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The 2013 New Voices Committee Welcomes YouAn interdisciplinary conference devoted to monstrosity and

its discursive corollaries, villainy and aberration, seems at first to be counterintuitive.  Above all, the monstrous marks a site of exclusion.  It signifies what cannot be accepted, what cannot be tolerated, what cannot be discussed.  Thus it seems like such an exclusionary concept could not serve as the basis of inclusive dialog across myriad academic disciplines.  Yet, as a glimpse at the presentations listed in these pages attests, the themes of monstrosity, villainy, and aberration have proven to be immensely conducive to communication across disciplines.  At this conference, attendees will hear presentations from not just language and literary studies, but also history, philosophy, religious studies, and political science.    

So what accounts for the fruitfulness of these themes?  Our world is full of monsters, villains, and aberrations.  It always has been and always will be.  But monsters and the like no longer dwell solely under beds and inside closets. They are no longer limited to Frankenstein, Dracula, or Leatherface. Culturally, we are steeped in monstrosity and obsessed with the abnormal in every aspect of our lives. Even as we fear monsters, scorn villains, and shun what isn’t normal, we identify with , root for, and embrace all of these things. Monstrosity is arguably the key to understanding not only our present, but its relationship to the past and the future.

This conference could not have been possible without the hard work, dedication, collaboration, and ambition of all those who have volunteered to help plan New Voices 2013. Nor could this conference have been possible without the assistance and encouragement of the English department faculty and staff, the Graduate English Association, and our graduate student community. And we also owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to all those office administrators and graduate directors in departments both here at Georgia State University and at countless other universities throughout the country. They helped to spread the word.     Thus, with the collaborative achievements of the aforementioned people, the New Voices Conference continues its

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annual tradition at Georgia State University, providing graduate students from all disciplines and from across the country the opportunity to present their latest research and creative work. On behalf of the GEA and the New Voice Committee, it is our pleasure to welcome you to “Monsters, Villains & Aberrations: A Conference of Dark Proportions.”

A Welcome from Dr. Paul Schmidt:Many thanks to all of you who supported the New Voices

2013 Conference by attending, presenting, providing funding, or simply spreading the word. It has been a pleasure working with Valerie and Shane and the other graduate students who are members of the GEA and the New Voices Organizing committee. Be sure to thank them and congratulate them.The New Voices Conference is a growing tradition in the Department of English at Georgia State University, giving students and faculty an opportunity to share in each other’s research in a public venue. I am excited about this year’s conference--"Monsters, Villains, and Aberrations: A Conference of Dark Proportions’--as it will give participants the chance to experience one another’s nightmares in a safe, academic atmosphere.

This conference has always been a cross-disciplinary endeavor, and this year should be no different. We hope that you will enjoy listening to frightening and monstrous (yet still somehow scholarly) voices from a variety of disciplines, as we work toward a deeper understanding of how the homicidal, the horrific, the twisted, the aberrant, and the villainous find their way into our everyday lives.

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Thursday, January 17, 2013            4:00 pm – 6:30 pm

Conference Kick-offUniversity Center – Room 460/65

Shane McGowan- New Voices 2013 Co-Chair:            Welcome

Dr. Randy Malamud- English Department Chair:            Opening Remarks

Valerie Robin- New Voices 2013 Co-Chair:Acknowledgements

GSU Faculty Research Roundtable Dr. Nate Atkinson, Department of Communication"Action Comics" 101: How to Film an Atomic Bomb"Dr. Ashley Holmes, Department of English“Monsters, Villains, and Aberrations” Beyond the Classroom: The Risks and Rewards of Going Public with PedagogyDr. Mark Noble, Department of English“How to Read a Doppelganger: or, Getting to Know Your Gothic Self”

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Friday, January 18, 2013          

Session 1                    9:00-10:15 am

Panel 1: Reshaping Life, Reality, and BeliefRoom 465             Moderator: Valerie Robin

“Snowcrash: Multiple and Erased Bodies in Cyberspace”Marcia Bost - Georgia State University  

“The Touch of Slimy Surfaces: Intersubjectivity and Video Games”    Cameron Kunzelman  - Georgia State University

“‘If the Real DS Ever Returns, Do You Promise that You Will Still Treat Me as a Friend and Love Me?’: Ernst Cassirer’s Philosophy of Symbolic Forms and Psychopathologies of Depersonalization”    Karen McCarthy - Emory University

“Propaganda and Goffman’s Face-to-Face Interactions”Mike Perazzetti - University of West Georgia

Registration 8:30 am – 9:00 am

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Panel 2: Here There Be Monsters: Lessons from the GSU Writing Studio

Room 470              Moderator: TBD   

“The Multiple Roles of a Tutor: Monstrous Problem or the Source of Heroic Strength?”  Kelly Elmore - Georgia State University

“Writing Anxiety: The Monster Lurking in the Writing Center”

Samantha Jakobeit-Meaux - Georgia State University

”Fear and Loathing in the Land of Punctuation”Helen Cauley – Georgia State University

"The Intimidation Monster: Tutoring Non-traditional Students in the Writing Studio"

Jimisha Relerford - Georgia State University

Panel 3: The Dark Side of Rhetoric: Reflections on the Aberrations

Room 480             Moderator: Laura Anderson

“Literacy and Liberation: Aberrations of Radical Education inside and outside the Classroom”

Diana Eidson - Georgia State University

“Word Monster”Sarah McArthur Smith - Georgia State University

“What Bedevils Rhetoric in America?”Anne Melfi - Georgia State University

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Session 2                    10:30-11:45 am

Panel 1: Reimagining the Techno-Monster: A New Media Literacy Roundtable

Room 465       This roundtable explores using New Media in first-year composition classrooms.

