Department of English Language and Literature
Oral Sessions
Sustainability and the Rebirth of Detroit
James Bates
Professor Carol Schlagheck
This project is focused on improving Detroit in a sustainable way. It begins with a brief history of Detroit’s industries and attempts to show that when a city the size of Detroit is linked directly to one industry, it is tied to that industry in success and failure, as seen in the economic downturn with the auto industry. The project outlines sustainable measures for income and food production for the city. Measures in effect already and those that could be helpful to the city are discussed. The project then discusses methods of working with the people of Detroit and the surrounding area to stabilize the city. Included among those interviewed is EMU Professor Charles Simmons, who has transformed his home into the Hush House community center of northwest Detroit.
Session C – Room 320 – Number 170
Fierce Feminine Figures of Greece
Nicole Bell
Professor Shiela Most
Through a discussion of some prominent female goddesses and creatures in Greek mythology, this presentation examines how mythical women exemplify physical, emotional and intellectual power in their society. With this clear differentiation between the mortal women and the mythological woman, one must ask, if the women of ancient Greece were so “weak,” then why are there so many powerful female figures throughout their mythology? Myths offer a lens into the lives of women though an immortal viewpoint. Women in ancient Greece should not be thought of as silent, for how can one be silent if the lesson (myth) is represented in the oldest of fashions, speech?
Session C – Room 344 – Number 176
Teaching “Correct” English: Codeswitching between Standard American and Vernacular English
Kaia Bishop
Professor W. Douglas Baker
Prevalent methods of teaching students Standard American English (SAE) often take the traditional approach of correcting vernacular English. Despite this approach, students still struggle with conventional grammar. Recent research suggests that, depending on the context, SAE is neither better nor worse than vernacular English: both represent different ways of communicating and each may be appropriate in particular situations. Most importantly, research suggests that in order to teach students SAE, teachers should guide students to compare SAE with their vernacular English. In other words, they need to learn about linguistic prejudices, the nature of language changes and codeswitching.
Session A – Room 320 – Number 39
Gesture, Affect and Inscription in the Poetry of T.S. Eliot
David Boeving
Professor Elisabeth Daumer
A striking feature of the poetry of T.S. Eliot is its vivid depictions of bodily gestures, such as the woman who “turns and looks a moment in the glass, / hardly aware of her departed lover” (in The Wasteland) and the “madman [who] shakes a dead geranium” (in “Rhapsody on a Windy Night”). Functioning as “objective correlatives,” such images aim to transfer ideas and emotions directly to the reader rather than merely stating them. This presentation explores the multiple functions of such gestural images with the aid of Carrie Noland’s theories on gesture and inscription as well as J.L. Austin’s theories on the performativity of language.
Session A – Student Art Gallery – Number 13
An Exploration into the Reality of Media Perceptions: Depictions of Women Public Relations Practitioners
Cherese Elizabeth Colston
Professors Lolita Cummings Carson and Regina Luttrell
Reality television has become a media staple with the “always on” generation (Net Gen). Shows like Jersey Shore, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, and Teen Mom 2 perpetuate unrealistic images of life. Within the last five years, the focus of these reality shows has shifted to professions including public relations. The purpose of this study is to distinguish the truths and deceptions of the portrayal of women in the public relations profession by analyzing two reality shows that focus on women in public relations.
Session B – Room 330 – Number 106
Bullying: A Victim’s Story
Alexander John Diakonis
Professor Carol Schlagheck
This presentation is based on an interview of a girl who related the horrible treatment she received at the hands of bullies, treatment that eventually led to her sister attempting suicide at age 10 and her family moving to a new community. At a time when the print and electronic media frequently contain stories about states’ laws regarding bullying, it is stories like this that rouse people to take a stand against the horrible treatment of our children by their peers. YouTube lets us see their pain; action lets us ease it. Thus, this presentation not only deals with ways bullying affects the victims but the families of victims as well.
Session A – Room 352 – Number 60
Homosexuality and the Holocaust
Michael Eisinger
Professors Martin Shichtman and Carla Damiano (World Languages)
This presentation focuses on the Nazi regime’s persecution of those they considered undesirable members of society. Although there is a general understanding of the Holocaust and its ramifications, many are unaware of some of the other minority groups that were singled out by the Nazi party, specifically homosexuals. Due to a lack in scholarly research and the taboo nature of homosexuality, this group’s persecution has been grossly overlooked in the study of the Holocaust. By addressing this little talked about aspect of a horrible time in our collective history, participants receive a more comprehensive understanding of the Nazi’s oppressive ways and their lasting impact on our history and culture.
