By BRIANA SPINA
News Editor
Students and faculty from the English department showcased their work at the annual English Symposium on Wednesday, April 25. The event lasted the entire afternoon and culminated with a presentation by this year’s Distinguished Visiting Scholar, medievalist Dr. Dorothy Kim.
The day began with presenters from the Senior Seminar course, ENG 498. The next session included two groups of students from ENG 126, Diverse Voices in Literature. In the same session, three students from Literary Theory presented critiques on short stories.
Dr. Brian Sweeney took his Survey of American Literature class to the event.
“This year’s symposium was a particularly lively and diverse one, adding a performance of scenes from the spring theater production to the usual mix of creative and critical work,” he said, referring to the performance given at the event by Saint Rose’s cast of “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.”
Next were the faculty presentations with topics ranging from agrarian capitalism and English husbandry manuals to the 1980 comedy film “Caddyshack” and depression. Dr. David Morrow, the chair of the English department, presented the former, though he was more enthusiastic about the next session, in which students read their writing pieces.
“For me, the highlights included hearing former and present students of mine reading their creative nonfiction,” he said. “I work with students on research papers and other analytical writing, so it’s a thrill to see this other side of them as writers.”
The students to whom Morrow is referring included students from Professor Daniel Nester’s Creative Nonfiction Writing and Poetry in Performance classes. They read their works about religion, a tedious hospital visit, a bumpy guide for kids in search of the perfect pet, sexual assault, and the misadventures of working at a secondhand retail store.
Sweeney, like Morrow, enjoyed this part.
“It’s always a treat to see the connections that emerge between student work produced for different classes,” he said.
Also during this session, Christiane Lee, the winner of the 2018 Senior Writing Award, read her short story about a forgetful old woman named Alice.
The final session was Dr. Dorothy Kim’s talk entitled “Intersectional Feminism, Fascism, the Alt-Right, and Medieval Studies.” An especially significant point she made was that “college campuses become recruiting grounds” for white supremacist groups.
“These neo-Nazi medievalists haven’t presented anything new. They have only gained popularity because of their academic status,” she said.
Further on this point, she talked about the Men’s Rights Association recruitments on the UAlbany campus and the “alt-right religious propaganda” published by the Columbia University Press.
“Pretending this is not happening will not stop it from happening,” she emphasized.
Kim has been the subject of attack for her work, most publicly and incessantly from Rachel Fulton Brown.
“She posts about me regularly [on the internet],” Kim said. “I have ignored her… She attempts to harass me and stop me from speaking.”
Kim then told about when Fulton-Brown, a white woman, showed up to a conference for Medieval Scholars of Color and sat right the front row while Kim, a woman of color, gave a presentation. Kim spoke more about her experience with racialized violence and the dangers of simply having a body that is “always under surveillance.” Nevertheless, Kim is determined to spread her message.
“Being nicer and quieter to Nazis is not going to stop them from attacking me…[you must take action] or else your campus will become another cog in the white supremacist machine.”
Sweeney saw tremendous value in this presentation.
“Having Dorothy Kim join us as Visiting Scholar was a real coup,” he said, “and her talk was a fitting end to the day’s events—powerfully reminding us of the vital importance of literary studies in our current historical moment.”
