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Conference theme: who is responsible for the village

April 1-2, 2005

Keynote address: "Shylock, the Hearth, and the Human Village"

Jason Peters, Augustana College

Conference Schedule

Friday, April 1, 2005

time event location
2:00-3:15 Registration Simpkins 341
3:30-4:30 Panel A 
Kendra Crede, WIU: “The Bubble Effect.” 
Chris Hazlett, WIU: “Prison Education and Liberatory Pedagogy.” 
Karen Mann, moderator		 Simpkins 027
7:00 Keynote Address: “Shylock, the Hearth, and the Human Village” 
Dr. Jason Peters, Augustana College		 Simpkins 027

Saturday, April 2, 2005

time event location
8:00-9:00 Registration; Continental Breakfast 
Provided for all participants		 Simpkins 341
9:00-9:55 Artists’ Hour 
Poetry, fiction, and art 
Joan Livingston-Webber, moderator		 Simpkins 341
10:00-11:00 Panel B 
Ellen Donaghy, WIU: “The X Factor: Defining GenX Youth” 
Devon Fitzgerald, ISU: “Digital Villages: Responsibility & Authorship in the Blogosphere” 
Marjorie Allison, moderator		 Simpkins 027
11:00-12:00 Panel C 
Sarah Williams, WIU: “The Revolution of the Village” 
Doug Bourne, WIU: “Fixing the Pillaged Village” 
Therese Trotochaud, moderator		 Simpkins 027
12:00-1:00 Lunch 
On your own		 Simpkins 027
1:00-2:00 Panel D 
April Nelson Camden, WIU: “Student Conceptualizations of the Writing Center: Collaboration Between Tutors and Students” 
Christine Kienol-Berlett, WIU: “Graham Greene: Novelist and Zoologist” 
Bradley Dilger, moderator		 Simpkins 027
2:00-3:00 Panel E 
Jason Price-Stalides, WIU: “I Am Your Father: The Telemachus/Skywalker Complex” 
Chris Bevard, WIU: “The Globalization of Fear” 
Tom Joswick, moderator		 Simpkins 027
3:00-4:00 General Session 
Kendra Crede, moderator		 Simpkins 027

Conference Abstracts

Kendra Crede, WIU: “The Bubble Effect.” 
M. Night Shamalayan.’s “The Village” depicts a group of victims who take action together to form their own community. The tragedy they experienced lead them to create a tragic-free lifestyle to be passed on from generation to generation, tucked away in the forest preserve while the rest of the world progresses. I recall experiencing something like this effect during my undergraduate college years—and even now. At Illinois Wesleyan University, we called it the “Bubble Effect.” Everyone was aware of it, talked about, joked about it, but did nothing to resist its enclosure. This essay explores a student’s relationship to the “real world,” engaging Myers, Elbow, and Anderson.

Chris Hazlett, WIU: “Prison Education and Liberatory Pedagogy.” 
A discussion of the current situation of prison population and demographics regarding race and economics. These populations are similar to the populations that radical pedagogy was developed for. A further discussion of how radical pedagogy in prison education could help produce critical, self-confident ex-inmates for our society, rather than relying on the system of vocational education which is currently in place. Example of liberal arts program with similarities to radical pedagogical methods, with excellent results.

Ellen Donaghy, WIU: “The X Factor: Defining GenX Youth” 
My essay deals with the portrayals of Generation X youth culture in the media and how media representations inform public perceptions of youth cultural identity. I focus on the shift in representation from the conservative Reagan-youth image to the Slacker trope and what cultural anxieties influenced that change. Those anxieties created a cultural narrative circulated by the media which quelled anxieties at the expense of youth cultural identity.

Devon Fitzgerald, ISU: “Digital Villages: Responsibility & Authorship in the Blogosphere” 
In an article in Wired magazine, Joe Tripp suggested that “the internet is quickly becoming the world’s primary source of information. Reporters begin every day by reading blogs. They’re looking for the pulse of the people for stories they might have missed.” Through blogs and other open source programs readers and authors of blogs create new “digital villages” in a space which is neither private nor public, neither mainstream nor exclusive but somewhere between these worlds. Recent composition scholarship has focused on the ways in which students use blogs to connect with other students, to engage in peer review activities and to envision themselves as authors of authentic texts. Scholars in rhetoric and composition, graduate students and other academics are using blogs as a way to create a community or a village of scholars with similar interests. In authoring these texts, academics are creating the possibility of a global village. However, these new digital villages may further fragment the author’s identity because there is a need to write within the conventions of that village. Digital villages are not free from conventions or rules any more than the villages typically seen outside the mainstream as portrayed in M. Night Shyamalyn’s “The Village.” Access into certain villages is not easily acquired. However, much of the rhetoric of technology emphasizes the accessibility of information and community without considering the author of the information or community. For digital villages where does the responsibility lie? Is it with the author of the village, with those who contribute to the village, or the reader of the text? This paper explores ways in which digital villages are authored, the responsibilities that comes with the creation of new villages, and questions the ways the Internet and web connect and create new villages.

