2007-2008 Colloquia

Colloquium Series Coordinator:
Julie Rowse 
jlrowse@bgsu.edu

All colloquia will run approximately from 11:00am to 12:00pm followed by an informal "brown bag lunch" from 12:00pm until 1:00pm. The Center will provide dessert and beverages. All events will take place on the Bowling Green State University Main Campus. 

Fall Semester 2007: 

September 13, 2007
Location : 207 Bowen-Thompson Student Union (Mylander Meeting Room)
Presenter : Dr. Jeffrey Brown, Associate Professor, Department of Popular Culture
Presentation Title : "Women in Action Films"
Abstract : Dr. Brown will preview his book project about the role of women in the action film genre .

October 11, 2007 
Location : 201 Bowen-Thompson Student Union (Sky Bank Room)
Presenters : Dr. Vikki Krane, director of the Women's Studies Program; Dr. Sally Ross, assistant professor in the Division of Sport Management, Recreation, and Tourism; Dr. Montana Miller, assistant professor in the Department of Popular Culture, and Kristy Ganoe, graduate assistant in the Women's Studies Program
Presentation Title : "This Is a Female Athlete"
Abstract : Members of this panel are currently engaged in research examining self-selected images of female athletes using an interdisciplinary framework. "This Is a Female Athlete" will display the photographs and discuss the initial research findings, based on data from interviews with the athletes, documenting how they chose to be portrayed. 

November 8, 2007 
Location : 201 Bowen-Thompson Student Union (Sky Bank Room)
Presenters : Dr. Bruce Edwards, Professor of English and Africana Studies and Associate Dean for Distance Education and International Programs
Presentation Title : "Finding Neverland: Fantasy and Faith in the Works of C. S. Lewis"
Abstract : Anglo-Irish author and critic, C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), has remained a popular and influential author more than four decades after his death, most recently because of the worldwide success of the launch of the movie series based upon his Chronicles of Narnia. Remarkable as the sustained posthumous interest in his work is, it is his ongoing and expanding readership in America that evokes curiosity and attention.  This lecture traces the highlights of his literary life and times, his multi-vocational successes as an Oxford and Cambridge literary historian and critic, broadcaster, religious apologist, memoirist, mythologist, science-fiction and fantasy writer, and his fascinating friendship with J. R. R. Tolkien. The heart of the presentation will focus on his affection for and rehabilitation of the popular genres of science-fiction and fantasy during his lifetime, and their continuing impact into the 21st century.

December 6, 2007
Location : 201 Bowen-Thompson Student Union (Sky Bank Room)
Presenter : Dr. Esther Clinton, Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Popular Culture
Presentation Title : "Proverbs in J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings"
Abstract : This presentation will explore the use of proverbs in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy. 

Spring Semester 2008 : 

January 17, 2008
Location : 207 Bowen-Thompson Student Union (Mylander Meeting Room)
Presenter : Dr. Kristen Rudisill, Assistant Professor in the Department of Popular Culture
Presentation Title : "Popular Theater as Social Corrective: Indian Class Relations from the Perspective of the Employer" 
Abstract : Dr. Rudisill's presentation explores two Indian plays, written 40 years apart, which explore class relations between middle class citizens and the servants with whom they interact daily. The plays give several humorous examples of how employers and servants should and should not behave and interact in a variety of stressful situations. The scenes highlight the ridiculousness of certain cultural attitudes, offer built-in opportunities for rethinking socially repressive cultural norms, and occasionally stretch the boundaries of acceptable between different social and economic classes in India.  

February 14, 2008 (in collaboration with the Center for Multicultural and Academic Initiatives La Mesa Oblique Monthly Lecture Series celebrating Black History Month) 
Location : 201 Bowen-Thompson Student Union (Sky Bank Room) 
Presenter : Dr. Angela Nelson, Associate Professor and Chair in the Department of Popular Culture
Presentation Title : "Hip Hop Music as Black Popular Culture" 
Abstract : The books, articles, and college courses on hip-hop culture and its expressive domains, rapping, graffiti writing, break dancing, emceeing, and deejaying, has grown immensely since the early 1990s. Black American culture is often seen as key to the origins and development of hip-hop culture in general and to rap, or hip-hop, music in particular. If this is true, then in what ways is hip-hop music a product of African American culture? Or, more specifically, what features, characteristics, or elements of black popular culture make hip-hop music one of its forms? And, given the fact that popular culture has historically been the dominant form of global culture and that America is the center of global cultural production and circulation and that "when viewed from the outside of the United States American mainstream popular culture has always involved certain traditions that could only be attributed to black cultural vernacular traditions" (Stuart Hall), what is black popular culture? British cultural studies pioneer Stuart Hall suggests that the "black" in "black popular culture" signifies the black community and the persistence of the black experience, a black aesthetic, and black counternarratives. Hall's four concepts will guide my discussion of hip-hop music as black popular culture. Through the music, lyrics, images, and videos of African American hip-hop groups and artists from the 1970s to the present, I will demonstrate the ways in which sacred and secular hip-hop music and its American contexts, textures, and texts relate to a black community, a black experience, a black aesthetic, and black counternarratives. 

March 13, 2008 
Location : 207 Bowen-Thompson Student Union (Mylander Meeting Room)
Presenter : Dr. Jeremy Wallach, Assistant Professor in the Department of Popular Culture
Presentation Title : "Genre, Authenticity, and Hybridity in Indonesian Popular Music" 
Abstract : Long a focus of lively debate among scholars of literature, folklore, and the popular media, genre has emerged as a central analytical category in popular music studies. Contemporary popular music genres can be viewed as resulting from a complex interplay of forces, including musical and sonic conventions, industry marketing strategies, and audience expectations.  Genre ideologies--themselves composed of myriad discourses on musical purity, features of the ideal audience, supposed core values, and so on--also appear to shape decisively judgments of aesthetic value and authenticity by producers, mediators, and consumers of popular music. The Indonesian popular musicscape is home to several distinct genres, each competing for listeners and recognition from a national audience stratified by class, gender, religion, region, and ethnicity. This presentation examines how a cultural logic of hybridization characteristic of everyday life throughout Indonesia continually interferes with and redraws genre boundaries by encouraging Indonesian musicians and producers to experiment with diverse musical sounds in their search for new listeners. The presentation will discuss a variety of Indonesian popular music genres, including dangdut, pop, ethnic fusion, hip hop, and underground rock.

April 17, 2008 
Location : 207 Bowen-Thompson Student Union (Mylander Meeting Room)
Presenters :
Mr. Mike Lewis, Master's Degree Candidate in the Department of Popular Culture
Ms. Laura Butera, Master's Degree Candidates in the Department of Popular Culture

Lewis Abstract : "Torture and Ambiguity: The Ideological Discourse of Battlestar Galactica "--Mr. Lewis' presentation will explore how the producers of Battlestar Galactica use ambiguity as a tactic for critiquing war in general and torture specifically. However, a program like 24 removes sexuality and sexual violence as a way to naturalize the use of torture as a legitimate interrogation method.Battlestar Galactica's producers go to great lengths to inject sexuality and place sexual violence back into the ideological discourse.

Butera Abstract : "Politicizing Height: Intersections of Power and Gender"-- Ms. Butera's presentation will focus on the often overlooked issue of height. Her presentation will politicize this bodily aspect by outlining its social construction and situating it
within systemic structures of inequality. Further, she will explore intersections of height, power, and gender by looking at the parallel situations of the tall woman and short man, both in embodied existence and representation.