Thu., April 27, 2017

Thu., April 27, 2017
REGISTRATION 11:30 am - 6:00 pm
SESSION I 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm
1A Troubled Harbors in Global Graphic Narratives (W20-407)
Chair: Monica Chiu, Univ. of New Hampshire
1. “Activism as Refuge in the Comics of Howard Cruse,” Matthew Cheney, Univ. of
New Hampshire
2. “Unsafe Harbors of Reconciliation: Wars, Immigration, and Working Through in
Vietnamerica,” Jin Lee, Univ. of New Hampshire
3. “The Ambivalent Representation of Humanitarian Aid in The Photographer,”
Stephen Roxburgh, Univ. of New Hampshire
1B Ports of Exchange: Racial Paradigms and the Harbors of Latinidad in the U.S. (W20-491)
Chair: Isabel Espinal, Univ. of Massachussets-Amherst
1. “Nature and Spirit of Dominican Women’s Writing in the U.S.,” Isabel Espinal, Univ.
of Massachussets-Amherst
2. “The Complexity and Vitality of U.S. Latinx Theater in the 21st-Century,” Priscilla
Page, Univ. of Massachusetts-Amherst
3. “Dáltonismo Chick: Colorblindness in Chica Lit,” Aida Roldan Garcia, Univ. of
Massachusetts-Amherst
4. “Symbolic Geography, Afrolatinidad, and “the freemasonry of the race” in Evelio
Grillo’s Black Cuban, Black American: A Memoir,” Trent Masiki, Univ. of
Massachusetts-Amherst
1C Borders, Lands, Thought (W20-301)
Chair: Anna Schwartz, Univ. of Pennsylvania
1.“Dispossession as Accumulation: Reason, Cataloging, and Racial Exclusion in Notes
on the State of Virginia,” Ajay Kumar Batra, Univ. of Pennsylvania
2.“Containerization and Performance in Claude McKay’s Banjo: A Story Without a
Plot,” Jazmin Delgado-Flores, Univ. of Pennsylvania
3. “Harboring Animacy,” Lilian Mengesha, Brown Univ.
4. “Harboring Transuranic Waste: Lunar Braceros, 2125-2148, and the Waste Isolation
Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico,” Myrriah Gomez, Univ. of New Mexico
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Thu., April 27, 2017
1D Narrative Harbors and American Myths in Racial Harmony (E25-401)
Chair: Patrick Lawrence, Univ. of South Carololina-Lancaster
Co-chair: Jorge Santos, Coll. of the Holy Cross
1. “Harboring Tropes: Stuck Rubber Baby and a Politically Useful Civil Rights Past,”
Jorge Santos, Coll. of the Holy Cross
2. “Commercial Harbors and the Comforts of Home: The Birth of Legal Hierarchies
and Failure of Racial Coalitions in Toni Morrison’s a mercy,” Patrick Lawrence, Univ. of
South Carolina-Lancaster
3. “Creating Community in Speculative Fiction by Chang-Rae Lee and Octavia Butler,”
Laura Wright, Univ. of Connecticut
4. “’Which Harlem Are You Fighting For?’: Interrogating Cultural Nationalism and
Failed Racial Utopias Through Marvel’s Luke Cage,” Patrick Kent Russell, Univ. of
Connecticut
1E The Aesthetics of Survival (13-2137)
Chair:
1. “GPS Poetics: The Transborder Immigration Tool and Art of Survival,” Alyssa
Cristina Quintanilla, Univ. of Pittsburgh
2. “The ‘impermeable words and exhausting gestures’ of the Caribbean Migrant and
the Limits of Representation,” Elizabeth Rodriguez Fielder, Univ. of Pittsburgh
3. “‘To all intents an Esquimo’: The Inuit in Matthew Henson’s A Negro Explorer at the
North Pole,” Ryan Charlton, Univ. of Mississippi
SESSION II 3:15 pm - 4:45 pm
2A Theory, Spiritualism, and the Persistence of Magic in Literature of the Americas
(W20-407)
Chair:
1. “Harboring Spirits: Theories of Time, Relativity, and Race in Alfredo Vea’s Gods Go
Begging,” Richard Perez, John Jay Coll.
2. “Sick of the Symbolic: Interpellative Escape & Shaping the Passages to the Real
Through Trance in Lyn DiIorio Sandin’s Outside the Bones and Toni Cade Bambara’s
The Salt Eaters,” Victoria Chevalier, Medgar Evers Coll.
3. “Divine War and the Ethics of Violence in No Name in the Street: Or, On Blackness
and Indianness,” Chad Infante, Northwestern Univ.
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Thu., April 27, 2017
2B Examining Nepantla, Healing Together: (Re)Mapping US Multiethnic
Women’s Writing (E25-401)
Chair: Jocelyn Marshall, SUNY-Buffalo
1.“(Re)mapping Womanhood: Feminicide, Space, and Searching for Identity in Desert
Blood,” Gabriela Almendarez, California State Univ.-Northridge
2. “Remote Contact in the Valley: Queer Art, Objects, and Brown Performance in
Karen Tongson’s Relocations,” Jewel Pereyra, Georgetown Univ.
3. “A Borderless Ethics of Care: Disenfranchisement and Reparations in Edwidge
Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying,” Caroline Porter, Univ. of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
2C No Hiding Place: Unsafe Spaces in the Writing of John Wideman (13-2137)
Chair: Yemisi Jimoh, Univ. of Massachusetts-Amherst
1.“Wideman in the Age of Black Lives Matter,” Tracie Guzzio SUNY-Plattsburgh
2. “Maximum Security: Incarceration and Identity in Wideman’s Fiction and
Nonfiction,” Jeffrey Renard Allen, Univ. of Virginia
3.“’Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?’: The Struggle for Faith in Wideman’s ‘Solitary’,”
Keith Byerman, Indiana State Univ.
