EGSA hosted its first conference at DePaul on May 21, 2010. This day-long conference allowed students to present literary criticism, poetry, fiction and nonfiction to their peers and to faculty. The night was capped off by the keynote speaker for the event, Toni Asante Lightfoot. Lightfoot, a Chicago-based teacher, editor and author, gave an inspiring address on her experiences with literature, both from the role of student and teacher.

Read below to see the schedule of events:

Time Slot (1:00-2:15)

• Room 1- Literary Criticism
• Elizabeth Cramarosso – “Refiguring Reading: The Execution of the Infinite in The Finite Marriage of Heaven and Hell”
• Laura Hahn – “The Construction of the Trans Novel”
• Leslie Maclean – “Frankenstein and Aversion to Female Sexuality”
• Amanda Bryant-“Who’s to Blame?:Understanding Iago’s motivations, his social context, and the contributing roles played by Othello and Desdemona”
• Room 2- Poetry
• Ryan O’Malley – “Break-room at the Local 150,” “Old Men and Their Cars,” “The Pit”
• Heather Styka – “Jane Hawking Earns Her PhD in Medieval Spanish Linguistics,” “False Color Images,” “Galileo, Upon the Death of Maria Celeste,” “Lady Ada Byron Lovelace Learns Needlepoint”
• Kate Scott Daly – “The Reposition,” “Natural Patterns,” “Summer Theatrics,” “Elegy & Rhapsody,” “Pursuit”

Time Slot (2:30-3:45)

• Room 1- Fiction
• Greg Schumaker – “Bookstore”
• Trudie Gauerke – (Excerpt from Young Adult novel) Take the Field
• Alex Glenn- (Excerpt from a novel) A Parade of Harrowing and Escalating Discoveries
• Room 2- Literary Criticism
• Amanda Lugo- “Toys in the Attic: Postmodernity, Psychological Realism and the Narrator in Stephen King’s The Shining”
• Jennifer McCafferty- “Comus’s Lady: Curious and Culpable”
• Kim Anderson- “I blessed Be Thy Breche, and Every Stoon: Harry Bailly’s Victor”
• Mark Jacobs – “Exposing ‘Hidden Authoritarians’: History, Form, and Subjectivity in William Kentridge’s Phenakistoscope”
• Room 3- Essay
• Sarah Hughes – “Small Wonder”
• Abraham Vucekovich – “Fish Magic”
• Stephanie O’Connor – “Competition Makes the World Go Around”

Time Slot (3:45-4:15) BREAK

Time Slot (4:15-5:30)

• Room 1- Fiction
• Josh Covell- “On Concurrence”
• Jennifer Cremerius- “Valerie Love”
• Steve Bogdaniec- “I Really Love Lucy”
• Lindsey Anderson- “The Naked Man Standing in Tar”
• Room 2- Literary Criticism
• Heath Black- “Dialogical Ecocriticism: The Breeding Ground for Eco-Marxism”
• Jennifer Rupp- “’Staged Fantasy’: A World of Dance in The Magic Toyshop”
• Kim Anderson- “De-gendering Language: Revising the Script that Fuels the Performance of Gender”
• Room 3- Poetry
• Lauren DuFloth – “Pile Hitch,” “My Tenth and Final Sonnet About You,” “This is in Response”
• Andrea Harrington – “What I’m Afraid to Hear, I Must Say So Myself,” “Nuclear Winter”
• Blake Carlson – “Discharge,” “The Winter Can’t Keep Anything Straight,” “This is How to Avoid Phone Calls,” “Men,” “The Highway From Heliopolis”

Time Slot (5:45-7 p.m.)

• Room 1- Nonfiction
• Alex Glenn- “Radio Daze”
• Josh Covell- “Getting Their Hands Derby”
• Lindsey Dunaev- “The Slippery Slope to Gettysburg”
• Jennifer Houghton- “Trust No One”
• Room 2- Poetry
• Heath Black- “This is Not Abraham Lincoln’s Civil War,” “Between My Mind and Imagination,” “Sleep is a Dead Artist”
• Jennifer Cremerius- “Going Through Her Things,” “Heirloom”
• Mary E. Hilbert- “The Pearl”
• Steve Bogdaniec- “Waiting Period,” “Info,” “Hilarious”
• Bethany Brownholtz- “My voice, lost” “Dear nineteen year old white kid in Portland pretending to be homeless,” “Daddy’s Opinions,” “The Grand Ardor”
• Room 3- Literary Criticism
• Andrea Harrington – “Breaking American Static: The Evolving Today from the Contradicting Then”
• Leslie Maclean – “Undermining Oppression: A Discourse on Cloud Atlas”
• Stephanie O’Connor – “Heed the Warning”
• Jennifer Finstrom – “Entering John Gay’s Trivia: Making a Path through the Present”

Keynote Speaker (7:30 p.m.) Toni Asante Lightfoot

Toni Asante Lightfoot is a native of Washington, D.C. now living in exile in Chicago. There she teaches in several schools, after school programs, and is currently the coordinator of WordsAlive! a program that teaches teachers how to teach poetry to 1st through 5th graders across content areas. Lightfoot has been published in several anthologies and lent her poems and voice to several CD projects. She can be heard as the voice of the only deaf poet on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam. Check out the Tia Chucha Press Anthology Dream of a Word for which she was co-editor.