Conferences and Awards
2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005
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April Best presented "The Displacing Effect of Other in Flannery O'Connor's The Displaced Person," at the Midwestern Conference on Christianity and Literature at Calvin College, held April 18-20, 2012.
Brittney Winters presented "God's Chosen People: African-Americans in Flannery O'Connor's The Artificial Nigger," at the Midwestern Conference on Christianity and Literature at Calvin College, held April 18-20, 2012.
Holly Kaupa presented "Creating a Bigger World: Culture Re-Structuring in The House on Mango Street and the Bildungsroman," at the Midwestern Conference on Literature, Language, and Media at Northern Illinois University, held March 30-31, 2012.
April Best presented "The Veil of Water: The River in Edwidge Danticat's The Farming of Bones," at the Midwestern Conference on Literature, Language, and Media at Northern Illinois University, held March 30-31, 2012.
Brittney Winters presented "Between Innocence and Experience: Marginalization of the 'Other' in Kerouac's On the Road" at the Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900 in Louisville, KY, held February 25, 2012.
Mary Hancock presented "Maintaining Faith and Achieving Balance Through Inward Violence in Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man is Hard to Find," at the American Literature Association Conference in Savannah, GA, held September 2011.
Mary Hancock presented "Clever Portia and the Mastering of Gender Structures in William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice," at the Third Annual Graduate and Undergraduate Student Conference on Literature, Rhetoric, and Composition at University of Tennessee, held April 2011.
Lisa Burgess presented "Three-Sex, Two-Sex, One-Sex: Gender Construction in Plato, Ovid and the Bible," at the Midwestern Conference on Literature, Language and Media at Northern Illinois University, held April 1-2, 2011.
2010 Conferences |TOP|
Kristin Tabor, "A motley Prophet: The Jester as Yeats's Autobiographical Analogue in 'The Cap and the Bells,'" at the Thirty-Fourth Annual ACIS-Midwest Conference at Grand Valley State University, held October 21-23, 2010.
Allyson DeMaagd, "Debunking DeValera: A Literary Backlash Against Oppressive Irish Politics," at the Thirty-Fourth Annual ACIS-Midwest Conference at Grand Valley State University, held October 21-23, 2010.
Jerrod Nickels, "The Cailleach, Sacrifice and the Fractured Family in Anne Enright's The Gathering," at the Thirty-Fourth Annual ACIS-Midwest Conference at Grand Valley State University, held October 21-23, 2010.
Katy Hyatt, "Gender Reversals and National Identity in J.M. Synge's Plays," at the Thirty-Fourth Annual ACIS-Midwest Conference at Grand Valley State University, held October 21-23, 2010.
Lisa K. Miller's master’s thesis, “Violence, Trauma, and Pornography: The Resurgence of Titus Andronicus in the Modern World,” has been selected as Grand Valley’s nominee for the Midwest Association of Graduate Schools (MAGS) 2011 Distinguished Master’s Thesis Competition. A review committee determined her scholarship as the best among the Graduate Dean’s Citations for Outstanding Thesis award winners from the 2009-10 academic year.
Jonathan Whitmer, "William Blake in 20th Century Pop Music," at the Midwest Popular Culture Association Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, held October 1-3, 2010.
June 2010
Katy Leedy, “Guests in Their Nation: Identity by Exclusion in the Contemporary Irish Short Story,” 11th International Conference on the Short Story in English, held in Toronto, Canada, June 2010.
Patrick Prominski, "The Importance of Reading Earnest(ly): Cultural Literacy in the Irish Short Story," 11th International Conference on the Short Story in English, held in Toronto, Canada, June 2010.
May 2010
Kristina Persenaire, “(Re)telling History: Postcolonialism in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy,” 21st Annual Conference of the American Literature Association, held in San Francisco, California, May 2010.
February 2010
Katy Leedy and Kristina Persenaire are nominated for membership in Phi Kappa Phi, "the nation's oldest, largest, and most selective honor society for all academic disciplines." Their motto is "Let the love of learning rule humanity."
November 2009 |TOP|
Ann Hayward was awarded the Graduate Deans’ Citation for Academic Excellence for Outstanding Thesis for Fall 2009
Brian Karsten, "Friending Fiction" (with Lisa Rozema and Rob Rozema) at the National NCTE Conference. Brian presented in a three-part sectional about using social networking sites in English classrooms. He and Lisa presented an assignment where they have students use mock Facebook accounts to explore characters in novels.
