Downloadable Conference Program
About the Conference
This conference is hosted by student organizations Kino Club 313, the Wayne State Comics Collective, Knit/Lit, and the Video Game Scholarly Interest Group, with support from the Popular Culture Working Group and the Wayne English Graduate Organization.
For more information about the various pop culture student organizations at Wayne State, please visit www.kinoclub313.com, wsuknitlit.wordpress.com, wsuvideogamestudies.wordpress.com, and our social media accounts: facebook.com/KinoClub313, twitter.com/KinoClub313, instagram.com/KinoClub313, and facebook.com/groups/wsucomics.
The Kino Club 313 website also features a blog where we post reviews, listicles, articles, and interviews written by undergraduate students, graduate students, independent scholars, and faculty from Wayne State and beyond. If you are interested in contributing to our blog, send an email to kinoclub313wsu@gmail.com – we’d love to publish your work!
Location
All conference events will be held in the Wayne State University Student Center – located at 5221 Gullen Mall, Detroit, Michigan – unless otherwise specified in the conference program. For more information about Student Center hours, services, and amenities (including ATMs, food court, lost & found, etc.) please visit studentcenter.wayne.edu.
Registration Table
The Registration Table will be located in the 2nd floor hallway of the Student Center.
The Registration Table will be open at the following times:
Friday: 11:30 AM – 6 PM
Saturday: 8:30 AM – 4 PM
Sunday: 11:30 AM – 2:30 PM
Registration table volunteers will provide participants with their welcome packet and tote bag, manage the sign-in sheet for attendees, and be available throughout the conference to answer any questions. Please make it your first stop – we’re looking forward to seeing you!
Art Exhibit – “Graphic Scenes: (Re)visionary Comic Book Art”
The David Adamany Undergraduate Library (UGL) has graciously offered to host an art exhibit in their atrium (1st floor, directly across from the entrance) for all three days of the conference. This art exhibit, curated by our plenary speaker Terrance Wandtke, features the work of comic book artists Dean Motter, Mike Mignola, and Sean Phillips.
A description of the exhibit can be found below:
Comic book artists have long made visual references to images from other comic books as well as film and pulp fiction illustration. In recent decades in the era of the ‘graphic novel,’ many artists have continued this tradition in self-conscious ways. Dean Motter, Mike Mignola, and Sean Phillips have not only appropriated but repurposed images in their science fiction, horror, and crime comics. Featuring images from Mister X, Hellboy, and Criminal, this exhibition examines how these series are inspired by and rewrite past conventions—regularly taking a stand against purveyors of high culture who seek to prohibit new media expressions of controversial content.
In addition to the art exhibit, the Wayne State Libraries Special Collections team will be presenting a pop-up display of rare and special materials related to the conference theme, which will also be located in the atrium of the UGL throughout the conference.
The Art Exhibit will be accessible at the following times:
Friday: 10 AM – 9 PM
Saturday: 9 AM – 5 PM
Sunday: 11 AM – 8 PM
Tech Bunker Virtual Reality Gaming Space
Come check out the Tech Bunker and play some VR on the far wall of the second floor of the Undergraduate Library. Whether you want to play a rhythm game like Beat Saber or a shooting gallery like Robo Recall, this is a great place to take a break and play some VR! The Tech Bunker also has the following games: Thumper, Dead and Buried, Rec Room, Arizona Sunshine, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, and Face Your Fears.
The Tech Bunker will be open at the following times:
Friday: 2 PM – 4 PM
Saturday: 11 AM – 2 PM
Sunday: 11 AM – 2 PM
If you’re having trouble finding the Tech Bunker, just ask a conference volunteer!
Lounge & Bag Decorating Station
Room 289 (just down the hall from the Registration Table) will be used throughout the conference as a Lounge Area and Bag Decorating Station. If you need a quiet place to relax, a spot to charge your devices, or a place to work on customizing your conference tote bag, look no further!
Wayne State’s reading and fiber-arts student org, Knit/Lit, has kindly donated a basket of knitting materials that attendees can use throughout the conference. These materials will be located in Room 289 and are free for the taking if you’d like to knit or crochet during panels.
