This past Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, Oct. 5-7, seven ETSU Honors and Midway Scholars along with Honors Scholars Program curriculum coordinator Joe Rice attended the annual Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association in the South (PCAS/ACAS) conference in the historic city of Savannah, Ga.
The conference, which was held in the Marriott Riverfront Hotel alongside the world famous River Street, was host to 498 scholars hailing from 34 U.S. states and three foreign nations. Over 180 schools were represented at the 3-day conference.
ETSU Honors Scholars Jewel Aldea, senior; Summer Carr, senior; Lindy Russell, senior; as well as panel moderator Joe Rice presented papers in a panel entitled “Disruptions of Time & Story in Film & Television at the End of the Millennium.” The papers in this panel ranged in topic, respectively, from “Pulp Fiction” to “Memento” to “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Angel” to “Run, Lola, Run”.
The remaining five Honors Scholars presented papers in the panel “Faces of Feminism Across the Globe.” All three papers in this panel were collaborations between students. Juniors Michelle Hammett and Maleka Khambaty read a paper on “Arabian Nights,” seniors Sarah Culp (Honors Scholar) and Tracy Mantell (Midway Scholar) presented a paper about Disney films, and junior Jennifer Snyder and Honors Scholars Program graduate Alyssa Chamberlain collaborated on a paper about magic realism. Chamberlain was unable to attend the conference because she is currently teaching English to students in China.
Aside from their own panels, students attended panels on many different subjects in popular and American culture. “I enjoyed the diversity of topics at the conference,” said Snyder. “I attended panels that consisted of everything from women’s and religious issues to papers about ghosts and mental health.”
Overall, students seemed happy with the conference experience. “Thought-provoking discussions, startling statistics, facts, and poetry about HIV/AIDs, and a poetry reading by Ava Haymon made this conference a truly enjoyable experience,” said Khambaty.
For many of the students, the PCAS/ACAS conference was their first formal presentation. “Even when out of the conference, the presenters were encouraging to the first-timers and happy to discuss their own topics on a personal level.
It was a receptive environment for a non-English major to try her hand at formal presentation,” said Hammett.
Several of the presenters were surprised and pleased by the turnout of non-English majors at the conference. “I thought that many people [at the conference] would be English majors/ scholars, but this conference had something to offer everyone,” Snyder said.
Presenters at PCAS ranged from undergraduate and graduate students to professors to representatives of medical coalitions, churches, and the military.
The range of personalities represented at the conference also surprised students. Presenters ranged from pop culture and American culture scholars to pop culture fanatics.
“People make fun of me for pursuing “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” as an academic study, but there were dozens of ‘Buffy scholars’ [at the conference]. I was even out’Buffy’ed at my own panel – one guy tried to ‘slay’ me because he felt I ignored too many episodes,” said Russell.
On Friday night of the conference, awards were presented to those students who had submitted their papers for the student competition.
Students also found time outside of the conference to enjoy what Savannah had to offer. Several students attended a “ghost walk” tour of Savannah while others chose to visit the shops and restaurants along the Riverwalk.
Khambaty in particular enjoyed the “ghost walk” tour. “[There were] stories referring to bloody women hung after just giving birth, civil war soldiers limping in hotels, and child ghosts running over the cobblestones in public parks,” she said.
The PCAS was organized in 1971 and currently publishes an annual journal, “Studies in Popular Culture.” The ACAS annually publishes “Studies in American Culture.”
PCAS and ACAS are part of the larger Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association, which will hold its next annual conference in Boston, Mass. on April 4-7, 2007.EDITOR’S NOTE:
Writer of this article and senior Honors Scholar Summer Carr won second prize from PCAS for her paper “John G. Raped and Murdered My Wife: Time in Christopher Memento.

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