AMERICAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION OF TEXAS
52nd Annual Meeting and
Conference
November 13-15, 2008
From Region to the World: The Importance of Place in American Studies
Hosted by Texas State University-San Marcos
San Marcos, Texas
Thursday, November 13
3:00-5:00 Lobby of Best Western-San Marcos
Registration
6:30-8:00 Center for the Study of the
Southwest & Southwest Regional Humanities Center, Brazos Hall
Welcome Reception
Friday, November 14
7:45-8:30 3rd Floor of LBJ Student
Center
Continued
registration, continental breakfast, coffee
8:45-9:15 LBJ Student Center Teaching
Theatre, 3rd Floor
Welcome
9:15-10:30 Session I
A. 19th
Century Literature, LBJ 3-11.1
Chair:
TBA
Mimosa Stephenson, University of Texas at Brownsville
“Humor in Uncle Tom’s Cabin”
Crystal Olivo, University of Texas at
Brownsville
“Paradox in Petticoats: Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall”
Kelly Clasen, University of North Texas
“Women Across the Water in Chopin’s At Fault and ‘Beyond the
Bayou’”
B. The
Politics and Philosophy of Place I, LBJ Teaching Theatre
Chair:
Gloria Velasquez, Texas State University
Cassy Burleson, Baylor University
“Through a Glass Darkly: A Longitudinal Study on the Effects of James Byrd Jr.’s Murder on Jasper, Texas”
Benjamin Balthaser, University of California, San Diego
“Inland Empire: Farm Fascism
and Imperial Memory in the California Popular Front”
Kandace Lytle, Texas State University-San Marcos
“The Collapse of Stegnar's Angle of Repose: A Philosophical Examination of
Lyman Ward's Notion of Place in History”
C. The
American Story, LBJ 3-9.1
Chair:
Greg Giddings, Midwestern State University
Pamela Herring, University of Texas at Brownsville
“The Importance of Place in Creating the Human
Story”
Nancy Romig, Howard Payne University
“The American Dream and Justice: Failed Ideals of Idyllic America”
Jared Griffin, Kodiak College, University of Alaska at Anchorage
“The Vanishing (White) American: Modernist Apocalypse and Pastoral, a Study of American Masculine Narrative”
D. Toni
Morrison, LBJ 3-5.1
Chair:
Ashley Bourgeois, Texas State University-San Marcos
Sarah Youree, Texas State University-San Marcos
“Sula and Siddhartha: Philosophy, Fiction, and Expanding the
“Hidden Tradition”
Rebecca Flores, Texas State University-San Marcos
“Flying South: Morrison Necessitates Place in Milkman’s Quest for Ancestry”
Ashley Bourgeois, Texas State University-San
Marcos
“Chevaliers Storm the Briar Patch: Caribbean Agency in Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby”
10:45-12:00 3rd Floor LBJ Teaching
Theatre
Presentation by Don Graham, author of numerous
books on Texas literature and film, including his latest book, State Fare: An Irreverent Guide to Texas.
12:00-1:15 Lunch (on your own)
1:30-2:45 Session II
A. Creative
Readings, LBJ 3.11-1
Miles Wilson, Texas State University
Terry Dalrymple, Angelo State University
John Wegner, Angelo State University
Cheryl Clements, Blinn College
B. Film
and Art, LBJ Teaching Theatre
Chair:
Stuart McClintock, Midwestern State University
Charles Olson, Midwestern State University
“The Incredible Bleakness of Being: Art and Commerce in the Texas Films of Joel and Ethan Coen”
Stuart McClintock, Midwestern State University
“Wes Anderson:
Texas Francophile”
Victoria Klimentieva, University of Texas at
Austin
“Frank Reaugh: On the Road Less
Traveled”
C. New York City
Literature—From the Inside, Out, LBJ 3.9-1
Chair: Linda Rodriguez, University of Southern
Mississippi
Heather
Hoyle Peerboom, University of Southern Mississippi
“As American as Mom and Chicken Curry: Home as a Metaphor in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies”
Linda L. Rodriguez, University of Southern Mississippi
“No Place Like Home in New York City: Harriet Jacobs’ ‘City of Iniquity’ in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself”
Kelli
Sellers, University of Southern Mississippi
“Rooted in Place:National Identity and Collective Memory in Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”
Heather Gausline Tate, University of Southern Mississippi
“Innocent Yet Not Ignorant: Bringing the Country to the City in Madeleine L’Engle’s The Young Unicorns”
D. Place
I, LBJ 3-5.1
Chair: Nancy Effinger Wilson, Texas State University-San Marcos
José Limón, University of Texas at Austin
“Place and Critical Regionalism: Americo Paredes and J. Frank Dobie”
Lyon Rathbun, University of Texas at
Brownsville
“The Western Experience
of Frank Diffenderffer, Native of Lancaster, PA.”
