Speakers

The University of North Carolina Charlotte

Paper

Technical Communication, George Orwell, and Our Contemporary Surveillance State

Speaker

Aaron Toscano

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Associate Professor

Speaker Bio

Aaron Toscano is an Associate Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, specializing in Rhetoric, Technical Communication, Gender Studies, Science Fiction, and Cultural Studies. His monograph Video Games and American Culture: How Ideology Influences Virtual Worlds (Lexington Books, 2020) examines video games as products of American culture. His first monograph Marconi’s Wireless and the Rhetoric of a New Technology (Springer, 2012) combines technical communication and science and technology studies (STS) to explain how technology is a product of a culture's time period.

Session

Paper: From the Fringes to the Mainstream: Conspiracy Theories and American Cultural Dis-ease

Western Carolina University

Bio

Aimee Kling is a writer, editor, and content developer at Kimmel & Associates staffing and recruiting firm in Asheville, NC and is currently an MA student with a concentration in creative writing at Western Carolina University.

Paper

Widow’s Applications for Pension, Martha Misemer, 1865-67

In this presentation, I will discuss the results of my transcription of and research on several documents related to Martha Misemer’s application for pension after her husband’s death in the Civil War: a one-page Widow’s Claim for Pension, dated January 27, 1866; an undated Claim for Widow’s Pension, With Minor Children; a two-page excerpt, dated March 14, 1867, from a document verifying the information provided in the Claim for Widow’s Pension, With Minor Children; and a cover sheet and casualty sheet concerning the death of Henry M. Misemer, dated May or June of 1865.

These documents play an important and distinct role in the larger McFee-Misemer Collection, elucidating the aftermath of the Sultana Disaster for one woman and her children, whom we have to come to know through the study of the personal letters in the collection. At the same time, the manuscript offers a view of life for women in the 1860s, providing detailed information about the realities of Martha’s life as a widow and newly single mother, and raising key questions about her life and the lives of women like her. It also provides a concise history of Henry Misemer’s life and career in the United States Army.

Scholars who are interested in feminist history, the impacts of war on civilians, the evolution of legal protections for women and children, the genealogical history of the Misemer family, those affected by the Sultana Disaster, or the Civil War more generally will find a wealth of information within these pages to aid them in conducting further research on those subjects.

Western Carolina University

Bio

Aimee Kling is a writer, editor, and content developer at Kimmel & Associates staffing and recruiting firm in Asheville, NC and is currently an MA student with a concentration in creative writing at Western Carolina University.

Paper

Widow’s Applications for Pension, Martha Misemer, 1865-67

In this presentation, I will discuss the results of my transcription of and research on several documents related to Martha Misemer’s application for pension after her husband’s death in the Civil War: a one-page Widow’s Claim for Pension, dated January 27, 1866; an undated Claim for Widow’s Pension, With Minor Children; a two-page excerpt, dated March 14, 1867, from a document verifying the information provided in the Claim for Widow’s Pension, With Minor Children; and a cover sheet and casualty sheet concerning the death of Henry M. Misemer, dated May or June of 1865.

These documents play an important and distinct role in the larger McFee-Misemer Collection, elucidating the aftermath of the Sultana Disaster for one woman and her children, whom we have to come to know through the study of the personal letters in the collection. At the same time, the manuscript offers a view of life for women in the 1860s, providing detailed information about the realities of Martha’s life as a widow and newly single mother, and raising key questions about her life and the lives of women like her. It also provides a concise history of Henry Misemer’s life and career in the United States Army.

Scholars who are interested in feminist history, the impacts of war on civilians, the evolution of legal protections for women and children, the genealogical history of the Misemer family, those affected by the Sultana Disaster, or the Civil War more generally will find a wealth of information within these pages to aid them in conducting further research on those subjects.

Speaker

Aimee Kling

Western Carolina University

Graduate Student

Speaker Bio

Aimee Kling is a first-year graduate student at Western Carolina University, studying creative writing. She has a bachelor's degree in English, Italian, and cinema studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Aimee is a volunteer ESOL tutor for adult learners, a passionate learner of foreign languages, and an administrative and content development professional for an executive search firm. She lives in the Asheville, NC area with her dog and three cats.

Session

Paper: Only Madness Reveals Meaning: A Creative Re-Reading of “The Yellow Wall-Paper”

Speaker

Alison Walsh

University of Florida

PhD Student

Speaker Bio

Alison Walsh is currently pursuing a PhD in English with a graduate certificate in Women's Studies at the University of Florida. Her research interests are film and prestige television, critical theory, and contemporary American culture. She is also a Teaching Assistant and Writing Coach for UF’s University Writing Program. Originally from North Carolina, she holds a BA in English & creative writing from Appalachian State University, as well as a Master of Library & Information Studies from UNC Greensboro. Before she was a PhD student, she had a career in university administration at UNC Charlotte.

Session

Paper: Archive, Atlas, Histoire: Reading Godard, Warburg, and Langlois through Archival Theory

The Citadel

Bio

Amy Emm is a professor of German at The Citadel in Charleston, NC. She has published widely on 18th and 19th century German literature

Paper

No title: roundtable discussion

My approach to teaching literature in German today has evolved as a kind of compromise between my own love of literature and the average student’s disinterest. Like many colleagues, I proceed from the experience that motivating active and critical engagement is possible when associated with tasks that are either creative and “fun”, or more perceptibly skill-building than the pursuit of a deeper textual understanding. Like many of us, I have learned to shift the deeper understanding from a worthy goal in itself to a more instrumental process that results in more practical rewards. In my Fateful Weapons in German Drama course, students engage with Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell and some lesser-known one-act plays via a series of formal debates. In my presentation, I propose to outline how the preparation and staging of debates can be structured towards producing a debate summary that performs the same argumentative work as a traditional analytical essay. While most students are doing the work in the name of competitive spirit or of developing a professional argumentative discourse, they often generate the kind of insights into the literary work that I find thrilling.

The Citadel

Bio

Amy Emm is a professor of German at The Citadel in Charleston, NC. She has published widely on 18th and 19th century German literature

Paper

No title: roundtable discussion

My approach to teaching literature in German today has evolved as a kind of compromise between my own love of literature and the average student’s disinterest. Like many colleagues, I proceed from the experience that motivating active and critical engagement is possible when associated with tasks that are either creative and “fun”, or more perceptibly skill-building than the pursuit of a deeper textual understanding. Like many of us, I have learned to shift the deeper understanding from a worthy goal in itself to a more instrumental process that results in more practical rewards. In my Fateful Weapons in German Drama course, students engage with Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell and some lesser-known one-act plays via a series of formal debates. In my presentation, I propose to outline how the preparation and staging of debates can be structured towards producing a debate summary that performs the same argumentative work as a traditional analytical essay. While most students are doing the work in the name of competitive spirit or of developing a professional argumentative discourse, they often generate the kind of insights into the literary work that I find thrilling.

Speaker

Amy Lea Clemons

Francis Marion University

Associate Professor

Speaker Bio

Dr. Clemons is a rhetorical scholar who applies Kenneth Burke's theories of language, culture, and narrative to various disciplines and subdisciplines–literature, film, communication studies, mass media, pedagogy, sociolinguistics, and even science, math, and technology. Her recent work oscillates between studies of fandom (or "participatory culture") and disability, sometimes featuring the powerful intersection of those two subject positions.

Session

Paper: Essential, but General: The Rhetoric of First Year Composition Programs in Southern Public Universities

Francis Marion University
Associate Professor

Bio

Amy Lea Clemons teaches film, composition, and professional writing at Francis Marion University. As a Kenneth Burke scholar and KB fangirl, she follows his commandment to “use all there is” to study pretty much anything. While her dissertation work on the rhetorical strategies of dystopian texts still features strongly in her scholarship, her current work includes the following, wildly disparate areas, held together only by Burke’s equally wide-ranging socio-rhetorical theories: science fiction/speculative fiction, the work of Terry Pratchett, disability studies, fandom/fanfiction studies, online interaction and computer mediated communication theories, serial narratology and “television” studies, writing pedagogies, and digital literacies. If it Burkes, it works.

Paper

Platform as Generic Rhetoric: The Case of the SCP Foundation

The University of North Carolina Charlotte

Paper

Translating in a Pandemic: One year of translating via Zoom

Francis Marion University

Paper

The Issues of Torture: Comparing the Use of Torture During the Spanish Inquisition and Post 9/11 America Pertaining to the Immorality of Torture

Western Carolina University

Bio

Ashley Balderas Gonzalez is a sophomore at Western Carolina University, where she attends the Brinson Honors College. She is working toward a degree in political science with a minor in Latinx studies. She is originally from Bessemer City, North Carolina. After graduation, she plans to attend law school and work as an immigration paralegal.

Paper

Where Human Rights and Civil Rights Meet: Latinx Immigration and Labor

In this presentation, I will examine labor issues for immigrants in the United States, particularly the Bracero program and its inherent violations of human and civil rights for the millions of farm workers that it brought across the U.S.-Mexico border. I will demonstrate the unjust treatment of these workers by contrasting their circumstances with those of workers with other types of documentation. Further, I will show how this program contributed to what journalist Juan Gonzalez identified in Harvest of Empire as the "Latinization of the United States" as a direct result of U.S. economic policies resulting in regional cultural expansionism.

Western Carolina University

Western Carolina University

Western Carolina University

Western Carolina University

Bio

Ashley Balderas Gonzalez is a sophomore at Western Carolina University, where she attends the Brinson Honors College. She is working toward a degree in political science with a minor in Latinx studies. She is originally from Bessemer City, North Carolina. After graduation, she plans to attend law school and work as an immigration paralegal.

Paper

Where Human Rights and Civil Rights Meet: Latinx Immigration and Labor

In this presentation, I will examine labor issues for immigrants in the United States, particularly the Bracero program and its inherent violations of human and civil rights for the millions of farm workers that it brought across the U.S.-Mexico border. I will demonstrate the unjust treatment of these workers by contrasting their circumstances with those of workers with other types of documentation. Further, I will show how this program contributed to what journalist Juan Gonzalez identified in Harvest of Empire as the "Latinization of the United States" as a direct result of U.S. economic policies resulting in regional cultural expansionism.

Speaker

Benjamin Flournoy

Gardner-Webb University

Graduate Student (Masters of English)

Speaker Bio

Benjamin Flournoy is a native of Wilmington, NC and now lives in the western part of the state. As a graduate student at Gardner-Webb University, he studies American, British, and World Literature with hopes to pursue his PhD in Literary Theory. He is married to Jasmine Flournoy, who consistently listens to him drone on about the ideas of Karl Marx, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Michel Foucault.

