Schedule (with latest updates)

FRIDAY MARCH 28 in 420 Taper Hall, USC University Park Campus

9.00-10.15 Obsession and the 19th-century Child
Erika Wenstrom, USC. “Trembling Boundaries in Wonderland”
Trisha Tucker, USC. “Forbidden Rooms and Dangerous Knowledge: L.M. Montgomery and Gothic Childhood”
Natasha Alvandi Hunt, USC. “Owning the Child: A Narrator’s Obsession in Henry James’s “The Last of the Valerii””
Chair: Jim Kincaid

10.30-11.45 Machineries of Obsession and Technologies of Paranoia
Michael Buckley, CSU Long Beach. “The Vital Grasp: Sausage, Structuralism, and a Computational Universe”
Zach Blas, “Gay Bombs: Re-manufacturing Paranoid Logic and Networks”
Alex Wescott, “Marijuana and Terrorist (Temporal) Drag: The War on Drugs, the War on Terror, and the “Immigrant Crisis” in Harold & Kumar”
Chair: Alice Gambrell

11.45-12.45 LUNCH

1.00-2.00 Keynote: Tavia Nyong’o, NYU. “Getting Obsessive about The Wire.” Introduced by Karen Tongson.

2.15-3.3 Pathologized Bodies and Physical Excesses
Domino Torres, USC. “The Transnational Links Between Magdalen Asylums in Ireland and the United States”
Maryam El-Shall, UC Irvine. ‘Emergent Subjectivity: the Medico-pharmaceutical Construction of Subjectivity of the ‘Crazy’ and the Embrace of the ‘Crazy’
Amanda Ebner, UC Irvine. “Public Strength, Private Shame: Dialogues of Excess among Female Athletic Bodies”
Chair: Jennifer Barager

3.45-5.00 Excessive Consumption, Obsessive Subjectivity
Mel Stanfill, CSU East Bay. ““Like the one from series two, ep eleven, just before the second act break”: Representations of Fan Obsession in Xena: Warrior Princess”
Suzanne Scott, USC. “Ethnographies of Obsession: Documenting and Pathologizing Fandom”
Matt Carrillo-Vincent, USC. “Maybe Everything is Tragic and Temporary: an Emo Obsession Confession”
Chair: Alexis Lothian

5.15-6.15 Keynote: Stephen Elliott. Introduced by Bryan Hurt

SATURDAY MARCH 29 in 420 Taper Hall, USC University Park Campus

9.00-10.15 Modernist Obsessions and Excesses
Robin Chin, UC Santa Barbara. ““A Valuable Liar”: Linguistic Decadence & Excess Economics in Djuna Barnes’ Nightwood”
Michael Colson, USC. “Never Give All The Heart”: W.B. Yeats and Aesthetic Obsession
Jerry Lee, CSU Long Beach. “No Son, Rudy, Too Late Now: James Joyce’s Ulysses”
Chair: Jessica Bremmer

10.30-11.45 Gender, Power and Literary Obsession
April Davidauskis, USC. “Cap’s Quest: Queering Imperialism and Nationalism in The Hidden Hand”
Katy Karlin, USC. “Stalking the Golden Shiksa: Roth, Allen, and the Anxiety of Postwar Assimilation”
Larrah Feliciano, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. “A deeply impressive moral: Prophecies of Scientific Obsession and Destruction in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Birthmark”
Chair: Tony Kemp

11.45-12.45 LUNCH

1.00-2.15 Obsession and the Writer’s Work:
Colin Carman, UC Santa Barbara. “Playing with Plato: Percy Shelley & Same-Sex Desire in 19th century England.”
Erin McNellis, UC Irvine. “To love oneself as another: The ethics of self-annihilation in Simone Weil and Georges Bataille”
Jennifer Ansley, USC. “A Reflection on Process, or, “Being Quite Possessed by my Work”
Chair: Mary Ann Davis

**

6pm A Celebration of Critical and Creative Obsessions at Tropico de Nopal, Echo Park. Bring conference program, button or flyer for entry.

Write, Revise, Repeat: Obsessive Formal Structures in Contemporary Poetry.
Readings and critical reflections by USC poets Saba Razvi, Josie Sigler, Nicky Schildkraut and Jessica Piazza.

Readings
Poetry and fiction by Stephen Elliott, Neil Aitken, Jessica Piazza and Josh Bernstein.

Critical Karaoke
Short reflections on pop by Christine Balance, Karen Tongson, Maura Klosterman, Jennifer Ansley and Matt Carrillo-Vincent.

Music
Featuring a DJ set from Tavia Nyong’o, conference keynote and Bluegum blogger.

Getting Obsessive

Everyone’s a little bit obsessive; academics are usually more than a little. But what consitutes our obsessions and what work do they do? What is the relation between obsession and knowledge production; and what about less legitimate obsessions, the things, places, people and cultural forms about which we feel excessive love or hate?

Thinking about the subjects and objects of obsession raises crucial questions about knowledge and culture, which this two-day graduate symposium will explore. Tavia Nyong’o (NYU Performance Studies) and Stephen Elliott (author of Happy Baby, Looking Forward to It, My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up) will give keynote speeches, and the event will be conclude with a celebration of obsession for conference-goers at Tropico de Nopal in Echo Park.