14th Annual

Undergraduate Conference on

English Language and

Literature

March 18 - 19, 2005

Featured Speaker: Marilyn Nelson

Award-winning poet Marilyn Nelson is author of The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems, The Homeplace and Mama’sPromises along with two collections of verse for children: The Cat Walked through the Casserole and Other Poems for Children and Halfdan Rasmussen’s Hundreds of Hens and Other Poems for Children, which she translated from Danish.

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Nelson started writing while still in elementary school. She earned her B.A. from the University of California, Davis, and holds an M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania along with a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. Her honors include two Pushcart Prizes, two creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship and the 1990 Connecticut Arts Award. Since 1978 she has taught at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, where she is a professor of English.

14th Annual

Undergraduate Conference on

English Language and Literature

Friday, March 18

4:30 p.m.-7:30 p.m.

Registration Moser Performing Arts Center

5:30 p.m.-7:30 p.m.

Session I Room N221

Chaucer’s Pilgrims I

Chair: Elise Bukowski, University of St. Francis

"Willful Victims: The Women of the Wife of Bath"

Joseph A. McLemore, Eureka College

"The Wife of Bath’s Tale and the Repression of the Feminine Voice"

Craig Maloney, University of St. Francis/Oxford University

"The Sad Strength of Griselda: Silence, Sympathy, and the Model

Woman (or Human) in The Clerk’s Tale"

Molly M. McLay, Illinois Wesleyan University

"Marriage vs. Civil Union—Chaucerian Style"

Elyssa Bulthuis, University of St. Francis

Session II Room N219

British Novel I

Chair: Jamie Neumann, University of St. Francis

"Less Appalled by Hideousness than Moved to Compassion Due to Injustice:

A Study of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein"

Markus P. Hagmann, Joliet Junior College

"Antithesis and Connection in E. M. Forster’s Howard’s End"

Amy Giovannetti, Trinity Christian College

"Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Inspiration for Sherlock Holmes"

Randal Jay Miller, University of St. Francis

"Spiritual and Physical Poverty Personified in Muriel Spark’s

The Girls of Slender Means"

Amanda Wetter, Trinity Christian College

Session III Room N225

Women Writers I

Chair: Sara Kooiman, University of St. Francis

"The Ideal Reader: Possession and Property in Jane Austen’s

Pride and Prejudice"

Rebeccah Bechtold, Knox College

"Welcome to the House of Mirth: The Moral Majority

Need Not Apply"

Alison Horvath, Calumet College of St. Joseph

"Creating Spaces for Literary ‘Creeping’: The Diaries of

Charlotte Perkins Gilman"

Maria R. Nader, Wittenberg University

"Tearing Down the Walls: Relationships in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’"

Alicia Levi, St. Ambrose University

Session IV Room N218

Twentieth-Century Writers I

Chair: Keith Hernandez, University of St. Francis

"Interpersonal Connections in Howard’s End"

Tim Stege, Trinity Christian College

"Cycle of Personhood: The Role of Whole-Souled and Vicious

Sentiment in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night"

Megan L. Minarich, University of Illinois at Chicago

"Unconscious Time in Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums"

Sean Bachman, St. Ambrose University

"United in Christ: Common Thematic Elements in the Works of

C. S. Lewis and Flannery O’Connor"

Rachel Feddes, Joliet Junior College

8 p.m. MPAC Auditorium

"Marilyn Nelson: Selected Poems" Marilyn Nelson

Reception and book signing in the MPAC Studio Theater following the reading.

Saturday, March 20

8 a.m.-9 a.m.

Registration/Coffee Moser Performing Arts Center

9 a.m.-10:15 a.m. MPAC Auditorium

Plenary Address by Marilyn Nelson

"Confusing the Muses"

10:15-10:30 a.m.

Coffee MPAC Studio Theater

10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.

Session V Room N221

Medieval English Literature I

Chair: Amanda Welsh, University of St. Francis

"‘Wulf and Eadwacer’: Perils and Parallels of Loneliness"

Mark J. Cassello, Indiana University Northwest

"Early Vernacular Lives of Holy Women"

Johnna L. ap’Morrygan, Western Michigan University

"Christian Salvation in Piers Plowman, Passus XVIII"

Shelley Thurman, Indiana University

"Behind Closed Doors: Reading Bedroom, Mind, and Motivation

in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde"

Jason Zysk, Stonehill College

Session VI Room N219

Shakespeare

Chair: Katherine Jannusch, University of St. Francis

"Silence and Speech in Much Ado about Nothing"

Amanda Meehan, Dominican University

"To be (chaste), or not to be?: A Study of Shakespeare’s Ophelia"

Liv Cole, Indiana University

"The Incestuous World of Denmark: Claudius Acting on the

Oedipal Desires of Hamlet"

Stella O’Rourke, St. Ambrose University

"Shakespeare’s Laertes"

Allison Gegenheimer, Joliet Junior College

Session VII Room N225

Women Writers II

Chair: Courtney Kuiken, University of St. Francis

"Mary Wollstonecraft: A Woman’s Power"

Stacy Griffin, University of St. Francis

"Bodies, Socio-Politics and Redemption in Mrs. Dalloway"

Alyssa Kaplan, Tulane University

"Sexual Inversion and Floral Love in Zora Neale Hurston’s

Their Eyes Were Watching God"

Tracy Cunningham, Calumet College of St. Joseph

"Case Study: Muriel Spark’s Modern Protagonists?"

