A Showcase of Arguments

[cheesy, but true!]

ENG 201
29 November 2010

A Showcase of Arguments

    On Saturday, November 12, the University of Dubuque hosted its fourth annual undergraduate conference for English Literature. UNCW sent three representatives to the conference and, with all objective perspective, fielded 3 of the 5 best presentations out of 68 student panels (which is a testament to the UNCW English Department as much as anything else). In academic terms what was most significant about the day was the collective of ideas—the showcase of arguments—provided by such a gathering. Agree or disagree, reinforce ideas or discover a new expansion of thought, these presentations were all remarkable in their own way.

    My two companions were in the opening panel of the day—ostensibly titled U.S. Lit–20th Century—along with a young lady presenting a paper on the Holocaust imagery in Sylvia Plath’s work and a young man discussing Nietzschean philosophy as applied to Cormac McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men. Lisa Graham offered her convincing interpretation of suicide as inevitable and necessary in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, and, the only non-senior on this panel, Sarah Holder offered theories about femininity as adaptation in avian symbolism in a trio of texts: The Time-Traveler’s Wife, Mother Love, and The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (this last title was the source of continual harassment from Lisa and me towards Sarah; we referred to it as Romancing the Stone, and wondered why Tennessee Williams wrote a movie for Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner). The presentation on Sylvia Plath’s work linked to similar critical theories as my own, and led to some insightful and intense debate which ended only because time for the panel ran out. The Nietzsche-McCarthy argument was solid in writing, but extremely lax in presentation. As far as literary polemics go, the evidence was ample, but the public offering of that evidence was not convincing.

    There was a presentation of questionable evidence that completely fell apart under the weight of its own fundamental premise which was notable to the North Carolina contingent. A woman who began her talk by declaring herself a Yankee who journeyed to Tennessee in order to examine the mythic history of Southerners in regards to the Civil War (which, of course, is better known in the more humid climes as the War Between the States). The presenter talked about the post-Civil War South creating a mythological history yet her basic premise as stated was that the Civil War was fought over the issue of slavery (which, as a declarative statement, is historically unsound). This was an example of an academic argument gone awry by issuing inaccurate evidence as the thesis. It also gave us our first look at what not to do with a presentation and how not to formulate a critical argument.

    In contrast to that, the keynote address at the banquet lunch was nothing short of astounding. Dr. Jonathan Barz, who was the organizer of the event, delivered a speech about the importance of literature and critical thinking. It touched upon totalitarian governments jailing dissident thinkers (who are almost always the writers and literature professors of a given state), other schools in universities who scorn literary departments yet voice envy at the ability of those students to dissect and analyze arguments, and how it is only literature and the arts by which we as a culture are forced to examine our own ideology and rectitude. Following the speech, I approached Dr. Barz and expressed my admiration for it. I had been taking notes as rapidly as I could but did not manage to scribble all the references I wanted to catch; I asked him if it would be inappropriate to ask if he might email me a copy of the speech. He smiled and told me he didn’t think he could do that but, he said while opening his leather notebook and folder, he would be glad to hand over his reading copy for me to keep. It was a remarkable request on my part followed with an equally amazing response; his marked-up copy closely resembled our trio’s own presentation copies of our work. It was a small validation that the younger scholars were treading a similar road of those who came before us. But upon learning how to walk, we were encouraged to find our own path through the jungle of critical thought and academic argument.

    My own presentation was at the end of the day, and I was the first among four people reading excerpts of fiction. A major difference in my own work when compared to those on the same panel is that I was presenting a partial story with only a tenuous grasp as to being called “fiction.” I presented part of a story about a woman sniper in Sarajevo during the siege from ’92-’96, followed by a peek behind the story to the “scaffolding” which lead to its composition: my own meeting of the women in the Dinaric mountains north of Višegrad and the personal conflict which resulted in feeling sympathy for a woman whose actions I found reprehensible. This presentation harkened back to the question raised in the first panel of the day concerning Plath and her use of the Holocaust to represent her own fears and uncertainties. Theodor Adorno’s quote about poetry being barbaric after Auschwitz was cited that morning, and it is one I have examined and contested in my own work with the Balkans. My response to such a claim comes in the use of a metaphoric quote I picked up in Serbia on my travels—and what I concluded my own presentation at Streamlines with: “The bridge is the most important creation in human history,” Serbian poet Matija Bećković told me while we shared coffee and conversation in Belgrade, “The bridge does not ask who crosses it.” I quoted that in relating the origin of my story of the sniper in Sarajevo. “Stories are like that,” I offered, “A story doesn’t ask who reads it.”

    Our journey to Dubuque for this conference is indelibly etched in my mind as a pinnacle of academic and literary achievement. The three of us represented the school, Sigma Tau Delta, and ourselves as (publicly) serious scholars whose work is accomplished and worthy of deep consideration. Privately, we were anything but serious, which formed a bond I hope with last for the duration of our lifetimes. The Streamlines Conference was in many ways a first step. A first step that is now behind us. I look back and smile at what we attained in that journey. Then I turn around and look ahead.

     The next step of our journey awaits.


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