“Why All the Fuss about the Body?”

An Interdisciplinary Conference on Local and Global/ized Bodies

The University of the SouthApril 11–16, 2016

CONFERENCE PROGRAM

Jessica Wohl. Finger Face, collage, 2014.

Jessica Wohl. Bend and Snap collage, 2014.

“Why All the Fuss about the Body?”:

An Interdisciplinary Conference on Local and Global/ized Bodies

The University of the South, April 11–16, 2016

PROGRAM

Monday, April 11

4:30 p.m., Gailor Auditorium

Keynote lectures

“‘The American Walk’: Global Contact, Gesture, Rhythm, and Poetry” by Dr. Haun Saussy (University of Chicago, Comparative Literature and East Asian Languages and Civilizations)

“Horror Old and New: Nakata Hideo’s Ringu (1998) between J-Horror and Hibakusha Cinema” by Dr. Olga V. Solovieva (University of Chicago, Comparative Literature)

Thursday, April 14

4:30 p.m., Gailor Auditorium

Keynote lecture

“The Mortal Body: Russian and American Ways of (Not) Knowing” by Dr. Jehanne M Gheith (Duke University, Slavic and Eurasian Studies, Women’s Studies, and Education)

Friday and Saturday, April 15–16

Twenty-eight faculty and student conference presentations (EQB Building)

Noon–1 p.m., Lunch for conference participants at the EQB Building

1–1:15 p.m. Welcome by Dean Terry Papillon and the conference organizers: Justyna Beinek, Sara Nimis, Mark Preslar, Steve Raulston, Donald Rung, and Kelly Whitmer, EQB

ALL PRESENTATIONS ON APRIL 15–16 TAKE PLACE AT THE EQB BUILDING

1:15–2:45 p.m. Panel 1: DISCIPLINING BODIES

Moderators: Dharitri Bhattacharjee and Scott Wilson

Kelly Whitmer, “Youthful Bodies and Sentimental Culture in Early Modern (Central) Europe”

Sara Nimis, “Incorporation in a Sufi Milieu: Apprenticeship and Ritual in the Trade Associations of Early Modern Egypt”

Emmanuel Asiedu-Acquah, “‘We Need Educated and Honest Youth’: Youthful Bodies, Discipline, and Resistance in Post-independence Ghana”

Michael Wairungu, “Uniformity vs. Swag: Styling the Body as Protest among High School Students in Kenya”

2:45–3 p.m. Coffee break

3–4:15 p.m. Panel 2: BODY, SEX, GENDER

Moderators: Derek Ettensohn and Arturo Marquez-Gomez

Liesl Allingham, “The (In)Visible Body”

Brandon Kemp, “Vulnerable Bodies: Ethical and Erotic Investment in Tsai Ming-liang’s I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone”

Kathryn Mills, “The Body: Sacred or Profane?”

4:15–4:30 p.m. Coffee break

4:30–5:45 p.m. Panel 3: RACIALIZED BODIES

Moderators: Melody Crowder-Meyer and Roger Levine

Russell Fielding and Matthew Mitchell, “Telling the Half: Slaves, Slavery, and Place in North America and the Caribbean”

Adam Dahl, “Black Disembodiment in the Age of Ferguson”

Tam Parker, “Ferguson and After: Profaned and Sacralized Black Bodies and the Contestation of the American Social Imaginary”

FRIDAY, APRIL 15

Jessica Wohl. Thing of Pearls, collage, 2014.

9–10:45 a.m. Panel 4: REPRODUCING BODIES

Moderators: Yuliya Ladygina and Alyssa Summers

Brandon Moore, “Human Sex Ratios and Environmental Factors: A Skewed Roll of the Dice?”

Elizabeth Skomp, “Dismantling the Ideal Soviet Body: Ludmila Ulitskaya and Corporeality”

Cat Clark, “Juno Reads Miss Piggy’s Guide to Life: Unruly Women, Grotesque Bodies, and the Controlling Nature of the Patriarchy”

Rachel Head, “Representations of Motherhood in the Soviet Union: Gladkov’s Cement (1925) and Baranskaya’s A Week Like Any Other (1969)”

Pippa Browne, “Function and Fetish: Comments on Breastfeeding”

10:45–11 a.m. Coffee break

11 a.m.–12:30 p.m. Panel 5: THE BODY IN ILLNESS AND IN HEALTH

Moderators: Laura Attanasio and Elise Kikis

Alyssa Summers, “The Immune System: Friend or Foe?”

