Three professors from Slippery Rock University’s Languages, Literatures, Cultures, and Writing Department and two secondary education majors presented at the Pop Culture Association’s 55th National Conference, April 16-18, in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Nick Katsiadas, assistant professor, presented two pieces at the conference. The first, titled “Back to Basics—A Process-Oriented Approach to Publishing on J.R.R. Tolkien: Tolkien’s Medievalism in Ruins,” aimed to demystify the publication process for a collected anthology of essays, with a focus on Tolkien’s medievalism.
Katsiadas’ second presentation, titled “‘I love not Man the less, but Nature more’: Romantic Ideals in Saga of the Swamp Thing,” traced the literary history of Alan Moore’s Saga of the Swamp Thing comic book series, connecting it to the ideals of the early 19th-century European Romantic Movement.
Additionally, Abigail Ronk, a senior from Beaver Falls (Blackhawk HS), and James Schultz, a senior from Canonsburg (Canon-McMillan HS), also participated in the conference.
Ronk presented her paper titled “Literary Analysis within Graphic Novels: Understanding Rewild alongside the Literary Canon,” which compared Devin Grayson and Yana Adamovic’s graphic novel Rewild with Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Schultz presented his paper, titled “Romanticism in Tolkien’s The Hobbit: Nature and Domestic Life as a Force for Good,” in the Tolkien Area. Schultz was the first undergraduate to present in this area in the conference’s 40-plus-year history.
Both Ronk and Katsiadas presented their research in a panel titled “Green Comics: Interventions from the Bayou and Beyond.” The panel also included presentations by Professor Danette DiMarco and Associate Professor Mark O’Connor. Katsiadas’s presentation in the panel was titled “Solastalgia in Josh Neufeld’s A.D.: New Orleans After the Flood and Mary and Bryan Talbot’s Rain,” while O’Connor’s was titled “Green and Whitewashing for Fun and Profit: American Promotional Comics.”