Session

Paper: “Their Souls’ Concerns”: Rebecca Harding Davis’ Transcendental Critique of Industrialism and Passive Christianity

WCU
Professor, DH

Bio

Brent E. Kinser is Professor of English and Department Head at Western Carolina University. He is the author of The American Civil War and the Shaping of British Democracy (Ashgate, 2011), and the coordinating editor of The Carlyle Letters Online (Duke UP, 2007– ; https://carlyleletters.dukeupress.edu/home), the electronic edition of The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle (Duke UP, 1970– ), for which he serves as an editor. He is the author of numerous articles on the Carlyles and co-editor of several Carlyle volumes, including of a variorum edition of Carlyle’s History of the French Revolution in Three Volumes (Oxford UP, 2020, with David R. Sorensen, Mark Cumming, and Mark Engel), the Strouse Edition of Carlyle’s Essays on Literature (U of California P, 2020, with Fleming McClelland and Chris R. Vanden Bossche)), an Oxford World’s Classics Edition of The French Revolution (2019, with Sorensen), “Rethinking the Western Tradition” edition of On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (Yale UP, 2013, with Sorensen) and co-author (with Sorensen) of the entries on Carlyle in Oxford Bibliographies Online (Oxford UP, 2012) and on the Carlyles in The Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature (Blackwells, 2015). He is co-editor of the international scholarly journal Carlyle Studies Annual and a founding director of the Victorian Lives and Letters Consortium (2011– ). His other work includes co-edited editions (with Rodger L. Tarr) of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’s Cross Creek Sampler (UP of Florida, 2011), and The Uncollected Writings of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (UP of Florida, 2007). At present he is working with colleagues to complete editions of Carlyle’s Past and Present for Oxford UP and Marge and Julia: The Correspondence of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and Julia Scribner Bigham for UP of Florida.

Panel Chair

Dickens and the Problem of Being Human

Speaker

Brian Gastle

Western Carolina University

Professor

Speaker Bio

Brian Gastle is Professor of English at Western Carolina University where he teaches medieval literature, professional writing, and research methods. Has served as Department Head, Associate Dean of the Graduate School, and Interim Associate Provost. He is the recipient of WCU’s University Scholar Award and the Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award.

Session

Panel: Letters from the Front: A Digital Collections Transcription and Annotation Project as Engaged Pedagogy

UNC Charlotte

Bio

Chikako Mori is a Senior Lecturer of Japanese. She has been serving as coordinator since Fall 2015 and designated student advisor of Japanese Studies program since Spring 2017.

Paper

Global Network Learning (GNL) & Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) Projects: Sharing Our Experiences

Chikako Mori will present her experiences with the GLII institute and collaborative online learning in Japanese.

UNC Charlotte

Bio

Chikako Mori is a Senior Lecturer of Japanese. She has been serving as coordinator since Fall 2015 and designated student advisor of Japanese Studies program since Spring 2017.

Paper

Global Network Learning (GNL) & Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) Projects: Sharing Our Experiences

Chikako Mori will present her experiences with the GLII institute and collaborative online learning in Japanese.

UNC Charlotte

Bio

Chikako Mori is a Senior Lecturer of Japanese. She has been serving as coordinator since Fall 2015 and designated student advisor of Japanese Studies program since Spring 2017.

Paper

Global Network Learning (GNL) & Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) Projects: Sharing Our Experiences

Chikako Mori will present her experiences with the GLII institute and collaborative online learning in Japanese.

Speaker

Christopher Mellinger

UNC Charlotte

Associate Professor

Speaker Bio

Christopher D. Mellinger is Associate Professor in the Department of Languages and Culture Studies and is affiliate faculty for the Latin American Studies program at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He is the co-editor of the journal Translation and Interpreting Studies, co-author of Quantitative Research Methods in Translation and Interpreting Studies (Routledge), co-editor of Translating Texts: An Introductory Coursebook on Translation and Text Formation (Routledge), and editor of the forthcoming The Routledge Handbook of Interpreting and Cognition.

Session

Paper: The Challenges of Translating Translation History

Gardner-Webb University
Undergraduate

Bio

Claire Allen is a senior English Literature major at Gardner-Webb University in Boiling Springs, North Carolina. She is the president of Gardner-Webb’s chapter of Sigma Tau Delta and works in a variety of writing-centered spaces on campus. Her current interests include contemporary topics such as comics, gender studies, and the study of adaptations, as well as historical topics like classic literature. She enjoys reading and writing in as many genres as possible, but is particularly inclined towards fantasy, science fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction.

Paper

I Work Alone: Batman and Fatherhood in Modern Adaptations

WCU

Speaker

Concepcion Godev

UNC Charlotte

Professor

Speaker Bio

Concepción B. Godev (Ph.D. The Pennsylvania State University) is a professor of translation studies and Spanish linguistics at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She has taught graduate courses on translation of political discourse, subtitling, and pragmatics. Her research focuses on pedagogical aspects of translation, second language acquisition, and language ideology.

Session

Paper: Spanish Nominal Neo-morphemes: Representations of Language as Inclusive Space

Fayetteville State University

Fayetteville State University

Speaker

Daniela Dal Pra

University of North Carolina Charlotte

Teaching Professor in Italian

Speaker Bio

Daniela Cunico Dal Pra studied at the University of Padua and received her M.A. from the University Ca’ Foscari of Venice, Italy. She earned her PhD in Romance Studies at the Graduate School of UNC-Chapel Hill. Her interest and research focus on European and Italian Cinema and Culture, with a special focus on Migrations across the Mediterranean Sea.

She has been teaching for the Department of Languages and Culture Studies at UNC Charlotte since 2001. At UNCC she is the director and coordinator of the Italian Program, and she collaborates with the Director of Film Studies.

Her courses include: Italian and Latin language and literature; for Liberal Studies: History of Beauty through Western Art History, and Global Connections; for Honors Program: History of Italian Mafia through Film; for the Italian program: Italian Culture, Introduction to European Cinema, History of Italian Cinema, and Migrations across the Mediterranean Sea through Italian cinema.

She is also Director of the Faculty Led Spring Break to Veneto (Italy) Study Abroad Program, and Co-Director of the UNCC Summer School in Rome.

Session

Paper: VENICE IS A FISH: Decline and Rebirth of Venice.

Maynooth University

Maynooth University

Coker University

Paper

William James’s Metaphysical Revelation in Sherwood Anderson’s ‘Tandy’

Speaker

David McCracken

Columbia College

Professor

Speaker Bio

Dr. David McCracken is a professor of English at Columbia College. He teaches first-year writing, American literature, and literary criticism courses. He also serves as the chair of English and the dean of Arts and Humanities.

Session

Paper: “Mayfly as a Lacanian Trope in David Foster Wallace’s ‘Everything Is Green’”

Western Carolina University

Paper

Nineteenth-Century Systems of Corruption in Charles Dickens’s Bleak House

Western Carolina University

Paper

Life’s a Soundtrack, Let it Resonate: Creating Rhetorical Situations through Sound and the Role of Sonic Agency

Speaker

Diana New

Western Carolina University

Instructor

Speaker Bio

Diana is an Instructor of Rhetoric and Composition at Western Carolina University. Her scholarship focuses around 19th Century Gothic Literature and Ecogothic Criticism, as well as Sonic Rhetoric.

Session

Panel: The Monster Within: The H[a]unted Self and its Purpose in Horror Fiction

Speaker

Eileen Anderson

Duke University

Lecturing Fellow

Speaker Bio

Eileen Anderson is a Lecturing Fellow in the Department of Romance Studies at Duke university. She has a PhD in Comparative Literature from UNC-Chapel Hill. Her research interests include digital pedagogy and media literacy. She is also a founding member of the Duke University Faculty Union.

Session

Paper: Disinformation and Propaganda from a Multilingual and Cultural Perspective in an Intermediate Language Classroom

Western Carolina University

Paper

A Visual Interpretation of the Black/White Binary

The University of North Carolina Charlotte

Paper

Reverse Roles of el amor cortes in Miguel Cervantes’ Don Quijote

Speaker

Emma Hamilton

Western Carolina University

M.A. Student

Speaker Bio

Emma Hamilton is a graduate student at Western Carolina University. She is working toward her M.A. in English Studies with a concentration in Professional Writing and Rhetoric. She is a graduate teaching instructor of English 101 and 202 and Co-editor in Chief of WCU's graduate literary journal, Yonder.

Session

Paper: “Writing is for You, You are for You”: Breaking Away from Phallogocentrism in Campbell’s Monomyth

UNC Charlotte

Bio

Enika Banerjee is a lecturer of Japanese. Currently she is teaching elementary and upper intermediate level of Japanese language courses. She also teaches Japanese Business and Culture and Advanced Spoken Business Japanese. She is currently oversees the Japanese Business Certificate program. She received her BA in Japanese Linguistics from Sophia University in Japan and her MA in Japanese Studies, majoring in Japanese Anthropology and minoring in Modern Japanese History, from the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). She started teaching Japanese during 2002 in Michigan. Prior to teaching she worked at investment banks in both Tokyo and Boston. She also worked as an interpreter/ translator at Japanese affiliated companies in both Michigan and South Carolina. Her research interests focus on foreign integration and their affects on the Japanese business culture. She is currently also working on a Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) Project with Sophia University. The research involves study on the connection between collaborating with native speakers and their effect on learning foreign language.

Paper

The GLII Institute and Globally Networked Learning in Japanese

Enika Banerjee will present her experiences with the GLII Institute and Globally Networked Learning in Japanese.

UNC Charlotte

Bio

Enika Banerjee is a lecturer of Japanese. Currently she is teaching elementary and upper intermediate level of Japanese language courses. She also teaches Japanese Business and Culture and Advanced Spoken Business Japanese. She is currently oversees the Japanese Business Certificate program. She received her BA in Japanese Linguistics from Sophia University in Japan and her MA in Japanese Studies, majoring in Japanese Anthropology and minoring in Modern Japanese History, from the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). She started teaching Japanese during 2002 in Michigan. Prior to teaching she worked at investment banks in both Tokyo and Boston. She also worked as an interpreter/ translator at Japanese affiliated companies in both Michigan and South Carolina. Her research interests focus on foreign integration and their affects on the Japanese business culture. She is currently also working on a Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) Project with Sophia University. The research involves study on the connection between collaborating with native speakers and their effect on learning foreign language.

Paper

The GLII Institute and Globally Networked Learning in Japanese

Enika Banerjee will present her experiences with the GLII Institute and Globally Networked Learning in Japanese.

UNC Charlotte

Bio

Enika Banerjee is a lecturer of Japanese. Currently she is teaching elementary and upper intermediate level of Japanese language courses. She also teaches Japanese Business and Culture and Advanced Spoken Business Japanese. She is currently oversees the Japanese Business Certificate program. She received her BA in Japanese Linguistics from Sophia University in Japan and her MA in Japanese Studies, majoring in Japanese Anthropology and minoring in Modern Japanese History, from the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). She started teaching Japanese during 2002 in Michigan. Prior to teaching she worked at investment banks in both Tokyo and Boston. She also worked as an interpreter/ translator at Japanese affiliated companies in both Michigan and South Carolina. Her research interests focus on foreign integration and their affects on the Japanese business culture. She is currently also working on a Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) Project with Sophia University. The research involves study on the connection between collaborating with native speakers and their effect on learning foreign language.