The Lounge will be open at the following times:
Friday: 11 AM – 6 PM
Saturday: 8 AM – 7 PM
Sunday: 11 AM – 4 PM
Parking
We recommend parking at Parking Structure 1 located at 450 W. Palmer Ave., Detroit, MI (across from the law school) or Parking Structure 2 located at 5150 Lodge Service Dr., Detroit, MI (between the John C. Lodge Service Drive and Anthony Wayne). These lots are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Visitor parking for the day does not exceed $12 (cash or major credit cards accepted). If you are staying off campus and would prefer to avoid driving in and parking, the Detroit area offers many affordable transportation options, including Uber, Lyft, and the QLine.
You may also find this searchable online map of the campus helpful: http://maps.wayne.edu/.
Technology
Each room used for this conference will be equipped with VGA and HDMI inputs as well as screens for presenters with audiovisual materials. Adapter dongles will not be provided, so if you need one please be sure to bring your own. Panels featuring Skype presenters will have a laptop set up to facilitate the virtual presentation. WiFi internet will also be available throughout the Student Center (please choose the WSU Public network, which does not require a password for access).
Live Tweeting
We encourage you to live-tweet during the conference using #WaynePop2019. Live-tweeting is a generative way to interact with other participants and continue the conversation beyond the conference. Please feel free to take pictures of the event and tweet them with our event hashtag. We do allow presenters to opt out of being photographed or having their presentation live-tweeted. In those cases, the moderator will make note of this at the start of the panel.
Schedule at a Glance
Friday, March 1st:
11:30-12:30 PM – Networking Roundtable (Student Center Ballroom A)
12:45-1:45 PM – Plenary Talk (Undergraduate Library – Bernath Auditorium)
2:00-3:45 PM – Panels 1 & 2 (Student Center Hilberry D & C)
4:00-5:45 PM – Panels 3 & 4 (Student Center Hilberry D & C)
6:00-8:30 PM – Film Screening + Director Q&A (Student Center Room 285)
Saturday, March 2nd:
9:00-10:45 AM – Panels 5 & 6 (Student Center Hilberry D, Room 010)
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM – Lunch Break
12:00-1:45 PM – Panel 7, Documentarian Talk (Student Center Hilberry D, Room 010)
2:00-3:45 PM – Panels 8 & 9 (Student Center Hilberry D, Room 010)
4:00-5:15 PM – Keynote Talk (Student Center Room 285)
5:15-7:15 PM – Reception (Student Center Ballroom AB)
Sunday, March 3rd:
11:30 AM – 12:30 PM – Coffee + Comics Brunch (Student Center Hilberry EF)
12:30-2:15 PM – Panel 10 (Student Center Hilberry C)
12:30-1:30 PM – Artist Talk (Student Center Hilberry B)
1:30-2:15 PM – Storytelling Workshop (Student Center Hilberry B)
2:30-4:15 PM – Panels 11 & 12 (Student Center Hilberry D & C)
Friday, March 1st
11:30 am – 6:00 pm
Registration Table: Next to Ballroom (Student Center, 2nd Floor)
11:30 am – 12:30 pm
Lunchtime Roundtable: How to Succeed at Networking Without Really Trying Ballroom A
Isaac Pickell (Wayne State, Literature & Culture), moderator
Rachel Dortin (Wayne State, Rhetoric & Composition), participant
Mariel Krupansky (Wayne State, Rhetoric & Composition), participant
Peter Marra (Wayne State, Film & Media), participant
Molli Spalter (Wayne State, Literature & Culture), participant
Nicole Varty (Wayne State, Rhetoric & Composition), participant
The Wayne English Graduate Organization (WEGO) welcomes a roundtable of panelists from Rhetoric and Composition, Literature and Culture, and Film and Media Studies to discuss ways to get the most out of your conference experiences. The discussion will encompass ways to secure travel funding, minimizing costs, when and how often to attend conferences (particularly during graduate school), tips for effective networking, and more.
Light refreshments will be provided by the Wayne English Graduate Organization (WEGO), or feel free to bring your own lunch!
