Post/Modern Subversion and Textual Rebellion
Hosted by Comparative Literature Graduate Studies.
Generously co-sponsored by Critical Theory, Women’s and Gender Studies, French & Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, Humanities, Religious Studies, German & Russian, and the Graduate Student Association
The topics of subversion and rebellion are latent in texts and themes of the modern era; they are even evident, in fact, in arguing for what exactly modernity really is, what is meant by “politics” or “political,” and what it means to be subversive. By challenging juridical laws, religious expectation, language, gender dynamics, and more, creation is itself creative of systems of power and modes of transgression. Art is always a product of politics. It is also always one of the first ways of challenging those very structures.
The Post/Modern Subversion conference will take place on Friday, May 31 from 9am-5pm in Walker Hall room 1220. Food and drinks will be served. All are welcome to attend. If you plan on attending virtually, please email Sicily Lerner at slerner@ucdavis.edu. There will be a second day which will take place on Saturday, June 1 from 10am-2pm in Sproul Hall room 912. A light brunch will be served. The first day will be the conference itself; the second will be a professional development panel for graduate students.
Please see below for the schedule for Friday, May 31, as well as panel and presenter information. Please note that the times are in PDT.
Post/Modern Subversion and Textual Rebellion
Friday, May 31
UC Davis Campus
Walker Hall 1220
9:05am Introductory Remarks
Sicily Lerner, Organizer and chair
9:10-10:05 Keynote Speech
Dr. Klaus Mladek, Faculty in Comparative Literature, Dartmouth University
10:05-10:15 Break
10:15-11:50 PANEL: Going Beyond, Growing Defiance: Transcending Holy Society and Wholly Norms
Panel Chair: Dr. Mairaj Syed, Faculty in Religious Studies at UC Davis
“‘Beyond the border between sense and nonsense’: Yosef Bovshover and the Anarchic Poetics of Madness”
Ethan Fraenkl, Ph.D. student in Germanic Studies at Columbia University, presenting in person
“The Contemporary African Woman and Gender Rebellion in Olabode Ojoniyi’s Our Wife Has Gone Mad”
Joseph Ali Dameh, Ph.D. student in theatre and performance studies at Bayero University in Kano, Nigeria, most likely presenting virtually
“Agony as Transcendence: Ecstasy of Saint Bernini”
Dr. Prakash Kona, Independent scholar in India, presenting virtually
“Borrowing, Praying, Sorrowing, Paying”
Simon Kuang, Graduate student at UC Davis in mechanical aerospace engineering, presenting in person
11:50am-12:05pm Break
12:05pm-1:10pm PANEL: Moving Within, Marking Against: City, Maps, Community, Worlds, and Liminality
Panel chair: Dr. Amy Motlagh, Faculty in comparative literature at UC Davis
“Silenced Marginalities: Multimodal Literature and the Transnational Black Subaltern”
Dr. Yomi Olusegun-Joseph, Faculty in English at Obafemi Awolowo University (Nigeria), presenting virtually
“Subversive Monstrosity: Theorizing the Teratocene”
Dr. Robert Tally, Faculty in English at Texas State University, presenting virtually
“Invisible Cities: Cities in Chaos”
Yingxuan Jia, Graduate student in English at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China, presenting virtually
1:10-1:30 Break
1:30-2:45 PANEL: Working Destruction, Wording Production: Linguistic Contention and Construction
Panel Chair: Eric Russell, Faculty in French at UC Davis
“Why we should go beyond Linguistic Rebellion in African Scholarship: A Case for Dis-Structuring”
Dr. Jonathan Okeke Chimakonam, Faculty in philosophy at University of Pretoria, South Africa, presenting in person
“Language Entanglements and Postcolonial Translation: María Nsué Angüe in Spanish and English”
Dr. Gema Ortega, Faculty in English at Dominican University, presenting in person
“Literature as Political Memory: How Works of Contemporary Hispanophone and Lusophone Novels in Translation Demonstrate and Develop Ideology and Imagine Utopia”
Rocko Foltz, Ph.D. student at University of Arizona, presenting in person
2:45-3 Break
3-4:35 PANEL: Finding Identity, Forming Individual: The Absent Audience in the Formation of Canon
Panel chair: Dr. Jaimey Fisher, Faculty in German at UC Davis
“‘OYO Lo Wa’: When a People Rejects a Defiant Playwright”
Olabode Wale Ojoniyi, Postdoc at University of Maiduguri, Nigeria, presenting virtually
“Documentary Theater as Political Activism and Social Critique”
Özlem Özmen Akdoğan, Postdoc at Harvard, presenting virtually
“Redrawing Cultural Boundaries: Jörg Fauser’s rebellion against conventions in the German cultural scene”
Dr. Maciej Jędrzejewski, Faculty in German at Uniwersytet Warszawski, presenting in person
“Hans-A-Plast and the New German Wave: Building Community through the Subversion of Pop”
Phill Cabeen, Ph.D. student, University of Illinois Chicago, presenting in person
4:35-5 Reception