Paper

The GLII Institute and Globally Networked Learning in Japanese

Enika Banerjee will present her experiences with the GLII Institute and Globally Networked Learning in Japanese.

Fayetteville State University

Paper

Polonius the Human

Speaker

Eric Hyman

Fayetteville State University

Professor of English

Speaker Bio

I am on phased retirement at Fayetteville State University, Ph.D Rutgers. My currentspecialties are linguistics, Nabokov, and Shakespeare (I have presented two papers on Shakespeare at SEACS and its predecessor PAC

Session

Paper: Laura Lippman’s Evasive Meta-novel Dream Girl

The University of North Carolina Charlotte

Paper

The Manchurian Candidate: Palatalization of Alveolar initials in Beijing Mandarin due to Manchu Influence

The University of North Carolina Charlotte

Paper

Dogen’s Tenzo Kyokun in Translation and Application

Speaker

Grace Jones

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

MA Student

Speaker Bio

My name is Grace Jones. I am a MA candidate at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and I am studying translation and interpretation studies. I had started this marvelous program during in my senior year of undergrad due to my university having an early entry program. Because of that opportunity, I was able to take four masters classes while taking my senior undergrad classes. I was told about this marvelous in my translation class that I took this semester, and it would be an honor present my final paper for this class at this event.

Session

Paper: The Art of Translation: An Analysis of the Usage of Spanish Subtitles in Gabriel Axel’s film Babette’s Feast

University of North Dakota
Second year PhD Student

Bio

Grant is a second year PhD student at the University of North Dakota. He graduated with an MA in English Literature from Western Carolina University in Spring of 2020. His primary interest is the interwoven nature of peoples and the landscapes that contain them. As a photographer, poet, and academic, Grant uses both creative and scholarly projects to engage with our understandings of place.

Paper

Lexia turns Optika: Textual Analysis of Looking at Appalachia

Western Carolina University

Bio

Hannah McLeod is an MA student in the English Studies Program concentrating in Creative Writing at Western Carolina University.

Paper

Letters from Levi Morrison Bogart to his sister Martha Jane Misemer, 1863-65

I will be presenting the results of a transcription of, and research on, five letters from Levi Morrison Bogart to his sister Martha Jane (Bogart) Misemer. These letters were written between 1863 and 1865, during the Civil War. The letters are part of a larger collection donated to the archives at Western Carolina University, the majority of which are from Henry Marshall Misemer to his wife Martha. These letters from Levi to his sister span the time between February, 1863, when Levi was a soldier in the Confederate forces, through his switch to the Union side of the war, all the way to just days before his death aboard the steamboat Sultana when, severely overloaded, it exploded in the Mississippi River.

In one letter dated June, 1864, after Levi has enlisted in the Union Army, he writes to his sister about things he has observed while his regiment is camped near Nashville, Tennessee, including attending his first Catholic Mass, his observation of Jewish people at worship and of the educateion of African-Americans. Both the Catholic and Jewish communities of Nashville have records of this time corroborating their existence, places of worship and members of the community. In later letters, Levi tells Martha about the difficulties he has had since he was captured, in September of 1864 by Confederate forces, and imprisoned at Cahaba. Cahaba is estimated to have been the most overcrowded prison in all of the United States during the Civil War.

Scholars of the Civil War will be interested in these letters and accompanying research for the breadth of experience Levi had during the war. He was just 20 years old when southern states began seceding from the Union, and throughout the strife he was a soldier of the Confederacy, a soldier of the Union, a prisoner of war twice, and a victim of the worst maritime disaster in United States History. His home in Eastern Tennessee sat squarely in the dividing line between the Union and Confederacy, and Levi’s experience is a direct result of that rupture.

Scholars of the Civil War, and nineteenth century history more broadly will be interested in Levi’s cultural observations throughout this period. While his opinions on the religious “other” are derogatory on the surface, there are underlying tones of tolerance for the things that he does not fully recognize or understand. And while public education was lacking for white children in Tennessee before the Civil War, it was nonexistent for black children. Levi offers a glimpse into what government records cannot show — that perhaps communities banded together to provide for education even in the worst of times. Levi also offers scholars a glimpse into how he young son of an eastern Tennessee farmer, fighting for Union forces, felt to see people of color access education.

Western Carolina University

Bio

Hannah McLeod is an MA student in the English Studies Program concentrating in Creative Writing at Western Carolina University.

Paper

Letters from Levi Morrison Bogart to his sister Martha Jane Misemer, 1863-65

I will be presenting the results of a transcription of, and research on, five letters from Levi Morrison Bogart to his sister Martha Jane (Bogart) Misemer. These letters were written between 1863 and 1865, during the Civil War. The letters are part of a larger collection donated to the archives at Western Carolina University, the majority of which are from Henry Marshall Misemer to his wife Martha. These letters from Levi to his sister span the time between February, 1863, when Levi was a soldier in the Confederate forces, through his switch to the Union side of the war, all the way to just days before his death aboard the steamboat Sultana when, severely overloaded, it exploded in the Mississippi River.

In one letter dated June, 1864, after Levi has enlisted in the Union Army, he writes to his sister about things he has observed while his regiment is camped near Nashville, Tennessee, including attending his first Catholic Mass, his observation of Jewish people at worship and of the educateion of African-Americans. Both the Catholic and Jewish communities of Nashville have records of this time corroborating their existence, places of worship and members of the community. In later letters, Levi tells Martha about the difficulties he has had since he was captured, in September of 1864 by Confederate forces, and imprisoned at Cahaba. Cahaba is estimated to have been the most overcrowded prison in all of the United States during the Civil War.

Scholars of the Civil War will be interested in these letters and accompanying research for the breadth of experience Levi had during the war. He was just 20 years old when southern states began seceding from the Union, and throughout the strife he was a soldier of the Confederacy, a soldier of the Union, a prisoner of war twice, and a victim of the worst maritime disaster in United States History. His home in Eastern Tennessee sat squarely in the dividing line between the Union and Confederacy, and Levi’s experience is a direct result of that rupture.

Scholars of the Civil War, and nineteenth century history more broadly will be interested in Levi’s cultural observations throughout this period. While his opinions on the religious “other” are derogatory on the surface, there are underlying tones of tolerance for the things that he does not fully recognize or understand. And while public education was lacking for white children in Tennessee before the Civil War, it was nonexistent for black children. Levi offers a glimpse into what government records cannot show — that perhaps communities banded together to provide for education even in the worst of times. Levi also offers scholars a glimpse into how he young son of an eastern Tennessee farmer, fighting for Union forces, felt to see people of color access education.

Shaw University

Paper

The Literary Hero in Carlyle and Emerson

Western Carolina University

Paper

Identity and Duality in Charles Dickens’s Bleak House

Western Carolina University

Western Carolina University

Speaker

Hongbing Zhang

Fayetteville State University

Professor

Speaker Bio

Dr. Hongbing Zhang is now a professor of Chinese teaching Chinese language and culture at Fayetteville State University. Graduating from the University of Chicago with a doctoral degree in Chinese studies, Dr. Zhang's research interests have been in modern Chinese literature and culture, critical theories, and postcolonialism. Before joining Fayetteville State University, Dr. Zhang taught at Northwestern University and the City College of New York.

Session

Paper: Wei Yuan and the Cultural Politics of Representing the World in Modern Chinese Geography

Speaker

Hunter Newman

The University of North Carolina at Charlotte

MA Fellow

Speaker Bio

The panelist are from the United States, China, and Japan, each of them have experienced their own countries public school education system. They will analyze the similarities and differences within their education systems through their academic research..

Session

Panel: American public education system failing? Cross-cultural examination of the public school system in China and Japan.

Speaker

Janet Tuthill-Beam

Gardner-Webb University

Graduate Student

Speaker Bio

I am currently a middle school ELA teacher with a passion for Trans-Atlantic Literature planning to finish a MA in English in May 2024 with a capstone that brings together Austen and Alcott. I possess an MS in Secondary Education, English and have taught middle and high school classes for more than a decade. I am a member of the Alpha Epsilon Upsilon Chapter of Kappa Delta Pi.

Session

Paper: Practical Transcendentalism for the Cult of True Womanhood

The University of North Carolina Charlotte

Paper

Critique of Modernity: Nietzsche’s Early Educational Thinking in Relation to New Humanism – An Aspect-Oriented Analysis

Speaker

Jason Huber

Western Carolina University

Instructor

Speaker Bio

I have been teaching composition and rhetoric at Western Carolina University since 2018. I am constantly thinking about the ways rhetoric shapes our reality both inside of the classroom and out in the "real world." My fields of research are rhetorical theory and institutional rhetorics. I have studied and presented on the rhetorical strategies of for-profit probation systems, prisons, and rehabilitation facilities. I’m also interested in pedagogical practices and the rhetorical ecologies of the classroom. My most recent research revolves around the uses of performative rhetoric and shared metaphors in the college composition course. I’m a bit of a conference nerd, so I relish opportunities to share research with other scholars.

Session

Paper: Justice for Sale: The Rhetoric of For Profit Probation Systems

Western Carolina University

Paper

What’s My Line Again? Examining Scripted Reality

UNC Charlotte

UNC Charlotte

Methodist University

Paper

Latin American Gothic: Horror, violence, and precarity in the 21st century in María Fernanda Ampuero’s Human Sacrifices

Speaker

Jessica Cory

Western Carolina University

Instructor

Speaker Bio

Jessica Cory teaches at Western Carolina University and is a PhD candidate specializing in Native American, African American, and environmental literature at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. She is the editor of Mountains Piled upon Mountains: Appalachian Nature Writing in the Anthropocene (WVU Press, 2019) and the co-editor (with Laura Wright) of Appalachian Ecocriticism and the Paradox of Place (UGA Press, forthcoming 2023). Her creative and scholarly writings have been published in the North Carolina Literary Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Northern Appalachia Review, and other fine publications. Originally from southeastern Ohio, she currently lives in Sylva, North Carolina.

Session

Paper: "The Politics of Recognition and the Power of Place in Lumbee Women’s Poetry"

Independent Scholar

Paper

Mom, what did you just give me?’: The journey of a Post-War Journal from Camp Hodolein, Czechi

Speaker

Jose Franco Rodriguez

Fayetteville State University

Professor

Speaker Bio

Jose M. Franco Rodriguez professor at Fayetteville State University. He earned his Ph.D. in Hispanic Philology from the University of Almeria, Spain, with a specialization in Golden Age literature. His research spans issues from the literary dialogue as a genre to oral Mayan literature, to linguistic landscape, to telecollaboration as a pedagogical tool. He has been at FSU since 2005. Prior to that he taught at Methodist University, was a bilingual teacher in Los Angeles County for seven years, taught Spanish at a community college in England, and worked as an English instructor to middle and high school students in Spain. For ten years, Dr. Franco has been an invited scholar at the summer seminars offered by the Instituto Cervantes at the University of Almería (Spain). He has earned teaching credentials from educational systems in Spain, England, California, and North Carolina, and has been the coordinator of the Spanish Education program at FSU since 2005.