2D Realignments of Ethnic Literatures with the English Major Today (54-915)
Chair: Doug Steward, Modern Language Association
1. Sarah Chinn, Hunter College
2. Paula Moya, Stanford Univ.
3. Ricardo Ortiz, Georgetown Univ.
4. Cheryl Suzack, Univ. of Toronto
5. Christine Wooley, St. Mary’s College
WELCOME RECEPTION with reading by Mia Heavener
6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
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Fri., April 28, 2017
SESSION III 8:30 am - 10:00 AM
3A Entre el Nuevo El Otro: Constructing the Self in Hispanic Immigrant Texts (Room A)
Chair: Samina Gul Ali, Univ. of Miami
1. “Idenity, Multilingual Discourse, and the Communicated Home in Henriquez’s The
Book of Unknown Americans,” Joe Wilson, Univ. of Tennessee-Knoxville
2. “Realizing the Other: Mirta Ojito’s Finding Manana: A Memoir of Cuban Exodus,”
April Conley Kilinski, Johnson Univ.
3. “Translating Psycho-Linguistic Subjectivity: In Julia Alvarez’s How the Garcia Girls
Lost Their Accents,” Allison Harris, Univ. of Miami
3B Wounding Borders and Healing Sanctuaries: Masculinities in Transition (Room A)
Chair: Meina Yates Richard, Syracuse Univ.
1. “(Im)Permeable Borders of the Self: Affective and Geographical Segregation in Native
Son,” Meina Yates Richard, Syracuse Univ.
2. “Cripistemologies of the Borderlands: Ghosts, Trauma, and Disability in Leslie
Marmon Silko’s Ceremony,” Adriane Bezusko, Univ. of Texas
3. “Post-Chicano Movement Borderlands: Entanglements of Vulnerability and Despair,”
Amanda Ellis, Univ. of Houston
4. “Archival Excavation and Resistance in Kadir Nelson’s We Are the Ship: The Story of
Negro League Baseball,” Emily Rutter, Ball State University
3C Spying, Espying, and Visibility in Multi-Ethnic Texts (Room A)
Chair:
1. “Who Can Play Asian Roles? Sonic & Visual Idenitis in Hollywood Films,” Su-ching
Huang, East Carolina Univ.
2. “Mestiza Consciousness, War, & Espionage in Multiethnic Noir,” Allison Layfield,
Ball State Univ.
3. “Bearing Witness in American Galaxy: Performance & Double Consciousness in
Whitehead and Coates,” Leah Milne, Univ. of Indianapolis
3D Solidarity as Harbor (Room A)
Chair:
1. “Harboring Across the Pacific: Transpacific Writing & Global Readership in Ruth
Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being,” Shu-ching Chen, National Chung Hsing Univ.
2. “Inter-Ethnic Solidarity: The Case of Japanese American Activism after 9/11,”
Dhanashree Thorat, Univ. of Florida
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Fri., April 28, 2017
3. “Multiethnic Muslim-American Women: Memoirs in Action,” Filiz Turhan, SUNYSuffolk
4. “An Arab-American Feminist Analysis of Mohja Kahf’s The Girl in the Tangerine
Scarf,” Lingyan Yang, Indiana Univ. of Pennsylvania
3E Finding a Way out of No Way: Black Philosophies, Rituals, and Religion (Room A)
Chair:
1. “The Refuge of Responsibility and the Politics of Recognition in Ralph Ellison’s
Invisible Man,” Katrina Newsom, Wayne State Univ.
2. “Geography, Ritual Grounds, and Cultural Memory in Whitehead’s Sag Harbor,”
Wendy Rountree, North Carolina Central Univ.
3. “Harboring the Exception: The Long Middle Passage of Toni Morrison’s Paradise,”
Keidrick Roy, U.S. Air Force Academy
4. “Hush, Harbor: Morrison’s Paradise, Brazil, & the Topology of Religious
Experience,” Joaquin S. Terrones, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
3F Schooled in Safety: Safe Space in the Academy (Room A)
Chair:
1. “Pedro Pietri’s Schooling: Building Safe Spaces with Pedagogical Poetics,” Molly
Dooley Appel, Pennsylvania State Univ.
2. “We Don’t Need No Stinking Badges!: Interrogating “Safe Space” Rhetoric in
Academia,” James Noel, Los Medanos Coll.
3. “(Un)Safe Harbor? Higher Learning in a time of Campus Cry,” Derek DiMatteo,
Indiana Univ.-Bloomington
3G Debunking American Myths about Real and Symbolic Harbors (Room A)
Chair:
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1. “Harboring Fugitives: Life and Death in Boston and in the Attic ,” Caleb Knapp,
Univ. of Washington
2. “The Historicity of Phillis Wheatley in Jeffersonian American Slavery,” Patrick
Sylvain, Brown Univ./Brandeis Univ.
3. “African American Chronotopes: Responses to Utopian Tropes of ‘Safe Harbor’,”
Letitia I. Guran, North Carolina A&T State Univ.
4. “Domestic Unrest: Immigrant Families and the Housing Crisis in Jung Yun’s
Shelter,” Keith Wilhite, Siena Coll.
Fri., April 28, 2017
SESSION IV 10:15 am - 11:45 AM
4A Places to Experiment on the Ground and in the Text (Room A)
Chair:
1. “American Alternatives: Experimental Literatures of the Spanish-Language Press,”
Kelley Kreitz, Pace Univ.