October 2009
Lauren Carlson, "Sister and the City: an exploration of the original Carrie Bradshaw and her significant contribution to American Popular Culture" at the Midwest Popular Culture Association Conference in Detroit, Michigan, held October 30 to November 1, 2009.
Katy Leedy, “‘Many books my life’: The Challenge of Accuracy in Art Spiegelman’s Maus” at the Midwest Popular Culture Association Conference in Detroit, Michigan, held October 30 to November 1, 2009.
Kristina Persenaire, “The Wisdom of Bumper Stickers: ‘Celebrate Diversity’ vs. ‘One World, One Love; The Ramifications of an Ideological Paradigm Shift from the Universal to the Specific” at the Midwest Popular Culture Association Conference in Detroit, Michigan, held October 30 to November 1, 2009.
Patrick Prominski, “The Problem with Faith: Autism and Its Consequences in Hope Leslie” at the Midwest Popular Culture Association Conference in Detroit, Michigan, held October 30 to November 1, 2009. Patrick is also serving as the Nineteenth Century American Popular Culture area chair for the MPCA.
The following students presented paper's at the Shakespeare Connects conference held at Grand Valley October 2-3, 2009:
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Rebecca Black, with Katherine Mayberry: “Pigeon Creek and Wayland Union High: The Winter’s Tale and Actor Apprenticeship”
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Brian Karsten: “Daughter’s Day: Marina and Perdita as the Central Figures in Pericles and Winter's Tale”
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Lisa Miller: “Titus Andronicus: The Most Modern of Tragedies”
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Patrick Prominski: “Telling Old Tales New: John Gower's Role in Pericles”
June 2009
Rebecca Black was the recipient of the "Outstanding People for Education" award. This program is county-wide in Allegan and is run through the school board. Nominations for the award were made by peers and community members. She was one of three people nominated from her district.
April 2009
Michelle Sanchez, presenting about research and interviews assessing the efficacy of current strategies in the writing center when working with international students. East Central Writing Centers Association Conference at Purdue University, held April 3-4, 2009.
February 2009
Patrick Prominski, "Tradition and Technology:The Struggle of Oratory from James Joyce's 'Aeolus' to Robert Kendall's 'Faith'" at the Conference on Literature and Culture Since 1900 in Louisville, Kentucky, held February 19-21, 2009.
Katy Leedy, "Resisting Colonization: Peacocks and Poles in Flannery O'Connor's 'The Displaced Person'" at the Conference on Literature and Culture Since 1900 in Louisville, Kentucky, held February 19-21, 2009.
November 2008 |TOP|
Mandy DeWilde was awarded the Graduate Dean's Citation for Excellence in the Major (English).
Megan Lockard was awarded a Presidential Research Grant for her thesis on Maria Edgeworth.
Denise Galloway, Lauren Hoffman, and Patrick Prominski were recipients of Scholarly Travel Grants.
October 2008
Ann Hayward, "From Mourning to Morning: Love and Grief in 'A Nocturnal upon Saint Lucy's Day, Being the Shortest Day'" at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference in St. Louis, Missouri, on October 24, 2008.
Patrick Prominski, "This is not not a game: Ulysses as Hypertext Fiction" at the Midwest Popular Culture Conference in Cincinnati, OH, held October 3-5, 2008.
September 2008
Robyn Brodie, Mandy DeWilde, Connolly Jenkins, Eric Serna and Barb Yates have all obtained positions as adjunct instructors at Muskegon Community College.
Sean Mackey and Dave Settle are adjunct instructors at Grand Rapids Community College.
August 2008
The following students presented papers at the T. S. Eliot Conference "Art, Culture, and Religion," co-sponsored by Grand Valley State University and The Russell Kirk Center, held August 14-16, 2008:
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Lauren Carlson: "Together Again: Reconciling and Restoring Gender in T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land"
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Denise Galloway: "The 'Easy Commerce of Old and New': The Eternal Pattern amidst Modern Chaos in T. S. Eliot and Evelyn Waugh"
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David Settle: "Visions of a Christian Society"
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Tracy Stevens: "No Transcendence through Return: T. S. Eliot's Theory of Social Change"
May 2008
David Settle presented his paper, "St. Clair Flats and the American Dream" at the SSML Conference at Michigan State University, which was held May 8th-10th, 2008.