Session

Panel: Of Gods and Men: Neurosciences meet Mayan Literature

The University of North Carolina Charlotte

Paper

Shadows of Hope and Despair: Stories from Camp Hodolein

Gardner-Webb University

Paper

Burying the Young: The Tropes of Coping in a Nineteenth-Century Cemetary

Paper

Gardner-Webb University
Professor of English

Bio

June Hadden Hobbs is Professor of English and Director of Undergraduate Research at Gardner-Webb University in Boiling Springs, North Carolina. She has published books and articles on popular culture topics such as American hymnody and tombstones as well as on more traditional literary topics such as Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead. She is the co-author with Joe DePriest of Tales and Tombstones of Sunset Cemetery: Tracing Lives and Memorial Customs in a Southern Graveyard, published in 2021 by McFarland Press.

Paper

Burying the Young: The Tropes of Coping in a Nineteenth-Century Cemetery

Speaker

June Hobbs

Gardner-Webb University

Professor of English

Speaker Bio

June Hadden Hobbs is Professor of English and Director of Undergraduate Research at Gardner-Webb University in Boiling Springs, North Carolina. Hobbs, who was editor of Markers: Annual Journal of the Association for Gravestone Studies for several years, has published books and articles on popular culture topics such as American hymnody and tombstones as well as on more traditional literary topics. Her latest publication, co-written with journalist Joe DePriest, is Tales and Tombstones of Sunset Cemetery: Tracing Lives and Memorial Customs in a Southern Graveyard (McFarland Press, 2021). She was the 2017 recipient of the Harriette Merrifield Forbes Award. Hobbs regularly teaches an honors seminar called Death in American Culture and has recently concluded a collaborative inquiry project with a pastor, a religion professor, and a psychiatric nurse titled “A Practical Theology of Corpse Care.”

Session

Paper: How the Historical Records Survey Saved American Cemeteries While It Put Writers to Work

Speaker

Kai Werbeck

UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHARLOTTE

Associate Professor

Speaker Bio

I am Associate Professor of German and Affiliate Faculty of Film Studies at UNC Charlotte. My research interests include German postwar film and literature, film theory, and cultural studies. I have published on Heinrich Böll, Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, Rainald Goetz, German horror film, and old-school rap. I am also one of the translators of Alexander Kluge’s Kong’s Finest Hour. Currently, I am working on a monograph on German horror cinema after 1945 and a translation of Oskar Negt’s writings.

Session

Paper: Grimm Love: Horror and Heritage in Rohtenburg

The University of North Carolina Charlotte

Paper

¡Buen Camino! A Culturally Contextualized Curriculum for Beginning Spanish

The University of North Carolina Charlotte

Paper

Macroestructura de historias personales en lengua originaria en hablantes bilingües de otomí-español

Western Carolina University

Paper

Leslie Espinoza’s ‘Multi-Identity’

The Citadel

Bio

Katya Skow is a professor at the Citadel where she teaches all levels of German.

Paper

no titel: roundtable

I have not taught an upper-level literature seminar since Spring 2019. Pre-pandemic, it had already become evident that many students were not thrilled by literature—especially its examination and analysis. I always gauge student interest before selecting topics, and my last seminar was on Literature of WWI. Although my students at The Citadel responded well to the topic, the class itself was pretty old-school. Students turned in question sets on the texts they were reading, took a midterm and a final, and submitted a short analysis of a text in the target language. In class I aimed at guided discussion in German; realistically we often spent more time deciphering the language. The assigned texts included several poems, two plays, short stories, a children's book, and Remarque’s Im Westen nichts Neues (both film and novel).Like many of us, I studied literature because I love to read. Although I do have the occasional student who reads literature for the joy of it, most of our students must be coaxed. We can’t force our students to love literature. Lately, in culture courses and even intermediate language courses, my approach has been to show students how to read texts as artifacts. Our practical, 21-century students can often be tricked into a close reading by being directed to collect, compare, and contrast in order to answer some larger question.
I did not use an assignment like this in my Literature of WWI seminar, but I wish I had. Not only does it force a closer reading of a text, it also lends itself well to guided discussion. I offer the panel an example of such an exercise based on a reading from my seminar on Literature of WWI.

The Citadel

Bio

Katya Skow is a professor at the Citadel where she teaches all levels of German.

Paper

no titel: roundtable

I have not taught an upper-level literature seminar since Spring 2019. Pre-pandemic, it had already become evident that many students were not thrilled by literature—especially its examination and analysis. I always gauge student interest before selecting topics, and my last seminar was on Literature of WWI. Although my students at The Citadel responded well to the topic, the class itself was pretty old-school. Students turned in question sets on the texts they were reading, took a midterm and a final, and submitted a short analysis of a text in the target language. In class I aimed at guided discussion in German; realistically we often spent more time deciphering the language. The assigned texts included several poems, two plays, short stories, a children's book, and Remarque’s Im Westen nichts Neues (both film and novel).Like many of us, I studied literature because I love to read. Although I do have the occasional student who reads literature for the joy of it, most of our students must be coaxed. We can’t force our students to love literature. Lately, in culture courses and even intermediate language courses, my approach has been to show students how to read texts as artifacts. Our practical, 21-century students can often be tricked into a close reading by being directed to collect, compare, and contrast in order to answer some larger question.
I did not use an assignment like this in my Literature of WWI seminar, but I wish I had. Not only does it force a closer reading of a text, it also lends itself well to guided discussion. I offer the panel an example of such an exercise based on a reading from my seminar on Literature of WWI.

Western Carolina University

Paper

The Rhetoric of Sexuality in the New Testament

Wofford College

Bio

Dr. Aigner is a full professor of German literature at Wofford College in South Carolina, where she teaches literature at all levels of German.

Paper

no title: roundtable

I view literature as narrative texts that capture both an emotional response to and are a critical reflection of a socio-cultural and historical time period in the German-speaking world. I bring literature into all levels of my language classes as a way of practicing language, thinking critically, and as a means of conveying the poetry and range of language used to express the human experience. In my lower-level classes, I will bring in poetry by a diverse range of authors, often using a poem that reflects on the chapter’s vocabulary/ topic or grammar. 19th century German “Romantik” poetry by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe lends itself well to teaching about the beauty of language, the importance of the environment in “Romantik” art and literature, and the use of the “narrative past” verb tense, which students need to learn in order to read and to produce more formal and poetic texts. In my “survey of literature” course I bring in poems about World War I, written by civilian women in Berlin and by men at the front, presenting them as “messages in a bottle,” in which poetry takes us to this horrific place of war, emotionally but with the intention of future generations tasked to preserve humanity and human life. Georg Trakl’s poem “Grodek” and August Stramm’s “Patrouille” are two examples of such war poems that bring us close to this moment in time. In my classes I speak of Heinrich Heine’s “Lorelei” and how it can be read alongside Paul Celan’s Holocaust poem “Todesfuge,” one of the most gripping Holocaust poems ever written in German. We discuss the figure of the maiden with the “golden hair” as a trope in German culture. I enjoy teaching Ingeborg Bachmann’s poem “Reklame” to teach about post-WWII consumerism and the “Wirtschaftswunder” in Germany, asking students to write their own poem in which they contrast their own emotional state today with slogans from popular advertisements on radio and TV. In my third-year German class I have students read post-WWII “New Objectivity” short stories and then write their own short story using characteristics of that genre. Literature is essential as a means of experiencing empathy, engaging in humanity, and possibly “hearing” the author and carrying on his/her call for action toward a more peaceful, sustainable, just world.

Wofford College

Bio

Dr. Aigner is a full professor of German literature at Wofford College in South Carolina, where she teaches literature at all levels of German.

Paper

no title: roundtable

I view literature as narrative texts that capture both an emotional response to and are a critical reflection of a socio-cultural and historical time period in the German-speaking world. I bring literature into all levels of my language classes as a way of practicing language, thinking critically, and as a means of conveying the poetry and range of language used to express the human experience. In my lower-level classes, I will bring in poetry by a diverse range of authors, often using a poem that reflects on the chapter’s vocabulary/ topic or grammar. 19th century German “Romantik” poetry by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe lends itself well to teaching about the beauty of language, the importance of the environment in “Romantik” art and literature, and the use of the “narrative past” verb tense, which students need to learn in order to read and to produce more formal and poetic texts. In my “survey of literature” course I bring in poems about World War I, written by civilian women in Berlin and by men at the front, presenting them as “messages in a bottle,” in which poetry takes us to this horrific place of war, emotionally but with the intention of future generations tasked to preserve humanity and human life. Georg Trakl’s poem “Grodek” and August Stramm’s “Patrouille” are two examples of such war poems that bring us close to this moment in time. In my classes I speak of Heinrich Heine’s “Lorelei” and how it can be read alongside Paul Celan’s Holocaust poem “Todesfuge,” one of the most gripping Holocaust poems ever written in German. We discuss the figure of the maiden with the “golden hair” as a trope in German culture. I enjoy teaching Ingeborg Bachmann’s poem “Reklame” to teach about post-WWII consumerism and the “Wirtschaftswunder” in Germany, asking students to write their own poem in which they contrast their own emotional state today with slogans from popular advertisements on radio and TV. In my third-year German class I have students read post-WWII “New Objectivity” short stories and then write their own short story using characteristics of that genre. Literature is essential as a means of experiencing empathy, engaging in humanity, and possibly “hearing” the author and carrying on his/her call for action toward a more peaceful, sustainable, just world.

Wofford College

Paper

The Reinvention of Exiled Austrian Artist Lisel Salzer

Francis Marion University

Paper

Franco’s Forgotten Dictatorship: Using Comics to Explore and Explain Fascism

Western Carolina University

Paper

Nations Ford Road and the Great Trading Path

Speaker

Laura Viale

UNC Charlotte

MA Fellow in Spanish

Speaker Bio

My name is Maria Laura Viale, I go by Laura. I am an MA Fellow in Spanish at UNC Charlotte. I got my BA in Translation and Interpretation from Universidad del Museo Social Argentino, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, my home country. After years of working as a sworn translator, interpreter and English instructor, I went back to school and got my MA in Hispanic Linguistics at the University of Arizona, where I worked as a Graduate Assistant, teaching elementary level classes, a Basic Language Coordinator, managing all 100 level Spanish classes and material, and a Global Ambassador, welcoming international students and helping them transition into the American college life. After graduation in 2019, I was hired as an Adjunct Instructor. Throughout the years of the lockdown and the pandemic, I worked as a Language Consultant for an AI Company called TELUS International, preparing language tests, analyzing audios to identify native speakers, translating instructions for different tasks and assessing the quality of lists. In 2022, I came to Charlotte and started working as an Adjunct Instructor, teaching 1000 and 2000 level Spanish classes, as well as Liberal Studies classes like Global Connections, where we focused on intercultural competence in the classroom.

Session

Panel: The Importance of Introducing Intercultural Competence in American Classrooms at an Early Stage in College: Building Bridges over Barriers.