Alan Oak, University of Texas at Brownsville
“Culture Shock in Typee and La Relacion”
2:45-3:15 Coffee Break
3:15-4:30 Session
III
A. Southern
and Southwestern Literature, LBJ 3.11-1
Chair: TBA
Parish Conkling, Texas
State University-San Marcos
“The Triadic Nature of Women in Katherine Anne Porter’s Fiction”
Theresa Flowers, University of North Texas
“The Significance of Mississippi in Selected Works of Eudora Welty”
Cassie Polasek, Texas State University-San
Marcos
“The Old Man, His Country, and a Light
in a Horn: A Study of Sheriff Bell in Cormac
McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men”
B. 20th
Century Literature, LBJ Teaching Theatre
Chair: Michael Hennessy, Texas
State University
Phil Swenson, Texas State University
“A Burning Tundra and Beyond: The Place(less)ness of West Texas in the Early Fiction of Don DeLillo”
Elizabeth Welch, Texas State University
“From Lolita to the World: Reading as Template for Global Understanding”
Whitney Oldfather, Texas State University
“Kerouac’s Beats Leave the Path”
Christopher Carmona, Texas A&M University
“The Girl Who Kissed the Gun and the Bullet That Ate Her: Why Joan Vollmer was Important”
C. Land of the Permanent Wave: The Writing and Life (but mainly the Writing)
of Edwin “Bud” Shrake, LBJ 3.9-1
Co-chairs: Chad
Hammett and Twister Marquiss, Texas State University
Steve Davis, Texas State University
Chad Hammett, Texas State University
Twister Marquiss, Texas State University
D. Place
II, LBJ 3.5-1
Chair: Kathleen Peirce, Texas State
University
Kenneth Hada, East Central University-Ada, Oklahoma
“Intensifying the World, or Putting the Rock Back: Place in the Poetry of Larry Thomas and Walt McDonald”
Amber Drown, Texas State University-San Marcos
“The Universality of Place in the Poetry of Walt Whitman”
Colleen Sheehy, University of Minnesota
“‘Caught An’ Brought Back’: Hibbing as Place and Dylan’s Place in Hibbing”
6:30 Center for the Study of the Southwest
& Southwest Regional Humanities Center, Brazos Hall
Dinner and
featured speaker Steve Davis, author of Texas Literary Outlaws and a new biography of
J. Frank Dobie to be published by the University of Texas Press
next year.
Saturday, November 15
8:30-9:00
Continental
breakfast and coffee
9:00-10:15 Session I
A. Ethnic
Identity, LBJ 3-9.1
Chair: Paul Hart, Texas State
University-San Marcos
Julie Richko, University College Dublin
“Irish
Settlement and Identity in Nineteenth-Century Texas: An Historical Archaeology”
Jeffrey Lambert, Texas State University-San Marcos
“The Emergence of Mexican-American Identity and the Creation of the Border in Texas”
Joe Orbock-Medina, University of California,
Berkeley
“The Texas Pro Human Relations Fund Committee and the Movement for
Mexican-American Unity in Texas, 1950-1952”
B. 19th
Century Literature, LBJ 3-5.1
Chair: TBA
Christian McPhate, Midwestern State
University
“Death and Mark Twain, a Birth Through Journalism”
Jessica Aranella, Texas State University-San
Marcos
“‘Average Racism:’ Conscious and Subconscious Racial Anxiety in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ and ‘Metzengerstein’”
Gabriel Ezeh, University of Texas at
Brownsville
“Christianity in Hope Leslie”
Kathryn Powell, Texas State University-San Marcos
“Through the Looking Glass: Place as a Reflection in Elizabeth Stoddard’s The Morgesons”
C. The
Politics and Philosophy of Place II, LBJ 3-3.1
Chair: Doug Ferdon,
Baylor University
Philip Pope, Texas Tech University
“A Landmark Decision: How Texas Stadium Provided Irving with an Identity”
Jennifer Eckel, University of Texas at Austin
“‘That God Forsaken Country’: The Woman’s Commonwealth reflects on Belton, Texas, 1866-1903”
Kyle Goyette, Texas State University-San
Marcos
“The Good Fight: Texas Women and the Battle for the ERA, 1972-1982”
10:30-11:45 Session II
A. Perception, Aesthetics, and Identity, LBJ 3-5.1
Chair: Craig Hanks, Texas State
University-San Marcos
Jimmie Killingsworth, Texas A&M
University
“Galveston: Natural, Artificial, and Virtual”
Dee Lannon, Texas State University
“From Crooner to
Cowboy: How Hollywood and Broadway Fashioned the Texas Mystique in American
Country Music”
Consuelo
Gutierrez, University of North Texas
“All Dolled Up: The Social Construction of ‘Texan-ness’ Through Dress
In Nic Nicosia’s ‘Bobby Dixon & The Texas Stars’”
Cory Lock, St. Edwards University
“‘Watching the Moving Shadows on Drawn
Shades’: Dance and Middle-Class Identity in Mollie E. Moore Davis’ ‘Mr.
Benjamin Gish’s Ball’”
B.
Creative Readings,
LBJ 3-9.1
Dick Heaberlin,
Texas State University-San Marcos
Nathan Brown, University of Oklahoma
Amy Frazier,
University of Texas at Brownsville
C.
American Studies:
Forms of Dissemination, LBJ 3-3.1
Chair:
TBA
Crishaun Keller, Texas
State University
“A College in Your Pocket: American Studies
& New Media”
Lisa Hull Reed, Texas A&M
University-Commerce
“Images and Text of Children in Early American Literature:
Indoctrination Through Inclusion”
12:00-12:30 LBJ 3-9.1
Concluding
Meeting & Best Paper Awards