Amy S. Patterson, “Engaging Therapeutic Citizenship and Clientship: Untangling the Reasons for Therapeutic Pacifism among People Living with HIV in Urban Zambia”

Phoebe Kajubi, “Tensions in Communication between Children on Antiretroviral Therapy and Their Caregivers: An Exploratory Study in Jinja District, Uganda”

Amelia Gray, “Redefining Physical Therapy: Extending Healing beyond the Physical Body”

12:30–1:45 p.m. Lunch for conference participants at McClurg Dining Hall, Room 206

SATURDAY, APRIL 16

1:45–3 p.m. Panel 6: PERFORMING BODIES

Moderators: Betsy Sandlin and Jeffrey Thompson

Courtney World, “Challenging the ‘Ballet Body’ with Somatic Dance Practices”

Toby Hickson, “The Unequal Struggle for Equality: Body as Performance in Kieslowski’s Trois Couleurs: Blanc”

Justyna Beinek, “Cecylia Malik: Embodiment, Eco-art, Ephemerality”

3–3:15 p.m. Coffee break

3:15–4:30 p.m. Panel 7: BODIES/MACHINES

Moderators: Maggie Fritz-Morkin and Shelley MacLaren

Bill Engel, “The Early Modern Corporal Imaginary and Memory Machines”

Mark Preslar, “Our Changing Body—Our Evolving Self”

Don Rung, “Reconstruction/Reincarnation: Navigating the Posthuman World of Charles Stross’s Accelerando”

4:30–4:45 p.m. Coffee break

4:45–6 p.m. Panel 8: THE DEAD BODY

Moderators: Aymeric Glacet and Steve Raulston

Shana Minkin, “French Imperial Bodies in Late 19th-century Alexandria, Egypt”

Nicholas Roberts, “The Politics and Geopolitics of Burial in Jerusalem: Understanding the Mamilla Cemetery Controversy and Muhammad Ali’s Interment in British Palestine”

Derek Ettensohn, “‘City of Death’: The Corpse and Catastrophe in Nuruddin Farah’s Fiction”

All events are free, open to the public, and have received generous support from the Dean of the College, Mellon Globalization Forum,

University Lectures Committee, the departments and programs of Art and Art History, Asian Studies, English, Film, French, German, History, Humanities, International and Global Studies, Italian, Politics, Religious Studies, Russian, Spanish, Women’s and Gender Studies, as well as Sewanee Union Theater, Sewanee Writers’ Conference,

Tennessee Williams Center, and Greenspace Art Collective.All images courtesy of Jessica Wohl.

ACCOMPANYING EVENTS IN APRIL 2016 April 5: Cheri Magid’s play The Gaba Girl, read by professional actors, 7:30 p.m., Black Box Theater at the Tennessee Williams Center. Cheri Magid is the 2015–16 Tennessee Williams Playwright-in-Residence at Sewanee. April 6: Guest lecture: “The Animality of Affect: Religion, Emotion, and Power” by Dr. Donovan Schaefer (University of Oxford, Science and Religion), 5 p.m., Gailor Auditorium April 8–10: Function and Fetish: Comments on Breastfeeding—an exhibition of paintings by Pippa Browne. Opening: April 8, 5:30 p.m. Exhibition open April 9–10: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Greenspace Art Collective (a green building behind Woody’s Bike Shop) “About The Body”: A World Film Series (3 final screenings, SUT):

• April 12, Yesterday (dir. Darrell Roodt, 2004, South Africa), moderator: Dr. Amy Patterson

• April 19, The Skin I Live In (dir. Pedro Almodóvar, 2011, Spain), moderator: Dr. Arturo Marquez-Gomez

• April 25, Son of Saul (dir. László Nemes, 2015, Hungary), moderator: Dr. Justyna Beinek