2. “A Forgotten Slave Speaks: Laila Lalami’s The Moor’s Account as Anti-Travel
Narrative,” Andrea Modarres, Univ. of Washington-Tacoma
3. “Nostalgia, Form, and Refuge in Ghazals of Agha Shahid Ali,” Matthew Nelson,
Univ. of Illinois-Urbana Champaign
4. “To bomb the hiding student out of his corner: Bambara and the Pedagogy of
Dislocation,” Danica Savonick, CUNY-Graduate Center
4B The Urban Harbor: A Roundtable (Room A)
Chair:
1. “Voyage through Death to Death: Urban Suffocation & Inherited Tragedy in Betts’
Bastards of the Reagan Era,” Shanon S. Murray, Univ. of North Carolina-Charlotte
2.“‘In New York You Can be a New Man’: Place in Post 9/11 Pakistani-American
Novels,” Samina Najmi, California State Univ.-Fresno
3. “Harbored in Brewster Place: Lives of an Urban Backwater,” Christine R. Payson,
Tufts Univ.
4. “The City as Safe Harbor in Howard Street,” Alexandra Smith, Univ. of Washington
5.“Making LA Great Again: Paul Beatty’s Toxic Nostalgia in The Sellout,” Richard C.
Taylor, East Carolina Univ.
4C Philosophies and Strategies of Refuge (Room A)
Chair:
1. “Villain or Victim? Confucianism & Characterization in Early Chinatown Literature,”
Brian Chen, Westfield State Univ.
2. “Learning to Swim: Colorblindness as False Harbor in Whitehead,” Emily
Donaldson Field, Bridgewater State Univ.
3. “(Port)Nguyen’s Complaint: Posture/Impostoring in Multi-Ethnic American
Literature,” Joe Kraus, Univ. of Scranton
4. “Mat Johnson’s Loving Day and the Ghosts of Strategic Essentialism,” Aisha
Damali Lockridge, St. Joseph’s Univ.
5. “Counterfeit Sanctuaries: The Impossible Quest for Freedom in Colson Whitehead’s
The Underground Railroad,” Maria Rice Bellamy, CUNY-Coll. of Staten Island
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Fri., April 28, 2017
Favorite Haunts: Safe is the Place (Room A)
4D Chair:
1.“(H)arborial Justice: The Forest as Harbor for Native American Spirits,” Sladja
Blazan, Würzburg Univ.
2. “Writing from the margins of marginality: Josefina Baez & Dominican American
Literature,” Sobeira Latorre, Southern Connecticut State Univ.
3. “Trinidad: Safe & Unsafe Harbor in the Works of Elizabeth Nunez,” Mary Jo
McCloskey, Manhattanville Coll.
4. “Harboring Transatlantic Histories, Identities, and Dreams in Cliff’s Abeng & No
Telephone,” Alison Van Nyhuis, Fayetteville State Univ.
4E Intersections of Gender, Race, and Trauma (Room A)
Chair:
1. “Narrative Strategies in Mental Illness Memoirs by Contemporary US Women Writers
of Color,” Jane Hseu, Dominican Univ.
2. “The Family as Harbor for Madness,” Lauren Kuryloski, Northeastern Univ.
3. “Post Tiananmen Trauma in Yiyun Li’s Kinder Than Solitude,” Holly E. Martin,
Appalachian State Univ.
4. “The Hold: Kindred & the Afterlife of Slavery,” Katherine Thorsteinson, Cornell Univ.
5. “Erotic Submission/Masochism & Black Female Subjectivity in Jones’s Corregidora,”
Anna Ziering, Univ. of Connecticut
4F Making and Unmaking Safe Harbors: Cross-Racial Community, Fugitivity, and the
(Non)Performance of (Un)Freedom (Room A)
Chair: Sunny Yang, Louisiana State Univ.
1. “Cross-Racial Ventriloquism in Anti-Racist Print Culture,” Marina Bilbija, Williams Coll.
2. “The Fugitive’s Repertoire: Outrunning the Law From Within,” Lauren Heintz, Tulane
Univ.
4G
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3. “On the Self-Refusal of Safe Harbor: Slavery, ‘Social Death,’ and the Curious Case of
‘the slave woman, Betty,’” Garry Bertholf, Clemson Univ.
4. “Reading the Veil of Black in Douglass & Jefferson: Affect, Legibility, & National
Belonging,” Gabrielle Everett, Rutgers Univ.
Membership Luncheon w. Keynote Address by Iyko Day
12:00 - 2:00 pm
Fri., April 28, 2017
SESSION V 2:15 - 3:45 pm
5A Graduate Student Professionalization Panel (Room A)
Chair: Amy Gore, Univ. of New Mexico
5B Safe Harbors, Speculative Histories: Fiction & Fabulation in Times of Turmoil (Room A)
Chair: Timothy K. August, Stony Brook Univ.
1. “Internal Freedom: The Negro Spiritual in the Black Imagination,” Shayne McGregor,
Yale Univ.
2. “Paper Families, Paper Capital: Kinship as Speculative Fiction,” Yuhe Faye Wang,
Yale Univ.
3. “Unincorporated Island Harbors: US Militarism, Settler Colonialism, & Asian American
Subjectivity in Guam,” Evyn Le Espiritu, Univ. of California-Berkeley
5C Harbor For Me: Maintaining Strength in Academe (Room A)
Women of Color Caucus (WOCC)
5D Precarious Universes: Harboring Multi-Ethnic Comic Spaces (Room A)
Chair: Theresa N. Rojas, Modesto College
1. “Johnny Legs and the Biblical Piñata of Locusts: John Leguizamo’s Ghetto Klown as Graphic Pathography,” Theresa N. Rojas, Modesto Coll.
