Bryant, Colin, Levchenko, and Jenkins Presented at 40th Southwest Popular American Culture Association Conference Conference

Our MA Film Studies students Phillip Bryant, Mariana Colín, Darya Levchenko and Austin Jenkins presented their research last month at the 40th Southwest Popular American Culture Association Conference in Albuquerque, NM. Their academic trip was financed from the individual English Graduate Travel Awards granted by the department. Bryant presented his paper “Even the Door Opening is Still Very Unreal: ‘Rectify’ and the Memory of the Southern Prison.” Colin gave a talk about her paper “Destructive Love: Parasitic Motherhood in Coraline”, and Levchenko gave a presentation about her interdisciplinary project titled “Holding the Future in Your Hand: Science Fiction Imagery, Film Gadgets, and Commercial Marketing.”

In addition, Austin Jenkins was awarded the Best Graduate Student Paper in the Science Fiction and Fantasy division paper and presented this paper “The Holy-Half Giant: Hagrid as the Virgin Mary in the Harry Potter Series” in one of the Harry Potter panels organized for the conference. Although he did not know what to expect, he shared “it was a great learning experience where I was able to not only present my own research, but interact with other scholars in similar fields and discuss their interests as well.” This experience served as a great introduction for him into academic conferences and he “definitely encourage others to submit proposals to the conference next year.”

Congratulations to the three of our students and their achievements! More information about their presentations and the conference can be read at http://southwestpca.org.