Keynote: "Beyond Text: Writing with Communities Today"
Cristina Rivera Garza
Friday, March 16, 2018 at 5:30pm
Michigan Union, Kuenzel Room

Professor Cristina Rivera Garza is the Distinguished Professor in Hispanic Studies at the University of Houston. Situated at the intersection of literature, literary theory, history, and creative writing, many of Rivera Garza’s recent publications (Los muertos indóciles: Necroescrituras y desapropiación, 2013) directly address the connections between writing, subjectivity, and community-based literary projects in the neoliberal age.

Friday, March 16
Michigan Union, Pond Room

10: 00am - 10: 30am Breakfast

10: 30am - 10: 45am Opening Remarks

10: 45am - 12: 15pm
Panel #1 - Beyond the Performance
Jieyi Yan - “The White Serpent Tale in Western and Eastern Literary Context: Its Adaptation, Transformation and Evolution”
Ann Tran - “Multicultural Comedy on YouTube: Anjelah Johnson’s Viral Nail Salon in Public Fora”
Anita Singh - “Budhan Bolta Hai: Social Mobilization through Community Theatre”

Faculty Respondent: Daniel Herwitz

12:15-1:15: Lunch

1: 15pm - 2: 45pm
Panel #2 - Beyond the Nation
David Ortega - “Álvaro Enrigue: Destabilizing Forces in the Quest for Origins in Vidas perpendiculares (2008) and El cementerio de las sillas (2002)”
Mung Ting Chung - “Re-defining Overseas Chinese Through “Historical” Stories:
A Study of the ​Chinese Student Weekly​ in the Early Cold War Era”
James Nichols - “An Impossible Bildungsroman: Exile and Transnational Subjectivity in Antonio Skármeta's No Pasó Nada”

Faculty Respondent: Antoine Traisnel

2: 45pm - 3: 00pm: Coffee Break

3: 00pm - 4: 30pm
Panel #3 - Beyond the Body
Joe Zappa - “Form and the Body in Fiston Mwanza Mujila’s Tram 83: For a Broader Affect Theory”
Hannah Doermann - “Beyond Diversity in Young Adult Fiction: Neoliberal Depoliticization of Social Movements in Hannah Moskowitz’s Not Otherwise Specified”
Martín Ruiz - “The Stranger and the Crack: Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth”

Faculty Respondent: Silke-Maria Weineck

4: 30pm - 5: 30pm: Reception - The Kuenzel Room, Michigan Union

5: 30pm - 7: 00pm: Keynote - Cristina Rivera Garza
“Beyond Text: Writing with Communities Today”

Saturday, March 17
Rackham, West Conference Room

9: 00am - 9: 30am: Breakfast

9: 30am - 11: 00am
Panel #4 - Beyond the Neoliberal
Michael R. Fischer, Jr. - “Excluded from the Beginning: Neoliberalism and White Supremacy in Modern Discourse”
Graham Liddell - “Arab Migration Narratives in the Neoliberal Age: Rethinking Trans/Nationalism”
Kwanyin, Lee (Pearl) - “Subversive Complicity: The Hunger Games and Shingeki no Kyojin against and under the Neoliberal Logic of Competition”

Faculty Respondent: Peggy McCracken

11: 00am - 11: 15am: Coffee Break

11: 15am - 12: 45pm
Panel #5 - Beyond the Document
Shalmali Jadhav - “Touching the Untouchable: Deciphering the Untranslatable in Fandry”
Sarah Chanski - “Re-Membered Landscapes: Palestinian Resistance in Laila Abdelrazaq's Baddawi”
Dzovinar Derderian - “Journey to the Archives: The Logics and Affect of Ottoman and Armenian Archives”
(Raphael Seka) - “Postcolonial Narrative and Identity Negotiation in Nuruddin Farah’s A Naked Needle and Nadine Gordimer’s The Pickup”

Faculty Respondent: Ruth Tsoffar

12: 45pm - 2: 00pm: Lunch

2: 00pm - 3: 00pm: The Iliac Crest Reading and Conversation with Cristina Rivera Garza

3: 15pm - 4: 45pm
Panel #6 – Beyond the Boundary
Raya Naamneh - "Language and the Postcolonial Self in Assia Djebar's Fantasia: An Algerian Cavelcade"
Grace Mahoney - “Notes from a Flying Nun: Vertigo and the Boundaries of Subjectivity in Shvarts’s Works and Days of Lavinia”
Duygu Ergun - “Coexisting in Space: The Battle of Algiers”

Faculty Respondent: Yopie Prins

4: 45pm - 5: 00pm: Closing Remarks

The Comparative Literature Intra-Student Faculty Forum (CLIFF) is an annual conference sponsored by the graduate students of the Department of Comparative Literature. CLIFF is designed to promote increased awareness of research being conducted in various languages and interdisciplinary studies at the University of Michigan.