2. “Super Smart Girls: Riri Williams and Lunella Lafayette, and the Intersection of Race
and Gender,” Mary Henderson, Morgan State Univ.
3. “(Vibe)ing Multiverse Heridas: Science-Fictional Re-Imaginations of Border Crossing
Spaces & Bodies in The Flash,” Samuel Saldivar III, Michigan State Univ.
5E Out of Harbor: Asian American Homelessness & Transpacific Identity (Room A)
Chair: Min Song, Boston College
1. “Becoming American: The Formation of a Biracial, Postcolonial, Immigrant Narrator
in American Son,” Nancy Carranza, Univ. of California-Riverside
2. “Catalog Brides and Origami Animals: Politics of Identity in Ken Liu’s The Paper
Menagerie,” Heejoo Park, Univ. of California-Riverside
3.“Transnational ‘Uncreated’ Memory and the Failure of Rehumanization in Jane Jeong
Trenka’s Fugitive Visions,” Sang-Keun Yoo, Univ. of California-Riverside
4. ““I try to explain love in shillings”: Harboring Love and Remittances in Shailja Patel’s
Migritude,”Gnei Soraya Zarook, Univ. of California-Riverside
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Fri., April 28, 2017
5F Ports of Call in CircumCaribbean Narratives and Cultures (Room A)
Chair: Solimar Otero, Louisiana State Univ.
1. “In the Water with Inle: Sexuality, Performance, and Spirituality,” Solimar Otero,
Louisiana State Univ.
2. “Frank Yerby and the CircumCaribbean Novel,” John Wharton Lowe, Univ. of
Georgia
3. “Caryl Phillips’s Circum-Caribbean,” Jeff Karem, Cleveland State Univ.
5G “What Does ‘Multi-Ethnic Literature’ Mean in the Early 21st Century?”: A Roundtable
(Room A)
Chair: Joe Kraus, University of Scranton
SESSION VI 4:00 - 5:30 pm
6A Safety, Danger, and Coming of Age (Room A)
Chair: Christi Cook, Southwestern Oklahoma State Univ.
1. “Bite Me: The Allure of Vampires and Dark Magic in Chicana Young Adult Literature,”
Christi Cook, Southwestern Oklahoma State Univ.
2. “Harboring Youth from Violence and the Law in Erdrich’s The Round House,” Heyang
Julie Kae, Metropolitan State Univ.
3. “US Mexico Border in Picture Storybooks,” Maya Socolovsky, Univ. of North CarolinaCharlotte
6B Institutional Harbors & Institutional Drift: Describing Readings of Multi-Ethnic Literature
(Room A)
Chair: Dena Fehrenbacher, Harvard Univ.
1. “Anthologizing Multi-Ethnic Fictions,” Janet Zong, Harvard Univ.
2. “Reading the Black Site: Making Sense of Censorship and Fact-Checking in the post9/11 Era,” Chad Hegelmeyer, New York Univ.
3. “Reading Agency: High Theory as Harbor,” Dena Fehrenbacher, Harvard Univ.
6C Harboring Gender, History, and Cultural Production in the Southwest
Borderlands (Room A)
Chair: Vanessa Fonseca, Arizona State Univ.-Polytechnic
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1. “Harboring Identity & Disrupting History in Emma Pérez’s Forgetting the Alamo, or,
Blood Memory,” Vanessa Fonseca, Arizona State Univ.-Polytechnic
2. “Sensational Narrative, Concealed Gender Codes: ‘Civility’ and Violence in the Early
Narratives of Mexican American Women Josefa Loazia and Juana Briones,” Bernadine
Hernández, Univ. of New Mexico
Fri., April 28, 2017
3. “The Enchanted Harbor: The Truth of False Cultural Propaganda and the Falsity of
New Mexico True,” Spencer R. Herrera, New Mexico State Univ.
6D Harboring Paradox: Race, Identity, Trauma, & Healing in Works by Daniel Black, Audre
Lorde, & Frank Walker (Room A)
Chair: Kristine Yohe, Northern Kentucky Univ.
1.“A Harbor of Humanity: Trauma, Healing, and Reconciliation in Frank X Walker’s
Turn Me Loose,” Kristine Yohe, Northern Kentucky Univ.
2. “Trauma Harbors and Aquatic Transformation in Daniel Black’s Perfect Peace,” Marsha
Jenkins, Cincinnati State Univ.
3. “Harboring Psychic Reality, Harboring Revolution: Audre Lorde’s Cancer Journals,”
Cheli Reutter, Univ. of Cincinnati
6E Intimacy, Relationality, and Neighborliness (Room A)
Chair:
1. “Harbors of Decolonial Love: Narrative, Community, and Intimacy in Decolonial
Action,” Erica Melko, Univ. of Illinois-Urbana Champaign
2. “Blood enemies but still kin: Violence & Relationality in Emma Perez’s Forgetting the
Alamo,” Kristina Mitchell, Univ. of Pennsylvania
3. “Intimacy and/as Refuge: Reading Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing in the Era of Mass
Incarceration,” Marquita Smith, William Paterson Univ.
4. “Along El Camino: Journey & Reconciliation in the Fiction of Oscar Hijuelos,” Barbara
Roche Rico, Loyola Marymount Univ.
5. “Some of Us / Others of Us: Radical Inclusivity and the Japanese Internment, Jessica
Brown, Tufts Univ.