12:45 pm – 1:45 pm
Plenary: “Comic Books as Pulp and Art as a Four-Letter Word: (Re)imagining the Stories Told about Popular Culture” Bernath Auditorium, Undergraduate Library (UGL)
Shelby Cadwell (Wayne State), moderator
Terrence Wandtke (Judson University), plenary speaker
Synopsis:
Like mass market pulp fiction and Hollywood’s B-grade film, the comic book began its life as cheaply produced entertainment for a wide audience. Part of the early 20th century phenomenon of “new” media development, American comic books were regularly derided by critics as an example of low culture in the 1940s. And after being targeted as a cause of juvenile delinquency in the 1950s, the industry created the Comics Code, eliminated the controversial content of crime and horror comics, and finally made the medium “safe” for children.
Following decades of artistically limited comic books in the mainstream, comics creators began to cater to an adult audience in the 1980s and 1990s with works ranging from Moore and Gibbon’s Watchmen to Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize winning Maus. Curiously, as this change took place, these new comic books were recommended by critics as high art. Drawing a dividing line between all that had come before (including the ground-breaking EC catalogue) and these new, sophisticated works for adults, critics reinstated the increasingly obsolete model of low culture versus high art.
This lecture represents the way this debate about popular culture (and the art it produces) is reoriented through the efforts of Dean Motter, Mike Mignola, and Sean Phillips. Active in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, these comics creators make extensive visual and thematic references to other comic books, pulp fiction, and B-grade movies: artifacts of supposedly low culture replete with the shocking content associated with science fiction, horror, and crime stories. In self-conscious ways, their series, Mister X, Hellboy, and Criminal, appropriate and repurpose genre conventions and controversies of the past.
In the process, these works rebut representatives of cultural institutions that find fault in popularity and pleasure and use “good taste” as a weapon to limit the content of media expressions. Concomitantly, these works force readers to revisit traditional notions of art and redefine what is artistic in an industrial and postindustrial context.
Plenary Bio:
Terrence Wandtke is a professor of literature and media studies at Judson University in Elgin, IL where classes taught include Comic Books and Graphic Novels and Media Theory. He has directed the school’s film and media program, served as the area chair of Comics and Comic Art for the Popular Culture Association Conference, and currently acts as the editor of the Comics Monograph Series for the Rochester Institute of Technology. His scholarship analyzes the connections between contemporary literature, film, and other media and his recent research focuses on the historical trends and revisionism associated with comic books. He is author of The Comics Scare Returns: The Resurgence in Contemporary Horror Comics and The Dark Night Returns: The Contemporary Resurgence in Crime Comics (both RIT) and The Meaning of Superhero Comic Books (McFarland); he is the editor of the collections Ed Brubaker: Conversations (UP of Mississippi) and The Amazing Transforming Superhero: Essays on the Revision of Characters in Comic Books, Film, and Television (McFarland). Topics of his recent articles include Frank Miller’s Sin City: The Hard Goodbye as resistance to the comics industry and the relationship between Marvel’s Jessica Jones and working-class literature. The founder of the Imago Film Festival, he has served on the selection committee for the St. Louis International Film Festival’s Interfaith Award and on the jury for the Elgin Short Film Festival.
Note: Be sure to visit the art exhibit “Graphic Scenes: (Re)visionary Comic Book Art” in the atrium of the Undergraduate Library. This exhibit was curated by Professor Wandtke and is the focus of his talk!