Pete Rorabaugh - Georgia State University

Valerie Robin - Georgia State University

Jen Vala - Georgia State University

Natasha Walker - Georgia State University

Panel 2: (Re)Figuring Criminality and Villainy: Faces of Evil Past and Present

Room 470             Moderator: Zachary Rearick

“The Bad and the Ugly: The Born Criminal in Cesare Lombroso’s Criminal Anthropology”

Guilherme Sanches de Oliveira -  University of São Paulo

“Healing the Scarred Villain: Political Correctness and the Rehabilitation of the Deformed Villains of Literature and Pop-Culture”

Ryan Prechter - Georgia State University

“Revealing and Derailing the Urban Machine: Dennis Lehane’s Patrick Kenzie”    Anna Toms -  University of Missouri-Kansas City

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Panel 3: Back inside the “Filthy Workshop of Creation”: Reconsidering Mary Shelley’s

FrankensteinRoom 480             Moderator: Shane McGowan

“Victor Frankenstein and His ‘Adam’: More Monster than Man’”

Burnes Ray - Georgia State University

“Monsters and Their Makers: Reading Frankenstein as Feminist Allegory”

Kristin Petersen -  Emory University

“The ‘Disgusting’ Body: A Transgender Reading of Affect in Frankenstein”

Anson Koch-Rein - Emory University

Session Break          12:00 pm - 1:15 pm

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Session 3                    1:30 pm – 2:45 pm

Panel 1: Textual Transformations: Examining the Impact of Modal and Generic Shifts

Room 465            Moderator: Zachary Rearick

“The Brief and Bloody Resurrection of Mme. L’Espanaye: An Exercise in Structuralism within the Context of Short Story-

to-Film-Adaptation”Joe Anderson - Georgia State University

“Scary Sounds: Symbols of Evil”Thomas LaPorte - Georgia State University

“Rewriting the Vampire Myth in Seth Grahame-Smith’s Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”

Tabitha Sheffield – Mississippi State University

Panel 2: Monstrous Works: Undergraduate Papers Inspired by Readings from the Monsters

V-Series ReaderRoom 470             Moderator: Dr. Brandy Ball-Blake

Each of the following presentations was originally written in fulfillment of an assignment for an English 1101 or 1102 course that used the Monsters V-Series reader. Each presentation will be accompanied by commentary from the instructor who made the assignment.

“Needle in the Hay”Max Fine with Sara Hughes - Georgia State University

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“Why Should We Continue to Hide Hyde?”Biju Ezeonwuka with Sara Hughes - Georgia State University

“From Human to Beast: The Monster in Oldboy”Seung Lee with Thomas Breideband - Georgia State University

Panel 3: Disturbing Domesticity: At Home with the Supernatural, the Uncanny, and the QueerRoom 480             Moderator: Shane McGowan

“Elizabeth Bowen and the Watchful Vitality of Objects”Dana L. Miller - Georgia State University

“Domestic Fetishism and Supernatural Rituals: Defense Mechanisms in Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle”

Meagan Frey - University of Tennessee-Chattanooga

“Identification with the Monster: An Alternative Reading of The Uninvited and The Haunting”

Sarah Boslaugh - Kennesaw State University

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Session 4                    3:00 pm – 4:15 pm

Panel 1: Race and Otherness in Late-19th and 20th-Century Literature

Room 465             Moderator: Deborah S. D’Cruze

“Ideologies of Race, White Supremacy, and the Black Body as a Tool of Protest In Charles W. Chestnutt’s The House behind the Cedars”

Zaab Para - University of West Georgia

"’And a Mighty Thing It Is’: Race, Class, and Civil Rights in Mother to Mother and ‘Where Is the Voice Coming From?’’”

