MEMORY: FORGETTING, FUTURES, & FOUNDATIONS PROGRAM
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 24TH
WELCOME. 9:10-9:15
PLENARY ADDRESS: 9:15-10:45
“Decolonial Water Memory: Floods, Rising Seas, and Inequality as Testimony to the Transpacific Anthropocene”
Jeffrey Santa Ana, Stony Brook University
Chair: Brian Eberle, Stony Brook University
Chat Moderator: Julia Brown, Stony Brook University
SESSION 1: 11:15-12:45
SESSION 1A. MEMORY LIVES!: UNCERTAINTY, DISORDER, AND FREEDOM
Faculty Respondent: Simone Brioni, Stony Brook University
Chair: Frank Harder, Stony Brook University
Chat Moderator: GradCon Committee
Presentations:
“Politically Mobilized Memory in Arundhadi Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.” Kyle Woodend, CHA University in South Korea.
“The Ethiopian Red Terror and Its Narrative Afterlife: Postmemory in the Short Stories of Dinaw Mengestu and Maaza Mengiste.” Brandon Breen, University of Cagliari
“Performativity in Shailja Patel’s Migritude.” Marietta Kosma, University of Oxford
“Memory, Counter-Memory, Trauma, and Place in Amy Waldman’s The Submission.” Margrét Ann Thors, University of Iceland.
SESSION 1B. HAUNTOLOGICAL ARCHIVES
Faculty Respondent: Andrew Newman, Stony Brook University
Chair: Hayden Kindrat, Stony Brook University
Chat Moderator: GradCon Committee
Presentations:
“Radicalization as Reclamation: How the Haunted Self Continues to Grasp at Polarization in an Attempt to Exorcise its Indeterminacy.” Zachary Waters, Rhode Island College
“The Ruined Archives of Sebald and Frisch.” Paromita Patranobish, Independent Researcher.
“The (Un)bearable Lightness of Instagram Memories.” Ana Isabel Galván García de las Bayonas, University of Murcia.
LUNCH BREAK
SESSION 2: 1:30 – 2:45
PANELS, PERFORMANCES, AND SCREENS: CONFRONTING LIMITATIONS TO MEMORIALIZATION
Faculty Respondent: Sara Santos, Stony Brook University
Chair: Lindsey Pelucacci, Stony Brook University
Chat Moderator: GradCon Committee
Presentations:
“Fandom, Embodied Nostalgia, and Animated GIFs.” Jessica Hautsch, Stony Brook University.
“When a Black Man’s Blue: HBO’s Watchmen and the Draw of the Alternate History Genre.” Sarah Myers, Stony Brook University.
“The Limits of Memory: Husserl, Levinas, and the Immemorial.” Charles Driker-Ohren, Stony Brook University
SESSION 3: 3:30-4:45
MEMORY AND BODY: MEDICAL HUMANITIES AS A RESPONSE
Faculty Respondent: Celia Marshik, Stony Brook University
Co-chairs: Julia Brown, Stony Brook University & Lea Borenstein, Stony Brook University
Chat Moderator: GradCon Committee
Presentations:
“Reaching Evelyn: A Documentary Study of Dementia Patients during the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Lindsey Pelucacci, Stony Brook University.
“‘No miracle is worthy’: Childbirth, Twilight Sleep, and the Medicalized Female Body.” Haleigh Yaspan, University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry.
“In Oblivion and Old Age: An Exploration of Remembering and Aging in Select Texts” Shobha Elizabeth John, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Bhopal.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25TH
SESSION 4: 10:00-11:15
SESSION 4A. FORGETTING AND RETROSPECTION: GRAPHIC APPROACHES
Faculty Respondent: Michael Rubenstein, Stony Brook University
Chair: Jessica Hautsch, Stony Brook University
Chat Moderator: GradCon Committee
Presentations:
“The Best We Could Remember: Memory, Forgetting, and Family Formation in The Best We Could Do.” Justine Trinh, Washington State University
“Subjectivity through Time: Retrospective Childhoods in Debbie Drechsler’s Daddy’s Girl.” Mukulika Batabyal, University of Delhi.