2:00 pm – 3:45 pm
Panel 1: Race & the Trans-Atlantic Superhero Hilberry D
Matt Linton (Wayne State), moderator
Binoy Agarwal (University of Delhi), Of Cross-Cultural Consumption: Imag(in)ing American Superheroes in India [Skype]
Pritesh Chakraborty (NYU), Indian Superhero Comic Books of Nagraj as Myth Creating Tools
Dolores Sisco (Youngstown State), Re-visioning the Black Superhero: From Blaxploitation to #BlackLivesMatter
Panel 2: Reading Gendered Norms through Popular Media Hilberry C
Elizabeth Drake (Wayne State), moderator
Sallwa Assarawie (Wayne State) and Nina Teal (Wayne State), Her Phallic Fallacy: The Poaching of Male Sexuality Among Female Anime/Manga Fans
Robin Hershkowitz (BGSU), Popular Memoirs of Women Held Captive
Christine Cook (Wayne State), WACs on Film: Gender Expectations in Never Wave at a WAC and Private Benjamin
4:00 pm – 5:45 pm
Panel 3: Narrating the Subaltern Hilberry D
Diana Rosenberger (Wayne State), moderator
Partha Bhattacharjee and Priyanka Tripathi (Indian Institute of Technology Patna), Going Beyond Narrative: ‘Retelling’ of Mahabharata in Amruta Patil’s Sauptik: Blood and Flowers [Skype]
Ena Dhankar (UT Austin), Retelling Ramayana: Subaltern Perspectives through Graphic Novels
Panel 4: Expressions of Identity and Play in Video Games Hilberry C
Kevin Ball (Wayne State), moderator
Kathryn Florence (Concordia University, Montreal), ContINUITy: Preserving the Teleological Role of Innupiat Mythology and Cultural Identity in Never Alone (2014) [Skype]
Steven Proudfoot (Wayne State), Look at What You’ve Done: Exploring Narrative Displeasure in Video Games
Namrata Jain (Ohio University), The Re-play and Inter-play of the Wild West – A Study of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and The Oregon Trail
6:00 pm – 8:30 pm
Film Screening and Director Q&A Room 285
Elena Past (Wayne State), moderator
Xavier Mendik (Birmingham City University), director & special guest
That’s la Morte: Italian Cult Cinema and the Years of Lead (Mendik, 2018)
Synopsis:
That’s la Morte: Italian Cult Cinema and the Years of Lead (2018) utilizes exclusive access to the archives of Dania Film: the prolific Italian production house that released 170 popular film titles between 1970 and 1984.
The documentary links the output of Dania and other populist film producers to the wider social, historical and political tensions within the Anni di piombo (‘years of lead’). Here, a decade of violent revolt, terrorist activity and militant sexual politics created a context of trauma that impacted on the Italian collective and cinematic consciousness. Some of the memorable markers in this dark decade included the 1969 Piazza Fontana (Milan) and 1980 (Bologna) bombings by clandestine fascist groups, as well as sustained violent activity by leftist collectives such as The Red Brigades (including their spectacularly tragic kidnapping and murder of Christian Democrat Premier Aldo Moro in 1978). These atrocities (compounded by over 14,000 additional terrorist attacks upon Italian citizens between 1969 and 1983), seem systematically reproduced in the popular film templates of the giallo (thriller), rogue cop films and sex comedy cycles that the documentary explores.
The past decade has witnessed an increased theoretical interest in Italian popular cinema generated during such periods of political crisis (Glynn, Lombardi, O’Leary [2012], Mendik [2015]), but these studies have often been limited by access to the types of film industry materials provided by the Dania collection. That’s la Morte combines these archival materials alongside exclusive filmed interviews with leading Italian filmmakers, performers, composers and screenwriters associated with the years of lead.
Director Bio:
Xavier Mendik is Professor of Cult Cinema Studies at Birmingham City University, from where he also runs the Cine-Excess International Film Festival (www.cine-excess.co.uk). He is the author/editor/co-editor of nine volumes on cult cinema traditions, including Bodies of Desire and Bodies in Distress: The Golden Age of Italian Cult Cinema (2015), Peep Shows: Cult Film and the Cine-Erotic (2012) and The Cult Film Reader (2008). He has also completed a number of documentaries on cult film traditions, including Tax Shelter Terrors: The Real Story of Canadian Cult Film (2017), and That’s La Morte: Italian Cult Cinema and the Years of Lead (2018).
