2015 History Conference: “Gods and Monsters” | SF State

Submitted by the Event Organizer

The 2015 History Students Association Conference at San Francisco State University will present papers that explore the intersection between humanity and its constructs.

How does ritual inform mentality? What can the supernatural tell us about historic truth and memory? How can we interpret stories so as to better understand the storyteller? How does politicization shape religious experience? How does the demonization of the other inform cultural fear? What do the fantastic elements interwoven with oral histories help us to discover about cultural norms?

 Lunch will be provided.

Gods and Monsters: Historicizing Ritual, Public Memory, and the Religious Imagination

2015 Conference Agenda
8:30-9:00am: Breakfast and Check In
9:00am-9:15am: Welcome from HSA
9:15am-10:30am: Panels 1 & 2
Panel 1: Worrisome Women – Rosa Parks Room E
Moderator: Professor Barbara Loomis

Rachel Davis, Rewriting Eve: The Birth of the Female Self
Jamie O’Quinn, Examining Slut-Shaming Through a Foulcauldian Perspective
Yvonne Sohn, The Disputable Monstrosity of the Hermaphrodite Adelaïde Herculine Barbin: A Religious Perspective

Panel 2: Other than Ourselves – Rosa Parks Room F
Moderator: Professor Charles Postel

Paul Barba, En Manos de Los Monstruos: Euro-American Constructions of Native Captivity in the Texas Borderlands
Matt Grossbard, The Bleating of Lambs: Ethnic-German Children in Post-war Poland
Ryan Smith, Fear and Loathing in the Pacific Rim: Sin, Vice, and Urban History

10:40am-12:30pm: Panels 3 & 4
Panel 3: Bodies of Concern – Rosa Parks Room E
Moderator: Professor Sheri Katz

Lisa Jackson, Radical Bodies: Exploring Rhetoric and Reality in District 13 of the Communist Party of the United States
Elwood Miller, Andrew Martinez, “The Naked Guy:” Prophet of the Body Freedom Movement
Ned Randolph, Disabling Subjectivity
Olivia Ward, Impure and Vile: Limpieza de Sangre and Racial Formation in Early Modern Spain
Sadie Yeager, On the Face of Russia: Beards and Orthodox Masculine Identity at the Turn of the Eighteenth Century

Panel 4: The Religious Divide – Rosa Parks Room F
Moderator: Professor Sarah Curtis

Daniel Beckman, The Demonological High Ground: 1980s Honduran State Ritual, Sanctioned Conspiracy Theories, and Media-Warfare Doctrines
Gregory Michna,“Roome for his People to Plant:” Puritan Settlement in Native America, 1628 to 1650
Julian Quinones, ‘I Must do What Their Hearts Say:’ Reassessing the Role of Captain Jack in the Modoc War
Jamie Pratt, A Visible Monster and An Invisible Progress Myth: A Close Look at Transhumanism
Daniel Robinson, St. Anselm’s Monstrous Jews

12:40pm-2:00pm: Keynote Speech from Professor Susanna Elm – Rosa Parks Room A-C
2:10pm-3:30pm: Panel 5

Panel 5: Monsters & Gods – Rosa Parks Room E
Moderator: Professor Laura Lisy-Wagner

Madhu Banerjee, Rakshasas and Asuras in Hindu Epic Tales
Alice Gubenko, “Get Behind me, Satan:” The Devil, Crossroads Demons, and the Roots of the Demonic
Sheri Kennedy, Starving for Remembrance: The Discourse of the Dead in Greco-Roman Society
James Medina, New Gods, Old Problems – Jack Kirby’s Monsters of War

3:30pm: Conference Ends.

Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.