CONFERENCE SCHEDULE
For questions about the conference or for any information not found on this page, please feel free to direct your questions to the Conference Co-Chairs through our Contact Us Page.
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9:00 AM – 5:00 PM: Registration (Lobby, Barnard Observatory)
9:00 AM – 5:00 PM: Lounge & Refreshments (Lobby, Barnard Observatory)
9:30 – 9:50 AM: Commencement Reception
10:00 – 11:15 AM: Panel 1 — Women Writing Mississippi: Eudora Welty and Jesmyn Ward
Chair: Ava Chuppe, University of Mississippi
“Ghosts in the Interstice: Flesh, Kinship, and Carceral Violence in Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing”
Cameron Carter, University of Missouri
“From Storms to Spirits: A Critical Literary Analysis of Environmental Influence Throughout Jesmyn Ward's Texts”
Jonathan Dacus, University of Southern Mississippi
“Subversive Purity and Mythological Storytelling: Reading the Annunciation in Eudora Welty’s “Shower of Gold””
Millie Greene, University of Mississippi
“Blooming By Night: Eudora Welty's Floral Poetics”
Anna Platt, University of Mississippi
11:25 AM – 12:40 PM: Panel 2 – History’s Hauntings
Chair: Simon Ross, University of Mississippi
“Slavery, the Supernatural, and the Gothic in Jesmyn Ward's Let Us Descend”
Emmaline Bennett, The New School
“A Stone’s Throw: How Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” Encapsulates the Southern Gothic”
Chelsea Foster, University of Texas at Tyler
“Memories of a Nineteenth-Century Memphis Murder: Opera Memphis & the Alice Mitchell/Freda Ward Case”
Mary Lothrop, University of Memphis
“Haunted Taste”
Isaac Overman, University of Arkansas
12:40 – 1:40 PM: Lunch (on you)
1:50 – 3:05 PM: Panel 3 – Critical and Creative Works in Southern Literature
Chair: Latrice Johnson, University of Mississippi
“The Coffin as a De-/Structuring Device in AMC’s Interview with the Vampire (2022)”
Madeline Chanfrau, Wake Forest University
“The Monstrous Daughters of the Faceless South: the Intersection of Place, Disability, and Generational Trauma in Is God Is”
Camden Clem, University of Mississippi
“Blood in My Alcohol Stream”
Madison Hankins, University of Southern Mississippi
“The Millwright”
Maya Wood, University of Southern Mississippi
3:15 – 4:30 PM: Keynote Address
Tupelo Room, Barnard Observatory
“Queen of the Camp Frontier: Women, Humans, Animals, and Other Monsters of the Plantationocene”
Dr. Michael Bibler
Associate Professor of English, Louisiana State University
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10:00 AM – 3:00 PM: Registration (Lobby, Barnard Observatory)
10:00 AM – 3:00 PM: Lounge & Refreshments (Lobby, Barnard Observatory)
10:00 – 11:15 AM: Panel 4 — The Monstrous Gothic
Chair: Jacob Fennell, University of Mississippi
“Gothic Revolutions: How Social Progress Creates New Monsters”
Shea Graham, University of Mississippi
“‘Once We’re Done Killing You, We’ll Have Heaven Here on Earth’: Vampirism and the Horrors of a Post-Racial Mississippian Fantasy in Ryan Coogler’s Sinners (2025)”
Alya Hussain, Independent Scholar
“Monstrous Hungers: Indigenous & Southern Gothic”
Abigail Ross, University of Arkansas
“Here There Be Vampires: The Evolution of Deep South Vampires in Literature and Film”
Kallye Smith, University of Tennessee
11:25 AM – 12:40 PM: Panel 5 — Gender, Identity, and the Gothic
Chair: Charlie Williams, University of Mississippi
“Queer Hauntings: Gender, Sexuality, and the Supernatural in Randall Kenan’s Black Southern Fiction”
Amanzi Arnett Dowdy, University of Mississippi
“Whispers Along the Mississippi: Boyhood, Haunted Landscapes, and the Folk Gothic of Mark Twain’s South”
ZI Mahmud, University of Delhi
“Decomposing Binaries: Southern Gothic Trans Experience in Annihilation”
Ash Maldonado, Louisiana State University
“Creole Identity in William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!”
Victoria Richard, Delta State University
12:40 — 1:40 PM: Catered Lunch
1:50 – 3:05 PM: Panel 6 – Resistance, Liberation, and Gothic Continuities
Chair: Abigail Cordwell, University of Mississippi
“Thriving in a Wasteland: Ecofeminist Resistance in Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo”
Catherine Azevedo, California State University, Stanislaus
“Monstrous Rebirths: Racial Illegibility and Futurity in Chicanx Speculative Fiction”
Paola Brinkley, University of Houston
“Compulsive Freedom: Goat and the Problem of Liberation in “The Robber Bridegroom””
Myong-In Chung, Sogang University
“Traditional Religion and the Postcolonial World in Akwaeke Emezi's Freshwater”
Ava Chuppe, University of Mississippi
3:15 — 4:30 PM: Panel 7 — Podcast With the Vampire
Chair: Charlie Williams, University of Mississippi
in conversation with
Wes Byers, University of Mississippi
Abigail Cordwell, University of Mississippi
Maggie Muehleman, University of Mississippi
4:30 – 5 PM: Closing Reception