6F “The bird and the fish can fall in Love, but where will they build their nest?”: Un/safe
Harbors in Richard Powers’ The Time of Our Singing (Room A)
Chair: Rocio David, Univ. of Navarra
1. Samir Dayal, Bentley Univ.
2. Dorothea Fischer-Hornung, Heidelberg Univ.
3. Sue-Im Lee, Temple Univ.
4. John Picker, MIT
“Club Americano” Exhibition at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts 6:00 pm
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Sat., April 29, 2017
SESSION VII 8:30 - 10:00 am
7A Misfits and Assimilation Failures in the Immigration Narrative: A Roundtable (Room A)
Chair:
1. “Henryk Sienkiewicz’s US-Immigrants in Za Chlebem (After Bread): Sans-Nationalism,
Anti-Exceptionalism, and the Failed Immigrant Novel,” Diana Filar, Brandeis Univ.
2. “Precarity and the Neo-Slave Narrative: Community as Failed Safe Harbor in
Morrison’s Beloved and Jones’s The Known World,” Megan Finch, Brandeis Univ.
3. “Mapping Inhospitable Harbors in Junot Diaz’s Drown,” Heather Ostman,
SUNY-Westchester Community Coll.
4. “Safe Harbor(s) Denied: Coleson Whitehead’s Apex Hides the Hurt,” Eva Tettenborn,
Pennsylvania State Univ.- Worthington Scranton
5. “Sitting A-Fowl: An Analysis of Donald Duk as a Bildungsroman,” Samantha Tseng,
California State Polytechnic Univ.
7B Race as Harbor, Faux Harbor, or Anti-Harbor : A Roundtable (Room A)
Chair: Lekha Roy, Indian Institute of Technology
1.“The Creation of Whiteness in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy,” Linda Krumholz, Denison
Univ.
2. “A Narrative of Resilience: The Colored Body as its Own Sanctuary in White America,”
Sharmila Mukherjee, CUNY-Bronx Comm. Coll.
3. “Harboring White Students in the (Coming) Age of Trump: Claudia Rankine’s Citizen,”
Andrea Opitz, Stonehill Coll.
4. “Harboring the Black Body: Racialized Identities in Toni Morrison’s God Help the
Child,” Lekha Roy, Indian Institute of Technology
5. “A Lonely Place: Power, Privilege, and Precarious Black Babies, “Gale Greenlee, Univ.
of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
6. “Sheltering and Unsheltering Spaces in Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig, Harriet Jacobs’s
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing,” Reshmi Hebbar,
Oglethorpe Univ.
7C The Ambience of Poems (Room A)
Chair:
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1. “A Body in the World Drowns In It: Women’s Multiethnic Poetic Representations of
Katrina,” Allison Cummings, Southern New Hampshire Univ.
Sat., April 29, 2017
7D 2. “Recovering Gwendolyn Brooks’s Early Defender Poems, 1934-38,” Mary I. Unger,
Ripon Coll.
3. “What Looks Like a Grave: Poetic Resistance in Cheryl Savageau’s Mother/Land,”
Theresa Warburton, SUNY-University at Buffalo
4. “Unsafe in Time: James Whitfield’s ‘The Vision,’ Apocalypse, and the Precariousness
of the Black Archive,” Magdalena Zapędowska, Univ. of Massachusetts-Amherst
5.“Harboring a Fugitive (History) in Michael Harper’s Poetry,” Meta L. Schettler, California
State Univ.-Fresno
7E A Chorus of Hiding Places in Music and Narration (Room A)
Chair: Barbara McCaskill, Univ. of Georgia
1. “The Sonic Harbor: Musical Performance as a Sanctuary in 20th-Century Women’s
Writing,” Meghan Burns, Univ. of Connecticut
2. “Modes of Sanctuary in Jazz,” Trivius Caldwell, West Point
3. “Musical Harboring in Louise Erdrich’s The Painted Drum,” Genevieve Hay, Tufts Univ.
4. “Multiple Audiences; Multiple Tasks: The Possibilities and Precarity of Safe Harbor in
Danticat’s The Dew Breaker, Ellen Goldner, CUNY-Coll. of Staten Island
7F The Literature, Biology, and Ethics of Harboring Bodies (Room A)
Chair:
1. “Genome Survivance in Vizenor’s The Heirs of Columbus,” Lesley Larkin, North
Michigan Univ.
2.“The Poetics of Politics in Koolaids: The Art of War,” Mazen Naous, Univ. of
Massachusetts-Amherst
3.“The Female Body Harboring Crimes of the Meat Industry,” Wenying Xu, Jacksonville
Univ.
4.“Resisting Body Norms: Survivance Strategies in Contemporary Arab American
Women’s Novels,” Nancy El Gendy, Univ. of Nevada at Reno
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Sat., April 29, 2017
SESSION VIII 10:15 - 11:45 am
8A Classroom as Harbor (Room A)
Chair: Nadine Knight, Holy Cross Coll.
1. “Safe Harbor Discussions: Facilitating Student Dialogue,” Heather Lusty and Julia Lee,
Univ. of Nevada-Las Vegas
2. “Constructing Safe Harbor in Utah,” David Roh, Univ. of Utah
3. “The Social Work of the Humanities: Mobilizing Literary Critical Practice for AntiOppression Advocacy,” Laura Murphy, Loyola Univ.-New Orleans
4. “Who Needs Race Talk, Anyway?: Teaching African American Literature to Students of
Color in Anxious Times,” Agnieszka Tuszynska, Queensborough-CUNY
8B Uncovering Harbored Secrets: Approaches to Teaching Multiethnic Trauma Literature
(Room A)
Chair: John N. Duvall, Purdue Univ.
1.“‘The gut-kick of history’: Reading Louise Erdrich’s The Round House as Detective
Fiction,” Stella Setka, West LA Coll.
2. “‘Nothing in the world could justify such violence”: Narrative Reistance to Imperial
Secrets in Rosario Ferré’s A House on the Lagoon,” Danelle Dyckhoff, Kennesaw State
Univ.
