Proceedings from the Fourth Annual Interdisciplinary Conference: Hysteria, which were presented at The University of Akron Student Union

Akron Graduate English Scholars, Society of

English

The University of Akron

The University of AkronIdeaExchange@UAkronEnglish Student Research English DepartmentSpring 4-28-2016HysteriaSociety of Akron Graduate English ScholarsUniversity of AkronPlease take a moment to share how this work helps you through this survey. Your feedback will beimportant as we plan further development of our repository.Follow this and additional works at: http://ideaexchange.uakron.edu/english_studideasPart of the English Language and Literature CommonsThis Conference Proceeding is brought to you for free and open access by English Department atIdeaExchange@UAkron, the institutional repository of The University of Akron in Akron, Ohio, USA. It has beenaccepted for inclusion in English Student Research by an authorized administrator of IdeaExchange@UAkron. Formore information, please contact mjon@uakron.edu, uapress@uakron.edu.Recommended CitationAkron Graduate English Scholars, Society of, "Hysteria" (2016). English Student Research. 1.http://ideaexchange.uakron.edu/english_studideas/1The Society of Akron Graduate English Scholars  Presents the Fourth Annual Interdisciplinary Conference  Hysteria                                            Thursday, April 28th 2016 The University of Akron Student Union Rooms 312 & 314          Ballroom C, D, & E  Acknowledgements This interdisciplinary conference was made possible by the support and contributions from the members of the Society of Akron Graduate English Scholars, who participate in meetings and in fundraisers needed to run this event.  Special recognition to the SAGES officers: Rebecca Ligon (President), Maya Cop-Crisford (Vice President), Mitch Ploskonka (Secretary), and Casey Kuhajda (Treasurer).   A special thank you to our SAGES leadership team who helped prepare this conference. Without their help, this conference would have not been possible.   This conference was organized by Kayla Hardy-Butler (Conference Chair), with the help of Juliana Amir (Conference Co-Chair), Melissa Perkins (Conference-Co-Chair), and Dana Hussein (Conference Co-chair) all of whom collaborated in every aspect of this conference, as needed with planning, advertising, and logistics.  Many thanks to Dr. Hillary Nunn, our faculty advisor, for her continued support and dedication to this organization and this project. Her insight and guidance keeps SAGES professionally grounded.  We would also like to thank: Dr. Joseph Ceccio, Dr. Sheldon Wrice, Doug Kukta, Mallory Rusnak, and our moderators, Dr. Hillary Nunn, Dr. Heather Braun, and Professor David Giffels. The committee would like to give a special thanks to artist Blackdahliah who provided the lovely cover art titled “Hysteria” whose work can be found at Blackdahliah.deviantart.com   Panel Schedule  8:00AM-8:25AM Coffee and Check In 8:30AM-9:45AM: The Personal in Hysteria Student Union Room 312  Scott Piepho “Perterbation”: A Short Story  Mary T O’Connor “The Last Time I Wore Rollers to Bed”: An Oral Presentation as a Witness to a Nervous Breakdown   Kathryn S. Stephan "How Well”: A Personal Essay  Jackie Hedeman "Stop the Traffic, Let 'Em Through," A Personal Essay  10:00AM-11:15AM Spiritual in Hysteria Student Union Room 312  Casey Kuhajda Inside Dostoevsky’s Double Bubble: The Nature of the Doppelganger within Fyodor Dostoevsky The Double  Mitch Ploskonka ‘The Truth or the white whale, what difference does it make?’: Moby-Dick, X-Files, and Modern Monomania  Devin Tracy Fairchild Anarchy in the UK and Terror in the Garden: a Postcolonial Reading of Paradise Lost and V for Vendetta 11:30 AM - 12:45 PM: The Hysterical Female Body Student Union Room 314  Cade Leebron "Hysteria: A Translation” A Creative Exploration of Disability, Rape, Belief, Validation, and Memory  Noor Hindi The Myth of the Disabled Woman: The Strange History of Nineteenth Century Vibrators and Female Sexual Frustration  Kailey Sherrick “Gilded Harlots of the Tenderloin”:  A History of Prostitution in Cleveland from 1866-1970  Sarah Lawrence Hysteria Inverted: The Rhetorical Excesses of Self-Injury in Images   2:00PM-3:15PM Idealized Environments in Hysteria  Student Union Room 314  Maya Cope-Crisford Identity Formation in Neil Gaiman’s Coraline  Nichols deCourville Captain Ahab and Humbert Humbert: The Obsessive Life” : A Study of Obsession within Herman Melville’s Moby Dick  Kaylor Montgomery Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World (1666) and Female Friendships Versus the Male Voice 	  	  _______________________________________________________________	  Keynote Address  Movement, Madness, Gender as Portrayed in the Insane Hospital Reports  By Dr. Sara Newman  Student Union Ballroom B 3:30PM - 5:00PM  Newman will discuss 19th century medical terminology and its relation to its contemporary meanings with specific attention to women who were medically categorized as hysterical. Dr. Newman is a professor at Kent State University in the Department of English. She holds a B.A. in English, an M.A. in the History of Art, and a Ph.D.in Rhetoric (University of Minnesota, 1998). She recently gave the talk, “Insanity, Institutionalization and 19th Century American Medical Language” in which she explored The Insane Hospital Reports, a collection of reports from nineteenth- century America insane asylums. As a member of the English Department graduate program in Literacy, Rhetoric, and Social Practice, she teaches writing, literature, and rhetorical theory.	  	  