Western Carolina University

Paper

Judaculla Rock and Me: An Exploration of Cultural Interpretation versus Appropriation

Speaker

Lori Oxford

Western Carolina University

Associate Professor of Spanish

Speaker Bio

Lori Oxford (Ph.D. Georgia) is Associate Professor of Spanish and the Associate Dean of the Honors College at Western Carolina University. She specializes in contemporary Latin American cultural production with a focus on contemporary Cuban narrative. Her research interests include cultural studies and gender studies in Latin America and Latinx communities in the USA. Recent scholarship includes work on novels by Jesús Díaz, Daína Chaviano, and Jennine Capó Crucet, and she has a forthcoming monograph from Lexington Books on Pedro Juan Gutiérrez’s Ciclo de Centro Habana.

Session

Panel: Undergraduate perspectives on Latinx and Latin American Issues

The University of North Carolina Charlotte

Paper

European Churches and Chinese Temples Reflecting HAP/LAP Emotions in the Brain’s Inner Theatre

Speaker

Mark Pizzato

UNC-Charlotte

Professor

Speaker Bio

Mark Pizzato, MFA, PhD, is Professor of Theatre and Film at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. His publications include Mapping Global Theatre Histories (Palgrave, 2019), Beast-People Onscreen and in Your Brain: The Evolution of Animal-Humans from Prehistoric Cave Art to Modern Movies (Praeger, 2016), Inner Theatres of Good and Evil: The Mind's Staging of Gods, Angels and Devils (McFarland, 2011), Ghosts of Theatre and Cinema in the Brain (Palgrave, 2006), Theatres of Human Sacrifice: From Ancient Ritual to Screen Violence (SUNY, 2005), and Edges of Loss: From Modern Drama to Postmodern Theory (University of Michigan, 1998). He also co-edited, with Lisa K. Perdigao, Death in American Texts and Performances: Corpses, Ghosts, and the Reanimated Dead (Routledge, 2010). Short films, produced from his screenplays, have won New York Film Festival and Minnesota Community Television awards.

Session

Paper: Melodramatic and Tragicomic Modes of Theatre, Film, and Neural Networks

UNC Charlotte

Bio

Mary A. LaMarca is an Associate Teaching Professor of French and the French major/minor adviser, as well as the French Club faculty adviser. She earned her PhD from Duke University, and focuses on theater and politics, particularly during the Occupation, as well as Translation, French for Business, and Francophone Literature and Cultures.

Paper

Language Exchange and Co-Curricular Cultural Events in French

This presentation will focus on internationalizing the French curriculum via a language exchange with the Université de Limoges, UNC Charlotte's sister university. My rationale is that by building individual relationships with students in France, students are more likely to study abroad as well as major in the language.

I will also detail efforts to internationalize the French major and minor by building a robust program of co-curricular events, such as films, games, karaoke, cooking seminars, conversation hours, and guest speakers. We have organized these in conjunction with an active French Club eboard, the Office of International Programs, the Global Gateways/International House at UNC Charlotte, as well as programming created by visiting and permanent faculty in French.

Finally, I will discuss outreach to our recent graduates and how their participation in promoting study abroad and the TAPIF program (Teaching Assistant Program in France) has led to increased student involvement.

Speaker

Mary LaMarca

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Associate Teaching Professor in French

Speaker Bio

Mary A. LaMarca is an Associate Teaching Professor of French and the French major/minor adviser, as well as the French Club faculty adviser. She earned her PhD from Duke University, and focuses on theater and politics, particularly during the Occupation, as well as Translation, French for Business, and Francophone Literature and Cultures.

Session

Panel: Global Network Learning (GNL) & Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) Projects: Sharing Our Experiences

UNC Charlotte

Bio

Mary A. LaMarca is an Associate Teaching Professor of French and the French major/minor adviser, as well as the French Club faculty adviser. She earned her PhD from Duke University, and focuses on theater and politics, particularly during the Occupation, as well as Translation, French for Business, and Francophone Literature and Cultures.

Paper

Language Exchange and Co-Curricular Cultural Events in French

This presentation will focus on internationalizing the French curriculum via a language exchange with the Université de Limoges, UNC Charlotte's sister university. My rationale is that by building individual relationships with students in France, students are more likely to study abroad as well as major in the language.

I will also detail efforts to internationalize the French major and minor by building a robust program of co-curricular events, such as films, games, karaoke, cooking seminars, conversation hours, and guest speakers. We have organized these in conjunction with an active French Club eboard, the Office of International Programs, the Global Gateways/International House at UNC Charlotte, as well as programming created by visiting and permanent faculty in French.

Finally, I will discuss outreach to our recent graduates and how their participation in promoting study abroad and the TAPIF program (Teaching Assistant Program in France) has led to increased student involvement.

UNC Charlotte

Bio

Mary A. LaMarca is an Associate Teaching Professor of French and the French major/minor adviser, as well as the French Club faculty adviser. She earned her PhD from Duke University, and focuses on theater and politics, particularly during the Occupation, as well as Translation, French for Business, and Francophone Literature and Cultures.

Paper

Language Exchange and Co-Curricular Cultural Events in French

This presentation will focus on internationalizing the French curriculum via a language exchange with the Université de Limoges, UNC Charlotte's sister university. My rationale is that by building individual relationships with students in France, students are more likely to study abroad as well as major in the language.

I will also detail efforts to internationalize the French major and minor by building a robust program of co-curricular events, such as films, games, karaoke, cooking seminars, conversation hours, and guest speakers. We have organized these in conjunction with an active French Club eboard, the Office of International Programs, the Global Gateways/International House at UNC Charlotte, as well as programming created by visiting and permanent faculty in French.

I will also discuss outreach to our recent graduates and how their participation in promoting study abroad and the TAPIF program (Teaching Assistant Program in France) has led to increased student involvement.

UNC CHARLOTTE

Bio

Matthew Levecque is a sophomore at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte majoring in Spanish with a concentration in Applied Language, minoring in K-12 Foreign Language Education, and working towards a Certificate in Translation. Currently, he is a communication consultant with the UNCC Communication Across the Curriculum program. In this position, he assists students at the 3000-level in oral and written communication through presentation preparation and practice, as well as composition writing and organization. Matthew was a presenter and first-time attendee at the Foreign Language Association of North Carolina’s fall conference. He also presented alongside Susana Cisneros at the Spring 2022 SEACS conference.

Paper

More Than a Train Ride! Consultants Communicating in the Charlotte Community

Outline
Presentation (Oral communication)
– Presentations allowed me as a consultant to interact with the community based project
– Strengths and weaknesses (my own or the student's)
– Focus on my interactions with the project through consultations and in-class interactions with students
-Pedagogy practice !!! (how the class was taught, how did we support the students to develop critical thinking, communication, and intercultural competencies)

– Reflection: viewing the student's growth from the first presentation to the second and how the consultations were able to assist in the growth of student’s oral communication throughout the semester

– Focus on the way this information was presented differently this semester from the first and second semesters I was in the 3202 class and how that impacted my work as a consultant

UNC CHARLOTTE

Bio

Matthew Levecque is a sophomore at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte majoring in Spanish with a concentration in Applied Language, minoring in K-12 Foreign Language Education, and working towards a Certificate in Translation. Currently, he is a communication consultant with the UNCC Communication Across the Curriculum program. In this position, he assists students at the 3000-level in oral and written communication through presentation preparation and practice, as well as composition writing and organization. Matthew was a presenter and first-time attendee at the Foreign Language Association of North Carolina’s fall conference. He also presented alongside Susana Cisneros at the Spring 2022 SEACS conference.

Paper

More Than a Train Ride! Consultants Communicating in the Charlotte Community

Outline
Presentation (Oral communication)
– Presentations allowed me as a consultant to interact with the community based project
– Strengths and weaknesses (my own or the student's)
– Focus on my interactions with the project through consultations and in-class interactions with students
-Pedagogy practice !!! (how the class was taught, how did we support the students to develop critical thinking, communication, and intercultural competencies)

– Reflection: viewing the student's growth from the first presentation to the second and how the consultations were able to assist in the growth of student’s oral communication throughout the semester

– Focus on the way this information was presented differently this semester from the first and second semesters I was in the 3202 class and how that impacted my work as a consultant

Western Carolina University

Paper

Assigned Divinity in Dickens’s David Copperfield

Speaker

Meghan Harrison

Western Carolina University

Graduate Student

Speaker Bio

Meghan is a Creative Writing English Graduate student at Western Carolina University. She lives in and loves the mountains. She also loves kayaking, hiking, and reading with her family.

Session

Paper: Perception vs. Observation: Digital Poets' Loss of Agency on Instagram

Appalachian State U

Bio

Bio included in previous section.

Paper

Teaching the Hyphen: Intersections of Native Nations and Latinx Literatures

This paper will introduce and conceptualize the course, Ethnic American Literatures: Intersections of Native Nations and Latinx Literatures, and give a brief overview of the student presentations.

Appalachian State U

Bio

Melissa D. Birkhofer is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Ethnic American Literature in the Department of English at Appalachian State University. Her current project co-authored with Paul M. Worley, Return to La Tama: Indigenous Women’s Testimonies in the Méndez Cancio Inquiry on the Interior of La Florida is under contract with the University of Kentucky Press's Appalachian Futures: Black, Queer, and Native Voices series. An article from this project, “She Said That Saint Augustine is Worth Nothing Compared to her Homeland: Teresa Martín and the Méndez Cancio Account of La Tama (1600),” will be published by the North Carolina Literary Review in 2023. She edited a special edition of Label Me Latina/o on the life and work of Judith Ortiz Cofer, and with Paul M. Worley, co-translated Miguel Rocha Vivas’s award-winning book Word Mingas: Oralitegraphies and Mirrored Visions on Oralitures and Indigenous Contemporary Literatures.

Paper

Teaching the Hyphen: Intersections of Native Nations and Latinx Literatures

This paper will introduce and conceptualize the course, Ethnic American Literatures: Intersections of Native Nations and Latinx Literatures, and give a brief overview of the student presentations.

Speaker

Melissa Birkhofer

Appalachian State U

VAP

Speaker Bio

Melissa D. Birkhofer is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Ethnic American Literature in the Department of English at Appalachian State University. Her current project co-authored with Paul M. Worley, Return to La Tama: Indigenous Women’s Testimonies in the Méndez Cancio Inquiry on the Interior of La Florida is under contract with the University of Kentucky Press's Appalachian Futures: Black, Queer, and Native Voices series. An article from this project, “She Said That Saint Augustine is Worth Nothing Compared to her Homeland: Teresa Martín and the Méndez Cancio Account of La Tama (1600),” will be published by the North Carolina Literary Review in 2023. She edited a special edition of Label Me Latina/o on the life and work of Judith Ortiz Cofer, and with Paul M. Worley, co-translated Miguel Rocha Vivas’s award-winning book Word Mingas: Oralitegraphies and Mirrored Visions on Oralitures and Indigenous Contemporary Literatures.