Saturday, March 2nd
8:30 am – 4:00 pm
Registration Table: Next to Hilberry Rooms (Student Center, 2nd Floor)
9:00 am – 10:45 am
Panel 5: History and Memory as Pedagogy Hilberry D
Georgina Adlam (Wayne State), moderator
Caroline Winstel (Northern Kentucky University), Drawn from Memory: Comic Books and Graphic Novels as a Vehicle for Memory Studies in Oral Testimony
Maria Wendeln (Wayne State), ‘Offred and the Commanders’: Approaching Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale through Trevor Getz’s and Liz Clarke’s Graphic History, Abina and the Important Men
Nicholas Langenberg (GVSU), Cultural Memory or Historical Reality?: The Effects of Twentieth Century Ideology upon Reader’s Responses to Kindred
Panel 6: Cross-Medium Epics Room 010 [Lower Level]
Chera Kee (Wayne State), moderator
Meredith Dabek (Maynooth), ‘Reaching Beyond the Canon’: The Interactive, Immersive Retelling of Austen in The Lizzie Bennett Diaries [Skype]
Aaron Proudfoot (UConn), Will’s Competition with Game of Thrones: A Repertory Studies Approach to Adapting and Appropriating Shakespeare in Serial Television
Leah Hamilton (Xavier), The Ideal Fallen Hero: Adaptations of Arthurian Themes of Religion and Redemption for Modern Audiences in the BBC’s Merlin
Eric Jarrard (Harvard), ‘You humans take something wonderful and ruin it just a little bit’: Biblical Cyclicality and Predictability in The Good Place
11:00 am – 12:00 pm Lunch Break (Not Provided)
12:00 pm – 1:45 pm
Panel 7: Heroes and Legends Hilberry D
Jose Guzman, moderator
Buddy Avila (BGSU), Unearthing Gilgamesh II: Reassessing Jim Starlin’s Superheroic Reimagining of The Epic of Gilgamesh
Blue Profitt (BGSU), ‘Hokey Religions’ and ‘Thy Weapons Ancient’: William Shakespeare’s Star Wars and Sinful Adaptation
Alexis Bedell (Kansas State), ‘Yipee-ki-yay to all and to all a good night’: Die Hard – The Children’s Picture Book Classic
Courtney Bliss (BGSU), Remixing the Revolution: How Hamilton Tells the Story of the Founding of America
Documentarian Talk: Razi Jafri Room 010 [Lower Level]
Kelly Polasek (Wayne State), moderator
Razi Jafri (UM Dearborn), guest speaker
Razi Jafri is a documentary photographer and filmmaker whose work focuses on religion, culture, politics, and the changing American cultural landscape. His current projects include directing and producing an upcoming feature documentary called Hamtramck, USA, which examines the complexities of multiculturalism through the lens of Hamtramck’s 2017 municipal elections. Another feature film he is currently working on is Loyalty, which follows the stories of three Muslim chaplains as they navigate religious freedom in the US armed forces.
He is also currently serving in a role as photographer and project manager at the Center for Arab American Studies at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, where he is working on a collaborative multimedia project called Halal Metropolis, examining Muslim visibility in southeast Michigan.
Razi is an alumnus of the University of Michigan-Dearborn where he received a bachelor’s degree in engineering.
2:00 – 3:45 pm
Panel 8: Mediating Identities Hilberry D
Lisa Alexander (Wayne State), moderator
Ryan Banfi (USC), Love and Hate: The Juxtaposition of Old and New Media in BlackKklansman
Hannah Mueller (BGSU), ‘What we lost in the fire, we’ll find in the ashes’: Black Masculinity, Violence, and Sexuality in The Magnificent Seven and The Hateful Eight
Lindsay Ragle-Miller (Wayne State), The Good Pagan in The Lord of the Rings
Trinidad Linares (BGSU), Telling and Retelling Romance Asian/American Style: To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before
Panel 9: Flattening Time Room 010 [Lower Level]
Steven Shaviro (Wayne State), moderator
Mary Karcher (Wayne State), (Re)telling the past; (Re)imaging the future; (Re)invigorating the present: A Hauntological Exploration of the Steampunk Movement
Cornelius Fortune (Mercy College), Perfecting Humanity, One Genome at a Time – The Curious Case of Rebooting an Entire Culture
Ella Tucan (Wayne State), ‘His Majesty the King needs to use your bathroom’: A/historical Reimagining in Roy Andersson’s Living trilogy
Laurel Rogers (USC), Streaming Canada: Alias Grace, Anne with an E, and the Production of Canadianness on Netflix
4:00 – 5:15 pm
Keynote: “From Bilbo Baggins to Buster Scruggs: (Re)imagining Ourselves Through Popular Culture” Room 285
Matt Linton (Wayne State), moderator
Matt Yockey (University of Toledo), keynote speaker
Synopsis:
This talk will reflect on how we use stories to navigate our relationship to the past and the future as participants in the social sphere. The act of retelling acknowledges a simultaneous presence and absence of a story and, in turn, this allows us to articulate a comparable simultaneity of self. This talk will explore how, within that cognitive and affective space created by retelling, we tell the story of our own utopian imaginings of ourselves.