Sarah Williams, WIU: “The Revolution of the Village” 
Society: a pattern of interaction among people that has a discernable form and shape. In my Society, my proposal for Social Institutions (a cluster of values, norms, statuses, and roles that define an established way of carrying out a vital set of activities in the society) are Education, Government, Economy, Law, and Science. [...] I would like to focus on the social institution of Education. The values I am asserting are that education will provide my society with the knowledge of their government and the laws that pertain to the system, and the availability of science and how evolution is important. 
This summary was excerpted by the conference organizers from a longer abstract.

Doug Bourne, WIU: “Fixing the Pillaged Village” 
The village has deteriorated ecologically and economically. The effect has reached Academia. The way to repair the village is through cross-disciplinary studies and Talloires Declaration.

April Nelson Camden, WIU: “Student Conceptualizations of the Writing Center: Collaboration Between Tutors and Students” 
When students first think about the writing center, what are their initial conceptions of about the role of tutors and the services the center has to offer? If students are recommended to see the writing center by their instructors, how does that make them feel? Students coming to the writing center with negative or uncertain attitudes about their writing, class, instructors, tutors, or the writing center may feel frustration and even indignation. This can lead to a very unproductive session from which neither the tutor nor the student benefit. [...] This study will examine student perceptions, initial opinions, and concluding impressions of the collaborative roles between tutors and students in the writing center. 
This summary was excerpted by the conference organizers from a longer abstract.

Christine Kienol-Berlett, WIU: “Graham Greene: Novelist and Zoologist” 
Animals greatly contribute to the novels of Graham Greene. In Greene’s The Heart of the Matter and The Power and the Glory the use of animal references is captivating. The Christian bestiary helps to interpret these references. In his novels, Greene selectively incorporates the presence of animals in many of his geographical settings. Furthermore, Greene creates important scenes of interaction between human characters and animals. Finally, it is interesting to note the number of ways in which Greene attributes his characters with zoomorphic qualities. Greene’s use of animal imagery influences the way his novels are read and how his characters are perceived by his audience.

Jason Price-Stalides, WIU: “I Am Your Father: The Telemachus/Skywalker Complex” 
In both the popular movie Star Wars and the ancient Greek epic The Odyssey, there is a climactic moment when the hidden identity of the father is revealed to the son, followed by the son’s initial rejection of that revelation. A theoretical construct, termed “hero psychology,” helps to illustrate the psych-mythological significance of that moment. Hero psychology functions as a model of ego-identity development that blends mythological and psychological theory and displays the parallels between Joseph Campbell’s monomyth cycle, Erik Erikson’s psychosocial crises, and James Marcia’s identity statuses. The monomyth symbolizes the means by which individuals navigate through the various psychosocial crises, and each phase of the monomyth cycle (separation, initiation, and return) corresponds to a specific identity “status.” Furthermore, the monomyth, as a generalized pattern of the collective narrative, is a vital component of the individual narrative—or what's come to be known as narrative identity. An analysis of the narrative self demonstrates that the individual is best understood as a collection of life-events; it illustrates a specific connection between the hero myth and the identity quest; and it shows how the same identity themes—the same bio-psycho-social stages of human development—have transcended time. Ultimately, each of us, in struggling to establish a coherent and stable identity, embarks on our own metaphorical hero quests, as both Luke Skywalker and Telemachus do in their respective tales.

Chris Bevard, WIU: “The Globalization of Fear” 
One of the key variables in the idea of the “global village” is the role of media and how media acts as a bridge between like and/or unlike cultures. As one of the biggest (if not the biggest) enterprises in the world, Entertainment is one of the major unifiers in this “village,” specifically, the function, importing and exporting of films. As a writer and fan of horror films, I plan to explore how a small group of American and Asian horror films reflect current concerns about society, as well as how they represent their respective cultures and influence each other by focusing on such films as “The Ring,” “Ju-On,” “Audition,” “Suicide Circle,” and “The Village.” The terms of what they say about their cultures, and how their messages provide a glimpse into attitudes, limitations, and possibilities within the “global village.”