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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SATURDAY 26 JULY 2025
Bondurant Auditorium, Bondurant Hall, University of Mississippi
All Panels unless otherwise stated will take place in the Bondurant Auditorium.
8:45/9:00 AM – 5:00 PM: Registration (Lobby)
9:00 – 5:00 PM: Lounge & Refreshments (Hannah Ford Room, Bondurant Hall)
9:30 – 9:50 AM: Welcome
10:00 – 11:15 AM: Panel 1 – Hunt and Harvest: Understanding Land, Animals, and Environment in Go Down, Moses
Chair: Dr. Rebecca Nisetich, University of Southern Maine
“Familial Ecosystems in William Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses”
Dr. Rebecca Nisetich, University of Southern Maine
“The Fox and The Hounds: Familiarity Between Animals and the Animalized in Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses”
Bella Ciampi, University of Southern Maine
“Taming the Wild: Reductive Identification of Land and Character in Go Down, Moses”
Will Connell, University of Southern Maine
“Games in the Woods: Cultivated Wilderness and Aristocratic Rituals in Go Down, Moses”
Vincent Herrington, University of Southern Maine
11:25 – 12:25 PM: Panel 2 – Representations of the Climate Crisis
Chair: Dr. Jay Watson, University of Mississippi
“Corruption From the Air Itself: Faulkner’s Portrayal of Twentieth-Century Atmospheric Anxieties in Light in August”
Olivia Knowles, Eckerd College
“Political Ecology and the Aftermath of Eco-crises in Hussain Ahmed’s Blue Exodus”
Ibrahim Williams, University of Mississippi
12:25 AM – 1:30 PM: Catered Lunch
1:40 – 2:55 PM: Panel 3 – Adapting to Disruptions to the Landscape
Chair: TBD
504-907
Miles B. Jordan, Louisiana State University
Couscous and Other Stories: A Novel
Dr. Hamida Riahi, Northern Border University
Island: A southern climate change novel in three parts
Sarah Ligon, University of Mississippi
3:05 – 4:05 PM: Panel 4 – Postcolonial Ecologies
Chair: Muftiat Oyindamola Adeyi
“Hunting Jungles: Colonial Ecology in Postcolonial India”
Dhruv Rahal, University of Delhi
“Taboo and Toxic: Transhistorical Colonial Ecocides within Southern Gastro-Dystopian Novels”
Emily Craig, Boston University
“It's not a Betāl but a Vampyre: A Case of Aesthetic Colonisation in India”
Sayantani Mukherjee, University of Mississippi
4:15 – 5:15 PM: Panel 5 – Thinking Ecologically with Hurston and Morrison
Chair: Dr. Eric Solomon, University of Mississippi
“‘The Wet Dust of the Bones’: Zora Neale Hurston and the Fertility of Phosphoric Florida”
Dr. Laura Wilson, Independent Scholar
“Ecological Memory and Resilience among Southern African American Women: Palimpsests of Strength”
Dr. Cassandra Hawkins, University of Mississippi
FREE TIME TO EXPLORE OXFORD / DINNER ON YOU
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SUNDAY 27 JULY 2025
Bondurant Auditorium, Bondurant Hall, University of Mississippi
All Panels unless otherwise stated will take place in the Bondurant Auditorium.
9:00 AM – 12:00 PM: Registration (Lobby)
9:00 – 5:00 PM: Lounge & Refreshments (Hannah Ford Room, Bondurant Hall)
9:30 – 10:30 AM: Panel 6 – Rewriting the Map: Narratives that Reimagine Place
Chair: TBD
“Resisting the Nation-State Border: The Chamizal Region and Land that Fights Back”
Ella Kotsen, Boston University
“Magical Realist Anthropocenes: Affective Testimony and Ecological Injustice in Helena Maria Viramontes’s Under the Feet of Jesus and Samanta Schweblin’s Distancia de Rescate”
Anthony Gottlich, University of Mississippi
“The Garden, the Gothic, and the Gloomy: Environmental Consciousness in Constance Fenimore Woolson’s ‘Rodman the Keeper’”
John W. Byers, University of Mississippi
10:40 AM – 11:55 AM: Panel 7 – Disrupting the Ecocritical Gaze
Chair: TBD
“Perverted Mutation, Beautiful Irregularity”
Camden Hunt, Boston University
“The Negro Sings of Rivers: Abolition Ecologies Along the Chattahoochee”
Brianna Jordynn Wright, Independent Scholar
11:55 AM – 12:55 PM: Lunch (on you)
1:00 – 2:00 PM: Panel 8 – Black Ecologies
Chair: Dr. Rich Purcell, University of Mississippi
“Our Morning Glory: A History of People and the Plant”
Carla J. Thomas McGinnis, University of Maryland
“(Eco)theologies of Black Liberation in Dee Rees’s Mudbound (2017)”
Preston S. Blakeley, University of Mississippi
“Haunting Voices: The Role of the Hog in ‘Clarence and the Dead’”
Meg Hanna, University of South Florida
2:10 – 3:10: Panel 9 – Extractive Ecologies
Chair: Dr. Leigh Anne Duck, University of Mississippi
“Awakening from the Ashes: The Rebirth of the Loggers’ and Yuroks’ Dignity in Damnation Spring”
Yunda Tang, National Taiwan Normal University
“Post Colonial Ecologies: A Pan-African Rejection of Anti-Nature Colonialism in A Tempest and Mama Day”
Briana Hemphill, Johns Hopkins University
“The Exploitation of Ecology, the Exploitation of Memory: Raoul Peck’s Radical Cinematic Style in Lumumba: Death of a Prophet”
Weihan Fang, New York University
4:00 – 5:00 PM: Keynote Address
Location TBD
Featured lecture by:
Dr. Gina Caison
Kenneth M. England Professor of Southern Literature, Georgia State University
5:00 – 5:30 PM: Closing Reception
With Special Thanks to:
All of our attendees.
Our Keynote speaker, Dr. Gina Caison.
UM Department of English, particularly the phenomenal administrative team, Myra Gilmore and April Wooten.
Dr. Katie McKee and The Center for the Study of Southern Culture.
Dr. Caroline Wigginton and the Department of English.
The 2025 SW/SW Committee: Anthony Gottlich, Maggie Muehlemann, Muftiat Adeyi, Sayantani Mukherjee, Abigail Cordwell, Simon Ross, Jacob Fennell, John W. Byers, Ibrahim Williams, and Eylie Sasajima
Our panel chairs: Dr. Rebecca Nisetich, Dr. Jay Watson, Dr. Leigh Anne Duck, Dr. Eric Solomon, Dr. Jaime Harker, Dr. Rich Purcell, and Ira Sen.
The University of Mississippi.
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