3. “Reading the Fuku as Structural Violence in the Classroom: The Brief Wondrous Life of
Oscar Wao, Silence and Pedagogy,” Anastasia Lin, Univ. of North Georgia
8C Confronting the World: Religion and Activism in Wright, Far, Garcia, and American Islam
(Room A)
Chair: Paul Corrigan, Southeastern Univ.
1. “Richard Wright’s Messianic Paradigm of Revolutionary Poetics in “Blueprint for Negro
Writing” and The Man Who Lived Underground,” Andrew Santana Kaplan, Univ. of
Illinois-Urbnana Champaign
2. “Multiple Nations under Allah: Conversion and Adaptation,” Shirin Nadira, New York
Univ.
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3. “Mission Churches in Sui Sin Far: Immigrant Tactics and Strategies,” Stephen Pearson,
Univ. of North Georgia-Gainesville
4. “The Religion of Artistry: US Ethnic Women Dream of Cuba in Cristina Garcia’s
Dreaming in Cuban,” Su Senapati, Univ. of South Florida-Sarsota Manatee
Sat., April 29, 2017
8D Is Home Really Where the Heart Is? Understanding Intersections of Public and Private
Violences Through Contemporary Multi-Ethnic American Literature (Room A)
Chair: Samina Ali, Univ. of Miami
1. “America has beaten you (…) and now you think hitting me will make it better”:
Domestic Violence in the Immigrant Narrative,” Marta Gierczyk, Univ. of Miami
2. “Redefining Structural Violence through Slavery, Marriage, & Motherhood in Rosalie T.
Turners’ Freedom Bound,” Suchismita Dutta, Univ. of Miami
3. “No Longer the Family’s Little Princess: New Considerations of Distorted Kinship
Intimacies through Bildungsroman Narratives of Contemporary Muslim Girls,” Samina
Ali, Univ. of Miami
8E Irish American Identity: Negotiating Assimilation in American Popular Culture (Room A)
Chair: James Byrne, Wheaton Coll.
1. “Harboring Savagery: American Manhood & the Cultural Representation of Irishness
in Late 19th-Century American Literature,” James Byrne, Wheaton Coll.
2. “Post-World War II Irish-American Novelists and the Anxiety of Assimilation,” Beth
O’Leary Community Coll. of Rhode Island
3. “Imagined Refuges in the Sunday Funnies: Irish America in the Early Comic Strips,”
Christopher Dowd, Univ. of New Haven
8F Refugee/Immigrant/Diaspora: Asian American Entanglement (Room A)
Chair: Betsy Huang, Clark Univ.
1.“The Sympathizer: Illicit Feeling in American Literature ,” Sarah Sillin, Gettysburg Coll.
2.“Not One, Not Two: Eco Diaspora in the Novels of Ruth Ozeki,” Emily Raymundo,
Univ. of Southern California-Dornsife
3. “Out to Sea in the Asian Diasporic ‘90s: Fresh Off the Boat and The Family Law,”
Douglas S. Ishii, Northwestern Univ.
Ayana Mathis Keynote 12:00 - 1:30 pm
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Sat., April 29, 2017
SESSION IX 1:45 - 3:15 pm
9A Waterways of Reading (Room A)
Chair:
1. “Finding Safe “Harbor”: US Fugitive Slaves, Sea Travel, & Performative Resistance,”
Martha Cutter, Univ. of Connecticut
2. “West African Ports and the Search for Safe Harbor in Hughes’s The Big Sea,”
Savannah Hall, Indiana Univ.
3. “Tired of Being in the Harbors of Diversity: Gloria Anzaldua, Counter-Images, and the
Seas of Institutional Whiteness,” Christopher Keller, Western Kentucky Univ.
9B The Article Submission, Review, and Publication Process at MELUS (Room A)
Chair: Gary Totten, Univ. of Nevada-Las Vegas
9C Otherworldly Harbors: A Roundtable (Room A)
Chair:
1. “Unincorporated Subjects & (Cyber)Space: Down These Mean Streets & El Puerto
Rican Embassy,” Margarita Castromán, State Univ. of New Jersey-Rutgers
2. “The Body as a Site for Harboring the Other-Worldly in Lyn Di Iorio’s Outside the
Bones,” Alina Ciobataru, CUNY-Graduate Center
3. “Bodies Swimming in the Harbor of Time-Space: Tracy K. Smith’s Life on Mars,”
Trenton Hickman, Brigham Young Univ.
4. “Making the Real Magical: Afro-Pessimism & Afro-futurism in Dialogue,” Joseph Earl
Thomas, Saint Joseph’s University
5. “Futurity in Dawn and Paradise,” Brianna Thompson, Cornell Univ.
9D Fake IDs: Hiding in Plain Sight (Room A)
Chair: Lucas Dietrich, Lesley Univ.
1. “Transcending Physical & Liminal Borders while Passing in Chesnutt and Hopkins,”
Reagan Bennett, Valdosta State Univ.
2. “Harboring Dissent: Anonymity & the Publication of Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton,”
Lucas Dietrich, Lesley Univ.
3. “Passing & Domestic Defiance in Gertrude Dorsey Browne’s Colored American
Magazine Stories,” Marie Drews, Luther Coll.
4. “A Comedy of Social Manners Yet Who Would Have Thought It?,” Rosa Martinez,
Sacremento State
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Sat., April 29, 2017
5. “Harboring Binaries: Transitive Identities in Eliza Allen’s The Female Volunteer,”
Asmaa Alshehri, Indiana Univ. of Pennsylvania
6. “Narrating a Clandestine Existence: Ramón ‘Tianquis’ Pérez’s Diary of an
Undocumented Immigrant,” Donna Kabalen de Bichara, Tecnológico de Monterrey,
Campus Monterrey
9E The Hard Sell: Commerce and Ethnic American Writing (Room A)
Chair: Min Hyoung Song, Boston Coll.
