Abstracts

This essay examines tropes of female objectification and competition, the representation of woman as the Other, and the demonization of a household devoid of men in the documentary Grey Gardens. Originally released in 1976, the cinema verit_ style of Grey Gardens casts an unflinching yet noncritical eye on the two female subjects and their paradoxical life stories. While their personal histories articulate the larger narrative of class, gender, and social systems of marriage and women as objects of exchange, the Beale story, elucidated by and through the directors, serves to feature and exploit the very notions of gender inequality and subjugation for which it seeks to breed empathy. Through the feminist theoretical work of Butler, Irigary, and others, an analysis of the Maysles' critically acclaimed documentary illuminates the Beale story as both an Artistotlean tragedy and a caveat that supports the hegemonic order of compulsory heterosexuality and the marriage contract.

Can the Holocaust truly be "taught" to elementary or secondary school students? The essay "From Conversation to Classroom: Teaching Holocaust Literature" investigates the notion that by pairing historically accurate reference texts with Holocaust narratives, educators may create a more engaging curriculum, which will expose younger generations to new information based on significant historical events, so that students may learn and grow as individuals in a multicultural society. This essay also surveys a number of Holocaust narratives to discuss the importance of evaluating the accuracy and authenticity of a book, whether a text is age-appropriate, and how a text will engage and enlighten students. Ultimately, I believe that Holocaust historical fiction and nonfiction texts can be paired in an elementary or secondary classroom to complement one another and decrease knowledge gaps for young learners so that they may fill in another piece of the puzzle that is our multicultural world.

The colonizing impulse borne out the Enlightenment led to a decree that 'noble savages' possessed some desirable quality, regardless of their perceived primitive standing. My inquiry will not focus on subjugation of colonized societies but upon the intellectual repression of members of both colonizing and colonized nations. Primitivism posits insecurity about exposure to new cultures, challenging a metaphysical or spiritual hegemony. Europeans seem to react not only to the vast material wealth represented by colonies but also to the fear that this essence will somehow become more attractive than tradition. I hope to investigate whether this tacit fear is a part of the impulse to colonize. In terms of textual exploration, I will closely read through Helen Oyeyemi's The Icarus Girl, highlighting moments of extreme returns to the spiritual in her protagonist's Nigerian birthplace.

This paper explores how Roald Dahl constructs himself as a brand in children's literature through the lens of Michel Foucault's theory of 'author function.' The BFG (Big Friendly Giant) is a pivotal work in this construction, since the title character is modeled after Dahl in several obvious and critical ways. In the novel, this Dahl-esque giant is recognized as the creator and distributor of dreams, or in other words, the 'author' of dreams _ the ultimate authorless text. This sort of power establishes the BFG as a 'doctor of discursivity' and thus Dahl as well. The BFG is also positioned as an author of 'ecriture' (Foucault's term for language emphasizing play between signifiers rather than conveyance of a signified), which according to Foucault is a contradiction in terms. Dahl makes this seeming paradox possible by combining subversive language with a comforting authority figure who controls our deepest desires.

This monologue, written for a graduate level workshop on performance writing, explores and explains fish from the Great Lakes region, both real and imaginary. The entire monologue is a forty-minute performance so, for the purposes of this presentation, a shorter excerpt will be performed.

Each summer, thousands of teachers nationwide participate in the National Writing Project's Invitational Institute, which stands as a leading professional development opportunity for K-College teachers in the teaching of writing. A major belief of the Institute is that through experiencing the role of a writer firsthand, participants become better teachers of writing. This study examines the applications of this model by following two participants in Eastern Michigan University's 2009 Summer Institute as well as the researcher herself into the ensuing school year, pursuing questions such as: How do teachers' writing practices and processes transfer to their teaching of writing? What gaps exist between how writing is taught and how a teacher practices as a writer? What happens when teachers systematically share their writing processes with students? The research findings will also interact with themes found within a chapbook of the researcher's poetry entitled "The Ashtray."

This paper presents an analysis of aspects of agreement and word order patterns in Ibibio, a pro-drop, Subject-Verb-Object, Lower-Cross language spoken in Akwa Ibom State of Nigeria. Determiner Phrases in Ibibio non-imperative finite clauses obligatorily co-occur with corresponding agreement markers or clitics that encode the phi-features of person and number, but the clitics may occur without their DP counterparts. Subject and [+human] object clitics must agree with lexical and functional heads, or the construction is disallowed. Thus, in addition to DP _ verb agreement, there is also DP agreement with mood, tense, and aspect phrases. The 'dropping' of a human DP object in Ibibio and its representation by a clitic results in a switch from SVO to a superficial SOV word order. This paper intends to examine the multiple agreement phenomenon and the SOV word order in Ibibio language.

