Hip Hop: Witty or Twitty?

Some may think we exaggerate how far a distance English Departments have traversed from Shakespeare and Milton. Just have a look at the program for the College English Association’s Middle Atlantic Group conference to be held this weekend at Montgomery College in Rockville, Maryland:

• “The Paradox of Change: Poe, Conan Doyle and the Early Hard-Boiled Novel”—
Lewis Moore, University of the District of Columbia (retired)

• “Sound Resistance: Blues in Children’s Literature”—Wynn Yarbrough, University of the District of Columbia

• “Reality Denied Comes Back to Haunt: Nature, Artifice, and Symptom in the Works of Philip K. Dick” –Alexander Howe, University of the District of Columbia

• “Amish Romance Fiction as American Pastoral”—Brian Reinking, Indiana University of Pennsylvania

• “Taste Test: Paradise Lost and the Desire to Know”—Christina Denny, St. John’s University

• “If I Shouldn’t Be Alive: Emily Dickinson’s Counterfactual Gothic and Religious Mental Spaces”—Ashley Kniss, Catholic University of America

• “From Artifice to Authenticity: Warren, Jarrell, and Lowell at Mid-Twentieth Century” –Joan Romano Shifflett, Catholic University of America

• “Breath-in Experience, Breathe-out Poetry: The Poet and the Inspiration Wisdom of Nature”—Genevieve Carminati, Montgomery College

• “Structures and Constructs, Patterns and Rules: Exploring Alternatives to Inflexibility”—Charlie Ewers, Frostburg State University

• “Concentration and Proliferation in Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio”—Audrey Farley, University of Maryland, College Park

• “Now, Gods, Stand up for Bastards!: A Critique of Literary Darwinism”—David Kaloustian, Bowie State University

• KEYNOTE ADDRESS: “Do Trees Fall in Love?” –Linda Joy Burke. Performance Poet, Writer, Photographer, Teaching Artist and Contributing Editor to Little Patuxent Review

• “Colonizing the Darkness: A Cognitive Figure and Ground Approach to the Light/Dark and Precolonized/Colonized Binaries in Heart of Darkness”—Charles Knight, University of Nottingham

• “Love in Idleness: Edith Wharton and Beatrix Farrand”–Mary Stevenson, Prince George’s Community College

• “Country and City in Jewett’s A White Heron”—S. Selina Jamil, Prince George’s Community College

• “Melville and the Lamia”—Nasreen Abbas, American University*

• “Using Film Pedagogy to Promote Character Strengths and Cognition”—Dorothy Phaire, University of the District of Columbia

• “Is Tweeting Making Students Twitty or Witty?”—Jolene Carr, Towson University

• “The Nature and Artifice of Writing Proficiency Assessment: Freshman Writing Courses and the English Proficiency Exam”—Terry Smith, University of Maryland Eastern Shore

• “To Tell a Lie and/or Break the Ice”—Will Jackson, Towson University

• “Processing a Path through the ‘Jungle’ of Words and Ideas”—Chen Chen, Towson University

• “Learning from Mistakes: A Discussion of an Undergraduate Research Study of Error Analysis”—Helene Krauthamer, Christopher Rothermel, LaTara Haynes, James S. Booker, and Natalie Bridgewater, University of the District of Columbia

• “Oprah Did What?: A Fun Icebreaker”—Jacqueline Brock, Towson University

• “A Transformative Encounter: Autobiographical Accounts of the Nature of Teaching”—Elizabeth Benton, Montgomery College

• “(Un)Natural (Speech) Acts: Shifting the Rhetorical Perspective from West to East”—Mike Eckert, Montgomery College (retired)

• “Pythagoras Was a Vegetarian”—Virginia Streamer, Montgomery College

• “Invisible Hands and Forces of Nature: Disaster Capitalism and State Capture in Caribbean Creative Discourse”—Randy Gray Kristensen, George Washington University

• “Back to Nature, or Adam Unbound: Tracing Alejo Carpentier’s Lost Steps”—Swift Stiles Dickison, Montgomery College

• “From Nothing to Nowhere: The Artifice of the Absurd in Don Delillo’s Point Omega and The Angel Esmeralda”—Shweta Sen, Montgomery College

• “Dangerous Crossings: Machines and Nature in Buster Keaton’s Our Hospitality”—Kevin Kehrwald, Frostburg State University

• “Signifying and the Negative Effects on African American’s Social Network Usage”—Chimere Pelzer

• “Signifying in the Media Compromises the Identities, Relationships, and Stereotypes of African American Women”—Sheneka Quinitchette

• “Love N’ Hip Hop: Debunking the Resistance of Stereotypical Representations of Black Love in Hip Hop Culture”—Shané Weaver

• “A Rhetorical Analysis of Montesquieu’s The Spirit of Laws and Rousseau’s Social Contract Theory: Implications for Conversion of the Secular and Religious”—Chaquina Jones

Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.
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