1. “Spies Like Us: The Sympathizer as a Work of Espionage,” Timothy K. August,
StonyBrook Univ.
2. “Chick Lit Goes to Wall Street: The Politics & Poetics of Cross-Cultural Collaboration
in Min Jin Lee’s Free Food for Millionaires,” Rei Magosaki, Chapman Univ.
3. “Insurrection in Babylon: Black Radicalism and the Secret Life of Eldridge Cleaver,”
Justin Gifford, Univ. of Nevada-Reno
9F Trauma & Native American Literature (Room A)
Chair:
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1. “Fantasy, Loss, & Melancholia in Hausman’s Riding the Trail of Tears,” Matthew
Dischinger, Georgia Institute of Technology
2. “Sexual Assault, Land Theft, & Environmental Destruction in The Round House,”
Jessica Mitzner, Tufts Univ.
3. “No Quarter: Cultural Identity & Historical Trauma in False Native American Memoirs,”
Chris Muniz, Univ. of Southern California
4. “Identity, Trauma, and Storytelling,” Mia Heavener, novelist
Sat., April 29, 2017
SESSION X 3:30 - 5:00 pm
10A Over There: Harboring Abroad, from a Distance (Room A)
Chair:
1. “Globalization and the Quest for a Safe Harbor: Place as Space in a New Geography
of European-American Imaginaries,” Josephine Gattuso Hendin, New York Univ.
2. “Turning Maroon: Translating Abolitionist Fiction in the Provincial Freeman,” Adam C.
Lewis, Boston Coll.
3. “The Harlem Renaissance Abroad: African-American Sanctuary & Resistance in
Spanish Civil War,” Karen Wooley Martin, Union Univ.
4. “Domesticity Abroad: Gender, Utopia, and Black Internationalist Sentiment in Pauline
Hopkins’s Of One Blood,” Samantha Simon, Univ. of Washington
5. “Facing the Other, Facing the Self: Ethnographic Journeys in Wong’s A Prayer for
Burma,” Chingyen Mayer, Siena Coll.
10B Jewish Literature and the American West (Room A)
Chair: Rachel Rubinstein, Hampshire College
1. “‘To prove the correctness and authenticity of my statements’: Solomon Nunes
Carvalho’s revision of the Western travel narrative,” Michael Hoberman, Fitchburg State
Univ.
2. “‘Oh, it was good to be a Madigan!’: Miriam Michelson’s Multi-Ethnic West and the
Irish-Jewish Unconscious,” Lori Harrison-Kahan, Boston Coll.
3. “Yiddish Writers in Los Angeles and the Jewish Fantasy Past,” Caroline Luce, Univ. of
California-LA
10C Woman Harborer (Room A)
Chair:
1.“Creating Harbors of Willed Affiliation & Collaborative Articulation,” Alan Robert
Ginsberg, Columbia Univ.
2. “Women Without Fear: Sisterhood, Shelter, and Support in Incidents in the Life of a
Slave Girl,” Sharon Lynette Jones, Wright State Univ.
3. “The Boundaries of Love: Collaboration & Resistance in Perkins-Valdez’s Wench,” N.A.
Pierce, Univ. of North Carolina-Greensboro
4. “‘I will never abandon you:’ Female Solidarity in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar
Named Desire and Sandra Cisneros’ Woman Hollering Creek,” Ariel Santos, Univ. of
Nevada-Las Vegas
5. “The Borderland as a Safe Place: Reclamation of the Feminine in Anzaldua’s
Borderlands,” Rasina Rayeeda Tanvir, Washington State Univ.
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Sat., April 29, 2017
6. “Harboring Seeds of Change: Motherhood in Woman Warrior, The Joy Luck Club, and
My Year of Meats,” Tuangtip Klinbubpa Neff, Univ. of Pittsburgh-Johnstown
10D The Role of the State in the Politics of Harboring (Room A)
Chair:
1. “Abolition and the Obscure Poetics of Dissent,” Amy B. Huang, Brown Univ.
2. “Dessa Rose in the Age of Reagan: Memory, Harboring Resistance, & Neo-Slave
Narrative,” Andrew Merrill, Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
3. “Ambivalent States: NGOs and the Future of Queer Politics,” Travis Sands
Metropolitan State Univ.
4. “Black Judas, Pensions, and the Federal Purse,” Nathaniel Windon, Pennsylvania
State Univ.
5. “MELUS as Harbor in the Age of Trumpism?,” Sally Ann Ferguson, Univ. of North
Carolina-Greensboro
Reading by Samuel Delany 6:00 - 7:30 pm
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Sun., April 30, 2017
SESSION XI 8:30 - 10:00 am
11A MELUS Executive Board Meeting (Room A)
11B Genre or Form as Safe Harbor (Room A)
Chair: Sue Shon, Univ. of Washington
1. “The Unspeakable ‘It’: Letters and Envelopes, Secrets and Lies in Nella Larsen’s
Passing,” Elif S. Armbruster, Suffolk Univ.