February 2008
Patrick Prominski gave a presentation titled "The Miraculous Deliverance and Daring Escape: Women, Captivity Narratives and the American Novel" at Siena Heights University. The program traced the captivity narrative from the early American Republic through the nineteenth century. Special focus was placed on the contributions of Jean Lowry, Maria Kittle (Ann Eliza Bleecker) and Hannah Duston. The white/Native American relationships in the fiction of authors Catherine Maria Sedgwick, James Fenimore Cooper and Lydia Maria Child were also discussed.
November 2007 |TOP|
David Settle will be chairing a session at the NCTE conference entitled, "Research on Social Contexts and Languages" in New York on November 16.
October 2007
David Settle presented his paper, "Experiencing Joy Through the Pursuit of Passion," at the MCEA conference in Dearborn, MI on Friday, October 12.
September 2007
Chad Cripe presented his paper "The Perfect (Eco)Critic: Exploring T.S. Eliot's Ecological Poetics" at the T. S. Eliot Society Conference in St. Louis.
May 2007
Sheridan Steelman presented her paper "Mirror Images in E.E. Cummings' Poetry" at the American Literature Association Conference in Boston.
April 2007
Chris Triezenberg presented her paper, "Voicing the Unvoiceable: Tracing Rage in Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind" at the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters Annual Meeting at Ferris State University on March 9th, 2007. Chris also presented the paper at the Popular Culture/American Culture Association's Annual Conference held in Boston, April 3-8.
March 2007
Chad Cripe presented his paper, "Down on Their Luck: (Mis)Representations of Lower Class Gambling in the Victorian Novel at the Northeast Modern Language Association's Annual Conference in March.
October 2006 |TOP|
Chad Cripe presented his paper, "'Nobody F**** With The Jesus': The Big Lebowski's Critique of Pat-Robertson-Evangelicalism" at the Midwest Popular Culture Association Conference.
October 2006: Participants In the Flannery O'Connor Conference
The following M.A. students presented their papers at the Flannery O'Connor Conference on October 6th and 7th 2006:
- Bridget Tomich: "Religion as Terrorism"
- Scott DeYoung:"The Hogs of Heaven: A Striking Grip of Grace in Flannery O'Connor's 'Revelation'"
- Luke Rapa: "Art as Experience: Violence and the 'Glaring Colors' of O'Connor's Fiction"
- Ruth Reiniche: "A Certain Reverence for the Purpose of Things: Resonant Objects in Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood"
- Christina Triezenberg: "The Tramp, the Bible Salesman, and the Gentleman from Charleston: Tricksters as Moralists in Flannery O'Connor and Margaret Mitchell"
- Ruth Reiniche served as Chair of Session E11: O'Connor's Priests, Teachers, Translators, and Monastic Ventures, and Mandy McGill served as Chair of Session B4: O'Connor's Nonfiction at the conference as well.
March 2006: Flannery O'Connor and Other Georgia Writers
On March 31, 2006, graduate student Christina Triezenberg presented her paper, "Unexpected Offspring: Echoes of Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind in Flannery O'Connor's 'The Life You Save May Be Your Own' and 'Good Country People'" at the 'Flannery O'Connor and Other Georgia Writers" Conference held at Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville, Georgia.
March 2006: MSU Doctoral Program and Fellowship
Nichole Shananaquat Shepherd has been admitted to the Ph.D. program at Michigan State University and has been awarded the University Distinguished Fellowship.
November 2005: Midwest Modern Language Association |TOP|
Graduate student Chad Cripe presented his paper, "Let them Eat Cake (and Throw Steak): Food as Communication in 'Napoleon Dynamite'," at the MMLA's annual conference in November 2005.
September 2005: University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire
Graduate Student Nicole Powell presented her paper, "Critical Considerations of Sarah Wakefield's Captivity Among the Sioux Indians" at a conference held September 27th-31st at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. She intends to continue work on this subject, which has been accepted as her thesis topic, with Dr. Helen Westra.
February 2005: Purdue University's Comitatus Medieval Studies Conference
The following graduate students presented their papers at the conference. These papers were originally written as part of Dr. Blumreich's Medievel Literature course.
- Eric Serna: "Tending the Garden: The Literary Response to the Evolution of Chivalry"
- Michelle Steil: "The Death of King Arthur: The Legend Beyond the Legend"
- Brooke Hazael-Massieux: "Plato Dressed Up: Finding Philosophy in the Fabric of the Text in Eric and Enide"
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Page last modified April 10, 2012