Many Romance languages have different words for 'girl' and 'boy' but retain the same word for 'three' and 'louse': different kinds of words change at different speeds over time. Much research remains in order to discover why this is the case and which semantic domains these words represent. By tagging two Indoeuropean (a 95 language-list and an 11 language-list) and one Austronesian (a 400 language-list) comparative word-database semantically and by wordclass, I endeavor to show that there is a system to which different semantic domains change at what speed. I believe this avenue of semantic-based research can complement recent statistical phylogenetic studies to shed further light on the basic semantic categories in cognition.

Constructed as a companion piece, Margaret Atwood's recent publication, Year of the Flood, has generated new eco-critical interest in her 2003 post-modern success, Oryx and Crake. In Oryx and Crake, Atwood invites her readers into a world that reflects the aftermath of a war fought between Nature and Culture. Atwood establishes Nature and Culture as individual gendered entities involved in a deathly struggle over reproduction and environmental rights. I argue that in its quest for survival in an inhospitable environment, Culture's obsession with bio-genetic engineering begins to overstep Nature's traditional evolutionary processes, thus creating a tension as each attempts to gain control over creation and their habitat.

As the 21st century progresses, the protection and preservation of architectural resources dating from the 'recent past,' defined as the prior 50 years, has inspired vigorous debate both within and outside the field of Historic Preservation. Many of these resources were built in modernist architectural styles that have fallen out of favor and are deemed unimportant in the eyes of a general public young enough to remember their construction. Among architectural historians and preservationists, the need to protect recent past resources is acknowledged, though consensus has not been reached when discussing the relative importance of these resources, considering the wide body of extant work designed by noted modernist architects and their firms. This presentation will discuss the issues involved in recent past preservation; efforts to preserve the work of two modernist architects based in Michigan, Alden B. Dow and Minoru Yamasaki, will be used as case studies.

The paper focuses on aspects of Georgian architecture in the United States including the style, the idea, and the changes it brought to the early American society. The research is organized in an easy-to-read format with subtitles. The areas of focus are the history of Georgian architecture; how the American colonies added their own elements to the style; the aesthetic philosophy; features of ornamentation; examples of Georgian buildings in the United States, with pictures and floor plans; plan variations including vernacular; and the end of style, how it impacted its successor and society during that time. Following the written research is a glossary constructed of terms associated with Georgian architecture and or style. Each term is defined by two different architectural resources to help give a more rounded definition.

Detroit experienced the same problems as other large cities during the 1960s and into the late seventies. Some cited industrial decentralization as the cause of this crisis; others cited the fear of integration of cross-town busing as well as civil disturbances, lack of social services, poor transit options, and so forth. These problems were being felt in most large rustbelt cities, not just Detroit. Chicago and other cities had similar issues including rioting. Still, many cities that were once heavily crime-laden in the sixties and seventies have since experienced great economic prosperity. The question people have been asking for years still looms: What happened to Detroit? Why did Detroit not rebound the way other cities did and continue to do? Why have other cities that have dealt with similar problems been able to reemerge and reinvent themselves to be attractive, vibrant places to live? One critical question is whether poor planning and urban design during the 1920s-1950s was related to the intense destruction of Detroit's riot in the summer of 1967 and its inability to rebound since. Many Detroiters who lost homes and businesses to fires, looting, and vandalism simply collected the insurance money, packed up, and left. Large urban rebuilding programs were not implemented by city government nor backed by federal dollars, resulting in large-scale blight and vacancy. Only slum clearance and infrastructure planning occurred for redevelopment that, in some cases, never happened. This paper argues that poor planning and design were the underlying culprits by showing that the intensive spatial demands of the auto industry, the depletion of good transportation planning, and a unique albeit weak urban design strategy were to blame.

Using the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) format, the student offers a written and photographic record of historic Old Town Hall in Brighton, Michigan. The building is a remarkable architectural treasure on the shore of the Mill Pond in Brighton; the design incorporates many features of a classic Italianate motif: arched Palladian windows, brick pilasters, and an elaborate decorative cornice. Built in 1879 for use as village government offices, Old Town Hall has served as a fire hall, police station and jail, city library, and newspaper offices. The buildings' distinctive architecture makes it the most recognizable structure in the city of Brighton. This report captures the various structures of Brighton's Old Town Hall; each component is described in detail, noting all known modifications made over time. This comprehensive study will serve as a historical record for future generations to utilize when studying the history of Brighton, Michigan.