Jessica Temple - Georgia State University

“‘I Wanted a Female Friend to Go with Us, a Good Stout-Hearted woman, Who Can Look Danger in the Face:’ (Re)classifying The Bondwoman’s Narrative as Female African-American Gothic”

Anna King - Georgia State University

Panel 2: Harnessing the Power of Monsters: Using the Monsters V-Series Reader in First-Year Composition (GTA Mentoring Session)

Room 470         Moderator: Dr. L. Andrew Cooper Sara Hughes - Georgia State University

Thomas Breideband - Georgia State University

Shane McGowan - Georgia State University

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Panel 3: Sex and the Modern Monster: Queering Gender and Sexuality

Room 480             Moderator: Zachary Rearick

"Death and Transformation: Trans-Phobia and Fear of Gender Instability in Horror Films”

Dudgrick Bevins - Kennesaw State University

“Denying the Outing: Pitch Perfect and the Future of Coming Out”

Daren Fowler - Georgia State University

“Talking about Fetishes: A Case for Photo Elicitation in the Study of Sexual Fetishism”

Samantha Allen - Emory University

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4:30-5:30 pm

Brandy Ball Blake and L. Andrew CooperEditors of the Monsters V-Series Reader

Room 470 Mentoring Session

Keynote Address

Mapping Disavowal:

A Rhetorical Frame for Monstrosity

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Saturday, January 19, 2013             

   Session 1                    1:30 pm – 2:45 pm

Panel 1: From Reel to Real: Lacanian Readings of Monstrosity and Aberration in Cinema

Room 470             Moderator: Dr. Calvin Thomas

“‘I’m Deranged’: Music as Catalyst for the Primal in David Lynch’s Oeuvre”

Mary Grace Elliott - Georgia State University            

“Jekyll and Hyde before the Mirror”Shane Smith - Georgia State University

“The Call of the Lamella in David Lynch’s Lost Highway”Seth Hagen - Georgia State University

“The Phallic Mother and Human Abjection in Ridley Scott’s Alien”  Terri Nicholson - Georgia State University

Registration 1:00 pm – 1:30 pm

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Panel 2: Monsters, Magic, and Marvels in Folk Literature and Folk Art of the Americas

Room 465             Moderator: Zachary Rearick

“Changó’s Daughter: The Role of Orisha Parentage in Dreaming in Cuban”William Michael Lake - Georgia State University

"Festival and Massacre: Staging Excess in Mapa Teatro's Los Santos Inocentes"Camilia Aschner-Restrepo - Emory University

“Uktena: The Horned Serpent of the Southern Appalachian Mountains”James A. Owen - University of Georgia

Panel 3: Determined to Undermine Myths: Making Monsters in Pedagogy

Room 480             Moderator: Steven Sams

“Monsters in Our Minds: Critical Thinking as Modern-Day Mythbusting”

Laura Anderson - Georgia State University

“Pedagogy and Determinism: Making Monsters”Robert Manfredi - Georgia State University

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Session 2                    3:00 pm – 4:15 pm

Panel 1: Postmodern Villainy: Terrorism, Mass Murder, and the Contemporary Image of Evil

Room 465             Moderator: Valerie Robin

“‘Almost a Creature’: Evil in Aurora”Mikaela Malsin - University of Georgia

“The Evil Up Close: John Updike’s Terrorist”Levin Arnsperger - Emory University

“Monstrous Others, Ghostly Terrorists, and the Haunting of National Security Law”

Nick J. Sciullo - Georgia State University

“Monsters Underground: The Weathermen, Aberrant Subjects, and the Pursuit of Liberation in Counter-Cultural Space”

Brittany Leach - University of Georgia

Panel 2: “I Want My MTV”: Gendered Monstrosity and Social Dysfunction on the

Postmodern Small ScreenRoom 470             Moderator: Deborah S. D’Cruze

“‘’Our Men Are Soldiers, Our Women Are Leaders’: Rearticulating Gender Norms in MTV’s Teen Wolf”

Maria Suzanne Boyd -  Georgia State University

“Taking the ‘Goosebumps’ out of Goosebumps: Contradictory Gender Epistemologies in Postmodern Children’s Horror Television”

Zachary Rearick - Georgia State University

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“Where Do the Cockroaches Come From?: Anomie and Innovation in AMC’s Breaking Bad”

Patrick Osborne – Florida State University

Panel 3: History Is Written by the Heroes: Lessons from the Dark Side of HistoryRoom 480             Moderator: Shane McGowan

“Descent into Monstrosity: The Mind of Gaius Caligula”Thomas J. McIntyre - Georgia Southern University

“The Dodo in the Long Eighteenth Century: An Exploration of the Monstrous Gray Ghost outside of the English Sentimental Eye”

Charles Hoge - University of Denver

“Night of the Living Dead: Animated Skeletons in Tomb Sculpture”

Jared Hansen - University of Alabama at Birmingham

“Questing the Beast: The Darker Side of the Arthurian Beast Glatisant"

Malorie Sponseller – Georgia Southern University

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6:00-7:30 PM @ Java Monkey in Decatur, GA

A Chorus of Creative Voices

Select Readings of Fiction and Poetry

featuring

L. Andrew Cooper, author of Burning the Middle Ground

Kathy Kincer, host of the poetry show Melodically Challenged on 88.5 FM

Alex Gallo-Brown Stephanie Devine

Java Monkey 425 Church Street  Decatur, GA 30030

Java Monkey is conveniently located right across from the Decatur MARTA station.

Please note that following our fiction and poetry event, there will be an unofficial conference wrap party in downtown Decatur. See the Presenters’ FAQ in your conference welcome packet for locations and times.