The Institute for the Study of Culture and Society welcomes Battleground States participants and attendees to a presentation and welcome reception with Rutgers University Professor of History T.J. Jackson Lears. Professor Lears examines the anti-imperialist tradition in America. He argues that while the (imperial) impulse to extend American power beyond our borders has pervaded U.S. history, it has also remained an embarrassment even to the most fervid expansionists. Professor Lears contends that a lust for empire flies in the face of republican suspicion of concentrated power, democratic celebration of popular sovereignty, and religious faith. He outlines a powerful counter-tradition against empire using the works of William James, Randolph Bourne, and J. William Fulbright.

Registration will be in Room 306. This room will act as the headquarters for Culture Club and the conference. Light refreshments – coffee, water – will be available for much of the day. In an effort to prevent interference with on-going panels as well as encourage conversation, participants and attendees are invited to relax and mingle in Room 306.

Beauchamp is the writer and director of the acclaimed documentary The Untold Story of Emmett Till. His film made a direct intervention in the Emmett Till murder case, leading the FBI to re-open this unsolved murder. Beauchamp’s visit to campus has been made possible by the Ethnic Studies Department. While on campus, he has offered to meet and speak with us about his process of movie-making, understanding of the role of artist as activist, and what he thinks academics and academic institutions can contribute to projects like his own.

“Trained Exploitation: How the Past Uses of the Female Body in Theatre Affect Modern Practice”

“Kiss This: An Examination of the Critical Reception of The Kiss”

“‘The Fat Rogue’: Shakespeare's Construction of Fat Characters”

“Sex Bomb, Hyper-Competitive, Ultra-Feminine: Print Media Analysis of Three Faces of Danica Patrick”

“Images of Liberty: WWI and National Visual Symbols”

“Ladies They Talk About”

“Butch/Femme: The Role of Binaries Restricting the Continuum of Male Sexual Existences”

"Got to Establish Who's Boss:" Inoculated Feminism and Success of the Left Behind Series”

“Over the Lake and Through the Woods: A Feminist Reclamation of the Journey”

“Are You Supposed to be Gay?: Masculinity and Homosexuality in Rawhide Kid: Slap Leather”

Moderator: Dr. Kim Coates, English Department

“The Politics of Cannibalism: Responses to Hurricane Katrina”

"The Greatest Work of Art: Stockhausen and the Aesthetics of ‘Shock and Awe’"

"’Time is Tissue’: The Revised Hijacking in The Unit and Snakes on a Plane”

Moderator: Dr. Erin Labbie, English Department

[Information coming soon]

"Values In and Of Popular Culture”

Dr. Hoppenstand is a Professor in Michigan State’s Department of Writing, Rhetoric and American Culture, author of dozens of articles, author or editor of several books including Popular Fiction: An Anthology, and editor of the Journal of Popular Culture. He received his PhD in American Culture Studies from BGSU and is a former student of Dr. Browne’s.

Room 306 will act as the headquarters for Culture Club and the conference. Light refreshments – coffee, water – will be available for much of the day. In an effort to prevent interference with on-going panels as well as encourage conversation, participants and attendees are invited to relax and mingle in Room 306.

"Notes on the Genealogy of Mechanic and Its Reification in the Information Age"

"Trashy, Trivial, and Testimony: Lesbian Investments in Representation from Pulp Novels to The L Word"

Moderator: Dr. Donald McQuarie, American Culture Studies

This panel will consist of video production work from Bowling Green High School students. In a class overseen by Theresa Dunn, the students used the medium of video to make complex and thoughtful statements about politics, war, representation, gender and popular culture. Proving that every voice counts, even those who do not have the right to vote, these students’ artistic statements are testimony to the importance of political participation in a democratic society.

