Past Conferences
In honor of the 75th anniversary of the comic book super heroine Wonder Woman in 2016, Á½ÐÔÉ«ÎçÒ¹ University and the Cleveland Public Library will partner to celebrate the intersections of public literacy, comics, and feminism in a jointly sponsored symposium. The 2016 Wonder Woman Symposium partners two powerful public institutions in Northeast Ohio, taking up the historical trends that have changed the world of comics, American popular culture, and feminism. Centering on the figure of Wonder Woman and her heirs, this symposium will feature plenary addresses by major creators in the industry and historians of the comics world, and workshops by comics creators on creating graphic narratives and comics. This forum seeks to highlight both regional and national talent. Our celebration of Wonder Woman's anniversary pays respect to "herstory" while recognizing her perpetual relevance to our present day, and beyond.
This conference is made possible, in part, by the Ohio Humanities, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this conference do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Full Schedule:
Thursday, Sept. 22, 2016
Cleveland Public Library, Louis Stokes Wing Auditorium, 325 Superior Ave, Cleveland OH 44114
6:00-6:30pm- Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti (via skype), Creative team of Harley Quinn, Starfire, and Harley Quinn and Power Girl
6:30-7:30pm- Phil Jimenez, Writer/Artist of Wonder Woman and Superwoman, and artist of Astonishing X-men, New X-men, Amazing Spider-Man and The Invisible
Carol & John's Comic Book Shop, 17462 Lorain Ave, Cleveland, OH 44111
8:00-10:00pm- Artist and Author Book Signing with Phil Jimenez, Cameron Stewart and other comics creators
Friday, Sept. 23, 2016
Cleveland Public Library, Louis Stokes Wing Auditorium, 325 Superior Ave, Cleveland OH 44114
3:00-4:00pm- Joan Ormrod, Co-editor of the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics and co-editor of Superheroes and Identities
4:00-4:45pm- Cameron Stewart, Writer/Artist of Batgirl, Motor Crush and artist of Batman and Robin and Fight Club 2
5:00-6:00pm- Trina Robbins, Author of The Great Women Superheroes, Wonder Woman, and editor of Babes in Arms and The Complete Wimmen's Comix
6:15-7:00pm- Roundtable Discussion with Presenters
Saturday, Sept. 24, 2016
Cleveland Public Library, Louis Stokes Wing Auditorium, 325 Superior Ave, Cleveland OH 44114
9:30-10:00am- Coffee & Refreshments
10:00-11:00am- Genevieve Valentine, Author of Catwoman, Xena: Warrior Princess and the novels The Girls at the Kingfisher Club and Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti
11:15-12:15pm- Carol Tilley, Author of "Seducing the Innocent: Fredric Wertham and the Falsifications That Helped Condemn Comics" and a Will Eisner Comics Industry Awards Judge
12:15-2:00pm- Lunch and Wonder Woman Record Breaking Event (at the Eastman Garden)
2:00-3:00pm- Laura Siegel, Daughter of Jerry Siegel, co-creator of Superman. A former correspondent for CNN, she has won over 100 awards including 13 Emmys and 8 New York Festival Awards
3:15-4:15pm- Peter Coogan, Director of the Institute for Comics Studies and author of Superhero: The Secret Origin of a Genre and co-editor of What is a Superhero?
4:30-5:00pm- Audience Q&A with Christie Marston, granddaughter of William Moulton Marston, creator of Wonder Woman
5:00-5:45pm- Roundtable Discussion with Presenters
6:00-6:45pm- Meet and Greet with Presenters
In the News:
- , Akron Beacon Journal
- , Crain's Cleveland Business
- , The New York Times
- , Cleveland.com
- , The Beat (comics blog)
- , Superman Homepage
Questions?
Please contact the organizers at wonderwomansymposium@gmail.com
Project Director: Professor Vera J. Camden
Project Coordinator: Valentino Zullo
Project Partners:
- Amy Dawson, Literature Department and Ohio Center for the Book Manager, Cleveland Public Library
- Jean Collins, Librarian, Literature Department and Ohio Center for the Book, Cleveland Public Library
Why the Humanities:
Answers from the Cognitive and Neurosciences
July 9-12, 2015
Á½ÐÔÉ«ÎçÒ¹ University Hotel and Conference Center
215 S. Depeyster St., Kent, Ohio 44240
For further information, contact whythehumanities@gmail.com
The purpose of this conference is to highlight and enhance the contributions that humanities education makes to personal well being, responsible citizenship, and social justice.
