Our first annual Undergraduate Literary Conference will take place on April 17-18 in the Plaster Student Union. The conference will feature over fifteen presentations ranging in topic from Dracula, the Adult Swim cartoon Archer, bathroom ghost myths, and Marxism in Harry Potter.
The conference will also feature MSU alum and Emporia State University professor Dan Colson as the keynote speaker. Colson specializes in anarchy’s effect on American culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. His keynote address, “Wild and Foolish Acts: Anarchism, Violence, and Democracy” will take place on April 17 in the PSU Ballroom West at 3:00.
The complete conference schedule is available below:
Friday, April 17, 1-2pm: Death, Violence, and Dracula (PSU 317)
Kyle Osredker, “Loss in Lincoln: A Close Reading of My Antonia”
Oliva Scott, “Power, Conformity, and the Male Anatomy in Pauline Réagle’s Story of O”
Michelle Trantham, “Van Helsing’s Role in the Relationship Between East and West in Stoker’s Dracula”
Friday, April 17, 2-3 pm: Gender Studies I (PSU 317)
Katelyn Whitaker, “The Search to Find Jane Eyre’s Identity: Her Masculine Alter Egos in St. John Rivers and Edward Rochester”
Kimberly Manning, “An Analysis on Margaret Fuller’s Transcendental Ideas and How They Changed the Women’s Rights Movements”
Ryan Gilliam, “A Sterling Example of Masculinity in Archer”
Friday, April 17, 3-4pm: Keynote Address (PSU Ballroom West)
Dan Colson, Assistant Professor of English at Emporia State University, “‘Wild and Foolish Acts’: Anarchism, Violence, and Democracy”
Saturday, April 18, 8:45-10am: Gender Studies II (PSU 317)
Paige Whitcomb, “Hemingway the Feminist”
Danielle Martin, “The Anti-Fairytale of Sorrow: A Feminist Approach to Gail Godwin’s A Sorrowful Woman”
Kevin Davis, “Saving the Princess: Critical Analyses of Conventional Gender Identity in The Last of Us”
Guy Smith, “Bathroom Ghost Rituals: Children Face Fear by Conjuring Monsters”
Saturday, April 18, 10-11am: Film and Drama (PSU 317)
Courtney Price, “To Thine Own Self Be True: The Use of Binary Oppositions in Interpreting Shakespeare’s Hamlet”
Katelyn Grisham, “A Proper Education”
Ziyun Chen, “A Doll’s House: Time and Space under the Masquerade”
Saturday, April 18, 11-12pm: Class and Society (PSU 317)
Rachel Combs, “Inversions of Social Order in The Clerk’s Tale: The Clerk’s Case for Powerful Wives and Common People”
Dailynn Turner, “Harry Potter: A Marxist Analysis”
Taylor Pitts, “Creative Expression in Walden Two”