Session C – Room 350 – Number 181
Beating a Drum beneath the Moon: The Unified Rhythm of T.S. Eliot
Charles Elliott
Professor Elisabeth Daumer
In both the critical and poetic writings of T.S. Eliot there is evidence of a fascination with primitive humanity as well as a preoccupation with the idea of unified sensibility in writing. By examining the work of the French Symbolist poets, an early and profound influence on Eliot, the argument in this presentation is that these two concepts are in fact closely tied, anchored in Eliot’s interest in poetic rhythm. Also considered are critical writings on and by Eliot, along with close readings of his poetry.
Session A – Student Art Gallery – Number 11
Katniss Everdeen of The Hunger Games: Empowered Girl or Female in a Male’s Role?
Mollie Hall
Professor Amanda Allen
Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games is a major phenomenon in adolescent literature. The movie being released in March 2012 is sure to make it an even greater force in popular culture. This presentation focuses on an examination of gender roles and female empowerment through the novel’s heroine, Katniss Everdeen. Katniss is introduced as having many masculine behaviors and characteristics, but she becomes increasingly feminine and powerful as the novel progresses. Katniss’s transition from a female in a male’s role to an empowered girl shows how the adoption of both masculine and feminine characteristics and the realization of one’s own agency lead to the greatest success.
Session B – Room 302 – Number 91
Text Messaging and its Potential Uses in the High School English Classroom
Kimaya Shanell Hudgins
Professor Amanda Allen
Educators are beginning to work with students whose lives have been immersed in the 21st century media culture. These tools include cell phones, game consoles, laptops, iPads, handheld game devices and television, just to indicate a few. This growing technology has been used mainly for entertainment purposes by the 21st century students and seen by others, especially educators, as a detriment to education and the intellectual abilities of these students. This paper describes the potential uses of text messaging in the high school English classroom, particularly how it might encourage interactions in the class centered on literacy.
Session A – Room 320 – Number 40
A Morpho-syntactic Analysis of Contraction in English
Danielle Lawson
Professor T. Daniel Seely
Contraction is the process of taking two free morphemes and making one bound in order to create one morpheme. To English speakers, contracted and non-contracted forms are semantically equivalent. However, there are instances where contraction is not allowed. For example, “I’m happy, but she’s not.” is grammatical, but “I’m not happy, but she’s.” is ungrammatical. In this new proposal there are two procedures for contraction. In finite contraction, the morphemes bear tense and must contract and attach themselves to hosts located on the right of the morphemes. However, in non-finite contraction, the morphemes are tenseless and must contract and attach themselves to hosts located on the left.
Session A – Room 301 – Number 22
Ko Hawai’i Pae ‘Aina: Never Silenced by the Haole
Geneva Marsack
Professor Thomas Ulch
The purpose of this comprehensive study of the indigenous literatures of the Hawaiian Islands is to educate mainstream audiences about these vastly underrepresented literatures. Topics include: stories dealing with the creation of the world, orphic stories that involve a journey to the land of the dead, and trickster stories, among others. Through the lens of these literatures, we get a glimpse of what traditional Hawaiian life and culture was like in a pre-contact society. This study starts in pre-contact times and moves forward to early contact and interaction with such historical figures as Kamehameha I, Captain Cook and the United States government.
Session B – Room 344 – Number 115
A Nation Without Borders: What the Global Community Can Learn from the Romani Systemole
Adam Mitts
Professor Sonya Alvarado
This paper explores how transnational institutions can function across borders without any of the enforcement mechanisms of a territorial nation-state, using the Romani system as an example. Due to their history, the Romani have their own legal and court systems that exist across continents in the same form. Common culture is a key to enforcement. We see community enforcement in Internet forums and other groups with no physical boundaries. This study ultimately asks: can the ideas of a transnational institution, like the Romani, facilitate countries and institutions in our globalized world service dispersed and displaced populations?
Session B – Room 344 – Number 111
The Role of Object Shape in Children’s Control of Mutual Exclusivity
Danielle Newby
Professor T. Daniel Seely
Research in this linguistics paper focuses on the role of the mutual exclusivity constraint in first language acquisition, and factors that affect the application of this word-learning constraint. Specifically, past work on the matter and the author’s research suggest that object shape plays a significant role in a child’s ability to override the mutual exclusivity constraint that is necessary to successfully learn labels for hierarchical categories and subordinate objects alike.
Session B – Kiva – Number 127
Purple Hibiscus: Nigeria through the Eyes of Time
Toluwa Olorunda
Professor Heather Neff
In Chimamanda Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus (2003), Nigeria is trapped precariously between the past and present. The past is examined within two paradigms: as a receding relic of pure, sacred traditions and, conversely, as the barrier between an uneducated mass and modern civilization. Time then becomes a complex metaphor for culture: as time advances, culture either diminishes or evolves, raising sublime questions about memory and remembrance, loyalty and identity. This presentation seeks to unravel some of the narrative threads woven by the young Nigerian author in her debut novel, analyzing how patriarchal, post-colonial and religious themes are used to tell a great story that goes beyond the everyday trials of family life.
