The short-key action “Alt+Shift” is supposed to change the keyboard language. However, this function no longer changes these language settings, as it once could do, and it may not regain functioning without altering the system itself. To help change and alter the system, more research and collaboration is needed. In the same way, this conference seeks to promote connectivity between various disciplines and their approaches to changing mainstream research to recover marginal voices and discover effective alternative methodologies. Recent conversations concerning immigration, environment, vaccinations, LGBTQ communities, women, race, and violence have illustrated ongoing concerns of alienation and subjugation of marginalized perspectives in society. While the topics of debate are not new, the presence of these conversations are exposing the oppressive effects associated with mainstream narratives and dominant research paradigms.

This conference aims to bring together scholars, creative writers, and educators from a broad range of disciplines in order to provide a space to share the myriad ways that scholars are alternatively researching materials and recovering marginalized voices from the prevailing dominant paradigms. While the rise in use of alternative methodologies has opened up new opportunities for research, social action, and expression by previously under-recognized and underrepresented groups, important questions remain. Particularly, how can we actively shift from the idea of "other" in such a way that the foundation of research practice changes?

If we cross over our disciplinary confines, then we can work more fluidly to successfully answer this prevailing question. Therefore, we are seeking submissions from all disciplines, such as but not limited to English, Rhetoric/Composition, Linguistics, Sociology, Psychology, Musicology, Art, Film, Anthropology, Geography, Biology, Mathematics, and more. Abstracts (250 – 300 words) are invited on a broad range of topics including, but not limited to, the following:

• Archives, recovered narratives, and construction of new archives
• Hegemonic constructions in research and methodology in a given field
• Representations of indigenous communities and scholarship
• Role of the media in identity formation and representation
• Influence of cultural environments on communicative practices
• Influence of geography and environment on spatial development and body awareness
• Employment of theoretical paradigms (feminism, cultural studies, post-colonialism, disability studies, etc.) to recover marginal perspectives or to develop alternative methodologies
• Phenomenology engaged in art, film, literature, music, etc.
• Influence of geography on race and/or gender relations
• Representations of gender identity and/or sexual preference in MMORPGs, film, music, etc.
• Analysis of mass media’s use of tropes/metaphors to cultivate xenophobia
• Use of social media in composition pedagogy to expand audience and communication awareness
• Employment of mindfulness in the humanities and sciences as pedagogical practices
• Reconsideration of institutional/university practices to support alternative scholarship
• Non-reductionistic biology engaged in ecology, behavior, history, mathematics, etc.
• Creative submissions of all genres and media will also be considered

Individual papers or panel proposals will be considered. Please consider submitting proposals that may not fit neatly into the ones listed above.

THURSDAY, MARCH 3

3:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.

4:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.

• Constructing and Contextualizing Transitive and Indigenous Identities Chair: Dr. Lisa King Hodges 213
  • Brent Lucia, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, “Revisiting Historical Narrative: Co-Constructing our Histories while Listening to The Native Voice”
  • Sandy Burnley, Michigan State University, “Into the Wilderness: A Look at Identities in London’s White Fang”
  • Robert Cremins, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, “The Appropriation of Indigenous Gender Identity as Modern Colonization”
• Whose House, Whose Tools?: Nationality, Religion, and Personal Identity in Contemporary Muslim Fiction Chair: Dr. Urmila Seshagiri Hodges 251
  • Kaitlyn Smith, University of Georgia, “‘God is Inside Me’: Islam and Goddess Theology in Fadia Faqir’s The Cry of the Dove and Robin Yassin-Kassab’s The Road from Damascus”
  • Danielle Gilman, University of Georgia, “The Problematic Feminist: Representations of the ‘Muslimwoman’ and Female Agency in Leila Aboulela's Minaret”
  • Anna Forrester, University of Georgia, “Rethinking the Transnation: Exile and the Idea of Nation in Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses”
• Narrative Dynamics: Pushing Psychodynamic Psychology to the Limits through Interdisciplinary Readings Chair: Matthew Smith Hodges 252
  • Michael T. Finn, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, “Self-overcoming from Without: A Psychodynamic Reading of Thus Spoke Zarathustra”
  • Morgun Custer, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, “Desire, the Phallus, and the Other in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain”
  • Jared Goldman, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, “Vicarious Sadism: How Carrie Evokes Pleasure in Others’ Pain”

Keynote Address
6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Lindsay Young Auditorium (Hodges Library, First Floor)

FRIDAY, MARCH 4

8:00 a.m. – 9:30 a.m.

