Schedule of sessions by room

This is a panel dedicated to the life and work of Jack Kerouac.

This is exploration of other Beat and Countercultural influences on literature.

Presentations in this session provide information not only in research techniques, but also helpful hints and methodology gained through actual research by experienced academic professionals. 

Moderator David Gans, currently working on a critical history of the Grateful Dead, will lead a listening session consisting of signature performances from the Grateful Dead’s audio archive, concentrating on those times when “the music played the band,” as the song says.

The Interdisciplinary Studies program has been active at The University of Southern Mississippi since 2009, after being abandoned five years earlier at a sister campus.  The program was reactivated with no faculty resources (instead, we “borrowed” from the Dean’s staff [2 Ph.D.’s and one ABD]) and 5 potential majors. The program has grown today to over 300 students, more than 150 graduates, a Director and Asst. Director of Interdisciplinary Programs, an administrative assistant and one GA, two full-time instructors, and an assortment of adjunct faculty.

Challenges to manage this growing and thriving degree program in the face of budget shortfalls, management issues, and programming challenges continue. This management and implementation team will discuss some of the issues they have faced and solutions and strategies used.

An exploration of Rap and Hip Hop's effects on female identity and on sexuality.

This panel will examine some of the ways that war affects the culture of a society by the literature that it inspires and the memorials that follow every conflict.

This panel features papers examining some of music’s most renown artists as well as those who helped present those artists to the public, the music critics.