Session

Panel: Intersections of Native Nations and Latinx Literatures

Appalachian State U

Bio

Melissa D. Birkhofer is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Ethnic American Literature in the Department of English at Appalachian State University. Her current project co-authored with Paul M. Worley, Return to La Tama: Indigenous Women’s Testimonies in the Méndez Cancio Inquiry on the Interior of La Florida is under contract with the University of Kentucky Press's Appalachian Futures: Black, Queer, and Native Voices series. An article from this project, “She Said That Saint Augustine is Worth Nothing Compared to her Homeland: Teresa Martín and the Méndez Cancio Account of La Tama (1600),” will be published by the North Carolina Literary Review in 2023. She edited a special edition of Label Me Latina/o on the life and work of Judith Ortiz Cofer, and with Paul M. Worley, co-translated Miguel Rocha Vivas’s award-winning book Word Mingas: Oralitegraphies and Mirrored Visions on Oralitures and Indigenous Contemporary Literatures.

Paper

Teaching the Hyphen: Intersections of Native Nations and Latinx Literatures

This paper will introduce and conceptualize the course, Ethnic American Literatures: Intersections of Native Nations and Latinx Literatures, and give a brief overview of the student presentations.

WCU
Instructor

Bio

Melissa Birkhofer is an instructor in the Department of English Studies and Director of the U.S. Latinx Studies program at WCU.

Panel Chair

Multi-Identity and Latinx Studies

Western Carolina University

Western Carolina University

Western Carolina University

Speaker

Miranda Miller

Western Carolina University

Instructor

Speaker Bio

Hailing from East TN, I have built my home and life in the TN-WNC mountains. I graduated from Carson-Newman University in 2015 and went on to obtain my Masters in Professional Writing at Western Carolina University, where I graduated in 2017. Soon after, I began working for the Department of English Studies at Western Carolina University where I teach entry level courses in writing, research, and rhetoric. My scholarly interests lie primarily in Appalachian literature, but I like to branch off into horror and genre studies. When I am not working, I enjoy reading, various creative pursuits, and watching Korean dramas.

Session

Paper: To Live Forever: Horror and the Abject in Donna Tartt's The Secret History

Speaker

Monica Rodriguez-Castro

UNC Charlotte

Associate Professor

Speaker Bio

Authorship order:
David L. García León, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor/Lecturer in Spanish and Intercultural Studies at the School of Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Maynooth University. He studies issues of Sociolinguistics, Critical Discourse Analysis, Queer Linguistics, and Latin American Cultural and Media Studies with a focus on Masculinities and Queer/Crip Theory. His work has appeared in journals such as the Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Latin American Research Review, Forma y Función, Boletín de Filología, and Revista de Estudios Hispánicos. His most current research project explores the way male disability is depicted in the Colombian Media Industry.

Javier E. García León, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Spanish at the Department of Languages and Culture Studies at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He conducts interdisciplinary research on Sociolinguistics, Critical Discourse Analysis, Queer Linguistics, and Latin American (LGBTQI+) Media Studies. In particular, he has examined the representation of transgender people in Latin American newspapers and audiovisual journalism of the last decades. His latest publications include his monograph Espectáculo, normalización y representaciones otras. Las personas transgénero en la prensa y el cine de Colombia y Venezuela (Peter Lang, 2021).

Mónica Rodríguez-Castro, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Languages and Culture Studies at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She is currently serving as Graduate Program Director of the Department of Languages and Culture Studies. She teaches specialized translation practice (Scientific, Technical, Medical, Legal Translation), computer-assisted-translation tools and translation project management. Her primary research interests include empirical studies in translator satisfaction, translation pedagogy, corpus linguistics, text-based linguistics and English<>Spanish contrastive linguistics. Her recent research has been published in Didáctica (Lengua y Literatura), Hermes – Journal of Language and Communication in Business, and Interpreter and Translator Trainer.

Session

Paper: Representing Disabled People in Colombian News Outlets. A Preliminary Exploration from Corpus Assisted Discourse Analysis and Critical Disability Studies.

College of Charleston

Bio

Nancy Nenno is a full professor of German at the College of Charleston, SC. Her works focusses on depiction of gender and race in German and Austrian literature.

Paper

no title: roundtable discussion

While many students think of literature as “old,” “dry,” “boring,” and “pointless for my career goals.” This may be a function in part of having been force-fed literary texts in high school without the texts being framed so that the interplay between text and context is clear. Or perhaps it is inherent in the canonization of a select few texts by a rarified group of scholars that students feel disengaged, or even disinclined to engage, with these texts. (Confession: This was most certainly how I felt about having to read early US-American literature in high school.) More than twenty years ago, the German program at the College of Charleston decided to move away from standard model of teaching the classics – whether students were proficient enough to read them or not – and to negotiate a way to embed literary texts, like vegetables, into classes with topics that were attractive and were/seemed relevant to our students, i.e., full of cheesy goodness. In my presentation I will offer strategies I have used in developing two different courses, both in English and in German. The first involves designing a class around a genre – in my case, the detective/crime novel or Krimi –that presents students with a familiar paradigm and then de-familiarizing the genre through the readings and discussions of an array of texts – including literature. The other strategy has been to build literary texts into courses focusing on issues that are of interest to the students. In particular, I have been building texts by Black Germans and Austrians into courses where they are both the central topic of the course as well as one of a variety of topical issues. Introducing students to the political and activist potential of literature provides them with a context in which to witness the power of literary texts both as self-expression and as discussion-starters.

College of Charleston

Bio

Nancy Nenno is a full professor of German at the College of Charleston, SC. Her works focusses on depiction of gender and race in German and Austrian literature.

Paper

no title: roundtable discussion

While many students think of literature as “old,” “dry,” “boring,” and “pointless for my career goals.” This may be a function in part of having been force-fed literary texts in high school without the texts being framed so that the interplay between text and context is clear. Or perhaps it is inherent in the canonization of a select few texts by a rarified group of scholars that students feel disengaged, or even disinclined to engage, with these texts. (Confession: This was most certainly how I felt about having to read early US-American literature in high school.) More than twenty years ago, the German program at the College of Charleston decided to move away from standard model of teaching the classics – whether students were proficient enough to read them or not – and to negotiate a way to embed literary texts, like vegetables, into classes with topics that were attractive and were/seemed relevant to our students, i.e., full of cheesy goodness. In my presentation I will offer strategies I have used in developing two different courses, both in English and in German. The first involves designing a class around a genre – in my case, the detective/crime novel or Krimi –that presents students with a familiar paradigm and then de-familiarizing the genre through the readings and discussions of an array of texts – including literature. The other strategy has been to build literary texts into courses focusing on issues that are of interest to the students. In particular, I have been building texts by Black Germans and Austrians into courses where they are both the central topic of the course as well as one of a variety of topical issues. Introducing students to the political and activist potential of literature provides them with a context in which to witness the power of literary texts both as self-expression and as discussion-starters.

UNC Charlotte

UNC Charlotte

UNC-Charlotte

Bio

Olga Padilla-Falto is a Teaching Professor of Spanish in the Department of Languages and Culture Studies at UNC Charlotte. She is the Coordinator for Elementary Spanish. She has a PhD in Applied Linguistics from Georgetown University. Her research interests include second language acquisition/teaching, new teacher mentoring, heritage language learners, inclusive classrooms, and language variation.
Dr. Padilla-Falto has taught Spanish at all levels, including K-8. As Coordinator for elementary Spanish at UNC Charlotte, Dr. Padilla-Falto mentors new teachers and prepares materials for L2 learners of Spanish. Together with Dr. Paloma Fernández Sánchez and Dr. García León, she has worked to create spaces for Spanish language heritage learners at UNC Charlotte.

Paper

Title Language Perceptions and Attitudes of Heritage Speakers of Spanish about their language

NOTE: this is a paper presentation with two authors. We were told to submit as a panel because there was no space to add a second author in the paper submission)

Spanish heritage language students are a growing population in our language classrooms. These learners vary from the non-heritage ones in that they come to the language classroom with a set of skills and cultural wealth. As language teachers we are faced with the question of how to best aid these students in further developing their language skills.

We propose that a key aspect to keep in mind is that Spanish heritage language speakers can often perceive their language proficiency or skills to be lacking, even when they are advanced. This shapes their learning and experiences in the language classroom. Typically, they cannot pinpoint what skills they need to develop, but they have a profound sense that something doesn’t quite fit, and might never do so. Whether those sentiments are accurate or not, we should not discount them, because it is the lens through which they will approach the classroom experience.

As part of an interactive exhibit for Hispanic Heritage month, we asked participants to anonymously complete the sentence My Spanish…/Mi español… In this paper we explore the replies that were shared, and what they show us about these learners. We will propose best practices about how to address these perceptions in the classroom, and use them to create a sense of belonging. We aim to create awareness of the needs of these students, the richness that they bring to their classroom, and how to value their language skills.

Speaker

Olga Padilla-Falto

UNC Charlotte

Teaching Professor

Speaker Bio

Please, see below (under "panelists") for the Bios. 2 authors for a paper presentation: Olga Padilla-Falto and Paloma Fernández Sánchez. We were asked to submit as a panel since the paper submission does not have space for 2 authors.

Session

Panel: Title Language Perceptions and Attitudes of Heritage Speakers of Spanish about their language

UNC-Charlotte

Bio

Olga Padilla-Falto is a Teaching Professor of Spanish in the Department of Languages and Culture Studies at UNC Charlotte. She is the Coordinator for Elementary Spanish. She has a PhD in Applied Linguistics from Georgetown University. Her research interests include second language acquisition/teaching, new teacher mentoring, heritage language learners, inclusive classrooms, and language variation.
Dr. Padilla-Falto has taught Spanish at all levels, including K-8. As Coordinator for elementary Spanish at UNC Charlotte, Dr. Padilla-Falto mentors new teachers and prepares materials for L2 learners of Spanish. Together with Dr. Paloma Fernández Sánchez and Dr. García León, she has worked to create spaces for Spanish language heritage learners at UNC Charlotte.

Paper

Title Language Perceptions and Attitudes of Heritage Speakers of Spanish about their language

NOTE: this is a paper presentation with two authors. We were told to submit as a panel because there was no space to add a second author in the paper submission)

Spanish heritage language students are a growing population in our language classrooms. These learners vary from the non-heritage ones in that they come to the language classroom with a set of skills and cultural wealth. As language teachers we are faced with the question of how to best aid these students in further developing their language skills.

We propose that a key aspect to keep in mind is that Spanish heritage language speakers can often perceive their language proficiency or skills to be lacking, even when they are advanced. This shapes their learning and experiences in the language classroom. Typically, they cannot pinpoint what skills they need to develop, but they have a profound sense that something doesn’t quite fit, and might never do so. Whether those sentiments are accurate or not, we should not discount them, because it is the lens through which they will approach the classroom experience.

As part of an interactive exhibit for Hispanic Heritage month, we asked participants to anonymously complete the sentence My Spanish…/Mi español… In this paper we explore the replies that were shared, and what they show us about these learners. We will propose best practices about how to address these perceptions in the classroom, and use them to create a sense of belonging. We aim to create awareness of the needs of these students, the richness that they bring to their classroom, and how to value their language skills.