Keynote Bio:
Matt Yockey joined the University of Toledo Department of Theatre and Film in 2010. He teaches courses on film history, film theory, European cinema, Third Cinema, auteur films (such as Hitchcock and Kubrick), screenwriting, animation studies, and film genres (including gangster, science fiction, and superhero films).
Yockey’s research focus is on Hollywood genres and fan studies. His essays on these topics have appeared in journals such as The Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies, The Velvet Light Trap, CineAction, Transformative Works and Cultures, Journal of Fandom Studies, The European Journal of American Studies, and Studies in Comics, as well as the anthologies Critical Approaches to the Films of M. Night Shyamalan (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), Superhero Synergies: Comic Book Characters Go Digital (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), and The X-Men Films: A Cultural Analysis (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016). His monograph on the 1960s Batman television series was published by Wayne State University Press in 2014. He is the editor of the anthology Make Ours Marvel: Media Convergence and a Comics Universe (University of Texas Press, 2017).
Yockey earned a combined Ph.D. in Communication and Culture and American Studies from Indiana University, Bloomington in 2007.
5:15 pm – 7:15 pm
Reception Ballroom AB
Join us for refreshments, board games, and make-and-take craft kits from Detroit non-profit Arts & Scraps!
Sunday, March 3rd
11:30 am – 2:30 pm
Registration Table: Next to Ballroom (Student Center, 2nd Floor)
11:30 am – 12:30 pm
Coffee + Comics Brunch Hilberry EF
Join the Wayne State Comics Collective for coffee, donuts, bagels, and comics talk! We’ll be chatting about the comics represented in the “Graphic Scenes: (Re)Visionary Comic Book Art” exhibit, including Dean Motter’s Mister X, Mike Mignola’s Hellboy, and Sean Phillips’ Criminal. Even if you haven’t read these comics, swing by to enjoy a quick brunch before heading off to the next session!
12:30 pm – 2:15 pm
Panel 10: FrankenPotter Hilberry C
Tabitha Cassidy (Wayne State), moderator
Amber Bessner (Hiram College), Frankenstein’s Creature Reimagined Beyond the 19th Century in Tim Burton Films
Wally Hastings (West Liberty University), Reimagining Frankenstein’s Monster in Comics
Sebastian Schuller (LMU, Munich), Mark Fisher visits Hogwarts: Moments of Capitalist-Realist Synchronicity in the Harry Potter Series
Laura Felschow (SUNY Oneonta), Re-visioning World War II: Muddling Muggle History in The Crimes of Grindelwald
12:30 pm – 1:30 pm
Artist Talk: Milestone’s Icon #2: Voluntary Witness Report Hilberry B
Chera Kee (Wayne State), moderator
Philip Crawford, guest speaker
Synopsis:
In Crawford’s artistic practice, he appropriates images, text and sounds from comic books, newspapers, music and video as primary source material to investigate the intersections between race, gender, sexuality and heroism in America. Stop!Cop! is an ongoing series of work that reflects on seriality of racialized police violence in America, supported by narratives of black criminality. The text he will present traces cultural threads between the comic book Icon #2 (Milestone Media, 1993), contemporary cases of police violence (i.e. Rodney King, Latasha Harlins), issues of youth education (i.e. comic books vs children’s books), and collective responses to racial inequality (i.e. fan clubs in Flint, Michigan). Through a close reading of the comic book and a suggestive explanation of these threads, Crawford argues that Icon #2 (re)presents the quotidian interaction of black people with the police as an Afrofuturist vision of superhuman violence and restraint. His presentation will entail a live reading of his Witness Report and a short overview of his artistic practice.