Sophia Van Till, Trinity Christian College

Session VIII Room N218

Irish Authors

Chair: Melissa Cleaver, University of St. Francis

"Reaching Beyond the Female: The Wife of Bath and James Joyce’s

Molly Bloom as Humanist Constructions"

Chelsey D. Hillyer, Illinois Wesleyan University

"Uprootedness and James Joyce’s Dubliners"

Joshua E. Koonce, Trinity Christian College

"The Cross and the Cloverleaf"

Derek Velazco, Greenville College

"A-Story Sought: The Past in the Poetry of

Seamus Heaney and Eavan Boland"

Jaclyn Jemc, Illinois Wesleyan University

Session IX Room N315

Contemporary Writers I

Chair: Hayden Hollister, University of St. Francis

"Uprootedness’ in Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman"

Anthony Bolkema, Trinity Christian College

"A Network of Golems: Self-Actualization in Michael Chabon’s

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay"

Wil Adams, Eureka College

"A Multitude of Jesuses: Christ Figures in the Work of

Chuck Palahniuk"

Benjamin Gunnink, University of St. Francis
"Renaming Ourselves: June Jordan’s Poems Defining

Feminism, Identity and Love"

Amy Falvey, St. Ambrose University

12:30 p.m.-1:30 p.m.

Luncheon Moes Room

1:45 p.m.-3:45 p.m.

Session X Room N221

Medieval English Literature II

Chair: Nina Lennon, University of St. Francis

"From Sidelines to Center Stage: The Route to Power of

Morgan Le Fay"

Samantha Woodson, Purdue University

"Reinscribing the Corporal Semiotic in Julian of Norwich’s

Revelations of Divine Love"

Joe Rochelle, Louisiana State University

"A Bishop, a Queen, and the Mouth of Hell: The Gendered Politics

of the Winchester Psalter"

Jill D. Hamilton, Truman State University

"Thomas Aquinas in Richard the Redeless and Mum and the Sothsegger"

Jesse W. Blaisdell, University of Washington

Session XI Room N219

British Novel II

Chair: Amanda Mosley, University of St. Francis

"Routes of Escape: Death and Sleep in Oliver Twist"

Lindsay Miller, St. Ambrose University

"Uprootedness in Modernism: A Study of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and

E.M. Forster’s Howard’s End"

Michelle Grossman, Trinity Christian College

"‘Only connect’: The Validity of Forster’s Epigram for Howard’s End"

Tom Vander Woude, Trinity Christian College

"Spirituality, a ‘Wreck,’ and Muriel Spark’s Approach"

Joshua Van Drunen, Trinity Christian College

Session XII Room N225

The Issue of Race

Chair: Mark DeRosa, University of St. Francis

"Shakespeare, Proto-Race, and Pre-Colonialism"

Jesse Bacon, Roosevelt University

"Is Huckleberry Finn a Racist Work?: Booker T. Washington and

W. E. B. DuBois as Defense"

Richard Laib, University of St. Francis

"War of the Worlds: The Clash of Identity and Identification in Adrienne

Kennedy’s A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White and

Funnyhouse of a Negro"

Rebecca McCary, The College of William and Mary

"Unveiling the Picture behind the Curtain: Women and Color as Revolutionary

Expression in the Iranian Cinema"

Rachel L. Bump, College of DuPage

Session XIII Room N218

Contemporary Writing and Theory

Chair: Megan Kearney, University of St. Francis

"Bannerman, Said, and Achebe: Examining Ideology in

Children’s Literature"

Andrea Dommisse, Trinity Christian College

"Small and Sudden: The Contemporary Occurrence of the

Image in Literature"

Sophia A. Estante, University of Wisconsin—Madison

"After the Partition: Women in Neocolonial Literature"

Rachel Griess, Trinity Christian College

"Cultural Roles in Children’s Literature: The Controversy

and the Acceptance"

Fallon Ostrowski, Trinity Christian College

Session XIV Room N315

Linguistic Analysis of Literature

Chair: Chansonette Bates, University of St. Francis

"Gender Linguistics and The Scarlet Letter"

Jamie Newton, Eureka College

"The Possibilities of Meaning in Lewis Carroll’s

Through the Looking Glass"

Christel Williams, St. Ambrose University"Revealing Conversational and Behavioral Habits in

George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession"

Sarah Bates, Eureka College

"Langston Hughes and the Expansion of Literary Language"

Ashante Reese, Trinity University

3:45 p.m.- 4 p.m.

Coffee Studio Theater

4 p.m.-6 p.m.

