CRAFT CRITIQUE CULTURE is an interdisciplinary conference focusing on the intersections among critical and creative approaches to writing both within and beyond the academy. This year’s conference will examine the concept of witness as a nexus of documentation and performance, past and present, event and audience, memory and revision. Our keynote speakers include Cornell University’s Newton C. Farr Professor of American History and Culture, and Pulitzer Prize winner, Michael Kammen; University of Iowa’s Professor of American Studies and Cinema and Comparative Literature, Lauren Rabinovitz; and Indiana University’s Associate Professor of Law, Jody Madeira.
Conference Schedule
Friday, April 11
Keynote Address
“Cultural Moments that Mattered in America: Participants and Observers Bear Witness”
Michael Kammen, Cornell University
Shambaugh Auditorium, 8pm
Saturday, April 12
Registration and Refreshments Michigan Room (351)
Beginning at 9:00am
IMU Panel Sessions - 9:30-10:50am
The Narrator on Trial Miller Room (259)
Chair: Eve Rosenbaum
“Witnessing and the Postmodern Citizen” Aryn Bartley, Michigan State University
“Boundedness and Transcendence: On Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood” Jennifer L. Conrad, University of Wisconsin-Madison
“Troubling the Documentary Interview” Courtney P. Davids, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Race, Violence and Confessional Memory Northwestern Room (345)
Chair: Raquel Baker
“Museums’ Obligatory Justice: Lynching Photographs and the Ethics of Exhibition” Karen Smith, University of Iowa
“The Rhetorical Performance and Imagined Reenactment of Violence: William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner and James Baldwin’s Blues for Mister Charlie” Erica Bazemore, University of Iowa
“Speaking Silence: Danticat’s Dew Breaker as a Site of Memory for the Modern Haitian Dyaspora” Cassandra Bausman, University of Iowa
IMU Panel Sessions - 11:00am-12:20pm
Hi-fidelity: Recording as Revision Northwestern Room (345)
Chair: Andrew Peterson
“Digital Audio: a deceptively faithful medium” Ben Morton, University of Iowa
“Of Jumped Sharks & Pregnant Grandmothers: The Sitcom’s Episodic Narrative Archive as Collection of Referential Documents in Late Season Seriality, Reflexivity, and New Situational Construction” Dana C. Gravesen, New York University
“Papers of Record: Archive, Narrative and the People’s Republic of Brooklyn” Erica Stein, University of Iowa
Life after Narrative + Narrative Afterlives Miller Room (259)
Chair: Barrett Gough
“Decomposing Life and Death: Poe’s ‘The Premature Burial’” Adam Bradford, University of Iowa
“Abashed Ambition: James Agee’s Intentions and Performance in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” Andrew Crooke, University of Iowa
“‘The Revisor’: Susan Howe and the Ethical Performance of the Editor’s Pencil” Sara Phillips, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Lunch 12:30-2pm
Keynote Address
“Blood Relations: Collective Memory, Cultural Trauma and the Prosecution of Timothy McVeigh”
Jody Madeira, Indiana University School of Law
Shambaugh Auditorium 2:00pm
IMU Panel Sessions - 4:00-5:30pm
(Self-)Ethnography Northwestern Room (345)
Chair: Sangeet Kumar
“A New Subjectivity?: Multiple Force Relations and Negotiated Identities in Recent Ethnographic Cinema” Allison McGuffie, University of Iowa
“Towards a Politics of Location: A Story of Inclusion/Exclusion at the Turkish Student Association of the University of Iowa” Ozge Girit, University of Iowa
Ethics, Saints and Shotguns: The Boundaries of Divinity Miller Room (259)
Chair: Jennifer Ambrose
“Morality Plays: Chris Burden’s Experiments in Ethical Philosophy” Joshua Fisher, University of Iowa
“Hearkening to Objects (faith’s role in witnessing the testimony of things)” Dan Boscaljon, University of Iowa
“The first step is paying attention: Tips for witnessing to loss and hope” Nancy Menning, University of Iowa
5:30-7:00pm Break for Dinner
Keynote Address
“When the Devil Drives: Virtual Voyages and the Marketing of Verisimilitude”
Lauren Rabinovitz, University of Iowa
Shambaugh Auditorium, 7:00pm
8:30-10:00pm Reception
The Cottage Bakery
14 S. Linn St.
Iowa City
Sunday, April 13
IMU Panel Sessions - 10:00-11:20am
Refreshments Hoover Room (255)
Beginning at 9:30am
Time is the only Witness: Cinema, History, Allegory Iowa Room (335)
Chair: Sushmita Banerjee
“Hollywood’s Unseen Allegorical Content” Kevin McDonald, University of Iowa
“Too late: Straub Huillet, Rossellini, and the Figure of an Aftermath” Claudia Pummer, University of Iowa
Mournings After: Crisis, Sexuality and Memory Penn State Room (337)
Chair: Charles Williams
“Remember AIDS? Nostalgia Morning & Video Remains” David Kentley Harvey, University of Iowa
“‘En Guerre Contre le Féminin:’ Storytelling, Trauma and the Crisis of Masculinity” Sharon Meilahn Bartlett, University of Iowa
“‘I Do No Want to Be the Ghost of a Virgin’: Reading the Narratives of the ‘Comfort Women’” Kats Mendoza, University of Iowa
IMU Panel Sessions - 11:30am-12:50pm
Bodies as Documents: Creative Presentations of History and Harm Iowa Room (335)
Chair: Nathaniel Minton
“‘You Know That I Loved You’: Witnessing and the Subculture of Self-Mutilation” Theodore Wheeler, Creighton University
Translation as Witness Penn State Room (337)
Chair: Ozge Girit
“The Voices of Zhu Shuzhen” Emily Goedde, University of Iowa
“Psuedotranslation: Constructing the ‘Other’” Andrea Rosenberg, University of Iowa
“Uncertain Origins: Translating Posthumous Texts” Margaret Schwartz, University of Iowa
“Re-Vision: Translating Amelia Rosselli” Diana Thow, University of Iowa
Contact Info:
Jessica Lawson
14 English-Philosophy Building,
The University of Iowa,
Iowa City, IA 52242
jessica-lawson@uiowa.edu