Recent studies in the cognitive and neurosciences indicate how humanities education can develop the following key cognitive and emotional capabilities that are essential not only for personal well being but also for responsible citizenship and social justice:
- Empathy, the ability to feel what others are feeling
- Mind Reading, the ability to understand the thoughts and intentions of others
- Metacognition, the ability to monitor and regulate one’s own perceptions and judgments of others
- Bias Correction, the ability to compensate for distortions in one’s judgments of others
- Self-Knowledge, the ability to recognize troublesome traits or motives in oneself
- Self-Other Overlap Recognition, the ability to apprehend similarities between oneself and others who appear very different from oneself
- Moral Judgment, the ability to form accurate and fair assessments of oneself and of others
Featured Speakers:
Nancy Easterlin
Research Professor of English at New Orleans University
She is the author of several books, including A Biocultural Approach to Literary Theory and Interpretation, employing cognitive and neuroscience in the analysis of literature.
Angus Fletcher
Associate Professor of English and Film Studies at The Ohio State University
His research focuses on the function of narrative and dramatic forms in fostering more tolerant, plural, cooperative societies—the kinds of societies that are more effective at developing progressive solutions to hunger, disease, and the other material problems of our biological world. He is the author of Evolving Hamlet and numerous articles.
Hunter Gehlbach
Associate Professor of Education at Harvard University
The author of numerous articles, he is an expert on the crucial social-cognition capability of perspective taking, on pedagogical strategies for developing it, and on designing questionnaires to measure this and other capabilities of social cognition.
Suzanne Keen
Professor of English and Dean at Washington and Lee University
She has conducted empirical research on how reading novels can activate and enhance empathy, sympathy, and other emotions and is the author of Empathy and the Novel, several other books, and numerous articles.
David Comer Kidd
PhD Candidate in Psychology at The New School for Social Research
His dissertation, the results of which were published last fall in a widely read and discussed article in Science, found that reading literary texts enhances people’s ability to infer other people’s mental states.
David Miall
Professor of English at the University of Alberta
He has conducted numerous empirical studies of literary reception and is the author of Literary Reading: Empirical and Theoretical Studies, in which he explains how reading literature can change readers’ capabilities and habits of cognition and feeling.
Keith Oatley
Novelist and Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Toronto
Among his many publications is Such Stuff as Dreams: The Psychology of Fiction, in which he offers empirically based explanations of how reading literature can increase empathy and other elements of emotional intelligence.
Natalie Phillips
Assistant Professor of English at Michigan State University
She is co-founder of the Digital Humanities and Literary Cognition Lab, which uses neuroscientific tools, such as fMRI and eye tracking, to explore the cognitive dynamics of literary reading.
G. Gabrielle Starr
Professor of English and Dean at New York University
She pursues research in neuroaesthetics, a relatively new field of inquiry that uses the tools of cognitive neuroscience to explore the contours of aesthetic experience. Her most recent book is Feeling Beauty: The Neuroscience of Aesthetic Experience.
Lisa Zunshine
Bush-Holbrook Professor of English at the University of Kentucky
She is the author of many articles and books, including Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel, which explains how specific literary passages induce and possibly train readers to infer others’ mental states.
Plenary Session, Dix Room
Moving Forward: How to Advance the Humanities with the Cognitive and Neurosciences
Presiding: Mark Bracher, Professor of English, Á½ÐÔÉ«ÎçÒ¹ University
What teachers can get from the conference:
- Two continuing education units (tuition waived)
- Presentations by cognitive and neuroscience researchers on key cognitive capabilities fostered by humanities study
- Discussions of the personal and social benefits of these capabilities
- Workshops on the best educational practices for developing these capabilities
- Opportunities to initiate collaborative research projects with other teachers and/or university researchers
This conference is made possible, in part, by the Ohio Humanities, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this conference do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Generous support is also being provided by Á½ÐÔÉ«ÎçÒ¹ University’s College of Arts & Sciences, College of Education, Health and Human Services, the Departments of English, History, Modern and Classical Language Studies, Philosophy, Psychology, and Sociology, and the Institute for Applied Linguistics.