15th annual K-State cultural studies conference March 9-11

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Sources: Phil Nel, 785-532-2165, philnel@k-state.edu;
and Phillip Marzluf, 785-532-2156, marzluf@k-state.edu
News release prepared by: Jennifer Newberry, 785-532-6415

Thursday, February 23, 2006

15TH ANNUAL K-STATE CULTURAL STUDIES CONFERENCE MARCH 9-11

MANHATTAN -- The 15th annual Cultural Studies Conference at Kansas State University will be March 9-11. The theme of this year's conference is "Privacy (and Secrecy)."

The conference will offer discussions on privacy issues, including the impact on legislation and technology and the role of privacy in literary texts, said Phillip Marzluf, assistant professor of English.

"Currently, issues of privacy, secrecy and surveillance are more important than ever," Marzluf said. "The 'Privacy' Cultural Studies Conference is an excellent venue for scholars from English, communication, education, political science and other disciplines to discuss these issues from the standpoint of their own interests, political perspectives and methodologies."

The conference will include papers investigating legal rights to privacy, considering the ways that the private lives and public works of artists overlap, and weighing the virtues of exposure and secrecy in computer coding and classroom pedagogy. Keynote speakers for the conference are Susan Hahn, a poet, and George Chauncey, a social historian.

Hahn is the author of six poetry books, "Harriet Rubin's Mother's Wooden Hand," "Incontinence," "Confession," "Holiday," "Mother in Summer" and "Self/Pity." She won the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2003 and also has won an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, the George Kent Prize from Poetry magazine and two Pushcart Prizes.

Gregory Eiselein, professor of English, has taught Hahn's work in some of his classes. Eiselein said he finds her poetry to be intimate, personal and private.

"She has said that poets must write what they know best," he said. "Her poems do have a resemblance to the intense tell-all poems of confessional poets like Anne Sexton and Sylvia Path. Her poetry is psychological, but it might be more about our culture's strange and tortured psyche as much as it is about any one person or experience."

Hahn will present poetry at 8 p.m. Thursday, March 9, in the Tadtman Boardroom of the K-State Alumni Center. Her talk also is sponsored by the English department's Visiting Writers Program.

Chauncey's research and teaching focus on urbanism, gender, sexuality, subjectivity and social movements of the 20th century. He is author of "Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940," which has won the Organization of American Historians' Merle Curti Award, the Frederick Jackson Turner Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Lambda Literary Award.

Chauncey is currently completing a work on gay life in postwar America, "The Strange Career of the Closet: Gay Culture, Consciousness and Politics from the Second World War to the Gay Liberation Era." He will present "Why Come Out of the Closet?" at 8 p.m. Friday, March 10, in 106 Kedzie Hall.

On-site conference registration will be at the K-State Student Union on the second floor concourse. Registration is $30 for the entire conference or $10 for one day.

The keynote addresses by Hahn and Chauncey are free and open to the public.

A complete conference schedule, along with biographies of the speakers, is available at http://www.k-state.edu/english/symposium/sched.html