Artist Bio:
Philip Andrew Crawford (b. 1988) is a visual artist and writer based in Berlin, Germany working primarily in mixed-media, collage, printmaking, painting and installation. A self-taught artist, Philip’s extended practice focuses on the nature and functions of myth and visual narratives by investigating the content, material conditions and historical context of, and responses to, the various cultural artifacts that he appropriates. Many of Philip’s current projects adopt text and images from comic books, magazines, newspapers, autobiographies, movies and video games. He uses these documents to understand and question contemporary conceptions of heroism, specifically as they relate to identity formation and our performances of race, gender, sexuality and religion. In (re)(de)constructing narratives, Philip likes to manipulate distance, transparency, and readability to invite multiple and illusory readings, highlight simple personal revelations or prod skeptically at deep-seated “universal truths.” Philip holds a BA in History from Stanford University and is completing his MA in American Culture and History at Freie Universitat in Berlin.
1:30 pm – 2:15 pm
Your Stories Are Detroit’s Stories: an interactive storytelling workshop with the Detroit Experience Factory Hilberry B
Connor Newton (Wayne State), moderator
Paul Talpos, Bria Swanson, and Chloe Seymour (Detroit Experience Factory), facilitators
Synopsis:
The narratives surrounding Detroit haven’t always been pretty. Bucking falsehoods to myths, storytelling in Detroit has become the way natives show the world what’s really happening in their city. The Detroit Experience Factory has been helping shed light on these stories for 13 years, defying the “tour company” norm and connecting people to Detroit’s one-of-a-kind people and projects. During this workshop participants will learn from DXF’s team on what makes an impactful community story and discover key ways they can bring storytelling back to their community as a powerful tool.
2:30 pm – 4:15 pm
Panel 11: Race and Nationality Across Media Hilberry D
Alina Klin (Wayne State), moderator
Karolina Kusto (University of Warsaw), Jewish American Princess in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: Reappropriation of the Stereotype [Skype]
Sourav Chatterjee (Columbia), The Virile Hero and Frail History: Retelling the ‘Effete’ and Reimagining Masculinity in Narayan Debnath’s Bengali Comics of the 1960’s
Sarah Deniz Akant (CUNY), Retelling from the Archives: Name as History, Fantasy, and Witness in Zong!
Panel 12: DTW > LAX Hilberry C
Alex Edelstein (UC San Diego), moderator
Haneul Lee (NYU), ‘Who is still listening in 2038?’: Detroit Rebellion in Detroit: Become Human
Quincy Flowers (CUNY), ‘On the Stretch…’: Fiction and History Out of Bounds
Livingston Garland (Wayne State), Apian Geometry
Riley Nisbet (Wayne State), From James Ellroy to Judd Apatow: Los Angeles and the Affect of Place
Conference Organizers:
This conference was organized by graduate and undergraduate students: Shelby Cadwell, Tabitha Cassidy, Elizabeth Drake, John Landreville, Matt Linton, Connor Newton, Steven Proudfoot, and Amber Taylor. With special thanks to faculty adviser Chera Kee and the Pop Culture Humanities Center Working Group, including Professors Lisa Alexander and Elena Past and graduate students Georgina Adlam and Kevin Ball.
Sponsors & Donors:
Dean of Students Office’s Student Activities Funding Board; WSU Humanities Center; WSU English Department; WSU Department of Classical and Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures; Green Brain Comics; Brome Modern Eatery; Source Booksellers; Quicken Loans; WSU Press; Ready Player One Detroit; WSU Tech Bunker; WSU Libraries; Detroit Visitor’s Bureau; Arts & Scraps Detroit; Better Made Snack Foods; Vault of Midnight Detroit
Thank you to the sponsors and donors that have provided funding, material resources, time, and energy to help make this conference happen!