UNC Charlotte

Bio

Dr. Paloma Fernández Sánchez is an Associate Teaching Professor of Spanish in the Department of Languages and Culture Studies and serves as the academic advisor for Spanish undergraduate programs (majors, minors and certificates). Dr. Fernández Sánchez is affiliate faculty for the Latin American Studies program at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She holds a Ph.D. in Spanish from Indiana University Bloomington. She also holds an M.A. in Spanish from Loyola University Chicago, and an M.A. in North American Studies from the Universidad de Alcalá de Henares in Spain.
After 20 years teaching at the university level, she has become more involved in the research and teaching of Spanish for Heritage Learners. She is the co-organizer (with Dr. García León and Dr. Padilla-Falto) of the Heritage Language Learning Symposium, an initiative to better serve the Spanish speaking population at UNC Charlotte.
Together with Dr. Padilla-Falto and Dr. García Leon, she has developed and piloted an intermediate course for Spanish Heritage Learners which increases the offering of Heritage Language courses for Hispanic and Latinx students.
In addition to teaching at UNCC, Dr. Fernández Sánchez has experience teaching Latina Women Writers, Latinx literature, Caribbean cultures and their migration to the United States, as well as a variety of topic courses on racial constructions in Latin American literatures, at the graduate and undergraduate levels at Indiana University Bloomington, University of Louisville, and Columbia College SC.
Together with Dr. Carol Polsgrove, Professor Emerita of Journalism, Indiana University Bloomington, Dr. Fernández Sánchez, has an ongoing project to bring Latin American literature to more English-language readers, hosted at https://latinamericanwriters.com/

Paper

Title Language Perceptions and Attitudes of Heritage Speakers of Spanish about their language

(same as Olga Padilla-Falto)

UNC Charlotte

Bio

Dr. Paloma Fernández Sánchez is an Associate Teaching Professor of Spanish in the Department of Languages and Culture Studies and serves as the academic advisor for Spanish undergraduate programs (majors, minors and certificates). Dr. Fernández Sánchez is affiliate faculty for the Latin American Studies program at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She holds a Ph.D. in Spanish from Indiana University Bloomington. She also holds an M.A. in Spanish from Loyola University Chicago, and an M.A. in North American Studies from the Universidad de Alcalá de Henares in Spain.
After 20 years teaching at the university level, she has become more involved in the research and teaching of Spanish for Heritage Learners. She is the co-organizer (with Dr. García León and Dr. Padilla-Falto) of the Heritage Language Learning Symposium, an initiative to better serve the Spanish speaking population at UNC Charlotte.
Together with Dr. Padilla-Falto and Dr. García Leon, she has developed and piloted an intermediate course for Spanish Heritage Learners which increases the offering of Heritage Language courses for Hispanic and Latinx students.
In addition to teaching at UNCC, Dr. Fernández Sánchez has experience teaching Latina Women Writers, Latinx literature, Caribbean cultures and their migration to the United States, as well as a variety of topic courses on racial constructions in Latin American literatures, at the graduate and undergraduate levels at Indiana University Bloomington, University of Louisville, and Columbia College SC.
Together with Dr. Carol Polsgrove, Professor Emerita of Journalism, Indiana University Bloomington, Dr. Fernández Sánchez, has an ongoing project to bring Latin American literature to more English-language readers, hosted at https://latinamericanwriters.com/

Paper

Title Language Perceptions and Attitudes of Heritage Speakers of Spanish about their language

(same as Olga Padilla-Falto)

UNC Charlotte

UNC Charlotte

Western Carolina University

Speaker

Philip Kaffen

University of North Carolina, Charlotte

Assistant Professor

Speaker Bio

Phil Kaffen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Languages and Culture Studies at the University of North Carolina Charlotte. His work focuses on film and other technical images, relying on philosophical, formal, and industrial framings to understand their work in Japan and the world more broadly.

Session

Paper: Lights, Camera, Action: Irrational Cameras & Japanese Cinema

Speaker

Rachel Poore

The University of North Carolina at Charlotte

MA Fellow

Speaker Bio

I started my education with two degrees from the University of North Florida in Anthropology and French Studies, continuing to the University of South Florida for a French masters with a specialization in Applied Linguistics. I had many linguistics but also literary courses during my masters studies that initially exposed me to medieval literature. I began teaching as a TA during my masters studies and have continued teaching full time at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. I am currently in the process of getting a certificate in Translation Studies in French, also at UNCC.

Session

Paper: Gender Roles, Dynamics and Expectations in Marie de France’s Lais and Today

The University of North Carolina Charlotte

Paper

French and Mandarin Linguistic Variation Panel

Speaker

Rafael Ocasio

Agnes Scott College

Professor of Spanish

Speaker Bio

Charles A. Dana Spanish Professor at Agnes Scott College and coauthor of The Dissidence of Reinaldo Arenas: Queering Literature, Politics, and the Activist Curriculum (University Press of Florida, 2022).

Session

Paper: Reinaldo Arenas’s Queer Activism and AIDS

Texas State University
Doctoral Students

Bio

Sam Owens holds an MA in applied philosophy and ethics. Sam is currently a doctoral student in the developmental education program at Texas State. Sam aspires to create more trans-inclusive educational environments. Sam is a co-author of the recently published NOSS white paper Clarifying Terms and Reestablishing Ourselves within Justice: A Response to Critiques of Developmental Education as Anti-Equity. Sam is interested in justice and access in higher education.

Jonathan Lollar is a doctoral student in the DE Graduate Program (learning support concentration) at TXST. He is a research assistant and assistant editor of J-CASP. Jonathan has a master’s in applied philosophy and ethics from TXST. He has taught undergraduate courses in philosophy and educational psychology. He also has interests in correctional education (incarcerated learners), education policy, motivation, and DE instructor identity.

Paper

Queering metacognition: Conceptualizing a more equitable approach for student engagement

Speaker

Sara Oswald

UNC Pembroke

Senior Lecturer

Speaker Bio

Sara Oswald teaches Composition, British literature, and English grammar in the Dept. of English, Theatre, and World Languages and Publication Design in the Dept. of Mass Communication. She was faculty advisor for the UNCP yearbook from 1988-2022 and has worked with students on several other print publications.

Session

Paper: Teaching Technical Terminology: Can Resurrecting “Dead Metaphors” Help?

North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University
Part-Time Instructor

Bio

Sarah Rhu is an adjunct instructor of English at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. She earned her BA in Women’s and Gender Studies from the University of South Carolina in 2019 and her MA in English with a concentration in literature from Western Carolina University in 2021. Her academic interests include creative nonfiction writing, vegan studies, and professional editing.

Paper

This Basket Holds Water: “Coiling” in Shapes of Native Nonfiction

Speaker

Shelby Troyer

Gardner-Webb University

Graduate Student

Speaker Bio

Graduate Student – MA English Program at Gardner-Webb University
Adjunct English Instructor- Delaware Technical Community College

Session

Paper: A More Faithful Witness: Black Prophetic Hope as Agency in The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Speaker

Shelley Jones

University of South Carolina, Palmetto College Columbia

Associate Professor of English

Speaker Bio

Shelley AJ Jones is an Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, Palmetto College Columbia. Her research investigates revision, genre theory, and periodical culture in the Romantic period, with a particular emphasis on how popular forms widened access to literature. This emphasis on access made possible by new technology informs her teaching interests as well: creating collaborative environments and communities for distance and online learners. She recently co-edited an edition of Helen Maria Williams Peru and Peruvian Tales for Broadview Press, published articles in Romantic Circles’ Pedagogy Commons and Essays in Romanticism, and has a digital edition of Mary Robinson’s poetry, Lyrical Tales with The Progress of Liberty: Verse Revisions and Periodical Poems, forthcoming at Romantic Circles.

Session

Paper: The Surprising History of Ephemera in British Romantic-era Verse

Western Carolina University

Paper

Returning Cherokee Voices to Cullowhee

UNC Charlotte

Bio

Susana Cisneros is a Senior Lecturer of Spanish and Affiliate Faculty of Latin American Studies. She teaches elementary, intermediate and advanced Spanish courses, she is currently serving as an advisor for the Spanish Club C.E.P.A. and also leads the Tertulia/Virtulia Spanish Conversation hour.

Paper

The GLII Institute: incorporating Intercultural Competency in Spanish

Susana Cisneros will discuss the GLI Institute and how she is incorporating Intercultural Competency in Spanish.

UNC Charlotte

Bio

Susana Cisneros is a Senior Lecturer of Spanish and Affiliate Faculty of Latin American Studies. She teaches elementary, intermediate and advanced Spanish courses, she is currently serving as an advisor for the Spanish Club C.E.P.A. and also leads the Tertulia/Virtulia Spanish Conversation hour.

Paper

The GLII Institute: incorporating Intercultural Competency in Spanish

Susana Cisneros will discuss the GLI Institute and how she is incorporating Intercultural Competency in Spanish.

Speaker

Susana Cisneros

UNC Charlotte

Senior Lecturer

Speaker Bio

Susana Cisneros is a Senior Lecturer of Spanish at UNC Charlotte. She has experience teaching elementary, intermediate, and advanced Spanish courses. She currently serves as an advisor for the Spanish Club C.E.P.A. and leads the Tertulia/Virtulia Spanish Conversation hour. Susana was inducted into the Honors Society of Phi Kappa Phi in 2021 and Phi Beta Delta in 2022. She was named Teacher of the Year in Higher Education 2022 by the Foreign Language Association of North Carolina. Susana is passionate about maintaining a connection to the community, as seen by completing the programs at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department (CMPD) Citizen Academy, Mecklenburg Court College, and the FBI Citizen Academy. She also participated in the Leading Education, Aligning, Developing -Upward Potential (L.E.A.Ding- Up) Program sponsored by the Latin American Chamber of Commerce (LACCC) and Leadership Charlotte Class 39. She currently volunteers as a facilitator for Cultivando Talento, LACCC initiative.

Session

Panel: More Than a Train Ride! Consultants Communicating in the Charlotte Community

UNC Charlotte

Bio

Susana Cisneros is a Senior Lecturer of Spanish and Affiliate Faculty of Latin American Studies. She teaches elementary, intermediate and advanced Spanish courses, she is currently serving as an advisor for the Spanish Club C.E.P.A. and also leads the Tertulia/Virtulia Spanish Conversation hour.

Paper

The GLII Institute: incorporating Intercultural Competency in Spanish

Susana Cisneros will discuss the GLI Institute and how she is incorporating Intercultural Competency in Spanish.

Western Carolina University

Paper

A Tale of Two Genres: The Narrators of Dickens’s Bleak House and the Intertwining of Gothic Bildungsroman

UNC Charlotte

Bio

Susanne Gomoluch is an Associate Teaching Professor of German at UNC Charlotte. She teaches all levels of German and translation.

