chair: Tara McLellan, University of Mississippi

The Global South in Early American Food Writing Sarah Wurgler Walden, The University of Mississippi

Defining the Self and Defining the South: Early Southern Women’s Captivity Narratives Tara L. McLellan

The Gardener and the Housewife: Gender, Authorship, and Reception in Published Receipt Books Katie Rawson, Emory University

The Presouthern Sense of Place: Memory, Movement, and Southern Identity in Augusta Jane Evans’ St. Elmo Katharine A. Burnett, The University of Tenneessee at Knoxville

Saturday, February 14th—10:30 to 11:45

Session 33—Faulkner's Ghostliness and Earthiness

Chair:

Crossing the Line: Race and the Power of Ghost Stories in Absalom, Absalom! Ashley C. Barnes, University of California at Berkeley

"On what grounds?": The Landscape of the 'Specific' in Faulkner's Intruder in the Dust Clare Callahan, Brooklyn College, City University of New York

"Le beaute’ d’entropie": Decay, History, and Southern Culture Clay Motley, Western Kentucky University

Session 34—The Country, The City, and The Tourist

Chair: Monika Siebert Wadman, University of Richmond

Sanctifying Tourist Spaces in the Smokies or "Even God Has a Price in Gatlinburg" Hope Amason, University of Arkansas

Faith and Rabbit Shit: Spirituality and Agriculture at The Farm, 1971-1983 Barrett Gough, University of Iowa

Seeing Washington: Modernity, Patriotism, and Consumerism on the Rubberneck Wagon Greg Borchardt, George Washington University

Session 35—Northern Virginia/DC Spaces

Chair: Krystyn Moon, University of Mary Washington

United Nations on Lake Anne: Early Reston’s Transnational History Andrew Friedman, Yale University

Virginia’s Changing Communities: Negotiating Spatial Relationships in the New Suburbia Debra Lattanzi Shutika and Carol Cleaveland, George Mason University

Some Alleys in Mt Pleasant David Kaufmann, George Mason University

Session 36—The Sounds of Identity

Chair:

Minstrels and Hillbillies: Southern Identity in Early Radio Karen L. Cox, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Colonial a-Go-Go; Or, Williamsburg Hosts a Hootenanny Matthew Sutton, College of William and Mary

Performing Bob Dylan: "I Resist Anything Better than My Own Diversity"—Walt Whitman Erin Callahan, Drew University

Saturday, February 14th—11:45 to 12:30

Break

Saturday, February 14th—12:30 to 1:45

Session 37—Keynote Address

Cherokees and Missionaries: An Argument against Argument Lucy Maddox, Georgetown University

Introduced by Lauren Stuart Muller, City College of San Francisco

Saturday, February 14th—2:00 to 3:15

Session 38—Native Representations and Rhetorics

Chair: Liz Wilkinson, University of St. Thomas (St. Paul, MN)

"Was there no Seer, though Fated Man": Lydia Sigourney’s Abjected Native American Representations Cheryl Marsh, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

"I am the mother of men": Nan-ye-hi’s Cherokee Rhetoric of Motherhood in Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century Treaty Negotiations Liz Wilkinson

Indigeneity and the Politics of Recognition: Treaty Discourse in the National Museum of the American Indian Monika Siebert Wadman, University of Richmond

Session 39—Telling the Stories of Fayette County, TN: Virtual Beginnings, Civic Renewal?

Chair: Leigh Anne Duck, University of Memphis

Leigh Anne Duck Loel Kim, University of Memphis Donna Pope, University of Memphis

Session 40—Racial Dilemmas

Chair:

Walt Disney’s Racial Dilemma in Song of the South M. Thomas Inge, Randolph-Macon College

The Man at the Filling Station: Assessing Walker Evans's Regard for African Americans Ray Sapirstein, SUNY at Albany

'Doom is always domestic:' Brother to Dragons and New Criticism Paul Fess, Hunter College, CUNY

Session 41—18th-Century Roots and Routes

Chair:

The Chinese Trade in Medicinal Rhubarb and Elisha Cullen Dick’s Practice in Eighteenth Century Alexandria, Virginia Kelley Shangle, George Washington University

The Trajectory Southward of the Works of Phillis Wheatley Rosemary Fithian Guruswamy, Radford University

"Where Can I ever Get Such a Wife": The Marriage of John and Susan Kean Jonathan Mercantini, Kean University

Tocqueville Scholarship as Stable Discourse Matthew Mancini, Saint Louis University

Saturday, February 14th—3:30 to 4:45

Session 42—Preserving and Promoting Civil War and Labor History

Chair: Wade Newhouse, Peace College

Remembering and Forgetting: Civil War Narrative in the Gettysburg Museum and the American Civil War Center Cynthia Fields, Virginia Commonwealth University

Localizing Nationalism: The Problem of Preserving and Selling the Civil War Wade Newhouse

Radicals, Reunions, and Repatriation: Harlan County and the Constraints of History Jessica Legnini, University of Warwick

Session 43—Jazz Histories and Hollywood Tributes to Dead Musicians

Chair: Suzanne Smith, George Mason University

The Papers of Frederic Ramsey Jr.: The Search for Buddy Bolden, “first man of jazz.” Vic Hobson, University of East Anglia

"Ancient to the Future": Religion and Improvisation in the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians Jason C. Bivins, North Carolina State University

"Dark Was the Night:" Race, Loss, and Haunting in Ray and Walk the Line Jack Hamilton, Harvard University

Session 44—Relocating Colonial America, Reimagining American Racial and Gendered Histories

Chair: F. Gregory Stewart, University of Mary Washington

Relocating the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 Margaret M. Mulrooney, James Madison University

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Colonial Revival J. Samaine Lockwood, George Mason University

(Re)Opening the Wound: Toni Morrison’s History Lesson of Human Trade as A Mercy F. Gregory Stewart

Session 45—Late 19th- and Early 20th-Century Aural and Visual Cultures

Chair: Lynne Adrian, University of Alabama

"The Sound of Authority": Hallucinatory Aural Culture and Aural Observation at the Government Hospital for the Insane, 1875-1905 Kathleen M. Brian, George Washington University

The Dog Speaks. The visual rhetoric of class in turn of the century photographs of people and their dogs Ann-Janine Morey, James Madison University

Investigating Southern Womanhood and Race Through the writings of Thomas Dixon Jr. and His Sister Addie May Dixon Thacker David Kidd, College of William and Mary

Saturday, February 14th—5:00 to 6:30

Session 46—Closing Plenary Session

Brad Evans, Rutgers University

Introduced by Leigh Anne Duck, University of Memphis