2012 EGSA Graduate Student Conference

The Texas A&M English Department and English Graduate Student Association would like to invite you to a series of events and panels at our 2012 Graduate Student Conference. Please contact Liz Grumbach at egrumbac@tamu.edu if you have any questions.

“Retrofitting English Studies: When Diversity Becomes an Afterthought”

April 14-15 2012

EGSA Graduate Conference Schedule

SATURDAY

10:00-10:40 Poetics, Community, and Embodiment (Blocker 202)
Sarah Hart- "Elegiac Rhetorics in Communities of Mourning"
Katy Harclerode (LeTourneau University)- “Freeing the Perhaps: Decoupling Language
and Embodiment in Student Poetics”

10:50-11:45 Challenging Authority: Literature, Genre, and Rhetorical Warfare (Blocker 202)
Shawna McDermott- “Girls on Fire: Gender, Authority and the Female Child-Warrior”
Melissa Elston- "Can the Old West be Digitally Retrofitted? The Troublesome Topoi of
Red Dead Redemption"
Ayde Enriquez-Loya “Rhetorical Warfare of Silence and Recovery: Enacting Rhetorics
of Survivance in 18th Century Literature”

11:45-12:50 Lunch served in (Blocker 203)

1:00-2:10 Digital Humanities Roundtable (Blocker 202)
Liz Grumbach
Tess Habbestad
Shawn Moore
Dr. Amy Earhart

2:20-3:15 Crossing Borders and Disciplinary Divides, or What Food Can Teach Us About
Making Meaning (Blocker 202)
Marcos del Hierro: "Hungry Hungry Hip Hop: Embodied Rhetorical Practices in Game
Theory and Gangsta Hippos"
Casie Cobos: "Kneading Maza: The Food Our Bodies Crave, the Chican@ Rhetorics We
Make"
Victor del Hierro: "Reproducing the Product: Ordinary Food with Extraordinary Love"

3:30-5:00 KEYNOTE (Blocker 457)
Jay Domage "Steep Steps, Retrofit and Universal Design: Spaces, Economies, and
Pedagogies of Disability in Higher Education."

SUNDAY


10-11am Breakfast and Creating Accessible Pedagogies Workshop with Jay Dolmage
(Blocker 203)

11:10-12:20 Stories from Beyond the Creative Divide (Blocker 202)
Ryan Neighbors- “Easy Rider”
Laura Morris- “The Dance”
Amber Foster- Traveler Lost
Catalina Bartlett- In the Shadow of the Red Rock

12:20-1:20 Lunch (on your own)

1:30-2:40 Theory and Practice: Challenging the Rhetorics of Exclusion (Blocker 202)
Garrett Nichols- “The Quiet Country Closet: Reconstructing a Discourse for Closeted
Rural Experiences”
Alma Villanueva- "Embodied Rhetorics: Exploring A Non-Objective, Non-Normative
Approach"
Stephanie Wheeler- "Rejecting Standardization: Toward a Disability Model of English
Studies"
Bryan Tarpley- “Something Rather Than Nothing: Toward the Reparative Dimension of
Post-Colonial Studies”

2:50-4:00 Time, Dance, and Invasive Species: Challenging the Scope of Rhetorical Inquiry
(University of Michigan, presenting via Skype). (Blocker 202)
Donnie Johnson Sackey: "Building a Cultural Rhetorical History of Invasive Species"
Gabriela Raquel Ríos: "Dancing With Your Breath, or How Rarámuri Dance Traditions
Challenge Ableism in Embodied Rhetorics"
Jennifer Sano-Franchini: "Time, Technology, and The Mediated Body: Rhetorics of East
Asian Blepharoplasty in Online Video

Patrick Henry is speaking at Texas A&M

On Tuesday April 10th at 3 PM, Richard Schumann will be enacting Patrick Henry's views on Church and State.

Here is the press release:

April 10

3:00 pm

Whitley Suite,  Evans Library 

Speaker:  Richard Schumann, Historical Interpreter, Actor, Lecturer; Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

Title:  "Give Me Liberty: 'Enthusiastic Oratory and Political Dissent in British America  1740-1776"

Co-sponsored by the departments of English, Communication, and History, the Academy of Visual and Performing Arts, with additional support from the Discourse Studies Working Group

Resume and Press Release:

Richard Schumann graduated from Rutgers University, double-majoring in Political Science and English, with a secondary specialization in Pre-Law. He undertook further study in Theatre in New York City at the Herbert Berghoff Studio, where he studied with Uta Hagen, Aaron Frankel, Hal Holden, and Sandy Dennis.  Along with the first generation of historical interpreters trained at Yorktown and Williamsburg, he began his apprenticeship in Living History in Yorktown, Virginia in 1981. 

Schumann has devoted the last 25 years to the thorough performance-based understanding of 18^th-century Virginia.  He joined the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in 1993, first as a Theatrical Interpreter, and then "became" Patrick Henry, the Voice of the Revolution, in 1995.  Continually striving to master the oratorical genius of the "forest born Demosthenes" before hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, Schumann combines two of his great loves:  acting, and history.  Mr. Schumann firmly believes that if it weren’t for Patrick Henry, we'd all be speaking English today.

Program Synopsis:

Richard Schumann’s depiction of Patrick Henry has impressed audiences again and again as a rare and stunning reconstruction of what ex tempore political oratory was like in a period that taught oratory through practice as much as through precept.  Schumann’s performance highlights how much Henry had learned from the religious orators of his time, particularly Samuel Davies, a Presbyterian “New Light” in Virginia during the 1750s. Henry later melded the “enthusiastic” style he had learned from Davies with his own experiences in the courthouse and tavern culture of Hanover, Virginia, and the House of Burgesses. Schumann’s interpretation and performance of the Henry character, and the “Give Me Liberty”: speech of March 23, 1775, will be followed by ample time for questions and answers. Mr. Schumann will then provide us with insights into how he has gone about reconstructing Henry and preparing his interpretation.  The presentation will be of special interest to our students and scholars in Rhetoric, American Literature and History, Communication, Religious Studies, and Performance Arts.