Dr. Marguerite Tassi
English professor, 308.865.8117
Ten students will be presented top awards today at the University of Nebraska at Kearney Student Conference in Language and Literature.
The Awards Ceremony, which will honor the students, will take place at 3:30 p.m. in Thomas Hall, Room 106. Outstanding Award recipients will receive a certificate and monetary prize, while Honorable Mention award recipients receive a certificate and a gift card to the Antelope bookstore. Award winners were selected by Department of English faculty members.
The Outstanding Graduate Student Essay Awards will be presented to Jason Willard of Kearney and Celeste Lempke ofWallace. The Outstanding Essay in Literary Criticism Awards will be presented to Laura Furrow of Kearney and Sada Hotovy of Lincoln. The Outstanding Essay in Expository Writing Award will be presented to Kevanie Damit-og ofHildreth. The Outstanding Work in Poetry Award will be presented to Eliot Wondercheck of Orchard. Honorable Mention in Literary Criticism will be presented to Sarah Hoefler of Firth, and Honorable Mention in Language is going to Brittany Seawell of Grand Island. Honorable Mention in General Studies awards will go to Martin Rodriguez of Alda and McKenzie Wiese of Filley.
The awards ceremonies will come at the close of the day-long conference, which is taking place in Thomas Hall. UNK English students are presenting their papers during six sessions.
The themes, locations and faculty members for each are below.
Darkness Made Visible: On Shakespeare’s Figures and Styles (Room 106). Chair: Dr. Marguerite Tassi, professor.
Sada Hotovy of Lincoln, “Dark Humor in ‘Titus Andronicus’: Shakespeare’s Disjointed Funny Bone”; Eliot Wondercheck of Orchard, “Nethermost Iago”; and Jason Willard of Kearney, “Shakespeare’s Figurative Focalization.”
Volatile Vernacular: The Politics of Language (Room 115). Chair: Dr. Michelle Beissel Heath, assistant professor.
Kevanie Damit-og of Hildreth, “Bech is not Bitch!: Cultural Comfort and Language”; and Brittany Seawell of Grand Island, “What is the Destiny of a Creole?”
Three Takes on Faulkner’s “Go Down, Moses” (Room 117). Chair: Dr. Robert Luscher, professor.
Melanie Glinsmann of Kearney, “If These Stones Could Talk: The Influence of Oxford in the Writings of William Faulkner”; Paul Skinner of Great Falls, Mont., “Rites of Passage: Hunting, Masculinity and Ritual in Faulkner’s ‘The Old People’”; and Celeste Lempke of Wallace, “Faulkner’s ‘Pantaloon in Black’: The Necessity of the Fringe Story.”
Hidden Holocaust (Room 113). Chair: Julie Flood, senior lecturer.
Ivette Ortiz of Scottsbluff, “The Impact of Joseph Mengele”; Mark Dearmont of Burwell, “Through the Eyes of a Soldier”; and Amber Putnam of Kearney, “Life in the Work Camps.”
Comic and Cartoon Icons: Popular Media in the U.S. (Room 106). Co-Chairs: Dr. Susan Honeyman, associate professor, and Dr. Michelle Beissel Heath, assistant professor.
Cassie Shaw of Flower Mound, Texas, “Scooby-Dooby Doo, Where Are You? You’ve Got Some Explaining To Do Now”; Cynthia Ostrom of Kearney, “Of Superhuman Bondage: Themes of Submission in 1940s Wonder Woman Comics”; and Celeste Lempke of Wallace,“Saving Young Girls from Ourselves: The Importance of Superheroine Fantasy.”
Contemporary Approaches to Modernist Writers (Room 115). Chair: Dr. Robert Luscher, professor.
Aaron Dickey of Lexington, Ky., “The ‘Hand’some Wing Biddlebaum”; Katie Hall of Nebraska City, “Violent Masculinity in Hemingway’s ‘In Our Time’”; and Cynthia Ostrom of Kearney, “Beyond Naturalism: Sin and Virtue in Steinbeck’s ‘The Pastures of Heaven.’”
Glory, Fame, and Wisdom in Ancient Literature (Room 111). Chair: Dr. Marguerite Tassi, professor.
Ashley Leever of Bridgeport, “The Glory and Fame of Achilles and Hector in the ‘Iliad and Odyssey’”; Sarah Hoefler ofFirth, “A Quest for Wisdom”; and Eliot Wondercheck of Orchard, “Poems Inspired by Homeric Epics.”