Presenters  Scott Piepho	  is in his second year in the NEOMFA program studying creative nonfiction where he is writing his thesis, a book tracing the history of rock music through lawsuits. He writes the award-winning biweekly column “Cases and Controversies” which appears in a number of Ohio legal newspapers. In addition, his work has appeared in the Akron Beacon Journal and Catalyst Ohio Magazine. Writing is a midlife career change for Scott. In the past he has worked as an assistant county prosecutor and an instructor in the University of Akron Political Science Department.   Mary T. O’Connor has found acceptance in real life as architect, aquatic comedian, certified citizen tree pruner and unicyclist. Participation in Hysteria adds “Ruthless Exploiter of family” to the list.  Through the NEOMFA Program, she hopes to add writer. She has had fantasy lives too numerous to mention here.   Kathryn S. Stephan is a class of 2018 Master of Fine Arts candidate in the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts (NEOMFA) consortium with a focus on Creative Non-fiction. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, and is very excited to be back in school, studying, teaching, and serving on the editorial board of The University of Akron's literary journal, The Rubbertop Review. After a two-year stint in Northern California, Katie is glad to be back in Ohio within driving distance of her hometown of Piqua, Ohio, and her two adorable nephews, her grandparents' cooking, her parents' old farmhouse, and her wonderful Midwestern friends. She enjoys writing about relationships, family, her family history, and her own sanity or lack thereof. When she is not writing or teaching, 	  	  Katie can be found baking, watching documentaries, driving three hours home to see her nephews, or grading papers in her hammock.  Jackie Hedeman's work has appeared online in Watershed Review and The Manifest-Station, and on stage with Available Light Theatre. Jackie is the Reviews & Interviews Editor for The Journal, the literary journal of The Ohio State University, and is a contributing editor at Partisan. Jackie holds a BA in English from Princeton University, and is pursuing an MFA in nonfiction writing from OSU.  Casey Kuhajda completed his undergraduate studies at John Carroll University, graduating with a B.A. in English Literature and minors in History and Philosophy. He is currently a Teaching Assistant and a graduate student in the department of English at the University of Akron. He plans to pursue a PhD beginning in the fall of 2017, with a focus in modern American Literature. He is interested in how machines and systems within modern American Literature serve as simultaneously comforting and anxiety producing entities.  Mitch Ploskonka completed his undergraduate studies at Centre College. Currently, Mitch is a graduate student at the University of Akron, pursuing his Master’s degree in English Literature. In the fall, he will begin his PhD studies at Michigan State University. His research interests are in disability studies, nineteenth century American Lit, and Grit Lit. He is interested in how American exceptionalism, masculinity, and ableism is defined and challenged in American Literature.   Devin Tracy Fairchild is from Phoenix Arizona. He is in his first year of graduate studies in English Literature at the University of Akron where he also went his undergrad. Devin’s area of specialization is Milton and Early Modern studies. Devin 	  	  is also a creative writer and has written novels and poetry. After graduation Devin plans on continuing his studies in a creative writing PhD and hopes to be a published and become a professor of English Literature and creative writing.  Cade Leebron holds a BA in Government from Wesleyan University and is currently pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing at The Ohio State University. Her work has appeared in Brevity, Rattle, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. She can be found online at www.mslifeisbestlife.com and on Twitter @cadeyladey.  Noor Hindi is a University of Akron student who is majoring in English and minoring in Creative Writing. After graduation, she hopes to pursue her MFA in poetry. Aside from being a student, she works at Kenmore Branch Library, and is also the assistant arts editor for The Devil Strip Magazine.  Kailey Sherrick is currently a graduate student at the Northeast Ohio Masters of Fine Arts program (NEOMFA). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Mill, Belt Magazine, and Fiction Southeast. When she isn't writing about living and working in the Rust Belt, she enjoys spending time with her family, gardening, and ruining dinner parties by talking about the Big Three: Politics, Sex, and Religion.  Sarah Lawrence has a BA from Carleton University, a MA from Arizona State University, and is currently a doctoral candidate in Rhetoric and Composition at Kent State University. Her research examines the representation and perception of the body as an argument, particularly in relation to art and medicine. Her dissertation, entitled A Rhetoric of Self-Injury: Establishing Identity and Representing the Body in Online Self-Injury Forums, maps language use, ethos creation, and the representation of the body on three online self-injury forums.   	  	   Maya Cope-Crisford attended the University of North Texas for her undergraduate degree in English, where she graduated Magna Cum Laude. She is a now a Graduate Assistant in the English department at the University of Akron, working on her Masters in Literature and teaching English Composition. After completion, Maya plans on pursuing a PhD in 18th-20th Century British Literature, with a focus on Romantic and Gothic Lit as well as an exploration of the ways in which scientific innovation affected the literature of the time. She currently lives in Akron with her 10-lb gladiator of a dog, Maximus, and hates writing short bios about herself. Unless it’s about her travels. Or food. Maybe she should consider travel writing instead.  Nichols deCourville obtained a BA in Philosophy from The University of Akron, and is working toward his MA in English Literature. Nichols is currently developing his Master's Thesis, which is comparing the poetry of the Brontës to the lyricism of the British punk band Crass. In his spare time, Nichols enjoys playing guitar and drums in various bands around Akron, Ohio. One day, Nichols plans to travel outer space.  Kaylor Montgomery is a graduating senior in English at Ohio State University, Mansfield. Research from her senior thesis, "Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World (1666), Early Modern Feminism, and Female Friendships," won third prize in the university-wide Denman Undergraduate Forum, and she has received several top awards in the English Department and at the Mansfield Campus such as the Mansfield Campus Academic Excellence Award, the Writing Across the Curriculum award, and the English Book Award. She is currently writing a performance review of the Royal Shakespeare Company's Henriad productions at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which she saw earlier this month, and she will begin the MA program in English Literature at the University of Akron in the fall.	  	   MODERATORS  Dr. Hillary Nunn is a professor at The University of Akron. She teaches courses in Shakespeare and early modern literature. Her current research focuses on intersections between Renaissance literary culture and the era's domestic medical texts and cookery books.  She is the author of Staging Anatomies:  Dissection and Tragedy in the Early Stuart Era (Ashgate, 2005), as well as "On Vegetating Virgins:  Greensickness and the Plant Realm in Early Modern Literature" in the collection The Indistinct Human in Renaissance Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) and "Home Bodies: Matters of Weight in Renaissance Women's Medical Manuals" in the volume The Body in Medical Culture (SUNY, 2009).  Dr. Heather Braun received her Ph.D. from Boston College and is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Akron. She teaches nineteenth- and twentieth-century British literature, composition, literary theory, and young adult literature. Her research and teaching interests include women writers, the Gothic, the Victorian doppelgänger, and Adolescent literature. She is the author of The Rise and Fall of the Femme Fatale in British Literature, 1790-1910 and has published on Victorian comedy, David Mamet, Norman Mailer, Mary E. Braddon, Sydney Owenson, and Mary E. Coleridge. She is currently working on a study of the doppelgänger motif in Victorian literature.    David Giffels’	  books include The Hard Way on Purpose: Essays and Dispatches From the Rust Belt (Scribner 2014); All the Way Home, (William Morrow, 2008), Are We Not Men? We Are Devo! (co-written with Jade Dellinger, SAF Publishing 2003) and Wheels of Fortune: The Story of Rubber in Akron (co-written with Steve Love, University of Akron Press 2008). His writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Parade, the Wall 	  	  Street Journal, Esquire.com, Grantland.com, Redbook, and many other publications. He also was a writer for the MTV series Beavis and Butt-Head. He is an associate professor of English at University of Akron, where he teaches creative nonfiction in the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts Program.	   Kayla Hardy-Butler is a graduate assistant in the English Department at The University of Akron where she is completing her Masters of Arts in English Literature, teaches English Composition, and graduated with her BA in English Literature with a minor in creative writing and second minor in popular literature and film. She currently serves as the SAGES Conference Chair and as the treasurer for The Upstart Crows.  Her interests include fiction writing, young adult literature, and American literature with attention to the gothic, folklore, and racial dynamics. She plans to pursue PhD studies with specific attention to modern American Literature. She enjoys singing, spending time with her shepherd-Akita mix dog, Boss, and reading mythology and folklore, both of which serve as influences for her creative writing.  Melissa Perkins is a born and raised a southerner from Orlando, FL, where she attended The University of Central Florida. After receiving her B.A. in English literature she went on to work at a large human resources firm in Orlando. Knowing that her true goal was to teach writing, she packed her bags in January of 2015 and headed to Akron, OH, where she is currently studying her M.A. in composition and rhetoric with an additional certificate in ESL. She hopes to pursue a PhD in composition and rhetoric where she would specialize in digital writing.   	  	         The Society of Akron Graduate English Scholars  SAGES is a student organization open to all English graduate students of all tracks that focuses on helping all tracks develop professionally during their time at the University of Akron. We work to provide members with tools to help them publish, present, and prepare for the future.  This organization also strives to promote unity among its members by creating events, providing resources, and visiting places that will benefit the pursuits of each track (Composition, Fine Arts, and Literature).   Disclaimer: This student organization is a registered student organization at The University of Akron. Registration shall not be construed as approval, endorsement, or sponsorship by The University of Akron of the student organization’s publications, activities, actions, or positions. 	  	  Notes 	  	  Notes 

Hysteria

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Hysteria

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