Organizer: James Paasche, Department of Popular Culture

“The Architecture of Subversion: Asserting Individuality without Destroying the World”

“I’m Not a Doctor, but I Play One on TV: Grey’s Anatomy’s Kate Walsh as Actor and Activist”

“Ah Ha, Hush that Fuss: Rosa Parks v. Outkast and the Framing of Right of Publicity v. First Amendment Debate”

“Armchair Diagnosis: 24, Fandom and Asperger's Syndrome”

Moderator: Ian Young, Department of Philosophy

“The Role of Sex in Freedom and Oppression”

“Theorizing (neo)Imperialism and the Panopticon”

“Prisoners of Responsibility: When the Illusion of Becomes Real(ly Manipulative)”

Moderator: Dr. Ellen Berry, English & American Culture Studies

Feminist creative writing is written with an intentional aim to be political revealing the truth about women’s oppression and the myriad ways it affects the real lives of human subjects. It’s overt goal is to liberate women from the existing power structures, and authors who chose to write in this “genre” may do so by a variety of aesthetic affects, thus, the connecting the political and the aesthetic. This panel of four feminist creative writers will briefly define feminist fiction and discuss some of the basic assumptions about literature that ground our politics of aesthetics and read from their own short story and poetry collections.

Moderator: Dr. Wendell Mayo, Creative Writing Program

(2007, 68 min.) Soldiers of Peace is the story of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and other veterans' transformation from soldiers to peace activists. The film traces their activism through the years, ending at the current war in Iraq, with a new group of veterans who oppose the current war. The film illustrates how Iraq Veterans Against the War are facing many of the same problems faced by the veterans before them. The film locates activism as a new space for these soldiers to continue fighting, albeit in a different and oppositional manner.

“Intercultural Opera as Meta-operatic Practice; Tan Dun's Tea: A Mirror of Soul”

“Towards a Cultural Proxemics: A Reading of Ingmar Bergman's Trollflöjten as uniquely Swedish”

"Finding Eléazar: La Juive and the Performance of Celebrity"

Moderator: Dr. Ronald Shields, Department of Theatre and Film

“All the News NOT Fit to Print: How Administrators Abuse Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier”

“See a Shadow Fast and Black': Wilson, Brustein, Schechner and Color-Blind Casting in the Musical Theatre of Jason Robert Brown”

“Stop the Student Press: Editorial Cartooning on College Campuses”

Moderator: Dr. Robert Sloan, American Culture Studies

“Eating the Ethnic Other: Food Festivals as Culinary Tourism in Toledo, Ohio”

“Folklore of Crossing the Southern Border: Exploring Artistic Connections for Youth on the US/Mexico Border”

“Indigenous Scholarship and Native Americana Songwriting”

Moderator: Dr. Madeline Duntley, American Culture Studies & Sociology

“Complexity and the Theater”

“The Lion, the Witch, and the What?: Introducing Asian Fusion to Entrenched Realism”

“Caesuras Through the Centuries: How Examinations of Silence Can Blur the Line between Politics and Poetics”

Moderator: Dr. Eileen Cherry-Chandler, Department of Theatre & Film

Matt Reiter is a poet who earns a living at the City University of New York's College of Staten Island and New Jersey City University. Matt holds a BA in English from West Virginia University ('99) and a MFA in Creative Writing from Boise State University ('03). He currently resides in Bloomfield, NJ, where there are very few blooming fields.

Byron Kanoti received his MFA in creative writing with a focus in poetry from BGSU and teaches composition and Contemporary American Poetry. He believes that the goal of poetry is to push the limits of language. Poetry should challenge conventions, not adhere to them.

Introduction: Colin Helb, American Culture Studies

(2006, 62 min.) Inspired by organizers at the Beijing Conference on Women in 1995, former construction worker Vivian Price spent years documenting the current and historical roles of women in the construction industry in Asia – discovering several startling facts. Capturing footage that shatters any stereotypes of delicate, submissive Asian women, Price discovers that women in many parts of Asia have been doing construction labor for centuries. But conversations with these women show that development and the resulting mechanization are pushing them out of the industry. Their stories disturb the notion of “progress” that many people hold and show how globalization, modernization, education and technology don’t always result in gender equality and the alleviation of poverty.

“’I’m Just Trying to be a Better Person’: My Name Is Earl and the American Corrections Discourse”

“Gender, Violence, and Responsibility”

“Wholeness and Holiness: Monastic Technologies in the Plays of Hrotsvitha”

Moderator: Dr. Timothy Messer-Kruse, Department of Ethnic Studies

Justin Philpot, Department of Popular Culture
Bowling Green State University

"Crossing Over: Tomatoes and the Performer/Spectator Divide"

“Watching 24 Does Not Mean I Support Torture”

Moderator: Dr. Gary Heba, English Department

“Battling Boys: The State of Masculinity in Popular Texts for Children”