Telling Tales with Heart: Conflicts and Clue Puzzles (Room 108). Chair: Dr. Barbara Emrys, professor.
Kaiya West of Gering, “Golden Age Mysteries Support Artificiality and Marxist Critiques: A Focus on Dorothy L. Sayers”; Craig Hall Bassett “Matters of Mystery in Poe’s Literature”; and Dan Dotson North Platte, “Love and Idealism: Conflict in ‘The Rise of Silas Lapham.’”
(The forth session will take place from 12:20- 1:20 p.m.) On Victorian Literature: Devils, Beauty, and Boredom (Room 214). Chair: Dr. Rebecca Umland, professor.
Amy Hadley of Kearney, “The Devil’s in the Details”; Ashley Leever of Bridgeport “The Disease of Ennui: A Perpetual State of Boredom and Loss of Desire in the Works of Baudelaire, Flaubert and Huysmans”; and Laura McAtee of Wahoo,“Lord Alfred Tennyson’s Victorian Fairytale: The Sleeping L’Envoi.”
Genocide Today: The Case of Rwanda (Room 107). Chair: Julie Flood, senior lecturer.
McKenzie Wiese of Filley, “Injustice Done to One Is Injustice Done to All”; Annalise McHargue of Kearney, “True Views of Genocide”; Rachel Hall of Campbell, “Double-Gift in ‘Murambi, The Book of Bones’”; and Roy Metter of Phoenix, Ariz., “Humans and Monsters.”
Of Picture Books: It’s Not Just Black and White (Room 212). Chair: Dr. Susan Honeyman, associate professor.
Jennifer Harvey of Minden, “‘And Tango Makes Three’: Introducing Gender and Sexual Diversity to Children”; Jacob Sandman of Curtis, “’Smoky Night’ in the Classroom”; and Laura Furrow of Kearney, “Color in Bedtime Stories: Promoting Sleepiness or Excitement?”
(The fifth session will take place from 1:25-2:25 p.m.) Multi-Genre Approaches to Native American Literature (Room 107). Chair: Dr. Susanne Bloomfield, professor.
Donna Deaton-Tompkins of Grand Island, “Blackfoot Lodge Pastel Paintings”; Martin Rodriguez of Alda, “Fool’s Crow’s Apocalypse”; Ayumi Yamanashi of Japan, “The Story of Fast Horse”; Adam Konruff of Chappell, “The Missing”; and Kyle Sayler of Kearney, “At the Battle of Wounded Knee.”
Revenge in Ancient Drama and Myth (Room 106). Chair: Dr. Marguerite Tassi, professor.
Jacob Sandman of Curtis, “Unauthorized Justice: Revenge in ‘Hecuba’ and ‘Medea’” and Sarah Hoefler of Firth, “Unnatural Motherhood: Killing Children for Revenge in Ancient Graeco-Roman Myths.”
Of Monsters and Darkness in 19th Century Literature (Room 115) Chair: Kristi Bryant, lecturer.
Barbara Soethout of Kearney, “‘Frankenstein’ and the Age of Romanticism”; Heather Wilkie of Bellevue, “Who is the Real Monster?”; and Aaron Dickey of Lexington, Ky., “Mortal Combat: (Homo)-Sexual Repression in ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.’”
(The sixth session will take place from 2:30-3:30 p.m. ) Graduate Student Parody Panel: All the Narratives Unfit to Print (Room 106) Chair: Cynthia Ostrom, UNK graduate student. Great Falls, Mont.- Paul Skinner
Kearney– Cynthia Ostrom, Jason Willard, Sonja Jackson and Melanie Glinsmann
Wallace– Celeste Lempke
Poetry Reading (Room 107) Chair: Allison Hedge Coke, associate professor.
Ainsworth – Samantha Schafer
Kearney – Annalise McHargue, Aaron Poorman
Lincoln – Shelby Krause
Lindsay – Lacey McPhillips
McCook – Corinne O’Dea
North Platte – Katie Thomsen
Orchard– Eliot Wondercheck
Ord – Nathan Horner
Paxton – Erica Rhodes
Stromsburg – Caitlin Ostberg
Taylor – Trysta Gruber
The UNK Student Conference in Language and Literature is sponsored by the UNK Department of English.