Integration of spatial and relational data in GIS is a valuable tool for Historic Preservation professionals. Proficiency with GIS assists with the development of conditional assessments of historic building materials, resource documentation, interpretive programs, historic mapping and designations, and cultural preservation. GIS is utilized in historic preservation to assimilate historic information with current data, designate historic districts, document individual structures, and chart settlement patterns. Elk Rapids, Michigan, will be used as an example of how GIS can be used in historic preservation. The village is interested in developing a heritage route. Information regarding the development of the village and EMU's role in Elk Rapids will be provided. The use of GIS tools and techniques will be shown to illustrate how GIS can be incorporated with historic preservation, with an interpretive heritage route as the end result.

According to the New York Times, the introduction of Google Maps signaled the arrival of Internet-based geographic information systems to the broader public imagination. Technically, the rapid developments of web services technologies has provided solutions for this new generation of interactive maps and, together with map service technology, have given cartographers the tools needed to design maps that meet the changing expectations of people. This paper describes how the new technologies were used to create an online interactive campus map for Eastern Michigan University. The map caters to the needs of the campus community as well as visitors to the campus. Its main functions include allowing users to quickly locate buildings, parking lots, or even campus events; find the shortest route between places; and calculate distance between points.

One of the most important tools in crime prevention and safety is one that gets an accurate and timely picture of what is going on for people within the community. With the aid of Geographic Information System (GIS), we are already able to combine geographic data with police report data and then display the crime information on a map accessible by the public. Furthermore, the burgeoning web 2.0 technology, which possesses the user-create web content spirit, offers the possibility to encourage a broad public participation in order to facilitate and supplement the system at new levels. We will discuss a framework for the design of a web-based GIS public participation mapping system for area crimes. We also discuss the values and unsolved questions of putting the system into practical application on EMU's campus.

This study examines the efforts made by South African women to change their political and social realities in the early to mid-twentieth century. The study of women's labor movements, anti-pass protests, and political organizations reveals their cohesive nature to the larger South African struggle for liberation. Highlighted in particular are the Federation of South African Women and its Women's Freedom Charter and infamous protest on the prime minister's doorstep in Pretoria. As the women's actions bring to light, black liberation and women's issues need not be mutually exclusive.

This historical study of Michigan's aviation industry presents a socio-cultural analysis of the state's early aircraft industry. The first known Michigan aeroplane flight did not occur until 1910, nearly seven years after the Wrights' flights at Kitty Hawk. The 1911 Detroit Air Meet demonstrated aviation's limited value as spectator entertainment, but in 1912 aircraft became weapons of war. By the mid 1920s, aeroplanes developed into instruments of transportation and economic growth. Michigan's involvement in the aircraft industry was driven alternately by wartime needs and by commercial opportunities. Expertise acquired through pre-existing boat, auto, and other industrial manufacturing was advantageous for Michigan when aviation began to show commercial promise in the mid-1920s. Between 1910 and 1933, at least forty Michigan aircraft companies produced designs ranging from immediate failures to enduring successes. Progressive individuals sought to make Detroit the nation's 'center of aviation,' and occasionally, the title was nearly deserved.

The role personality plays in a monarch's leadership is a crucial aspect of understanding the dynamics of power in the Middle Ages. During the twilight of the twelfth century, King Richard of England provided an excellent example in his struggles to assert his authority. As Richard attempted to establish his independence from his father, Henry II, he also showed how the personality of the ruler greatly affected his reign as he tried to differentiate his rule from that of his father's and shape his ruling style according to his martial and administrative interests. In this investigation, the use of contemporary accounts of the struggles between Richard and his father allow the modern examiner insight into the evolution of the manifestations of power from strictly personality-driven to a more bureaucratic and structured emphasis. The research also describes contemporary views of the rights of kings and the intricacies of feudal political power.

An important element in the numerous causes that led to the French Revolution was the influence of the Paris salons. In the late 18th century, these social organizations were a place of rational discourse in which members of both the aristocracy and bourgeoisie were able to assemble and discuss ideas from the Enlightenment. In the salons, women functioned as hostesses who invited men to use the parlors in their home as a location for these meetings. Salonnieres, as they were called, were highly influential in these intellectual societies and participated in the lively debates and discussions. Because of the significance of salons in the years preceding the fall of the Bastille, it is important to ask whether women were able to actively participate in the revolution and whether these salons were a remnant of the Old Regime or a center of modern liberalism. To answer these questions, I will trace the evolution of the salon, women's participation in the revolution, and the changing perceptions of gender at the end of the 18th century.