Paper

no title: roundtable discussion

Teaching literature for the sake of literature has become difficult at my institution as it is oriented towards degrees in engineering, business, and STEM. Many of our majors are double majors in one of these disciplines, and so their interest lies in more tangible subjects. To many, literature offers no factual knowledge and has no concrete answers it asks. In addition, a concerning development is the loss of the ability to read longer texts–the pandemic didn’t help there either. But the strong believer in the value of literature that I am, I developed two successful ways that provide entry points for my students to rediscover reading literature: one by teaching advanced level German courses that are literature based, and another by focusing on translating literature in my translating courses. In my presentation, I would like to share my experience with the developing and teaching process of both courses. Apart from describing my teaching methods, I will share assignments and activities that can be useful to other colleagues in developing entire courses as well as individual class meetings. At the same time, I hope to instigate a discussion how we can revisit and revitalize the significance of literature in our classrooms.

Speaker

Susanne Gomoluch

The University of North Carolina Charlotte

Associate Teaching Professor

Speaker Bio

I'm a Associate Teaching Professor in German and the Elementary and Intermediate German Coordinator.

Session

Panel: Roundtable Discussion: Teaching Literature Because It Matters

UNC Charlotte

Bio

Susanne Gomoluch is an Associate Teaching Professor of German at UNC Charlotte. She teaches all levels of German and translation.

Paper

no title: roundtable discussion

Teaching literature for the sake of literature has become difficult at my institution as it is oriented towards degrees in engineering, business, and STEM. Many of our majors are double majors in one of these disciplines, and so their interest lies in more tangible subjects. To many, literature offers no factual knowledge and has no concrete answers it asks. In addition, a concerning development is the loss of the ability to read longer texts–the pandemic didn’t help there either. But the strong believer in the value of literature that I am, I developed two successful ways that provide entry points for my students to rediscover reading literature: one by teaching advanced level German courses that are literature based, and another by focusing on translating literature in my translating courses. In my presentation, I would like to share my experience with the developing and teaching process of both courses. Apart from describing my teaching methods, I will share assignments and activities that can be useful to other colleagues in developing entire courses as well as individual class meetings. At the same time, I hope to instigate a discussion how we can revisit and revitalize the significance of literature in our classrooms.

Western Carolina University

Bio

Terin Waller is a senior at Western Carolina University studying Spanish and Business Law. She will be graduating in May 2023 and is interested in continuing her academic career with a graduate degree in Project Management. Her research interests include the Spanish language and Hispanic cultures, as well as Latin American political movements.

Paper

Evaluating Effects of the U.S. Embargo on Cuba

The Cuban Embargo has been subject to much debate over the last 60 years, as it remains a constant fixture in American foreign policy. Not only is this embargo an affair between the United States and Cuba, but it is also one that the whole world discusses, as the United Nations has called for an end to the embargo for 30 years. Last year, all members of the UN except two — Israel and the United States — called for the embargo to be lifted. This global attention calls into question the true motivations behind upholding the embargo. While it is an economic restriction, it affects more than just the economics of this small island. Every aspect of life in Cuba is affected by the embargo, including diet and nutrition, healthcare, and the ability to bid for jobs. I will examine the U.S.'s motives for the embargo and evaluate whether it has been effective in achieving those original objectives.

Western Carolina University

Western Carolina University

Western Carolina University

Bio

Terin Waller is a senior at Western Carolina University studying Spanish and Business Law. She will be graduating in May 2023 and is interested in continuing her academic career with a graduate degree in Project Management. Her research interests include the Spanish language and Hispanic cultures, as well as Latin American political movements.

Paper

Evaluating Effects of the U.S. Embargo on Cuba

The Cuban Embargo has been subject to much debate over the last 60 years, as it remains a constant fixture in American foreign policy. Not only is this embargo an affair between the United States and Cuba, but it is also one that the whole world discusses, as the United Nations has called for an end to the embargo for 30 years. Last year, all members of the UN except two — Israel and the United States — called for the embargo to be lifted. This global attention calls into question the true motivations behind upholding the embargo. While it is an economic restriction, it affects more than just the economics of this small island. Every aspect of life in Cuba is affected by the embargo, including diet and nutrition, healthcare, and the ability to bid for jobs. I will examine the U.S.'s motives for the embargo and evaluate whether it has been effective in achieving those original objectives.

Gardner-Webb University
Graduate Student

Bio

I am a graduate student at Gardner-Webb University where I am studying English with a concentration in writing. I have been studying remediation and ownership in fan created artifacts such as fan videos. I also work at the Union County Library where I am a full-time Circulation Library Specialist. I help run the library’s teen podcast and one of our book clubs.

Paper

Fan Videos: An Original Art Form That Builds Community

Western Carolina University

Paper

Coquetting with Truth: Earnestness and its Consequences in Dickens’s Bleak House

Speaker

Valerie Davis

Santiago Christian School

Teacher

Speaker Bio

My name is Valerie Davis. I live with my husband and three kids in the Dominican Republic, where I am a high school English teacher in an international school with primarily Dominican students. I love where I am, what I am doing, and the many experiences I have had living here for the last ten years. I just completed my Masters in English Literature through Gardner-Webb University. I an avid reader, I am fluent in Spanish, I love playing sports and doing physical activities of all kinds, I am a creative cook and gardener, and I am a member of a local Lutheran church, Iglesia Cordero de Dios. I participated in SEACS as a presenter two years ago and valued the experience–I hope to participate again this year.

Session

Paper: Making Room at the Table: The application of a Christian Literary Lens to Marilynne Robinson's Gilead and Susanna Clarke's Piranesi

Western Carolina University

Bio

Victoria Marth is an international student from Rudersdorf, Austria, taking graduate Education and English Studies classes at Western Carolina University

Paper

Letters from Henry. M. Misemer to his wife Martha, 1865

I will present the results of my transcription and research on two letters from H. M. Misemer to his wife. The two letters provide us with an insight into the life of prisoners of the Confederacy at the end of the Civil War. The letters were written about 2.5 weeks apart from each other. Both were written in order to provide his family with information about his well being, updates on the war and to ask for updates from home.

The first letter is dated March 28th, 1865, the second one was written on April 14th, 1865 – just days before the explosion of the steamboat Sultana (in which he was killed). In both letters, H. M. Misemer mentions communications with people that have experienced Andersonville prison and shares the information he has acquired from them. He reports less about his imprisonment at Cahaba Prison but lists several soldiers that died while being there. Camp Vicksburg, where many Union soldiers where waiting to be exchanged, is described as: “it is almost a heaven” (Misemer Civil War Letters HL_MSS_21-07_02_50). This might also be due to the support of the Sanitary Commission.

During the winter of 1864-1865 the situation was tense in Tennessee. In addition to the encounter with the enemy’s organized troops, the Federal troops had to fight rebel guerrillas as well. The war was about to end and H. M. Misemer was well aware of that. Apparently, many soldiers have been looking forward to being exchanged and going home, but H. M. Misemer is not convinced. And as it turns out, he was right – only a few of his comrades would reach their homes again.

Western Carolina University

Bio

Victoria Marth is an international student from Rudersdorf, Austria, taking graduate Education and English Studies classes at Western Carolina University

Paper

Letters from Henry. M. Misemer to his wife Martha, 1865

I will present the results of my transcription and research on two letters from H. M. Misemer to his wife. The two letters provide us with an insight into the life of prisoners of the Confederacy at the end of the Civil War. The letters were written about 2.5 weeks apart from each other. Both were written in order to provide his family with information about his well being, updates on the war and to ask for updates from home.

The first letter is dated March 28th, 1865, the second one was written on April 14th, 1865 – just days before the explosion of the steamboat Sultana (in which he was killed). In both letters, H. M. Misemer mentions communications with people that have experienced Andersonville prison and shares the information he has acquired from them. He reports less about his imprisonment at Cahaba Prison but lists several soldiers that died while being there. Camp Vicksburg, where many Union soldiers where waiting to be exchanged, is described as: “it is almost a heaven” (Misemer Civil War Letters HL_MSS_21-07_02_50). This might also be due to the support of the Sanitary Commission.

During the winter of 1864-1865 the situation was tense in Tennessee. In addition to the encounter with the enemy’s organized troops, the Federal troops had to fight rebel guerrillas as well. The war was about to end and H. M. Misemer was well aware of that. Apparently, many soldiers have been looking forward to being exchanged and going home, but H. M. Misemer is not convinced. And as it turns out, he was right – only a few of his comrades would reach their homes again.

Western Carolina University

Bio

Whisper O’Brien is a fourth-year undergraduate student at Western Carolina University majoring in English with a concentration in Literature and minoring in Professional Writing. Her interests lie in the study of the intersectionality between gender, race, and class, and she hopes to continue her research on these topics as she explores more literature. Whisper currently serves as a Student Ambassador for the English department of her university and tries to remain involved in the community the English department has fostered on her campus.

Paper

Intersections of class and gender in Julia Alvarez's In the Time of the Butterflies

I will be exploring the intersectionality between gender and class, and the role women play in politics and nation-construction by examining the novel In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez. I am hoping that my research will reflect the importance of the role women play in the political field and how that role can completely shift the political landscape of entire nations. This research will also explore the way in which social class allows a person to interact with the political world around them, and how when class and gender intersect and are cross-examined, we see that such a dynamic can become a powerful catalyst that can transform the very foundations of a nation.

Western Carolina University

Bio

Whisper O’Brien is a fourth-year undergraduate student at Western Carolina University majoring in English with a concentration in Literature and minoring in Professional Writing. Her interests lie in the study of the intersectionality between gender, race, and class, and she hopes to continue her research on these topics as she explores more literature. Whisper currently serves as a Student Ambassador for the English department of her university and tries to remain involved in the community the English department has fostered on her campus.

Paper

Intersections of class and gender in Julia Alvarez's In the Time of the Butterflies

I will be exploring the intersectionality between gender and class, and the role women play in politics and nation-construction by examining the novel In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez. I am hoping that my research will reflect the importance of the role women play in the political field and how that role can completely shift the political landscape of entire nations. This research will also explore the way in which social class allows a person to interact with the political world around them, and how when class and gender intersect and are cross-examined, we see that such a dynamic can become a powerful catalyst that can transform the very foundations of a nation.

Western Carolina University

Western Carolina University

Western Carolina University

Western Carolina University

Speaker

Zoe Takvorian

The University of North Carolina at Charlotte

M.A.

Speaker Bio

-DAAD language assistant in German at UNCC (since August 2022)
-Teacher Education Program at Couven-Gymnasium Aachen, Germany (from 2020-2022)
-Research assistant at the department of Cognitive Literary Studies as well as the department of Linguistics and Cognitive Semiotics at RWTH Aachen (from 2018-2020)
-M.A. German + English, 2020 – RWTH Aachen University, Germany
-English and German literature at Maynooth University, Ireland (2017)
-B.A. German + English, 2017 – RWTH Aachen University, Germany

Session

Paper: Fact Meets Fiction: The Representation of Mental Health in the Media