2. “Robin Coste Lewis and the Risks of Harboring the Black Venus,” Jamie Crosswhite,
Univ. of Texas-San Antonio
3. “Our Faith, Our Country, Our People: Nicholas Said & the Power of Cultural Capital,”
Jessie L. Dunbar, Univ. of Alabama-Birmingham
4. “Runaway Slave Portraiture and the Emergence of Racial Blackness,” Sue Shon, Univ.
of Washington
5. “Best-Selling Bodies: Marketing and Reception in Early Indigenous Literary Production,”
Amy Gore, Univ. of New Mexico
11C Queering the Family: A Roundtable (Room A)
Chair:
1. “Tejana Westerns: How Forgetting the Alamo or Blood Memory Negotiates, Resists,
and Presents Texas History in Frontier Fiction,” Nicole Frisbey, Texas A&M Univ.- San
Antonio
2. “The Uncertain Harbor of Home: Queering Families in Manuel Munoz’s Bring Brang
Brung,” William Orchard, CUNY-Queens Coll.
3. “A Safe Harbor between the Self & Other: Community in Morrison’s Sula,” Matthew
Scully, Tufts Univ.
4. “Out of the Shadows: Outing and the Institutionalized Erasure of Queer Migrant
Narratives in Jaime Cortez’s Sexile,” José A. de la Garza Valenzuela, Univ. of IllinoisUrbana Champaign
5. “‘They are hunting my daughters’: La Llorona’s Maternal Protection and Resistance in
Marisela Treviño Orta’s Braided Sorrow,”Maria Duran, Univ. of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
11D Finance, The Working, Class (Room A)
Chair:
1. “Do I Contradict Myself? Multitudinous Salvation in Ben Lerner’s 10:04,” Ruby
Perlmutter, Univ. of Connecticut
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Sun., April 30, 2017
2. “From White-Collar Work to the Creative Economy in Ellison’s Invisible Man,” Kevin
Pickard, Southern Methodist Univ.
3. “Rebellion of an Arrogant Beggar,” Grace Russell, Tufts Univ.
4. “The Value of Indocumentada’s Work in Tobar’s The Barbarian Nurseries,” Matthew
Schratz, Brandeis Univ.
5. “‘Credit is Capital’: Market Forces, Harboring Education, and Booker T. Washington’s Up
From Slavery,” Miguel Rivera, Tufts Univ.
11E Stories Harbored in the Dust: Early 20th-century Immigrant Stories Revisited through
Contemporary Archival Approaches (Room A)
Chair: Thomas Conners, Univ. of Pennsylvania
1. “Which Side are You On: Boston’s Labor Radicals in Rick Geary’s The Lives of Sacco
and Vanzetti,” Michele Fazio, Univ. of North Carolina-Pembroke
2. “Dead/Undead, Fiction/Nonfiction: Revisiting Our Nativist History through Aleksandar
Hemon’s The Lazarus Project,” Tracy Floreani, Oklahoma City Univ.
3. “‘I Tell Heem Nothing!’: New Immigrant Education, Naturalization, and the
Americanization Project,” Cristina Stanciu, Virginia Commonwealth Univ.
SESSION XII 10:15 - 11:45 am
12A Incarcerations (Room A)
Chair:
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1. “‘Pain or Rage’: Physical Confinement and Restricted Imagination in Cisneros’s Woman
Hollering Creek,” Taylor Bowman, Auburn Univ.
2. “Harbor or Hell? Japanese American Incarceration Writing,” Heather Hathaway,
Marquette Univ.
3. “Harbor as Confinement: Eileen Chang’s The Golden Cangue,” Wenxin Li, Suffolk
Community Coll.
4. “Incarceration v. Financialization: Margaret Atwood and John Edgar Wideman’s
Representations of Prison Culture,” Jennifer L. Lieberman, Univ. of North Florida
5. “Harboring Trauma: Reading Gothic Eruptions in the Life & Adventures of a Haunted
Convict,” Arline Wilson, Univ. of Deleware
Sun., April 30, 2017
12B Bodies, Boundaries, Borders: Consenting and Trespassing (Room A)
Chair: Thomas Conners, Univ. of Pennsylvania
1. “Affect in Latino Bodies & Bodies of Text,” Thomas Conners, Univ. of Pennsylvania
2. “Harboring Affect in the Body: Sexual Violence and Resistance in Edwidge Danticat’s
Breath, Eyes, Memory,” Luis Marin, Univ. of Arkansas
3. “Playing it Unsafe: Body Politics and Issues of Consent in Octavia Butler’s Dawn and
Kindred,” Meghan M. Hurley, Univ. of Pennsylvania
4. “Theorizing Sexual Sovereignty: Violent Body-Border Crossings in Erdrich’s The Round
House,” Kaylee Mootz, Univ. of Connecticut
5. “The Future is Now: Sleep Dealer and Virtual Connection in a Post-Factual Era,” Susan
Thananopavarn, Duke Univ.
12C Music, Memory, and Identity in the Fiction of Jeffrey Renard Allen and John Keene (Room A)
Chair: Thomas Conners, Univ. of Pennsylvania
1.“Memory and Music in the Fictions of Jeffrey Allen and John Keene,” Keith Byerman,
Indiana State Univ.
2. “Selections from Song of the Shank,” Jeffrey Renard Allen, Univ. of Virginia
3. “Selections from Counternarratives,” John Keene, Rutgers Univ.
12D Safety, Secrets, and Identity Shifts in the Literature of Early African Americans (Room A)
Chair:
1. “Conversion, Transformation, or Just Playing Indian?: John Marrant’s 1789 Narrative,”
Keely Byars-Nichols, Univ. of Mount Olive
2. “The Substance of Silence: Harboring Secrets and Performing Race in Crafts’ Running
a Thousand Miles for Freedom and William Wells Brown’s The Escape,” Julia S. Charles,
Auburn Univ.
3. “‘In His Own Hands’: Literacy as Protection in the Essays of Rev. Peter Thomas
Stanford,” Sidonia Serafini & Barbara McCaskill, Univ.of Georgia
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