The Margaret Atwood Society

Conference Panels

UPCOMING PANELS 

Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900
February 2009

Margaret Atwood Society Panel
Chair: Tomoko Kuribayashi

  • Carol Osborne, ”Saving Graces: Narrative Designs in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake“
  • Nancy Peled, “Wicked Woman Writing: Narrator as Witch in Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin“

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PREVIOUS PANELS

Modern Language Association Convention 
December 2008

The Door and Other Atwoodian Spaces
Organizers: Deborah Rosenthal and Tomoko Kuribayashi

  • Ted Sheckels, “Spaces of Retreat: Temporary Respites in Atwood’s Threatening World”
  • Earl Ingersoll, “Doors and Other Spaces in Atwood”
  • Lynda Hall, ‘”born with mortality’s hook in us”: Atwood’s The Door on the Thresholds of Life”
  • Paul Huebener, “Dark Stories: Poet-Audience Relations and the Journey Underground in The Door”

Modern Myths and Popular Culture in Atwood’s Works
Organizers: Karma Waltonen and Denise Du Vernay

  • Jenni G. Halpin, “Distressed Distribution in “Encounters with the Element Man”
  • Lorraine York, “I’ve Broken the Sound Barrier”: Margaret Atwood’s Literary Celebrity and Popular Culture”
  • Sharon R. Wilson, “Magical Realism in Atwood’s The Blind Assassin”
  • Eric Aronoff, “We’re Hard-Wired for Dreams”: Mythology, Biology, and the Human in Atwood’s Oryx and Crake” 

Modern Language Association Convention 
December 2007

Atwood’s Recent Shorter Fiction
Organizers:  Sharon Wilson and Lisa Weckerle 

Presiding: Lisa Weckerle

  • Kiley Kapuscinski, “Writing the Wrong: Ethical Responses to Female Violence in the Mythic Minifiction of Margaret Atwood”
  • Camille Harris, “‘Who Are We Now?’: Societal Constructions in Margaret Atwood’s The Tent”
  • Karma Waltonen, “‘Your Tent Is Made of Paper’: Self-Reflexive Writing in The Tent”
  • Alice Rachel Ridout, “The Relation between Time and Space in Margaret Atwood’s Moral Disorder”

Atwood as a Poet
Organizers: Karma Waltonen and Debby Rosenthal  

  • Marilyn J. Rose, “Tender (Though Far from Toothless): Margaret Atwood on Love”
  • Tomoko Kuribayashi, “‘Consider the Body’: Remaking the Myth of Female Sexuality in Margaret Atwood’s Recent Poems”
  • H. Louise Davis, “Atwood, Ambiguous, and Accusatory: Circe/Mud Poems and ‘The Bog Man’ as Models for Ecofeminist Fiction”

 

Modern Language Association Convention
December 2006

Myth and Intertextuality in the Works of Margaret Atwood

Presiding: Deborah Rosenthal and Lisa Weckerle

  • Sharon R. Wilson, “The Crone Creator Goddess in Atwood’s The Penelopiad“ 
  • Earl G. Ingersoll, “Myth in Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad“
  • Hilde Staels, “The Penelopiad: Atwood’s Parodic and Burlesque Transformation of the Penelope Myth”
  • Lauren J. Lacey, “Unmaking Myth in The Penelopiad“
  • Tomoko Kuribayashi, “Margaret Atwood’s Myth Remaking in Recent Poems and The Penelopiad“

Performing Atwood

Presiding: Jennifer M. Hoofard and Tomoko Kuribayashi

  • Deborah Phelps,  “Misconceiving Atwood: The Edible Woman in Performance”
  • Lisa Weckerle, “Multiple Identities: A One-Woman Show of the Writing of Margaret Atwood”
  • Gilya Hodos and Eileen Strempel “(In)Habitation: Settings of Margaret Atwood Poems by Women Composers”

 

Twentieth-Century Literature Conference
February 2006

Margaret Atwood Society Panel
Organizer: Cynthia Kuhn
Presiding: Debrah Raschke

  • Elizabeth J. Fleitz, “Troubling Gender:  Rethinking the Disordered Body in Atwood’s The Edible Woman”
  • Cathia Jenainati, “Narratives of Aging and Melancholia: Margaret Laurence’s The Stone Angel and Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin”
  • Debrah Raschke, “’Shock and Awe’: Machiavellian Politics in Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride”