Session XV Room N219

Medieval World Literature

Chair: Nicholas Matesevac, University of St. Francis

"Christian Fairies: Women in the Works of Chrétien de Troyes"

Thomas E. Maranda, University of Kansas

"A Distant Song: The Voices of Languedoc"

Jeannette S. Rogers, Meredith College

"Genre as the Path to Authority: Literary Choices of Margery Kempe and

Christine de Pizan"

Cathy Gilbert, Illinois Wesleyan University

Session XVI Room N221

Chaucer’s Pilgrims II

Chair: Carrie Monaco, University of St. Francis

"Prioress ‘Re-Analysis’: Why the common interpretation of the

Prioress’s love-hate contradiction should be reconsidered"

Michael Ginzburg, Bentley College

"The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale: The Impossible Self-Absolution

of a Conflicted Soul"

Corinna Dooha-Chambers, Knox College

"Weaving Herself: Chaucer’s Wife of Bath

Joanna Schroeder Kourtidis, University of St. Francis

"The Sly and the Beloved: The Roles of Nicholas, Absolon and John

in Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale"

Malissa Kent, Knox College

Session XVII Room N218

Epic, Drama, and Film

Chair: Kelli Gritzenbach, University of St. Francis

"A Problem of Repentance: Christopher Marlowe’s Faustus"

Karen Hilberg, Knox College

"Milton’s Paradise Lost: A Discourse on Colonization"

Janice K. Egger, St. Ambrose University

"Chekhov’s Misgivings of Creative Intelligence in ‘The Black Monk’"

Luke Richie, Triton College

"A Nation of Dunces Congratulating Themselves: The Miller’s Tale Elucidates

Forrest Gump"

Rachel Price, Illinois Wesleyan University

Session XVIII Room N225

Contemporary Writers II

Chair: Michael DiVecchio, University of St. Francis

"What Does the Butler Gain for All His Labor at Which He Toils under

Darlington Hall?: A Parallel Reading of Kazuo Ishiguro’s

The Remains of the Day and the Book of Eccclesiastes"

Chris Marchand, Eureka College

"The Swallows of Kabul: Violence, Religion and Khadra"

Ryan Zajdzinski, Joliet Junior College

"Caliban’s Curse of Hope: The Use of Mimicry in Wole Soyinka’s Death and

the King’s Horsemen"

Allison Backous, Trinity Christian College

Session XIV Room N315

Myth and Fantasy

Chair: Melissa Matthews, University of St. Francis

"Maiden, Mother, Crone: A Discussion of Female Archetypes in European Fairy

Tales and Folklore"

Jennifer Lawrence, Calumet College of St. Joseph

"Kushielian Creditability: A Thematic Comparison of Jacqueline Carey’s

Kushiel Trilogy and John Milton’s Classic Paradise Lost"

Brittany E. Parsons, St. Ambrose University

"Anthropology and Epistemology: The Mythology of Tolkien

according to the Criteria of Frye and Campbell"

Rachel Gollwitzer, Trinity Christian College

6 p.m. - 7 p.m.

Reception Studio Theater

ELL Guest Speakers

1992 Larry Heinemann 1993 Gwendolyn Brooks 1994 Tillie Olsen 1995 Mary Gordon 1996 Eavan Boland 1997 Li-Young Lee 1998 Benjamin Bagby

1999 Tobias Woolf 2000 Robert Creeley 2001 Billy Collins 2002 Edward Hirsch 2003 Phillip Lopate 2004 Valerie Martin 2005 Marilyn Nelson

ELL Participants 1992-2005

Alverno College, Aurora University, Barnard College, Benedictine University,

Bentley College, Blackburn College, Bradley University, Bryn Mawr College,

Calumet College of St. Joseph, Cardinal Stritch College, Carleton College,

Carthage College,Chicago State University, Claremont McKenna College, Coe

College, Colby College, College of DuPage, College of William and Mary,

Colorado College, Columbia College, Concordia University, DePaul University,

DePauw University, Dominican University, Eastern Illinois University,

Elizabethtown College, Elmhurst College, Eureka College, Furman University,

Goshen College, Governors State University, Greenville College, Hamilton

College, Harvard University, Holy Cross College, Illinois College, Illinois State

University, Illinois Wesleyan University, Indiana University, Indiana University

Northwest, Ithaca College, Joliet Junior College, Kalamazoo College, Knox

College, Lewis University, Louisiana State University, Loyola Marymount

University, Loyola University of Chicago, Luther College, MacMurray College,

Marquette University, Millikin University, Meredith College, Mount St. Clare

College, Mt. Mercy College, New Mexico State University, Northern Illinois

University, Northwestern University, Ohio Wesleyan University, Olivet Nazarene

University, Oxford University, Purdue University, Quincy University, Roanoke

College, Roosevelt University, St. Ambrose University, St. Xavier University,

Santa Clara University, Sarah Lawrence College, Simmons College, Skidmore

College, Southern Illinois University, Stetson University, Stonehill College,

SUNY- Brockport, Texas A&M Commerce, Trinity Christian College, Trinity

College, Wales, Trinity University, Truman State University, Tultane University,

University of California at Los Angeles, University of Chicago, University of

Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, University of Illinois at Chicago, University of

Iowa, University of Kansas, University of Nebraska-Omaha, University of St.

Francis, University of Washington-Seattle, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater,

Vassar Wabash College, Wellesley College, Western Illinois University, Western