“Performing Care Work: Graphic Narrative and Tensions of Visibility.” Julia Brown, Stony Brook University.
SESSION 4B. ALTERING SPACES: PROXIMITY, LOCATION, AND MOVEMENT
Faculty Respondent: Ritch Calvin, Stony Brook University
Chair: Lisa LeBlond, Stony Brook University
Chat Moderator: GradCon Committee
Presentations:
“Leather Bars and Luxury Lofts: Memory-Play and the Changing Landscapes of Queer Alabama.” Sarah Chant, The New School for Social Research.
“Haunted Houses: Reading the Memory of Surveillance in Gay Bathhouse Design.” Brian Eberle, Stony Brook University.
“Queer Time and Memory in A.E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad.” Lucien Darjeun Meadows, University of Denver.
SESSION 5: 11:45-1:00
SESSION 5A: COLLECTIVE IDENTITIES: CRISES OF BELONGING
Faculty Respondent: E.K. Tan, Stony Brook University
Chair: Nayoung Yang, Stony Brook University
Chat Moderator: GradCon Committee
Presentations:
“Confronting Hidden Histories through Mythmaking in the Indo-Caribbean Diaspora.” Victoria V. Chang, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago.
“‘Collective Amnesia’: Analysing the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 through the Intersection of Gender and Historiography.” Pooja Yadav, University of Delhi.
“Discovering Alternative Futures through Women’s Collective Memory in Ecofeminist Literature.” Tayla Straub, Stony Brook University.
SESSION 5B. CAN’T GET YOU OUT OF MY HEAD: QUESTIONS OF RELIABILITY
Faculty Respondent: Katherine Johnston, Stony Brook University
Chair: Brian Eberle, Stony Brook University
Chat Moderator: GradCon Committee
Presentations:
“Unreliable Narrators and Chaotic Structure: The Art of Misremembering in I’m Thinking of Ending Things.” Carina Stopenski, Carnegie Mellon University.
“Memory and Power: Unreliable Narrator in Ma Jian’s Beijing Coma and Mo Yan’s The Republic of Wine.” Dania Shaikh, St. Xavier’s College, Gujarat University.
LUNCH BREAK: 1:00-1:45
SESSION 6: 2:00-3:30
SESSION 6A. THE MEMORY OF (OUR?) TRADITION
Faculty Respondent: Tracey Walters, Stony Brook University
Chair: Lea Borenstein, Stony Brook University
Chat Moderator:
Presentations:
“Identifying the Self and Decolonisation via Memory-writing and Imagination in Indigenous American and Chinese American Fiction.” Jessica Mure, University of Gloucestershire.
“The Decolonial Imagination in African American Literature: Hauntings that Delink from Modernity/Coloniality to Reconstitute Ways of Knowing.” Lisa LeBlond, Stony Brook University.
“Personal Histories of Wrongful Death in the Context of Black Lives Matter: Community-Based Obituary Projects as Instruments of Resisting Racial Violence.” Sunoo Kim, Independent Scholar.
SESSION 6B. THE USABLE PAST(S): THE MEMORY OF MEDIA
Faculty Respondent: Timothy August, Stony Brook University
Chair: Bernard Krumm, Stony Brook University
Chat Moderator: GradCon Committee
Presentations:
“The Politics of Remembering and Forgetting in Contemporary Media – Analyzing the Social Amnesia Surrounding the Marichjhapi Massacre.” Pratiti Roy, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Bhopal.
“Visualizing Trauma and Healing in East Indonesia: Remembering “Forgotten” Cold War Memories through Arts-based Research.” Julie Gaynes, University of California, Los Angeles.
“In(ter)ventions: Technologies of Memory, and a Post-human Imagination.” Sonakshi Srivastava, Indraprastha University Delhi.
KEYNOTE ADDRESS: 4:00-5:30
“Migrant Lots/Migrant Horizons”
Edgar Garcia, University of Chicago
Chair: Anthony Gomez
Chat Moderator: