Program 58

Writers of Extreme Situations: A Multidisciplinary Perspective

TUESDAY, APRIL 16

Session 1, 8-9:30 am PST / UTC 3-4:30 pm

Panel 1: Christa Wolf: A Writer of Extreme Times for Extreme Times 

Moderator: Minh Nguyen, CSULB 

Location: AS 385

Dr. Robert Blankenship (CSULB), ‘Imminent dangers, all fatal’: Reading Christa Wolf’s Divided Heaven in the Age of Doomscrolling 

Barbara Ward (independent scholar), Invisible Clouds: Cultural Evolution of Language in Accident: A Day’s News by Christa Wolf 

Emery Pham (CSULB), A Story of Liminality: The Significance of the In-Between Fate in Christa Wolf’s Cassandra 

Lani Chavez (CSULB), Gen Z Doesn’t Want to Work Anymore: The Reaction to East German Socialism in Fräulein Schmetterling Echoes through Modern Sentiments of Work Culture 

  

Session 2, 9:30-11 am PST / UTC 4:30-6 pm

Panel 2: Trauma, Scars, and Repair

Moderator: Amy Desuza-Riehm (CSULB)

Location: AS 385

Dr. John Kennedy (Western Carolina University), Counterfactual Central American Poetics: Grief, Longing, and Repair 

Jessica Montero (CSULB), Bearing Scars: Resilience and Unresolved Trauma in The Tattooed Soldier 

Leslie Garcia (CSULB), Asylum Seekers and Their Fate in the US 

Roberto Soto (CSULB), Unraveling Pandemic Misinformation: The Nexus Between Dishonesty and Conspiracy Theories in Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s The Real Anthony Fauci 

 

Session 3, 11 am-12:30 pm PST / UTC 6-7:30 pm

Panel 3: Surviving Trauma 

Moderator: Levon Parseghian (CSULB)

Location: AS 385

Dr. José Rodriguez (CSULB), Ethical Cognizance in Survival Stories: Exploring Subversive Identity, Intentionality, and Agency in Moral Ordeals 

Hillorie McLarty (Middle Tennessee State University), This is a Story Not to Pass On: Sethe’s Trauma and Loss in Beloved 

Ayah El Reda (CSULB), “The Old Will Die and the Young Will Forget”: Ghassan Kanafani’s “The Land of Sad Oranges” and “Letter From Gaza” 

Kattiana Etka (CSULB), Journey Through Trauma: Navigating The Paths of Addiction in Carr’s The Night of the Gun 

 

Session 4, 12:30-2 pm PST / UTC 7:30-9 pm

Panel 4: Unveiling the Resilience: Women’s Survival in Extreme Situations through the French Language

Moderator: Dr. Maria Sanchez-Reyes (CSULB)

Location: AS 385

Samantha O’Mara-Mezzano (CSULB), Surviving and Forgiving Adultery during 1500s Europe 

Victoria Ferreyra (CSULB), The creation of an identity, sexuality, and gender through writing: A study of trauma and memory processing in the life of Rachilde, a fin-de-siècle gender-non-conforming woman 

Yen-Tran Le (CSULB), Ru by Kim Thúy: A Novel with Film Sequences 

 

Session 4, 12:30-2 pm PST / UTC 7:30-9 pm

Panel 5: Violence Against Women: Survival and Trauma Narratives 

Moderator: Dr. Rajbir Judge (CSULB)

Location: MHB 315

Dr. Susan Cherie Beam (York College of Pennsylvania), “Assault buries the self”: Reading Trauma in Sexual Assault Survival Narratives 

Jessica King (CSULB), Sexual Violence in Media Impacting Disabled Women 

Dr. Amir Sharifi (CSULB) and Dr. Ali Ashouri (SDSU), Linguistic Implications of “Jin, Jian, Azadi” Slogan (Woman, Life, Freedom) at Local and Global Levels   

Christina Schwartz (CSULB), The Cost of Girlhood: Acceptance and Sacrifice in Kij Johnson’s “Ponies” 

 

Session 5, 2-3:30 pm PST / UTC 9-10:30 pm

Panel 6: Wars and Victimhood in Texts and Media 

Moderator: Dr. Katherine McLoone (CSULB)

Location: MHB 315

Dr. Katherine Hammitt (CSU Dominguez Hills), Representing Nuclear Entanglements in the Pacific: Les Champignons de Paris  

Bahar Momeni (University of Texas at Dallas), Resilience and Rebellion: Artistic Expressions of Identity and Democracy in The Trees We Carry 

Tyler Wadman (CSULB), The Scars of the Past: The Polarity of Victimhood in Obsidian Entertainment’s Knights of the Old Republic II  

 

Session 6, 3:30-5 pm PST / UTC 10:30 pm-12 am

Musical Performance by Dr. Adrià Martin Mor (CSULB) & CWL Graduation Celebration

Location: MHB 315

 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17

Session 7, 8-9:30 am PST / UTC 3-4:30 pm 

Panel 7: Reverse Migrations and Impossible Returns in Life and Fiction 

Moderator: Amy Desuza-Riehm (CSULB)

Location: Anatol Center, AS 119

Max Molchan (Northern Illinois University), Frustrating and Damaging Attempts to Return to a Previous Culture 

Dr. Molleen Shilliday King (University of the Fraser Valley), Trauma-Based Adaptations: AntigoneMonsieur Lazhar and Ru 

Dr. Paul Cahill (Pomona College), Economic Exile and Migratory Identity in the Writings of Azahara Palomeque 

Mayra Lopez (CSULB), “A Fly in Milk”: Isolation and Loss of Hope in Walter Tevis’ The Man Who Fell to Earth 

 

Session 8, 9:30-11 am PST / UTC 4:30-6 pm

Panel 8: Living as Women in Twenty-First Century Italy: An Extreme Situation I 

Moderator: Dr. Clorinda Donato (CSULB)

Location: Anatol Center, AS 119

Dr. Clorindo Donato (CSULB), Writing in the Extreme: The Autofiction of Twenty-first Century Italian Women Writers 

Mary Conte (CSULB), The Shared Extremities of Born Under a Bad Sign and The Lying Lives of Adults 

Elizabeth Poirier (CSULB), Family Relations in the Extreme: Growing up Girl in Italy Today 

Jaclyn Taylor (CSULB), The extreme does not exist: rejecting death and other organizing boundaries in Viola Di Grado’s Hollow Heart 

 

Session 9, 11 am-12:30 pm PST / UTC 6-7:30 pm

Panel 9: Living as Women in Twenty-First Century Italy: An Extreme Situation II 

Moderator: Dr. Pravina Cooper (CSULB)

Location: Anatol Center, AS 119

Rhonda Hunt del Bene (CSULB), Di Grado’s Hollow Heart: Surviving the Extremes 

Hilary Stern (CSULB), Extreme Empowerment in Sardinian Women Writers:  Grazia Deledda and Michela Murgia 

Alessandra Balzani (CSULB), The Postcolonial Extreme in the Black Mediterranean: Igiaba Scego’s Cassandra in Mogadiscio 

 

Session 10, 12:30-2 pm PST / UTC 7:30-9 pm

Panel 10: Extreme Situations in the Ancient World 

Moderator: Jessica Brooks (CSULB)

Location: Anatol Center, AS 119

Eliana Eisen (CSULB), From Captivity to Catastrophe: Analyzing the Mythic Journey of Daedalus and Icarus 

Gillian Duane (CSULB), And God Said, “Let Them Be Trans:” The Nonbinary Ascetic in Early Eastern Christian Monasticism 

Jessica Brooks (CSULB), Ancient Authors and Extreme Situations: what accounts survive major catastrophes and are they accurate? 

 

Session 11, 2-3:30 pm PST / UTC 9-10:30 pm

Plenary Address

Moderator: Dr. F. Elizabeth Dahab (CSULB)

Location: Anatol Center, AS 119

Christopher Goffard (LA Times), Crossing the Impossible Bridge in a Dynamite Truck: Observations on Film, Friendship and Collaboration 

 

Session 12, 3:30-5 pm PST / UTC 10:30 pm-12 am

Panel 11: Poetics of Identity and Failure 

Moderator: Dr. Pravina Cooper

Location: Anatol Center, AS 119

Dr. Enrico Vettore (CSULB), Extreme Situations as Exemplary Zen Texts: Luigi Pirandello’s Last Short Stories Collection 

Ciaran Pierce (CSULB), “We Had Become What We Feared Most”: Queer Failure and Inherited Violence in Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous 

Ray Paramo (CSULB), ‘Stricken with a Double Loss’: Manuel Muñoz’s Communities of Productive Melancholia in The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue 

Karely Rodriguez (CSULB), A Shameful Life: Social Alienation and Collective Suffering in Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human 

 

THURSDAY, APRIL 18

Session 13, 8-9:30 am PST / UTC 3-4:30 pm

Panel 12: Bearing Witness and the Politics of Resistance 

Moderator: Dr. Kathryn Chew (CSULB)

Location: AS 385 (for viewing; all panelists are on Zoom)

Dr. Manjeet Baruah (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India), Writing Violence and the Indigenous in a Borderland: Motifs and Literary Representation of Crisis among the Nagas of Northeast India 

Dr. Sasha Colby (Simon Fraser University), Memoir and the Literature of Crisis: WW II and the Canvas of the Personal 

Elsa Canali (Freie Universität Berlin), ‘Despite all’: The urgent writing and practices of resistance of Alcira Soust Scaffo during Mexico ’68 

Duygu Dalyanoğlu (Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Turkiye), The Post-Memory of the Armenian Catastrophe in Armenian North American Plays 

Gamze Tosun (Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Turkiye), Performing atrocity: Staging memories of violence in the contemporary theatre of Turkey 

Dr. Haritha Unnithan (University of Kerala, India), Temporality, Memory Repertoire, and the Discourse of Conflict in The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida 

 

Session 13, 8-9:30 am PST / UTC 3-4:30 pm

Panel 13: Narratives of Trauma Across Cultures 

Moderator: Randall Estupinan Medel (CSULB)

Location: AS 385 (for viewing; all panelists are on Zoom)

Giovanni Salvagnini Zanazzo (University of Padua, Italy), Why am I suffering? Self-Identity and Trauma in Duras’ La Douleur 

Dr. Lipika Das (IIIT-Bh, Centre for the Study of World Literature, Odisha, India), Can World Literature Exist Without English?  

Maya Gal (University of British Columbia), Ethical Considerations of Trauma Storytelling; Case Study of Refugee Tales Project 

David Williams (Clemson University), At the Limits of Expression: Memory and Knowledge in Zofia Nałkowaska’s “The Visa” 

 

Session 14, 9:30-11 am PST / UTC 4:30-6 pm

Panel 14: Refugees and Asylum Seekers  

Moderator: Dr. Crystal Lie (CSULB)

Location: AS 385 (for viewing; all panelists are on Zoom)

Dr. Dilek Menteşe Kıryaman (Çankırı Karatekin University), The Language Barrier and the Asylum System in Carol Watts’ “The Interpreter’s Tale” 

Jake Perea (CSULB), ‘No Belongings Except Our Stories’: History and Trauma in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Refugees 

Brenna Rose (CSULB), Can Replicating DNA Replicate Our Soul?: The Dangers of Artificial Intelligence in Ezra Daniels’ Upgrade Soul 

 

Session 14, 9:30-11 am PST / UTC 4:30-6 pm

Panel 15: Women in Extreme Situations 

Moderator: Dr. Jeffrey High (CSULB)

Location: AS 385 (for viewing; all panelists are on Zoom)

Dr. Daniela Suarez (CSULB), Brenda Navarro’s Empty Houses: Mothering the State, Disappearing the Mother 

Dr. Eun-Joo Lee (Sogang University, South Korea), Ethical Ordeals: Surviving the Unimaginable 

Daman Khalid (Washington State University), Imperialism’s Impact on Women’s Bodies: Examining Violation and Vulnerability in the Context of United India and Japan (1940s) 

Jinghan Jiao (Université Lumière), How we remember and write about comfort women after the Nanjing Massacre 

K S Ahima (NIT Warangal), Feminine War Memory in The Mountains Sing by Nguyen Phan Que Mai and Pachinko by Min Jin Lee 

Entidhar Al-Rashid (University of Texas at Dallas), The Literary Representation of Traumatic Experience in Between Two Worlds by Salbi and in Dreaming of Baghdad by Zangana 

 

Session 15, 11 am-12:30 pm PST / UTC 6-7:30 pm

Panel 16: Extreme Encounters in Nature and Urban Settings 

Moderator: Dr. F. Elizabeth Dahab (CSULB)

Location: AS 385 (for viewing; all panelists are on Zoom)

Dr. Marie Cazaban-Mazerolles (Université Paris 8), The cyclone and the crocodile : poetic issues regarding extreme encounters with disruptive nature  

Inés Noé (Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Germany), An aesthetic from the street: The chronicles of extreme poverty by Victor Hugo Viscarra 

Ridhima Narayan (independent scholar), Documentaries on the Edge: Portraying the Untold Stories of Manual Scavengers and Caste-Based Discrimination 

 

Session 15, 11 am-12:30 pm PST / UTC 6-7:30 pm

Panel 17: Exilic and Prison Narratives in Postcolonial Spaces 

Moderator: Dr. Kathryn Chew (CSULB)

Location: AS 385 (for viewing; all panelists are on Zoom)

Benjamin Hoover (Indiana University), Subversive Consolations Past and Present: The Role of the Image in Prison Poetry 

Junaid Shabir (University of Texas at Dallas), ‘Against Forgetting’: Witnessing and Memory-Making in the Poetry of Agha Shahid Ali 

Azzeddine Tajjiou (Mohamed First University, Oujda, Morocco), Amidst Shadows and Dreams: Exploring Extremes of Corruption and Hope in Postcolonial African Writing 

 

Session 16, 12:30-2 pm PST / UTC 7:30-9 pm

Panel 18: Bearing Witness: Erasures and Horrors 

Moderator: Dr. Crystal Lie (CSULB)

Location: AS 385 (for viewing; all panelists are on Zoom)

Dr. Elisa Reato (Université Paris Nanterre), Leaving the perimeter of xenophobic thinking 

Dr. Hadas Zahavi (Princeton University), Peace: An Extreme Situation 

Madelaine Hron (Wilfrid Laurier University), Eating Black Children’s Flesh: Writing/Righting Current Cocoa Slavery 

Nishtha Pandey (Indian Institute of Technology Madras), Bearing Witness Through Erasure: Examining Crises of Form in Contemporary Refugee Novels