9:45 a.m. – 10:45 a.m.

• Memory, History, and Trauma: Revisioning the Ghastly and Grotesque Chair: Dr. Martin Griffin Hodges 212
  • Allison Clymer, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, “Spectral Echolocation in Joyce Carol Oates’ Black Water”
  • Daniel Penny, Columbia University, “The Blotter Sonnets”
• Decoding Culture: Finding Meaning in Body and Literature Chair: John Nichols Hodges 251
  • Jonathan Mark Hendrix, University of West Georgia, “‘Joke, Joke, Don’t Kill Me!’: Semiotic Disconnection and Discovery in Atwood’s Oryx and Crake”
  • Victoria E. Ruiz, Purdue University, “‘Alt+Shift’ Language: From Code/Culture to Collaborative Understanding”
• Disabling the Disability Spectacle in Literature Chair: Staci Conner Hodges 252
  • Hannah Widdifield, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, “Disability as Spectacle in Nathanael West’s A Cool Million”
  • Peter Smith, Western Carolina University, “Lunatic Creole: Masquerade and Disqualification in Jane Eyre”

Plenary Presentation
11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Lindsay Young Auditorium (Hodges Library, First Floor)

12:15 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.

1:45 p.m. – 2:45 p.m.

• Finding Agency in Popular Culture and Voicing “Black Lives Matter” Chair: Kali Mobley Hodges 212
  • Rich Miller, Suffolk University, “More Voices and More Dreams: Expanding the Hoop Dreams Narrative”
  • Michelle Wait, Mississippi State University, “Immortal Man: The Resurrection of Tupac, Introspection, and Identity or ‘Holler if Ya Hear Me’: Black Lives Matter”
• Web Socialization: Constructing Online Communities Chair: Dr. Jessi Grieser Hodges 251
  • Alyssa Wynans, Belmont University, “Shakespeare Online”
  • Anni Simpson, North Carolina State University, “Anita Sarkeesian and the Rhetoric of Hostile Audiences”
  • Rachel Atherton, Purdue University, “Composition Practices of Fandom: Authorship, Intertextuality, and Inclusivity”
• Hybrid Identities in Global and National Spaces Chair: Dr. Michelle Commander Hodges 252
  • Natashia Okonta, University of Missouri, Kansas City, “The Space In Between”
  • Sherri Hoffman, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, “The Reluctant Fundamentalist: Using Affect to Map Global Potentialities”

3:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Grist Creative Reading
5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Hilton Downtown, First Floor

SATURDAY, MARCH 5

10:00 a.m. – 10:15 a.m.

10:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.

• Alternative Routes for Writing Pedagogies Chair: Dr. Jeff Ringer Hodges 212
  • Stephanie Mahnke, Michigan State University, “Rhizomatic Mapping: Dismantling Meta-Narratives for Alternative Knowledges”
  • Elizabeth Geib, Purdue University, “The Appropriation and Uses of Time: Shifting Through Identity in Writing Center Sessions”
• Transcending Normalcy: Identity Politics and Conformity Chair: Dr. Gerard Cohen-Vrignaud Hodges 251
  • Emily Miner, Kansas State University, “Speaking Across the Podium: Rhetorical Questions and Feminist Allusions in Laverne Cox’s ‘Ain’t I a Woman?’”
  • Kylie Dennis, Mississippi State University, “‘[H]ow the folds of my flesh do not confine me’: Inscription, Stigmatization, and Transformation in Transgender Poetics”
  • Courtney Mullis, Wake Forest University, “Troubling Normal: The Liberation of the Other in the Works of Jeanette Winterson”

11:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m.

• Globalizing Concerns about Environmental Identities and Spaces Chair: Jacqueline Kerr Hodges 212
  • Nicholas Hansford, Miami University, “Textual Japan”
  • Claire Niedzwiedzki, University of South Carolina, “Climate Change’s Invisible Rhetoric”
• Reading Across Disciplines: Methodologies of Diffractive Scholarship Chair: Dr. Bill Hardwig Hodges 251
  • Trevor Jackson, University of California, Merced, “Sovereign Only to the Self: Unspeakable Geographies in Cormac McCarthy’s Early Novels”
  • Marilee Shaw, University of California, Merced, “Diffraction as Starting Point: Antigone (Again)—Reading through MWI to Seek Social Justice for Queer Death and Queer Lives (Literary Perspectives)”
  • Sage B. Perdue, University of California, Merced, “Theatre of Mind: Medical and Psychiatric Narratives in Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis”

1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.