Please find below the schedule for this year’s conference at Troy University.  This conference is going to be exciting, and we hope you’ll join us!

Download schedule

2018 ACETA Schedule (subject to change)

Location: Troy University, Troy, Alabama
Date: Friday & Saturday, February 23 – 24, 2018

Friday, February 23

1:30 – 2:45 pm
Registration (Hawkins Hall Lobby)

3:00 – 4:15 pm
Welcome by Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs/Provost, Dr. Earl Ingram (Hawkins Hall Auditorium)

Presentation of Award – Winning Papers

• William J. Calvert Award  —  “Let Go and Give Students Control: The Modified Flip” by Christy Burns, Jacksonville State University
• Mary Evelyn McMillan Award  — “Disrespected, Unprotected, But Not Dejected: An Examination of Black Women’s Resistance in Antebellum Literature” by Madison Ogletree, Auburn University, nominated by Dr. Julia Charles

4:30 – 5:45 pm
The Poetics of Empathy      Hawkins Hall Room 107

• “Speaking the Unspeakable: The Articulation of Suffering in Fraser’s Strange Pieta” by Bailey Bridgeman, Samford University
• “A Study in Empathy” by Michael Orlofsky, Troy University
• “‘Surpassed by Her Beauty’: The Patriarchal Readership, the Sympathetics Imagination, and the Complication of Marie de France’s Proto – Feminism” by Stephen G. Melvin, University of North Alabama

Imagining the Experiences of Women in World War II Hawkins Hall Room 111

• “Sympathy for Women in Exile” by Anna Taylor and Carly Niswander, Jefferson State Community College
• “Aharon Megged’s Hanna Senesh and Empathy for ‘The Other’” by Eric Sterling, Auburn University Montgomery

Friday, February 23

5:45 – 6:30 pm
Reception (International Art Center, Troy University)

6:45 – 8:00 pm
Entertainment: Pendulum (IAC)
Dinner—New Orleans theme (IAC)
Keynote: Martin Puchner, General Editor, The Norton Anthology of World Literature (IAC)

Saturday, February 24

9:00 – 9:45 am
Registration & Coffee (Hawkins Hall Lobby)

10:00  –  110:00 Eugene Current – Garcia Address Hawkins Hall 119
Dr. Kirk Curnutt

11:15 – 11:30 am
Coffee Break

11:30 am – 12:45 pm

Expressions of Female Empathy  Hawkins Hall Room 119

• “Double – layer of ‘Sympathetic Imagination’” by Christy Burns, Jacksonville State University
• “‘Telling the Truth About My Own Experiences as a Body’: Virginia Woolf as Both a Writer and a Survivor of Sexual Violence” by Donovan Cleckley, University of Montevallo
• “Daughter – Mother Understanding: The Sympathetic Imagination in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club” by Taten Shirley, Faulkner University      

Breaking Barriers Through Empathy Hawkins Hall Room 117

• “Technology and Identity Theory: Cultural Considerations in FYC” by Brandon Burrell, Auburn University at Montgomery
• “The Evolution of Cross – cultural Empathy as Depicted through Language Contact in Film” by Catherine E. Davies, The University of Alabama
• “The Sympathetic Imagination and Racial Difference in The Lost Virgin of the South” by Ben P. Robertson, Troy University

1:00 – 2:15 pm
Lunch and Business Meeting (Trojan Dining Hall)

Parking will be available in the Hawkins Hall lot on John M. Long Blvd. (across the street from Hawkins Hall).

We recommend lodging at the Marriott Courtyard or Hampton Inn, both located at Troy Plaza Loop (intersection of Hwy 231 & George Wallace Drive).