 

Modern Language Association Convention
December 2005

Teaching Margaret Atwood’s Works
Presiding: Jennifer M. Hoofard

  • Shuli Barzilai, “Atwood in the Classroom: Looking Back, Looking Forward”
  • Tomoko Kuribayashi, “Teaching Margaret Atwood’s Poems Along with Sylvia Plath’s”
  • Marie I. Lovrod, “Teaching Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale in the Context of Transnational Feminisms”
  • Lynne Bruckner, “Surfacing in the Ecofeminist Classroom”

Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake
Presiding: Dunja M. Mohr

  • Karma Waltonen, “Beyond Didacticism: The Relations between the Personal and the Political in Oryx and Crake”
  • Deborah Rosenthal,  “’Here and Not Here’: Fragmentation in the Absence and Presence of Maternal and Romantic Bonding in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake”
  • Alice Rachel Ridout, “Tragic Triangles: Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and The Blind Assassin”
  • Tara Johnson, “Locating Sources of Knowledge and Truth in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake”

 

Twentieth-Century Literature Conference
February 2005

Margaret Atwood Society Panel
Organizers: Karen Macfarlane and Cynthia Kuhn
Presiding: Sally A. Jacobsen

  • Karma Waltonen, “Transgressing Through Humor in Oryx and Crake.”
  • Ian Williams, “Or What: Voicing Irony in Morning in the Burned House.”
  • Sue Sorensen, “‘Death by Landscape’: Atwood’s Revision of Wordsworth’s Lucy Poems.
  • Sally A. Jacobsen, “Fishy Food, Global Business and Atwood’s Postmodern High Jinks in Oryx and Crake.”

 

Modern Language Association Convention 
December 2004

Margaret Atwood’s Dystopian Visions
Presiding: Joy Arbor

Sharon R. Wilson, “Dr. Frankenstein in Oryx and Crake“

  • Debrah Raschke,  “The Temptation to Apocalypse in Atwood’s The Robber Bride“
  • Dunja M. Mohr, “‘The Rag Ends of Language’: The Poetic Discourse of Survival in Atwood’s Future Visions”
  • Deborah Phelps, “Apocalyptic Canada: The Nationalist Lessons of Susanna Moodie.

Margaret Atwood and the Craft of Narrativity

Presiding: Lynda Hall

  • Sally A. Jacobsen, “The Blind Assassin: Negotiating with the Canadian Postmodern.”
  • Earl G. Ingersoll, “Margaret Atwood as Narrative Innovator: The Handmaid’s Tale.”
  • Theodore F. Sheckels, “Critic as Storyteller: Margaret Atwood’s Use of Narrative in Survival and Second Words.”
  • Radmila Nastic, “Narrating Alterity in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing.”

 

Twentieth-Century Literature Conference
February 2004

Sleight-of-Hand: Transgressive Strategies in Margaret Atwood’s Fiction
Presiding: Shuli Barzilai

  • Sally Jacobsen, “Negotiating with the Dead in The Blind Assassin“
  • Susan Hoeness-Krupsaw,  “Snowman goes Windigo: Ironic Reversals in Oryx and Crake“
  • Shuli Barzilai, “Gothic Fractures in Lady Oracle“

 

Modern Language Association Convention 
December 2003

Margaret Atwood and the Environment
Presiding: Charlotte Templin and Karen Macfarlane

  • Holly Blackford, “The Ecological Movement of the Female Body in Surfacing“
  • Susan Fisher,  “‘The Faces of Animals’: Margaret Atwood and the Animal Story”
  • Patricia Merivale, “Oryx and Crake: The Unhinging of the Ecological Imagination”

Margaret Atwood’s Multiple Bodies
Presiding: Phyllis Perrakis and Joy Arbor

  • Sally Chivers and Nicole Markotic, “Margaret Atwood’s Problem Bodies”
  • Jennifer Hoofard, “‘It Is Her Body, Silent / and Fingerless, Writing This Poem’: Margaret Atwood’s “Notes toward a Poem That Can Never Be Written”  
  • Laura Wright, “National Photographic: Embodying the Animal in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing“
  • Steven Bruhm, “Lepers Leaping, Ladies Dancing: Aesthetics and Kinesthetics in Margaret Atwood”