Session A – Kiva – Number 61
Challenging Mutual Exclusivity Across Modalities
Ashley Paul, Emily Rosochacki and Marissa Cirillo
Professor T. Daniel Seely
This research proposes that the word learning principle of Mutual Exclusivity (ME) does not hold within bimodal bilingualism, but does hold within a single modality (visual or manual). We explore the two modalities of American Sign Language (ASL) and spoken English. Our central question asks if ME (that states there is only one word per object identified and named) interferes with the language acquisition of children acquiring both ASL and English. If ME holds across modalities, we expect to see its effects within bimodal bilingualism. Our research and proposed study exhibits information that suggests that children who have successfully acquired a basic knowledge of ASL and English are not restricted to assigning only one word to one object or one sign to one object.
Session A – Room 301 – Number 21
The Will to Survive: Civilians, Prisoners and Nazis during the Holocaust
Jennifer Rokakis
Professors Martin Shichtman and Carla Damiano (World Languages)
During the Holocaust, the will to survive was strong. Many civilians, prisoners and Nazis did things that they normally would not do, all in the name of survival. This presentation references the study abroad class, “Representing the Holocaust,” as well as various literary texts about the Holocaust; it explores the will to survive among these three groups, paying particular attention to their distinct survival methods.
Session C – Room 350 – Number 182
Modernizing Shakespeare’s King Lear
Danielle Irene Ross
Professor Craig Dionne
Beginning less than a century after his birth, Shakespeare’s works have been interpreted, modified, adapted and modernized to suit audiences of the time. Indeed, we live in a world brimming with play adaptations, songs and movies of his work. In recent years, the modernization of Shakespeare has taken the form of graphic novels, a medium once reserved for children’s stories. Through this medium, Shakespeare’s works, such as King Lear, ask the reader to question their own interpretation of the text — do they agree with the image portrayed? In doing this, graphic novels are able to reach and inspire a broader audience, and ultimately, make Shakespeare more accessible to a variety of age groups.
Session A – Room 301 – Number 23
The Relationship between Ergative, Absolutive and Genitive Case in Mesoamerica
Zachary Cavanaugh Smith
Professor Veronica Grondona
The vast majority of the world’s languages can be divided into two groups based on their case-marking and syntactic alignment: Nominative-Accusative and Ergative-Absolutive. While the majority of the languages of Mesoamerica are classified as Ergative-Absolutive, they differ from other Ergative-Absolutive languages in how they express genitive structures, such as possession and composition. This paper looks into the nature of genitive constructions in several Mesoamerican languages within the context of their Ergative-Absolutive alignment, and what this says about language reconstruction, regional contact, alignment systems, and the very nature of case marking as a feature of human language.
Session B – Room 344 – Number 114
Queering T.S. Eliot: Reading J. Alfred Prufrock as a Transgender Character
Laurie M. Stevens
Professor Elisabeth Daumer
T. S. Eliot is known for being the staunch and stuffy Modernist poet, but there are tones of isolation, confusion, self-hatred and deep uncertainty that make “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” instantly relatable to transgender readers. Throughout the poem Prufrock transgresses rigid, socially-constructed concepts of sex and gender identity. Prufrock’s struggles with his emotions, lack of definite gender, and relation to peers and the world in general are the same as those that LGBT youth grapple with even today. Prufrock can be, no matter Eliot’s intention, a vivid genderqueer literary protagonist.
Session A – Student Art Gallery – Number 12
Nominal Temporal Markers in Guaraní
David Zalewski
Professor Veronica Grondona
Guaraní is a group of languages spoken in South America south of the Amazon, with roughly 4.5 million speakers residing primarily in Paraguay, but also in Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil. A unique feature of Guaraní is its nominal morphology that includes affixes that contribute temporal information of the nominals they attach to. In some ways, these nominal affixes are similar to known verbal tenses, yet how to define this morphological phenomenon within the field is problematic. Can this system of inflection be classified as nominal tense, or is it a new grammatical category altogether?
Session A – Room 301 – Number 25
The Ypsilanti Underwear Project: Commemorating Community and Sustainable Production
Anthony Joseph Zick and Elizabeth Mikesch
Professor Christine Hume
The Ypsilanti Underwear Company produced women’s health underwear for over 50 years in the late 19th and early 20th century. It was located on the Huron River that served as its power source, and the company was the region’s largest employer of women. The presenters discuss and show documentation of their public art project, an event entitled “Celebrating the Source.” They froze the Ypsilanti Underwear Company’s slogans into ice poetry and then released them into the current of the Huron River. In addition to narrating the process of putting their project together, a three-minute documentary film is shown.
Session B – Room 330 – Number 107
